Let's Get 7 in IELTS

William: Hello and welcome to How To, my name is William Kremer. Occasionally, at work or at home, someone will say something that is very rude and offensive. You’ll be shocked and angry… we say in English that you take offence at their words – you take offence. In today’s programme, we’re going to look at a few things you might say in response to somebody very rude.
You’re going to hear Martin and Claire. They work in the same team. Martin isn’t very pleased with Claire’s work and he’s decided to tell her. But it’s
important to note that Martin isn’t Claire’s boss, he’s just a co-worker or a colleague. And he isn’t a very nice person, so Claire is going to take offence at some of the things he says.

Jackie: Hello, welcome to the programme, with me, Jackie Dalton. This programme is all about expressions you can use when you think someone is wrong about something and you want to disagree with them. We're going to do this with the help of British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. He was recently interviewed by John Humphries, a BBC journalist. Tony Blair disagreed with quite a lot of the things John Humphries said and we're going to look at some of the language he used when he did this language you could use in all kinds of situations when you disagree with someone. In the first example, Tony Blair responds to John
Humphries by using one of the simplest words in the English language.

Tony Blair

William: Hello, and welcome to How to… Your handy guide to handy English My name’s William Kremer…. and you’re studying English… aren’t you?
Do I sound a little uncertain? – do I sound like I’m not sure if you’re studying English? Well, in today’s programme we’ll be looking at ways for you to show that you’re not sure of something. But it’s more complicated than showing certainty or uncertainty - there are different levels of certainty. English
speakers demonstrate how sure they are of something by using words and phrases – and also by using different intonation, by saying things differently.
You may have noticed that on the How To webpage on BBC Learning English dot com, there is a large picture of a beautiful pair of eyes. But whose eyes are they? Well, that’s the question I asked my colleagues Catherine and Elena earlier on…

Jackie: Hello, welcome to the programme, with me, Jackie Dalton. This programme is all about expressions you can use when you're having a discussion or disagreement with someone and you want to tell them what you think about something. We're going to do this with the help of the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

(conversation)

Jackie: Hello, I'm Jackie Dalton. In this programme, we're going to look at the language we use when we make suggestions. We'll do this by listening to clips from a discussion in the BBC Learning English offices. A member of BBC Learning English is leaving the team to go and work somewhere else and her colleagues are planning a party for her. We'll hear people making suggestions about what the party could involve.

In English, suggestions are very often expressed in the form of questions.