Giving Advice

If you don’t know what to do and want some advice you can ask the following questions:

What shall I do?

What should I do?

What do you think I should do?

Could you give me some/a piece of advice*?

(*Note: advice is uncountable in English, so there is no ’an advice’!)

If you’d like to give advice you can use the following structures:

I think you should…..

I think you shouldn’t ……..

Why don’t you…………?

You could………

If I were you I would.....

I think it would be good if you……….*

(*use the second conditional – past form - after "if" !)

Example dialogue:

- I have broken my car. I need to go to work tomorrow. What shall I do?

- If I were you I would ask my parents to lend their car. Or if they want to use it, I think it would be good if you used public transport.

- Thanks for the advice, I'll think about it.