Week 18 — Light week: consolidate, shadow, edit

This week

Grammar: review of the hardest patterns from your error log · Vocabulary: review and spaced repetition round (three new words: candor, discreet, reservation) · Idioms & phrasal verbs: idiom review round (five new: hit a wall, ahead of the curve, get the ball rolling, a steep learning curve, leave someone holding the bag) · Speaking: shadowing practice 3 · Writing: editing a colleague's draft · Soft skill: giving upward feedback

Light week: sessions are 20 minutes and exercises are shorter (six items). Keep the routine; do not skip.

Day 1 — Grammar: review, the hardest patterns from your error log

⏱ 20 min · Mon

Rule in 60 seconds

Take the three error buckets you logged in weeks 16 and 17. This week you do not learn a new rule; you automate an old one. Three steps:

1. Name it: write the rule in one line ("since + present perfect", "participle subject must match").
2. Trap it: write the wrong version you tend to produce and the right one side by side.
3. Test it: say five fresh sentences with the right pattern, about real work, without looking.

The six items below cover patterns that most often survive to C1: past simple vs present perfect, dangling participles, fewer/less, embedded questions, certainty modals and articles with proper nouns. If a pattern is not in your log, spend that time on one that is.

Exercise

Correct one error in each sentence.

1. "We have deployed the fix yesterday."
2. "Looking at the graph, the trend is clear."
3. "The new build has fewer latency than before."
4. "She asked me where was the report."
5. "The outage mustn't have been caused by the deploy, as the timing is wrong."
6. "The Kafka is much faster than the RabbitMQ for this use case."

Answers and explanations

1. "We deployed the fix yesterday." A finished time expression (yesterday) needs past simple, not present perfect.
2. "Looking at the graph, we can see the trend." Dangling participle: the trend is not looking.
3. "less latency." Latency is uncountable.
4. "...where the report was." Embedded questions use statement word order (and backshifted tense after a past verb).
5. "can't have been caused." Negative deduction uses can't have; mustn't is prohibition.
6. "Kafka is much faster than RabbitMQ." No article with product names used as proper nouns.

Use it

Write your single hardest pattern, your wrong version, and the right version. Say the right version five times with different content.

Day 2 — Vocabulary: review, spaced repetition round

⏱ 20 min · Tue

Word	Part of speech	Meaning	Example
candor	noun	Honest, direct speech, even when uncomfortable (British spelling: candour)	"Her candor in the review helped us fix the design before launch."
discreet	adjective	Careful and reserved in what you say or do, so as not to embarrass or reveal something sensitive	"He was discreet about the missing tests and raised them privately with the lead first."
reservation	noun	A doubt or objection, usually mild (often plural: reservations)	"I have reservations about the timeline, mainly because of the payments dependency."

Collocations and word family

• candor: speak with candor; a candid assessment / conversation; radical candor (a management idea popularized by Kim Scott). Adjective: candid; adverb: candidly.
• discreet: discreet about / in; a discreet inquiry / word; noun discretion; adverb discreetly; do not confuse with the homophone discrete (separate, distinct).
• reservation: have / express / voice reservations about; without reservation (fully); serious/lingering reservations. (The other meaning, a booking, is unrelated.)
• Pronunciation: CAN-der, dis-CREET, rez-er-VAY-shun.

Exercise

Cloze. Word bank: candor, discreet, reservation, arguably, germane, tacit.

1. I'd like to share a concern with complete ______: the plan has no rollback.
2. Please be ______ when raising this with the vendor; we need their goodwill.
3. I have a ______ about the migration date, but I'll support the decision.
4. The point most ______ to this proposal is the dependency on the payments team.
5. There was a ______ understanding that nobody would question the CTO's design.
6. It is ______ the biggest risk on the roadmap.

Answers and explanations

1. candor: direct honesty. 2. discreet: careful and low-profile. 3. reservation: a mild doubt, stated singly with "a". 4. germane (week 16): relevant to the matter. 5. tacit (week 16): unspoken. 6. arguably (week 17): claim open to dispute.

Use it

Say three sentences: one voicing a reservation about a plan, one giving a candid assessment, one discreet word of caution to a colleague.

Day 3 — Speaking: shadowing practice 3

⏱ 20 min · Wed

Prompt. Choose a 60-90 second clip of a clear, well-paced speaker giving advice or feedback (a TED talk on communication, a podcast such as BBC's 6 Minute English, or a conference talk). Shadow it using the five-pass method.

Structure: five passes

1. Listen once for meaning; do not read.
2. Mark the transcript or your notes: chunks (/), stressed words (CAPS).
3. Repeat phrase by phrase, matching stress and speed.
4. Shadow together with the speaker, half a beat behind.
5. Record your last pass and compare with the original.

Pronunciation micro-drill: consonant clusters and stress

• Clusters at the end of words are often dropped by fluent speakers: asked (ASKT), next steps (nex-STEPS, keep both consonants), tactful (TAKT-ful), risks (RISKS).
• Stress: rez-er-VAY-shun, CAN-did, TAKT-ful, un-der-STAND-ing.
• Intonation for feedback: falling tone for statements ("I'd like to offer some feedback."), rising for genuine questions ("Would that work for you?").

Self-check - [ ] I matched at least three stressed words per sentence to the speaker's. - [ ] I kept consonant clusters (asked, next steps) audible. - [ ] My speed matched the speaker's without rushing. - [ ] I could hear one difference between my recording and the original, and named it.

Day 4 — Idioms & phrasal verbs: idiom review round

⏱ 20 min · Thu

Expression	Meaning	Example
hit a wall	To reach a point where you cannot make further progress. Informal; neutral in tech teams.	"We hit a wall with the query optimizer and had to redesign the schema."
ahead of the curve	More advanced than others; anticipating a trend. Positive; business register.	"Adopting observability early kept us ahead of the curve."
get the ball rolling	To start a process or activity. Informal; friendly tone.	"Let's get the ball rolling with a kickoff on Monday."
a steep learning curve	A situation where much must be learned quickly. Neutral; sometimes said as a euphemism for "difficult".	"The new framework has a steep learning curve."
leave someone holding the bag	To leave a colleague to take the blame or deal with the consequences alone, often unfairly. Informal, US origin; strongly negative.	"He left the intern holding the bag for the outage."

Exercise (6 items)

1. Choose: "Getting started on the migration was easy; we ______ in the second week." (hit a wall / got the ball rolling)
2. Fill in: "Let's send the invite today to ______."
3. Fill in: "By investing in tooling early, the team stayed ______."
4. Review (week 17): "The lead resigned, so two engineers ______ and covered the on-call."
5. Review (week 15): "The bug we found is only the ______; there are more."
6. Which expression would you never apply to yourself unless confessing wrongdoing: "hit a wall" or "left someone holding the bag"?

Answers and explanations

1. hit a wall. 2. get the ball rolling. 3. ahead of the curve. 4. stepped up (week 17). 5. tip of the iceberg (week 15). 6. left someone holding the bag. It accuses you of dumping the blame on someone unfairly; "hit a wall" is neutral.

When NOT to use them: leave someone holding the bag should not be said about a colleague in a formal review; describe the behavior neutrally ("the responsibility was placed on one person"). A steep learning curve is sometimes used to disguise a hard product; in feedback be specific about what is hard.

Day 5 — Writing: editing a colleague's draft

⏱ 20 min · Fri

Colleague's draft (an incident summary going to the director):

Subject: incident yesterday

Yesterday at around 3pm our booking api was down for about forty minutes. The reason was because the deploy team pushed a config change without to test it in staging. Many customers was affected and support got alot of calls. We fixed it by rolling back the change. I think this happened since the review process are not enough strict. Sorry for the trouble.

Task. Edit it. Keep the colleague's meaning and voice; fix errors, add what a director needs (impact number, duration, fix, prevention), and cut it to about 90 words. Then write a two-sentence comment to the colleague explaining your two most important edits, in a supportive tone.

Model answer

Subject: Incident summary: booking API outage, 3:00-3:40 pm yesterday

The booking API was down for 40 minutes yesterday afternoon. A configuration change was pushed without being tested in staging. About 1,200 customers were affected and support received roughly 300 calls. We restored service by rolling back the change.

Our review process did not require staging validation for configuration changes, which allowed this. We will make it mandatory by Friday and will share a full postmortem on Monday.

Comment to the colleague: "I tightened the reasoning and added the impact numbers, since directors read the first two lines first. I also swapped the apology for the action we're taking, which is more reassuring to them."

What changed and why: - Subject line now says what, where and when. - Errors fixed: "the reason was because" (redundant), "without to test" (needs without + gerund), "customers was" (agreement), "alot" (two words), "review process are not enough strict" (agreement and word order: "not strict enough"). - Impact and prevention were added; a director needs numbers and a next step. - The apology became an action; better in an incident context. - The comment names the reason for each change; editing a colleague's work should teach, not just correct.

Day 6 — Speaking record: shadowing then your own version

⏱ 20 min · Sat

Record a 2-minute talk in two parts. (1) 60 seconds shadowing your chosen clip from Wednesday. (2) 60 seconds original: explain to your manager one process that slows the team and propose a fix, using candor and tact.

Structure for part 2: the observation with a fact (15 s) - impact (15 s) - your suggestion (20 s) - a question inviting their view (10 s).

Scoring rubric (1 to 4)

Criterion	1	2	3	4
Clarity	Message unclear	Point emerges late	Clear main point	Point is unmistakable and memorable
Structure	No visible order	Some order, jumps	Clear sequence	Signposted and easy to follow
Fluency	Frequent stops/fillers	Occasional long pauses	Mostly smooth	Smooth with deliberate pauses
Grammar accuracy	Errors block meaning	Frequent errors	Few errors	Error-log patterns avoided
Vocabulary range	Repeats basic words	Some C1 words	Good range	Precise, varied, natural
Pronunciation	Hard to follow	Stress errors distract	Generally clear	Rhythm close to the model

Shadowing task. This is the shadowing task; choose a talk from a native or fluent speaker whose style you admire (TED, BBC, a conference). Note one rhythm feature to keep.

Log your score: total out of 24, plus the one sentence in part 1 where your rhythm differed most from the speaker's.

Day 7 — Soft skills + weekly review: giving upward feedback

⏱ 20 min · Sun

Scenario. Your director's weekly meeting regularly overruns by 30 minutes, and decisions are made at the end without the people who had to leave. The team is quietly frustrated. You have a good relationship with her and a one-to-one on Tuesday.

Task. Write a 150-word script for raising this, using candor and tact.

Model response

"Thanks for the time. I'd like to share some feedback on the weekly meeting; I'm raising it because I think it's important to you and the team.

What I've noticed is that the meeting has overrun by about half an hour in the last four weeks, and two decisions were made after several of us had dropped off. The effect is that people who own those areas aren't in the room, and I've seen that lead to rework. I may be missing context on why the meeting runs that way.

What if we moved decisions to the first 20 minutes and put status items in writing? I'm happy to draft an agenda. Would you be open to trying that for a month?"

Techniques used: (1) Purpose stated first ("important to you and the team"). (2) Observable facts with numbers, not judgments. (3) Impact described (rework). (4) Humility marker ("I may be missing context") keeps it discreet without diluting it. (5) A concrete alternative and an offer of help. (6) A time-boxed experiment as the ask.

Weekly recap (20 items)

1. Correct: "We have deployed it yesterday."
2. Correct: "Looking at the graph, the trend is clear."
3. Fewer or less: "___ latency".
4. Correct: "She asked where was the report."
5. Which modal for negative deduction: mustn't or can't?
6. Product names as proper nouns: "the Kafka" or "Kafka"?
7. Define candor.
8. Opposite of discreet?
9. What is a reservation (sense used at work)?
10. Give a collocation of reservation.
11. Stress in reservation?
12. "Hit a wall" means...?
13. "Ahead of the curve" means...?
14. "Get the ball rolling" means...?
15. "Leave someone holding the bag" is...?
16. What is the first step of shadowing?
17. Which final consonants are often dropped in "next steps"?
18. In upward feedback, what should come before the suggestion?
19. What phrase adds humility without diluting the message?
20. What do you ask for at the end of upward feedback?

Answers

1. "We deployed it yesterday." 2. "...we can see the trend." 3. less. 4. "...where the report was." 5. can't. 6. Kafka. 7. Honest, direct speech. 8. indiscreet. 9. A mild doubt or objection. 10. have/voice reservations about. 11. rez-er-VAY-shun (third syllable). 12. Reach a point with no progress. 13. More advanced than others. 14. Start something. 15. Leave someone to take the blame or deal with the consequences alone; strongly negative. 16. Listen for meaning. 17. The /t/ in "next" (so it becomes "nex steps"). 18. Observation and impact. 19. "I may be missing context." 20. A small, time-boxed trial.

Self-score - [ ] I know my hardest grammar pattern and can say it correctly five times. - [ ] I used the three new words at least once each. - [ ] I completed the five-pass shadowing method. - [ ] I edited a draft without rewriting the writer's voice. - [ ] I can give upward feedback with facts, impact and a suggestion.

Error log. Write down your top 3 recurring mistakes and mark any that have disappeared since Week 16; celebrate those.