ESL Blogs

Yes, 'gave you away' means 'showed something about you that was a secret'. 

Some members here on MyEC keep copying other's writing from the Internet instead of writing their own. They might have wanted to share what they thought was worth sharing, or they might have tried to fool us into believing the blog was written by themselves. 

But we're not allowed to do that -  not to copy a piece of writing from the Internet without the permission from the author. Don't plagiarize! 

I know it may be so hard for you to write something. You could try to start with something easy or short. You don't need to write something lengthy or complicated. A short paragraph will do.

And, your writing doesn't need to be perfect. Don't be afraid of making mistakes when you're writing - you're even expected to make some mistakes here and there in your writing because even native speakers make mistakes too. 

You may have thought, 'How could Expector know the blog wasn't written by me?'  Now you know the answer: It was the perfection that gave you away. Yes, the writing was too polished to be written by an English learner like you, or you can say 'It's too good to be true'. 

I hope our members will try to let me know if you notice a blog which is copied from the Internet. Try to google it or yahoo it when you're not so sure.

Yes, we encourage you to write your own blog; we appreciate the blogs written by you.

Note

The construction 'too...to...' has a negative meaning: 'so much...that...not possible', for example, you can say 'I'm too old to learn' or 'He's too young to marry her'.