How to talk about trends in English

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, we are the 3 English Experts. I'm Rebecca. I'm Dave. I'm Birgit. And welcome to this episode. 3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey. Hi everyone and welcome back to this episode. Today we're talking about trends, so how to describe a trend. With this we mean something like prices are increasing or the cost of, I don't know what, cars is decreasing. So we're talking about movements and changes. Why are we talking about this? It's helpful, for example, in all kinds of situations. So actually, of course, when you're presenting, maybe you have to present figures, you have graphs, you have diagrams, but it could also just be talking about things that are happening right now. So at the moment, my stress levels are increasing or the moment my number of working hours is decreasing. It's very useful in lots of situations. And of course, the easy version is increase, decrease, increase, decrease. But what we want to do today is to show you that there are a lot of options. So again, it's upgrading, finding new words to use and how to use them. So that's our topic for today. So I'm going to hand over to Dave, who's going to talk about upwards, I think. Is that right? Upwards? Upwards. Thank you very much. Hi everybody. I'm doing the upwards. Okay. So of course we're talking about upward trends. And so generally we use verbs to talk about these. So here are a few, Rebecca already mentioned one, for example, increase. Okay. You can also say just go up, right, as well. Another word is something that you do maybe as a hobby, climb, right? So I don't know the number of people who smoke is climbing. We hope that's not the case. I think it's actually not climbing anymore, but we know what you mean. Dave, thank you very much. Two that are very common now and also are quite interesting is the word to soar. That's S-O-A-R. Okay. And that is when something increases quickly. Okay. So the price of petrol is soaring, right? So it's increasing very quickly. Often a new word that you hear as well is skyrocket, which means the same as that. The other important skyrocket. Yes. The other one is surge. Maybe you've heard of that one as well. That's S-U-R-G-E. And in this case, it means to increase suddenly. Okay. So the soar is quickly, surge is suddenly. So increase suddenly. Okay. And I've got a couple more for you. Let's say maybe the figures on your graph that you want to describe in your presentation weren't very good. Then you want to talk about maybe as they're getting better. So that's the easy form. Yeah. It's getting better. Two other options, maybe to recover. Yeah. So like if you're ill, you recover. And then there's the phrasal verb version of that, which is to pick up. So the numbers are picking up, the sales figures are picking up, recovering, getting better. So they are all basically mean the same and are synonyms. Dave has thrown a lot of fancy new words at us. That's fantastic. Because I think, I believe this is like a newspaper language. We'll read this maybe very often when we read through newspapers and people are not used to using the surge or picking up. And it's wonderful that I was just watching Dave as he explained this. And I think that's very memorable with little laughs, with climbing. Thank you very much, Dave. I think that's excellent teaching. So maybe next time people talk about this, they might remember. I had to think about that. What could be a hobby? Didn't see that coming. Okay. So let's move over to Birgit, who's going to talk about the medium one, no changes, things like that. Thank you. Yes. Nothing has changed, sort of thing. Everything stays the same. Yes. How can we describe that? So remaining is a good word here. When you talk about figure or something remained, maybe sales revenue remained steady. This is another word, steady, where people very often have not used themselves. But I always say something like a ready, steady, go. That's where you get it from. Everybody gets on the same level, steady and stay the same, unchanged. So these are the words how you can describe a chart figure. And another one nice word is something remains stable, stable, or another word is stagnate. And you see, this is what we use also, stagnium, but very often people cannot think of that. So yeah, try to use alternating words. And that's an upgrading, as we said, and we have also an episode on this and phrasal verbs, Dave mentioned them. So it's always good to have alternatives. Now, Rebecca will talk about something going down. Going down. Yes. So I've got the down words. And actually, I always say to people, it kind of, it helps if you think of the D because they're often with a D. So to go down. Yeah, obviously, that's an easy one. Then we've got decrease. We had that before. Decline, also a D word. So to go down, to drop. Obviously, drop would be a bit more dramatic. Like if you drop something, it falls immediately. So fall, we have as well, not a D word, but then we've got deteriorate. That's fancy. That's fancy. It's a tricky word to say. You just have to literally pronounce every single, you know, deteriorate. But you could make it easy, Rebecca, by saying it means get worse. Yeah, you could say that. It's not a fancy. Get worse is not fancy, though. But that sometimes is also tricky. Worse, because not everybody is sure about worse. That's true, actually. Yeah. It deteriorated. Wow. Okay. Another sort of dramatic one to the opposite of Dave's saw, maybe we've got slump. That's a good one. Slump is like a crash, you know, slumped with an S. Yeah. So there's lots of nice down words. And like I said, a lot of them are with a D. So probably, if we look deeper into the language, if we were looking more, we would find a lot more, wouldn't we? Absolutely. So if you read something like you said as well with newspapers, if you read the Financial Times, for example, if you read the section where they talk about stocks and shares and, you know, changes on the stock market, you will see a lot of these words used. So that's a nice place if you're trying to build up your vocabulary. Take a look at something like that. Financial Times, where they go into real detail about changes on the stock market. And there are a lot of these that you can identify. So there really are many. And I think Dave has a nice quiz about this, right? Yeah, I thought I'd put a little quiz onto our three English experts resources tablet. I'll put a link in the show notes. So feel free to go along and play the game and maybe you can already test yourself what you learn from this. And then I'm sure you'll get one or two other phrases and words, whatever, from that quiz. Yeah. And maybe it's also interesting to mention that it's not always this one word, maybe in newspapers or Financial Times, as you said, is the one word they would only use because people learn or sometimes are very uncertain about, or can I only use this in this situation? But this very often is variety, isn't it? Sort of the context is more important here and the direction, the trend. I mean, actually the subject of our today's episode here. Okay. So once you've got your words, you've got your up and your middle and your down, you can add even more description by adding an adverb, for example. So Birgit, I'm going to hand over to you because adverb obviously is a grammar thing. Birgit, what's an adverb? So I don't have the upwards or downwards. I've got the grammar words or the adverbial words. We don't have a shortening name for that. Adverb, that sounds complicated, but that's just when you describe a verb, how something changes. I give you an example that's easier, slightly, sharply, rapidly. We have the ending ly here. So people are unsure sometimes about this. It takes a little exercising before you can be sure what does it need to be. But we're talking about maybe they dropped. And how did the figures drop? Dramatically, rapidly. And there again, you have different kinds of strength. So you have stronger adverbs and you have weaker adverbs. Slightly would be good one for very small change. Slowly, obviously, it's got to do with the pace. Moderately. And these are all words when I bring them up, people, a lot of people, of course, my learners, then they're in the learning process. They don't use them actively. Again, how do they use them in an active way? So from an adjective, every adjective could become an adverb. And of course, there are some irregular ones, for example, worse, which we mentioned earlier. So that comes from bad. Bad, worse, worst. Yeah. And speaking of exceptions of adverbial forms is another one is, and that's important here when we describe trends fast. Yeah, there's no fastly, of course. OK, I'm handing over to Dave, who's going to talk about sizes, amounts, mengen, something. Yeah, thanks. So there's words that you can change into adverbs. Of course, it's the adject form, the rapid, the sharp, by adding the ly. So there's rapidly and sharply. And if you're talking maybe about size instead, then you can talk about considerably, substantially and dramatically. So, of course, they can be used for both up and down, which is cool then that you can use these phrases. For example, you could say unemployment increased sharply, let's say, or you could say decreased sharply, whatever. And also with considerably, you could say the amount of exports increased dramatically or considerably or something like that. What about the grammar? Because you've heard us talking about increasing, decreased. Hmm. What about the grammar? Yeah, the grammar basically is important here in the way that when we talk about changes taking place right now at the moment, that will be continuous, something people overuse sometimes and use it not correctly for this what's happening at the moment. So again, there's another episode on that if you're interested. But this is something describing what's happening now. So numbers are going up, are picking up, are dropping. That would exactly describe that this is happening right now over a period. Or another one, of course, my favourite present perfect. You can see something you look at figures and you can say, OK, these figures have changed. Yeah, you wouldn't refer to some point in the past, wouldn't say, well, maybe probably Americans might say that they changed. But it's a present perfect issue here very often. And you will hear that and read that in papers. I don't know how strong you feel about that. If people just use past tense, Rebecca, as a native, that. Yeah, I mean, it depends on the situation, but definitely. Yeah. When there's no time in the sentence for me, like prices have changed, prices have gone up. You know, there's no like in January or last year, it's just generally have prices gone up. Yes, prices have gone up dramatically or something. So there's no time in the sentence. For me, that's a classic case of why you should be using present perfect. Yeah. But it would not what it would probably not be. It would be a simple present. Unless you say it's you describe it. That's a trend. Isn't it a trend to say that they go up? You can say, well, if it was a if it was a repeated situation. So every summer, the number of flights to Spain goes up or number of. Yeah, generally right now. Yeah. But if you're talking generally, then you can use present simple. So I was just going to say, actually, this is your big five because. Yeah, it is a big five in the future. I'm so you can it goes up every summer. It's going up right now. It went up last year. It has gone up on its side and it will go up next year. So it's a it's a good example. You can do it with all your big five. Yeah, that's true. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Another grammar point is the prepositions. So obviously, if you're describing figures, so the easy one is gone up from 10 to 20, for example. So you'd have from and to not until 20. Often I hear this because of this. So it's gone from two. And then, of course, this, you know, so it's gone up by 10. So if it goes from 10 to 20, it's gone up by 10. A lot of people get that wrong. It stays at. So it's stagnated at 20 percent or something. We have to use the ass anymore. I'm not thinking on a level. It's on a high. It's on a it's on a high level. It's at a high level at a high level. That's it's on a high level. It's at a high level. So both, I would say. And the other thing is people often add prepositions when they're not needed, for example, to say grew up. No. Yeah. You know, it is is I hear that. Yeah. Increasing. So you don't need the up with the increase or decrease down. You don't need that. You know, decrease is down. So drop down or drop down. Yeah. Don't need it. You can't drop up. I don't think I'm pretty sure that gravity says, no, you can't drop up. So drop is generally down. So you don't get down. It's like, you know what I mean? It's like you can go down and up, up and down. They go together. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Drop, drop up. No. Yeah. So there's all these prepositions that just don't always need to be there, because especially if you've got these describing words, it dropped dramatically. You don't need the down because it's obvious it dropped down dramatically. So don't overdo it with the extra prepositions, let's say. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a tricky. That's a good one for exercising, trying to get that into your sentences when you talk, if you're not used to using that, because that will help you feel more confident and get into the flow and be fluent if you're sure about this, to have these adverbs going with fancy verbs in discussions in your business settings. I think that's a good step. The golden nuggets. Okay. So for our golden nugget today, keeping in the theme of charts and what have you, I love AI and ChatGPT. And I thought to myself, I wonder if ChatGPT could help me describe a trend, a chart with also indications of why something happens. So the causes of something happening. And so I had a chart that I prepared and I uploaded it to ChatGPT and guess what? It was able to create a description of the chart, which I could then give in a presentation. Of course, this is cheating, you can say, but it is a way to speed up the process if you want to, but also to use this to learn English, because what's ChatGPT produced is a really nice text that described the chart that I put up or uploaded to ChatGPT. I was really impressed with the English that it used. So for you, I'll very quickly in the show notes, I'll copy and paste what I put into ChatGPT as the prompt, but it's very, very simple. I just literally wrote in the prompt, write a text to describe this chart for the upcoming sales presentation, including giving reasons for the trend. And the reasons for the trend were in the chart. They were included in the chart. And then as I said, that was it. Guess what? If you wanted to, ChatGPT could also describe what would happen later. So extrapolate, that is an English word. So extrapolate the chart. So go off this chart and imagine it's going into the future. And it was even able to do that, right? So to predict the extrapolation of the chart. So I think that's quite a cool thing for learning processes, but also for cheating. Right. Next time in the next episode, we're going to have a guest again. It's going to be a different episode with an interview guest, and this will be very fancy. I think for my side, it will be Grzegorz Mignon-Fogarty from the United States from a California side. And she's a four time winner of the best education podcast. She's been online podcasting for a long time, eight years, or maybe even 10 years with the first podcast she had on science. Very fascinating. We're so happy she'll be on our show. And yeah, hopefully you'll be pressing play today and listen to what she's going to say. Bye bye. Bye for now. Bye. Thank you so much for pressing play today. If you enjoy our podcast, please share with your friends, your family or your co-workers. 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