Smart Expressions for Providing Reasons, Predictions and Recommendations
Everyone wants to sound smart. Yet, when we speak a foreign language, our ideas get watered down by simplistic language (😩). How can we help learners overcome this problem? Cue ... smart expressions!
To help you out, we've gathered smart expressions below that’ll allow your students to cleverly handle three key parts of discussions: providing reasons, making predictions and giving recommendations.
Expressions for Explaining Why
Some discussion and test questions ask students to provide possible reasons for something. For example, “How would you explain the rise of hate speech on the internet?”
Encourage intermediate students to go beyond, “I think this is because ...” and instead try the following expressions:
The rise of hate speech ...
| Intermediate | Advanced |
| might be because ... | might stem from ... |
| can be explained by ... | could be attributed to ... |
| was probably caused by ... | may be due to ... |
| may be a result of ... | *A possible explanation might be that ... |
Notice the modal expressions – “might,” "may" and “probably” – in the examples above. These allow students to avoid expressing absolute certainty when they’re not 100% sure of their response.
Since “How would you explain”-type questions require students to provide what they think is a possible reason, students will feel more comfortable sharing their opinions when they're taught these modal expressions.
Often, advanced students want to express correlation instead of causation, but lack the expressions to do that. If you sense hesitation or hear them say something like, “This is kind of because …” or “Maybe this is because …,” you can suggest the following expressions:
- Rises in hate speech are often associated with …
- Rises in hate speech are often related to …
If a student wants to provide more than one reason, encourage them to start with, "There are several possible reasons/explanations for the rise in hate crime."
Expressions for Making Predictions
Some discussion questions ask students to make predictions, such as “How might greater diversity benefit the tech industry as a whole?”
If your student starts with “I think” or “I guess,” you might want to suggest the following alternatives:
- My guess is that ...
- I'm not convinced that ...
- The data suggest that ...
- History shows that ...
- Given that / Seeing as ... I'm not convinced that ...
The last pair of alternatives include conditional phrases like “given that” and “seeing as,” which allow for more nuance in responses.
Expressions for Providing Recommendations
A different category of questions might ask students to give recommendations, such as “What could governments do to encourage people to buy environmentally friendly cars?”
Encourage your students to go beyond “I think the government should …” and try the following:
- They should consider ...
- They should focus on ...
- One solution/option would be to ...
- It would help to ...
- It would make sense to ...
- A reasonable/sensible approach would be to ...
- One way forward is to ...
- A key priority would be to ...
- It would be in their interest to ...
Students who have multiple suggestions can structure their responses like this:
- The government has a few options.
- One option would be to ...
- Another option would be to ...
- A third option would be to ...
👋 That’s it for now!
What did you think of these expressions? Which ones do you plan to introduce to students or use yourself? If you liked this post, see this post on expressions for providing opinions.
