Overwork Thursday, April 12, 2007
This week our phone guest Bassam in Egypt selected 'until we meet again' as his favourite English expression. We would like you to write a short piece which naturally includes this phrase and any other vocabulary from this webcast. It can be any kind of writing, a short story, telling us about something that happened to you, whatever you like. 300 words maximum please.
The winning entry will be published on this page along with comments from us. We will say what we like about your essay and also offer some corrections (if necessary). Closing date Monday 16th April, 2007
Thank you for your entries, the competition has now closed.
This week's winner is Tanuja Ghosh from India. Well done! We liked this entry because it was extremely well written, used the vocabulary from the webcast and was a very good story.
Here's Tanuja's entry:
Alex and Maria are not exactly the happiest of couples. I believe they cannot be called happy by any standards. In fact, they are very unhappy. Alex & Maria fight most of the time. Their relationship has gone stale. Cold indifference has taken the place of early sweetness and has left both the parties raging inside1.
It is not as if they are not nice & decent fellows. Alex particularly is a popular personality in his neighbourhood and in his bank, where he works as the C.E.O. Alex runs his bank well and makes it sure2 that the employees are well paid, not overworked ,have enough leisure and disapproves of long hours work culture3.
Alex loves his job & has totally immersed himself in the banking strategies, clients & credits, interests& profits, accounts & hard statistics. Again, globalization has taken a heavy toll of his work/ life balance4.
The upshot of it all is that Maria is left alone which she hates5. She is a romantic type, if you know what I mean. Maria loves candle light dinners6, enjoys walking lazily along the wet beach holding Alex's hand, whispering sweet nothings to Alex's ears. But Alex has no time to waste doing such idle silly7 things. He accompanies Maria to the parties/social get-togethers8 when everybody gushes about how good they look together. He is making a fortune for the well-being of their future together. Isn't that enough?
He gets the shock of his life when Maria decides that she can't take it any more. She says," Alex, I did love you dearly. I still do. Our once Fabulous9 relationship is now extinct. So I am leaving. Take care. Until we meet again10." And walks out on him. Just like that. I know not If this has made Alex any the wiser.
Comments from BBC Learning English
This piece of writing manages to use the appropriate expressions in a natural way and to tell a very good story at the same time.
1: This is a very descriptive and poetic sentence.
2: You don't need to use the word 'it' in the expression makes sure.
3: This is an appropriate use of the expression 'long hours culture'.
4: Again, this is a very accurate use of two of the expressions from the webcast.
5: You need to use a comma before 'which' in this type of relative clause: 'Maria is left alone, which she hates'.
6: Here you need to use the adjective of the noun 'candlelight', which is 'candlelit' .
7: Lists of adjectives should be divided with commas: 'idle, silly things'.
8: You don't need the definite article 'the' here.
9: There is no need for you to use a capital letter at the beginning of the adjective 'fabulous'.
10: This is a perfect example of the expression 'until we meet again'.
Congratulations, Tanuja. A prize is on its way to you.
We'd also like to mention Alessandra from Italy who sent us an entry. You didn't win this time, but we liked the way you managed to use the target language in a personal account of your work life. Here it is.
In my opinion if you work hard and you consider yourself "overworked", you long to tell your boss: "Next week I will be on vacation. I hope you will be in another office 'until we meet again'!" I think that it is an example of the use of such expression in a negative sense...
But if you are going to leave for a business meeting because you will have to take your boss's place on your boyfriend's birthday, then you will maybe tell him "I wish you will always want to marry just me 'until we meet again'! This is a positive use of the expression at least in your wishes!
Bye bye, Ale
