In Universities^x, Plurals^x

1. Use of present perfect tense and simple past tense Speakers of American English generally use the present perfect tense (have/has + past participle) far less than speakers of British English. In spoken American English it is very common to use the simple past tense as an alternative in...

The sentences: Young Americans seemed to be natural savages when they came to the university. They had hardly heard the names of the writers who were the daily fare of their Europian counterparts, let alone took it into their heads that they could have a relationship to them. "What's Hecuba to...

Army/navy/airforce: considered as an institution/organization - signular. Theoretical grammar says "police" can also appear with the meaing of institution in the singular, though the dictionary really says it is always in the plural. Here is an explanation I found in a book from university. It...

The assignment was about the different views on marriage we can find in The importance of being earnest. This is the corrected version (done by me) but the original one was written by a student of mine who is at university studying English translation. I thought if I say "we find characters...

Hi Mitali, The common usage is that nouns used as adjectives are singular, so that it is 'shoe store', 'chemical industry', 'life science division'. However, local usage would supersede this guideline; that is, the company or institution may have its own preferred terminology. For instance,...

Re: What is Morality? "Now here's a straightforward question. What is morality? Is it a personal code of conduct? Is it in some sense absolute? I would be very interested in understanding where the various participants in this forum are coming from on this one, as I hope it will help me to...

There are Arabic speakers here though not many. Mainly of Palestinian decent. It is only a minority. I studied Arabic as a hobby for a year at a local university. It took me that long to learn how to write it, speaking don't even think about it (lessons were only once a week). Learning the...