Wish/hope/others

Will this thread grow?

Hi, Aastha,

Thanks for watering this plant.

I know what you said. But I'm afraid you've missed my original post. I was trying to figure out those annoying sentences that drove me a bit crazy. I found all of those alternatives on Google. And I do think they're all correct grammatically, and I also believe there is slightly difference in meanings, isn't it? I need more help with this one.



Pastel

Hello, Pastel

You'll go crazy if you try to analyse everything you find in a search engine in terms of "correctness".

Anyone, literally anyone, can make a webpage or post anything they want on the net. That does not guarantee its correctness. some things will be correct, some others will not. People who have no knowledge of a certain field will post about it. People who cannot construct a decent sentence will write about anything they want; some will even give you advice on that which they do not know! You will find even the silliest spelling mistakes.

And, of course, people who have no clue whatsoever may blindly believe in the "figures" they find in a search engine.
It is evident that not everyone is more intelligent than that, but you are.

In Columbus's times, everyone believed the Earth was flat. If it had been possible to "google" the belief, you would have probably found many more hits for "the Earth is flat" than for "the Earth isn't flat".

Yet, the majotrity was wrong in that case... as in many others.

Go figure...

I still think a good book or a good teacher -and you must have access to both where you live- will be much more reliable in many cases.

Miriam

Dear Miriam,

Yes. You are totally right at the very begining of your previous post. Any variants of one sentence will be annoying enough to send me to a mental house. The listings on Google are considered as for reference only. One should never buy all the the stories without any doubt in mind.

It is not difficult for native speakers to explain the meaning. Maybe some of them are not well equipped with grammatical rules to teach, but almost all of them can teach how to differentiate between meanings, for example, my wish/hope examples. They know what sounds odd and what doesn't. For us, ESL/EFL learners, it seems to take forever to get there, you know


Being a ESL/EFL teacher, I have to be nit-picky at learning your language. I will never know whether or not my students will bring up any possible questions which I am not able to control or offer them the best explanation. What's worse, some students learn English in a jumping way, they are too anxious to learn. Eventually, they mess up everything. All I can do is provide them with rules as simple as possible. For example,

Wish
1. used to express good wishes, followed by nouns. ==> Wish you a good day.
2. used to express something unreal, impossible or unlikely happened in the future.
==> I wish I could fly.
==> I wish you have a good day. (I saw this sentence in a textbook used to teach junior high school student, secondary education.) I would think it contradictable. How can you wish someone has a nice day unless you really wish so.


See, any slight change in the sentence would kill the curious cat like me. I slept at 4am last night just because one of my class asked me to teach them 'Participle.' I had my nose buried in 5 grammar books, trying to figure out the simplest way to present the most complicated concept. My lecture is just fine for them, they grasp the main idea easily. Haha, you must have thought I was a serious person. Most of the time, I'll play with English happily. But I'm serious here and I need an nice explanation.

Regarding your last paragraph, I must say you are a 5-thumb up teacher. It's honorable to be one of your student here. And I'm so sorry that my posts make your head spinning, and I feel guilty here after reading your excellent posts, because my walking on air makes you suffer in the hell. haha.