GuruEAP

Cost or costs?

In the metal and mining sector, companies are facing significant problems (Hopwood, 2018). For example, they face increasing production cost due to the rapid development of new mining technologies.

Like much basic vocabulary in the field of economics, cost is a difficult word! First of all this is one of those words that can be countable and uncountable, and secondly there are some usage peculiarities with each. (more…)

Value or values?

Foreign companies offer more added values to products or services.

Sorry folks, but this is another countable / uncountable problem. Let’s take a look at some examples of each! (more…)

Production and Productions

According to data, 40.49 % of palm oil productions are from small farm owners.

Productions (countable)

The plural form of production collocates strongly with film and theatre: (more…)

Market(s) and ‘the market’

It is important to test products on animals before releasing them commercially to markets.

The problem here is that there are two kinds of market – physical and virtual – and in this example, markets (plural) suggests more than one physical market, while releasing them commercially suggests more than one virtual market. Let’s take a look at some examples. (more…)

Abstract and concrete spending

Helping developing nations can spend much money.

If I want to spend money, I basically have two options: (more…)

No Money No Honey

IELTS often requires us to talk about money and how we spend it, so here’s a song illustrating some common collocations. Lyrics are embedded in the video.

Notice that we do not usually say “The price is expensive.” This is acceptable collocation in some languages (!), but not in English – see here, here and here. (more…)

Reconstructing consumerism with Skidelsky

1. Think about – or better still, chat to a friend – about consumerism. Why do we love shopping so much? ( Indonesians check out the difference between consumeristic and consumptive!)
2. Watch the video and listen to what Robert Skidelsky has to say about consumerism.
3. Then attempt to reconstruct what Skidelsky says using the app below. Watch the video again if necessary!

(more…)

‘Stood at’ in a chocolate bar chart

In this post we’ll do two things. First, you will read a text and complete (draw) a bar chart based on the text. Next we’ll think about the use of ‘stood at’ in this kind of text, which is very similar to the writing you do in IELTS Task 1. (more…)

Nothing ‘needs’ high cost

Studying abroad needs high cost!

 This one does not translate directly from Indonesian. In fact the meaning changes dramatically!
In English if you say something ‘needs high cost‘ then you are saying: (more…)

The price is expensive (2)

The price of natural pearls is more expensive than the price of man made pearls.

 This is an Indonesian student translating ‘harganya mahal‘!
We see what you mean. But in IELTS (more…)