General English:8
Unit5 Innovation thinking
Expressions Describing effects
Describing effects
Here are some phrases you can use to describe the effects of actions.
It made a lot of people feel very worried about the future of the company.
It had quite a bad effect on staff morale.
It caused several people to quit.
The result was that we started to think differently about our customers.
The stormy weather had a bad effect on sales.
The new schedule made the engineers happy.
We‘d found it difficult to communicate as a team.
Grammar Background information
You can use the past perfect – had + past participle – to give a sense of what happened previous to a story you are telling.
We had lost a lot of money the first year, and nothing we‘d tried to do had made any difference.
If you want to indicate that the action had been going on for an extended period, use the continuous form: had + been + verb + ing
Well, we‘d been struggling to innovate for a while.
We‘d been trying to solve the problem for months, and nothing had worked.
We found a solution to a problem that had been frustrating us for a while.
It was great when we moved in, because we had been looking for a new office for a while.
We‘d had problems with the new manager, but they were later resolved.
We‘d been trying to work out what to do for a while, and when the answer came, it was a surprise.
I had met him years ago, but we didn‘t work together until this year.
Expressions Solutions
Describing solutions
Here are some phrases you can use when you‘re describing solutions.
We dealt with the problem by hiring more creative people.
Well, the way we got around the issue was to reduce the length of the meetings.
A: And that solved the problem?
B: Yes. It was an effective solution, and I was pleased with it.
We‘d been finding it hard to hire good engineers.
The news about layoffs made everybody nervous.
The result was that several people quit.
We solved the problem by having weekly meetings.
We dealt with the issue by doing better planning.
The solution was to hire another sales manager.