What would you recommend?

This is the second installment in a series of Quick Tips to Improve Speaking.

Another common speaking task in English tests like TOEFL is to make a recommendation. What are the best language strategies for doing this?

First, many people start out by framing their answer as if they were in this hypothetical (unreal) situation themselves. To do this, you need to use the fairly uncommon subjunctive mood in English, which is used to describe conditional or imaginary situations. Here, the rules of subject/verb agreement change, so you would say something like this:

If I were her …

If it were me …

If I were in his shoes …

If you begin your statement this way, talking about what you would do in the situation, you should use the modal would. So you might say:

If I were her, I would take the bus to work.

If it were me, I wouldn’t take a part-time job.

If you don’t place yourself in the same situation, you should use the modal should. So you might say:

In my opinion, people should graduate from college before they get married.

I think that she should major in engineering.

Or you can use a combination of both. For example:

If I were in his shoes, I wouldn’t take a part-time job. I think he should focus on his studies.

Finally, you might want to consider how to talk about the consequences of a particular action. Here’s how you do that using the modals would (to express a certainty) and might (to express a possibility):

If he took a part-time job, he would have less time to study. He might actually fail the class.

If he was studying hard, he wouldn’t have time to play video games. He might even get an A.

Notice that in the “if” clause, we use the past tense form of the verb.

Using these simple strategies will help you to make your recommendations much more fluently.