Cambridge Dictionary

Here is the link for the online Cambridge Dictionary with the US and UK pronunciations of words.

Gerund vs. Infinitive

Numerous exercises on gerund vs. infinitive along with their key are hereby made available for you to have access at your convenience.  You can also find the list of verbs used with gerund and/or infinitive here.

Here you can find more information and exercises on the same topic.

Gender Neutrality

"English Style Guide" released by the Commission is hereby available.  On pages 48 - 49 you can find the section on gender neutrality. 

Modal verbs

Here you can find some information and exercises on modal verbs along with the key for the exercises. (Source: English Grammar in Use. Intermediate by Raymond Murphy)

Here you can find more exercises on modal verbs.

Sample summary

The Summary of the Article Entitled "The U-bend of life" Published in the December 18th, 2010 Issue of The Economist

The main topic of the article is happiness; the concept of happiness, its drivers, and why the trend of happiness over age is U-shaped, i.e. why people’s state of happiness tends to decline until middle age, and then, improves for the remainder of their lives. The article mostly draws on the findings of the socio-economic studies conducted due to the increasingly widespread interest in the issue. Along these lines  a new branch of economics has started to measure happiness in order to use it as an alternative to money, which is the discipline’s conventional measure. The need for alternative measures of well-being and their relevance for policy evaluation have also caught the attention of politicians.

Studies suggest that the four main drivers of happiness seem to be gender, personality, external circumstances and age. Women tend to be happier than men, and neurotic people tend to be unhappy, whereas the opposite holds for extroverts. Furthermore, circumstances in people’s lives play a role, as, for instance, recent research shows that people in rich countries are happier than the inhabitants of poor ones. This discovery differs from Richard Easterlin’s observations in the 1970s, which  suggested only a weak correlation between money and happiness across countries; the discrepancy is probably due to the current availability of better data. Nevertheless, factors other than income – probably cultural ones – still seem to affect the degree of satisfaction across countries.

The U-shaped trend showing the strong link between age and happiness can be seen all over the world, although the age happiness bottoms out at varies across countries. Even more intriguing is the fact that this relationship is not a reflection of external circumstances, such as money and children, but the result of people’s internal changes. One such possible cause may be the elderly's recognition that they are closer to death, which makes them better at living for the present; similarly, the sober acceptance of their strengths and weaknesses leads to learning to be satisfied with what they have.

Finally, it is mentioned that happiness has favourable consequences on health and productivity. Given that not only happiness and health but also happiness and productivity are positively correlated, the elderly’s brighter state of mind should help them counteract the negative effects of their poorer physical condition and deteriorating cognitive skills. In conclusion, ageing – from the points of view of both the individual and the society as a whole – should not  be seen only as a burden.

Latin terms, phrases, abbreviations and acronyms

You can find a list of Latin terms, phrases abbreviations and acronyms that can be used in English here.

PS: The abbreviation for the Latin phrase et alii is 'et al.' with a dot at the end.  Here is a general rule for the use of the dot in abbreviations:  If the last letter of the word being abbreviated is not the same as the last letter of the abbreviation, you need the dot.  What are the abbreviations for 'professor', 'doctor', 'mister' and 'abbreviation'?

Journalistic Titles

Here you can find a brief explanation on journalistic titles used in, e.g., newspaper headlines.  We, however, should not use this style for our titles in administrative writing, unless it is a press release.  How would you change the headlines provided as examples in the hot-linked document into administrative style titles?

Articles

Here you can find the document on articles along with the key for the exercises.