BE 393: Aim High With These Flat Adverb Grammar Tips
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This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 393. Aim high with these flat adverb grammar tips.

Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English. Get the English skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business. For a presentation, a meeting, or your office party, this is Real Business English with your favorite American hosts, Lindsay and Aubrey, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.

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Hey, Lindsay, how are you? Hey, Aubrey, feeling great today, but I have a question. Are you ready? Yeah. All right. So do you know anyone who doesn't play fair? You play a lot of sports or just in life, maybe? Yes, I do. I play pickleball with someone who's notorious for calling a ball either out or in whatever is to her advantage. And she even has admitted that she does that. And if you didn't see it right, then she should get the point, right?

So you have to really watch the line closely when she, cause she's going to call it wrong to her advantage. And I would never do that. I feel like that's not playing fair. No, that's really brazen, isn't it? Wow. It reminds me of when I used to play tennis, I was kind of like really into tennis when I was 15 or 16 and I used to play with adults. And there was this one female tennis player, an adult who also made bad line calls and

But I think if you approached her and said, you're known for making bad calls around town, she wouldn't admit it. She'd say, what do you mean? No, I don't. I always call it fair. That blows my mind. I just don't know how. I don't know. I couldn't do that either. Especially to become known as the cheater. Ooh, great.

Not good. This is really tricky. You guys may have noticed some grammar mistakes we're using here because I should say, you know, play fairly. She needs to call it fairly. But this is a flat adverb that we use very commonly in English.

We recently discussed flat adverbs on an All Ears English episode. It was actually yesterday's episode. And today we're sharing chunks that use flat adverbs. So you can definitely listen to this one first and then go check that one out. Make sure to follow both podcasts so you're not missing these amazing episodes.

I love it. Super exciting. And Aubrey, I want to make sure our listeners know about something exciting that's coming up very soon and what they need to do to be one of the first to find out. What's coming up, Aubrey? What's happening? Yeah, we have our professional English level one course

We cannot wait for you guys to check it out. It has a heavy emphasis on meetings and professional speaking. This is going to be vital for everyone who works in English. Yes, guys. So to get on the exclusive early list, go over to allearsenglish.com slash professional. And that will allow you to hear about the course first, to be one of the very first to get into the course when it goes live in just a couple of weeks.

So go on over there right now, allersenglish.com slash professional and get ready. I am excited for this. Oh my gosh. Yes. So exciting. Amazing interviews. Oh, I cannot wait for everything you will learn in that course. Native speakers from all corners of the country and a few from abroad. Oh my gosh. It's so good. All right. I won't say anything else. It's coming soon. Awesome. So let's first just define a flat adverb. In case you missed yesterday's Allers English episode, you'll get way more details there and a lot of information about

why native English speakers make these grammar mistakes and when and if you can make them as well. But today we're diving into some more idiomatic chunks that use flat adverbs that we use all the time at work.

Yes, I love it. So again, anything else we want to say about the specific definition here, Aubrey, that our listeners need to know? Yeah. So just to know that flat adverbs are adverbs that have the same form as the corresponding adjective. So for example, the word fair, yes, there's fairly, but when we use it as a flat adverb, it's just fair without the

So these are also called simple adverbs or bare adverbs. And often it is correct grammar to use the flat adverb like fast, for example. Right. She drives fast. The car is fast. The adjective and adverb have the same form.

Yes, I love that. All right. So should we go through the first one? I mean, that is play fairs. The first one, right, Aubrey? Exactly. Yes. And we say this all the time at work. It's not just about sports and calling the line correctly. It's also about being ethical in your business dealings. And we'll say someone plays fair if they are trustworthy.

Yes, very important to have that reputation in the business world, especially in your industry. Your company needs to be known as being trustworthy. So again, example here again, that competitor isn't playing fair. They're using extremely underhanded techniques. Underhanded, that's a bonus. That is a good bonus. Nefarious, underhanded. It really means unfair, but a little more serious, unethical. This reminds me of

the show um not severance i'm trying to think of the one on hbo with the family that's like a tech mogul company and there it's like the father passes away and

And he's passing his inheritance on to these children. And there's so many underhanded business techniques in this show where they're like calling the board members at home to try and convince them to vote a certain way. And there's probably money laundering, like a lot of these things where people are not playing fair. They're not being ethical.

Right. So they're passing the corruption right down to the next generation, right? Exactly. Yes. Right. So you definitely want to play fair. Like you said, Lindsay, you want to have a reputation for being trustworthy and ethical. Oh, for sure. Yeah. Next one, Aubrey, is dress smart. And I think this is very important for business. What does it mean? Yeah, it means to wear clean, neat, appropriate clothing, you know, well-fitting and stylish.

And it can also mean to dress in a way that conveys professionalism and respect. It's definitely a compliment if someone says, "Oh, you're dressed very smart today," or "I want to dress smart for this meeting."

Exactly. Exactly. And sometimes if you're smaller, maybe it means getting your clothing tailored even at the highest levels, right? Because if clothing doesn't fit, I find that because I'm petite, somewhat petite, pretty average to petite, that if I buy non-petite clothing, it just looks terrible on me. So I either have to buy petites or get stuff tailored, which I haven't done yet, but I'm thinking of starting to do it because...

Yeah, looking to look to dress smart, Aubrey. Especially at conferences, times where you are wanting to, you know, make the best first impression you can. But what's really interesting here is this is ungrammatical. Really, we should say dress smartly. But because it's an idiom, this is language we use all the time. You will hear and can say dress smart.

Yeah, love it. Anything else we need to know there about dressing? I think it's interesting when I was looking up information about this, we do have the smart casual dress code. So this is very versatile, but it bridges the gap we can say between formal and casual wear. So it's interesting when we have business casual, we have business formal, and then smart casual is somewhere in between.

Okay. That's a nuanced thing, right? What's the difference between smart casual and business casual? Tricky. It was interesting. There were a lot of images and it's especially tricky for women. For guys, for men, it's often clearer where it's like blazer or not, button up or polo. And for women, it's sort of like, does it need to be a skirt and heels and a shirt or tailored pantsuit maybe? Or could it be a more casual dress? So very nuanced, like you said, Lindsay.

Yeah. And we also need to be careful when we go to weddings that we understand what the dress code is. It's black tie, all these things. But that's another episode for another day of right to dress smart at a wedding. Exactly. If the invitation says smart casual, you may need to do some Googling for images to see what they're expecting. There's all kinds of weird things they say on wedding invitations. Garden party formal. What? What does that mean? I need to Google.

Don't be ashamed to Google. Absolutely. Number three is work hard. Well, yeah, I mean, we use this all the time. Yes. Absolutely. Right. This means to engage in earnest and energetic work. You're working hard. And this is not ungrammatical. It is a flat adverb, but hard is the same form, adjective and adverb. If you said work hardly or hardly working, that has a very different meaning. What does that mean to be hardly working?

Well, there's like the opposite, right? It's the opposite. You're not working very hard. Are you working hard? And that's an expression actually, right? Are you working hard or hardly working? Right? That's a chunk that we say. Exactly. It's a play on words. It means you're hardly working and not working at all. Yeah.

Really interesting. Right? So this is where you can see that this grammar could be confusing. If you think in order to use a word as an adverb, I have to always add an L-Y, that's not the case and can actually cause real miscommunications, misunderstandings, right? So this work hard is how we say it. For example, I'm a firm believer that anyone who works hard can reach their goals or it's important to work hard to reach one's goals. Love it. Love it. All right. So let's move on.

on oh this expression work smarter not harder Aubrey a good bonus I like this you know working hard or hardly working but we also have this expression work smarter not harder we do use this in sports as well if someone with volleyball you can either hit a really difficult spike or you can just barely tip it over the blocker and then sometimes people will if they get a good tip and get the point they'll be like work smarter not harder it's the smart play and we also use this in business

Yeah, I find that if you're someone who is not afraid to work hard, it can be easy to not bother to find the smart ways to accomplish something in a shorter amount of time because you don't mind working hard. So if you're one of those people like I am, my recommendation is to find a mentor who is totally the opposite. They're actually a little lazy. I don't want to say lazy, but they prefer to just spend more time. We'll say efficient, not lazy.

Efficient. They've probably found ways to work a lot faster and a lot smarter. So get some influence in your life. Or to eliminate duplication of efforts, right? There may be things you are doing that's causing you to put in way more time, harder work, when there are simpler ways to accomplish the same or maybe even a better goal. Yes. We're always looking for those things, Aubrey. I love it.

Good stuff. So we'll take a quick break. Oh, no, we have one more. Yes. Oh, and this is a good one. What is this? Yeah. And this is aim high, aim high, which means to be ambitious. I hear this a lot with college kids. I'm going to share the second example here. Like their daughter is only applying to Ivy League schools because they want her to aim high. So this would be as opposed to maybe state schools, community colleges. Some people would not see that as aiming very high.

Mm-hmm. Good example. Or you need to aim high if you want to be successful. So you might hear your parents say this to you or a mentor, that kind of thing. Yeah, it's about setting ambitious goals, right? Aim high. Love it.

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Okay, Aubrey, let's break it down in our signature role play. So here we are prepping for a team presentation. Good. Yes. All right. I'll start us out. Okay. I need to go shopping. I want to dress smart and I don't have anything. Well, we've been working so hard on this presentation. I'm confident it'll go well. I agree. We need to aim high if we're going to impress the board. Absolutely. And we need to be ready for some crazy questions. They don't always play fair.

I love this. I can imagine a board that's like really trying to stump you or really trying to ask the difficult questions. And, you know, though that's not unethical, we also might use this expression that way. I'd be like, oh, I feel like that's not playing fair. They're trying to trick me.

And I know that this is a really common challenge for a lot of our listeners. I've talked with some of our students who are working 100% in English. Sometimes it's not about the presentation. It's about worrying about the questions that might be coming at the end. Will I understand the question? Will I be able to answer and articulate the question? So in this professional English level series, levels one, two, and three, which we'll be publishing, we're going to address that problem in these courses, guys.

So we'll have something for you. - I'm so excited for you to get all of that because this is difficult enough in a first language, let alone in a language you are learning. So definitely very excited for you to get these strategies and skills. - Yes, yes. In professional level one, we're building our foundation, getting speaking, getting meetings, and then we're moving into the higher levels, level two and three, where we'll get into those nuances.

How do we deal with those crazy questions? Right. That's a real thing. So Aubrey, let's go back into this role play here. Yeah. Yeah. So I first said, I want to dress smart. I feel like I don't have the appropriate clothing. So I'm saying I need to go shopping. That just means I want to look professional. I want to be dressed in a way that will make a good impression. Nice. And then I said, oh, we've been working so hard on this presentation. So I guess no time to shop. Right. I'm confident it'll go well.

Yes, exactly. And just work hard, right? And it's not always going to be just work hard. We conjugate this, right? So we've been working so hard. We needed to work hard, right? You'll see this a lot of different ways. Okay. And then what did you say in response? Then I said, we need to aim high if we're going to impress the board. So this is another way of saying we really need to do a good job. For sure. And then I said, absolutely. And we need to be ready for some crazy questions. They don't always play fair. Yeah.

Yeah, right. This happens. Yeah, you never know, right? If they are really looking for the nitty gritty, the little details, they're going to ask you about specific numbers that you might not have on hand and you certainly wouldn't have memorized. That would sort of feel like they weren't playing fair. Yeah, for sure. So Aubrey, where is another episode? Where is the first episode in...

in this series. How can we get it? It was just yesterday, guys. So scroll up, go to All Ears English. Make sure you're following both podcasts, Business English podcast right here and All Ears English, because often we do series where we're sharing how we use it more in everyday conversations over there. And then we're going to do separate vocabulary about what is more specific to being at Business English here.

I love that. So go on over, open your search bar wherever you're listening right now, type in All Ears English and open the show and hit the follow button and then go find that episode. You don't need to do them in order, right? So you can easily go back, listen to part one. That'll give you your daily life English, everyday English. And then you're over here for business English.

Love it. Absolutely. Oh man, flat adverbs are so tricky. Native English speakers often make grammar mistakes that are accepted in regional dialects, right? Drive safe is a good example. You'll hear more about that over on the All Ears English podcast. You need to know which you can make and why and where. A lot of important details here.

Yeah, for sure. And like you said, as you go to the other podcast, we did do a few examples where I kind of cringed and you can even see that over on YouTube. And that's really interesting because there are some everyday flat adverbs that are totally fine and everyone uses them at work or everywhere, anywhere, but some

Like I said, I think you need to be at a backyard barbecue in a certain part of the country with certain people to get away with it. Very interesting. It depends on the region. It depends on the regional dialect. So yes, don't miss that episode. And remember, it's all about connection, right? And who we're around, the words we choose always comes back to connection because that's our ultimate goal with language. Absolutely. And today's idiomatic chunks will help you connect at work. Native English speakers use all of these. Throw them into one of your next conversations. All

All right. Great stuff, Aubrey. We'll see you back here very soon. All right. You have a good day. Awesome. See you next time. Bye. Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional. Want more from All Ears English? Don't miss our biggest and best podcast with 8 million monthly downloads. Just search for the All Ears English podcast and hit

follow to get four new episodes per week on fluency, American culture, grammar, and so much more. Or tap the link in the show notes. Remember, we believe in connection, not perfection when it comes to learning English. Follow the All Ears English podcast now.