Can You say?

"Now that we broke up, It gives you all the focus on the healness of your illness"

Thanks 

Avangi,

^{I agree with your comment. I have tried to explain to learners before that learning from the “may I say this?” format does not help the cause. Instead of building up the fundamentals of English by listening and reading, some are trying to take a shortcut by asking “can I say this?” and the answers were soon forgotten. I see many questions are of the same varieties because the answers we posted were not fully understood. Many volunteers did’t mind answering these questions which is admirable.}

^{For this particular question, I would say “now that we are no longer together,you should focus on the recovery of your illness.}

Fully agree with you, Goodman.  

I am not trying to crucify anyone, or negate the effectiveness of certain learning method. What I have observed is that many ESL learners opted to learn the patterns of speech rather trying to work on the understanding of fundaqmentals, but often misinterpreted the answers from the forum. This is evident from the sentence structure of the posted sentences which are often awkward and unnatural. Personally, I used the media to it’s full extents. For many years, I watched Discovery, BBC and channels like History and recently The Science Channel. With the aide of closed caption and narration, it’s much like sitting in an English class. Watching a program in certain topic and reading the captions, we can build comprehension and foundation of sentence structure. I had revealed my non-English speaking origin in the past and many of you may not know it from my posts.  I am still trying to polish my writing style and enlarge my vocabulary. That said,  I think my tone comes very close to being that of native’s. I know learning English isn’t the easiest task for those whose mother tongue wasn't English. I had to learn it because I need to survive in my second mother land, the US. If I could learn it, I’d venture to say, many coming to this forum can as well. Choosing the correct method to learn any skill can cut the time and effort in half and double the results. That’s my experience.  

Hi gang,

I certainly don't advocate the "May I say this?" method to the exclusion of all others, but neither am I prepared to say that's what a learner is doing, simply because his progress seems slow.  And I don't wish to deny him that tool.

Best regards,  - A.

Beaverbeaver  -  I was thinking of classrooms with lots of work and high standards.  I don't mean to imply that those can't be found   -   just not in my area.  The methods which Goodman describes are excellent, and I think we should use whatever is available and works for us.