Downloads – English Online

How to write numbers

Daniel Fuchs — Mon, 23 Nov 2015 08:00:15 +0000

Here is a handout in German about how to write numbers, amounts of money and, as a bonus, dates, in English.

Fun fact: Have you ever noticed that the keypads on a telephone and a pocket calculator, although very similar, are reversed in their arrangement of numbers?

Prefixes

Daniel Fuchs — Mon, 09 Nov 2015 08:00:51 +0000

Here’s a handout on Prefixes. Sometimes you can guess the meaning of words you’ve never heard before from their prefixes, but it doesn’t always work because language is not strictly systematic.

Past and Perfect Tenses

Daniel Fuchs — Mon, 26 Oct 2015 21:00:42 +0000

Here’s a brief guide to the past and perfect tenses, written in German.

Vergangenheit und Perfekt

Legal forms of enterprises

Daniel Fuchs — Tue, 20 Oct 2015 10:07:35 +0000

Here is a handout on legal forms of enterprises in different countries and an interview with a business consultant on the differences between a sole trader and a limited company.

Compound adjectives

Daniel Fuchs — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 08:15:55 +0000

Did you know that you can build your own adjectives in English? Take any phrase and connect its components with hyphens, put the thing before a noun, and there you are.

For instance, if you want to say that a building was designed after the style of the end of the century, you can write that it’s an end-of-the-century building. Astounding, isn’t it?

Actually, there are limits to this concept. To write about an end-of-the-period-when-there-were-two-German-states building would be a bit over the top. But you get the idea.

I’ve tried to put down some simple rules in German which you can download here. The hyphens are often omitted in modern business talk and advertising because they are seen as uncool. But that’s wrong. Keep the hyphens, they’re important. Or how would you tell the difference between a green-energy consultant and a green energy consultant without a hyphen?