Have you ever heard a "Knock , knock. Who’s there?" joke?  What about something that “makes your hair stand on end”?

William Shakespeare not only wrote great plays, and wonderful, romantic poetry, but this balding, long-dead man from Stratford , so enhanced the English language , that we are still using his words and phrases today. You might have a friend whom you describe as having ‘a heart of gold’ or someone else to whom you say, “Good riddance!”. Maybe certain foods or sounds, “Set your teeth on edge”. Has someone ever made you jealous? Then you were suffering from, “The green eyed monster”.

I like to think it's spring in February when the very first snow drop pushes through the snow. But by the time you read this it will be May, the snowdrops have long retreated back into the soil and the garden is full of blossom, late tulips, primroses and all the rest. It is a time of new beginnings, of fresh hopes.

Do I have to have a coma here?

by Gisele Méndez edited by Lynne Hand

Amused by the title above? Don’t worry – the spelling mistake "coma" instead of "comma" is intentional, and it highlights an important point: If you're writing a letter to a friend or relative, it doesn't really matter if you make a silly mistake, but if you want to be taken seriously in business; errors – comic or not – can hold you back.

Perhaps you find yourself nervously rushing through a presentation, or you forget the pronunciation of an important word during a meeting. When English is your second language, it is all the more important to speak and write clearly and concisely in business to avoid miscommunication. Luckily, there are some simple ways to improve your skills and communicate more effectively.

At the moment we have the builders in – when they finally arrive for the day. This can mean any time between 8.30 and 11 30 am – more often the latter. We thought it was a small job – just a roof repair on an out building  - but they’ve managed to extend it to 10 days so far. Fortunately we are paying by the job rather than the hour. One of them will go off for a spade, a special one he can’t work without,  or to the post office ( 5 doors way) and then doesn’t reappear for 4 hours..

Most people would agree that spring is for lovers, so is any other time for that matter, because people can fall in love any time, any place and anywhere (to quote the famous Martini advert), and it can happen under the most peculiar of circumstances. I first spoke to my husband when I was waiting for him to finish with the ironing board. My daughter met her future husband in a shared college kitchen where she was astonished to see him defrosting frozen mashed potato. She even wrote home about it.  It took three years before they got together. My in-laws met on top of a bus, so must have made arrangements to meet again very quickly,  and my parents met in the pouring rain outside a cinema. My father proposed half an hour later and mom only took a few weeks to say 'yes'.

Linguists are full of theories about how people learn – the use of short term and long term memory, how the brain encodes ideas, the use of menomics and lots more complicated gumph. You don’t need to know all that to learn a language. What you do need is to hear it and to try it out, and this isn’t too hard – ask any two year old.