The secret letter that makes your level Go from beginner to advanced!

jadi kindred

English Business Coach & Founder of Accent Unique Inc. 

​This simple letter is surprisingly particularly important. Why you may ask? Because it is the most important rule, the foundation of English. The lesson you should have learned on day one. The problem is that day one was usually awfully long ago and 99% of my clients simply forgot it or don't find it important. Even very advanced speakers forget this little letter and it immediately brings them back to sounding like a beginner.

Clients hire us to correct the errors that no one else corrects. Their anglophone clients are definitely not correcting their grammar during a business meeting. That is our job.

Some of my clients have made the same pronunciation errors for 10 years and no one corrected them.

Others have forgotten this essential rule, which is the foundation of English.

What is the letter?

The letter is S! Remember that all important 3rd person singular rule for the present tense? We need to add an s to verbs when using the subject, he, she, and it.  During my training in teaching English-as-a-Second Language, I learned that around 60% of the time the 3rd person is used. That makes sense to me, when I think about all of the subjects that are included in the simple word “it” in the English language.

Everything is it, so therefore must have the rule of adding an s the simple tense verb.

I will give some work-related examples:

1. Stephane works online.
2. My friend has an office in Montreal.
3. Her boss starts work at 7am.
4. The new printer doesn’t work.

 
Another aspect of that all-important letter “s” is…

The plural form! Making something plural can really change the context of a sentence.

For example: I have a boyfriend vs I have boyfriends.
 
Some words completely change when you add an “s” at the end, such as….

1. Wood vs woods. One means the material; the second means the forest.
2. New vs news. The first word is an adjective and the second a noun.
3. Tight vs tights. One is an adjective; the other is a garment of clothing. 

We tend to underestimate the importance of these details in English, but what if I accidentally added the letter “t” to chiotes, by saying chiottes? Yes, I have done that and yes, it was embarrassing!