Search results for 'tag:Genders tag:Adverbs' matching tags 'Genders' and 'Adverbs'

Mistakes made by Chinese Learners

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:30:26 GMT

Hi everyone

I just wondered if anyone could help - I have to write a profile of a chinese learner of English (completely made up). In it I must put any difficulties that the learner has in learning English as an L2. I have got so far:

Intonation transfer from L1 may cause them to be perceived as rude/inconsiderate, more serious transfer may affect comprehensiveness.
No inflections in L1 - tenses difficult to learn in L2 as L1 has no true tenses and concept of time is expressed by adverbs/implicit or contextual assumptions.
Difficulty distinguishing [r] & - Does anyone know why this is as I can't find a reason?!!
Prepositions such as 'on', 'in' & 'at' have one chinese translation in many contexts, 'zai' - may be confused resulting in phrases such as 'on Taiwan' instead of 'in Taiwan'.
Use of awkward gerunds e.g. 'no noising', excessive use of verbs ending in 'ing' e.g. 'do not climbing', confusion of 'ed' & 'ing' verbs e.g. 'i am bored' vs 'i am boring' --- all of these errors occur because verbs are not conjugated in chinese, for tense or pronoun.
No equivalent word for 'the' so may be used excessively when not needed e.g. 'The China' or missed out when needed. May also be confused with 'a'/'an'.
Confusion over countable and uncountable nouns, use of 'how much?' vs 'how many?' - leads to phrases such as 'I want a soup' & 'a lot of shoe'. This is due to there not being plurals in chinese - no inflections.

Switching between 'he' & 'she' - Does anyone know why this is?

If anyone can think of anymore it would be greatly appreciated or if anyone knows the answers to my questions about gender switching and distinguishing [r] & this would also help a lot!!

Thank you in advance.

Shannon

Re: double word adjectives

Goodman — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 21:25:37 GMT

Here is a helpful website: http://www.kentlaw.edu/academics/lrw/grinker/LwtaCompound_Adjectives.htm

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Compound Adjectives

1. A compound adjective is formed when two or more adjectives work together to modify the same noun. These terms should be hyphenated to avoid confusion or ambiguity.

Incorrect: The black and blue mark suggested that he had been involved in an altercation.
Correct: The black-and-blue mark suggested that he had been involved in an altercation.
Incorrect: Her fifteen minute presentation proved decisive to the outcome of the case.
Correct: Her fifteen-minute presentation proved decisive to the outcome of the case.

2. However, combining an adverb (usually a word ending in "ly") and an adjective does not create a compound adjective. No hyphen is required because it is already clear that the adverb modifies the adjective rather than the subsequent noun.

Incorrect: The remarkably-hot day turned into a remarkably-long week.
Correct: The remarkably hot day turned into a remarkably long week.

3. Furthermore, you should not place a hyphen in a compound adjective if the adjectives are capitalized, such as when they are part of a title.

Correct: His book was entitled, "Gender Neutral Language in English Usage," and it revolutionized the way people think about sex roles.
However: His book on gender-neutral language revolutionized the way people think about sex roles.
Correct: The students were participants in Chicago-Kent's vaunted Legal Research and Writing Program.
Also Correct:
The student decided to attend a school with a good legal-research-and-writing program. Note that in this example, the reference is to a type of program, rather than a specific program, and so the use of hyphens is proper.

Study guide.

Matrix4583 — Sat, 08 Apr 2006 02:03:02 GMT

Hey, i'm new here. My name is Tim and I got this forum from a friend of mine. He told me that this might help me with the problem i got. I have a brother that is 16 years old and i'm 23( in the US Army). He needs help with his english. The teacher gave him the study guide, but no answer on it. So i ask him to give the study guide to me and i'll help him with it. Well, since i'm busy soo much on school and my job, it's impossible for me to do this. I was wondering if you have some time and help me with this problem. I really appreciate it. Here's the problem.

Language Art:

A. apostrophe
B. Synonym
C. noun or pronoun
D. quotations mark
E. Adjective
F. verb or verb phrase
G. abbreviation
H. antonyms
I. root word.
J. proper nouns
K. Verb
L. action and linking
M. gerund
N. adverb
O. gender
P. subject
Q. Nomniative, object and possessive
R. Predicate nominative
S. Present, past and future
T. direct object.
U. prepositions
V. appositive
W. Object of a preposition

1.____ The subject of a sentence may be what part of speech?
2.____ States what the subject does, is or has in a sentence.
3.____ Sometimes called the simple predicate
4.____ The main part of a without any affixes.
5.____ Two kinds of a Verb.
6.____ What moddifies noun or pronoun?
7.____ What follow a linking verb or action verb?
8.____ The simple tense of verb.
9.____ Follow a preposition.
10.____ Tells more about another noun.
11.____ Answer "what?" or "whom?"
12.____ who or what the sentences about.
13.____ The three cases of personal pronoun.
14.____ personal pronoun have number, person and what?
15.____ Usually modifies a verb, but can sometimes modify an adjective.
16.____ show relationship between it's object and some other word in a sentence.
17.____ A participle that end in "ing" and functions as a noun.
18.____ needed to form possessive nouns and contractions.
19.____ Capitalized because they are particular person, places, and things.
20.____ A short way of writing a word consisting of some of the letters in the word followed by a period.
21.____ Used to show where the exact word of a speaker begin and end.
22.____ Opposite meaning.
23.____ A word that is similar to another in meaning.

That's it. Hoooha.

Study guide.

Matrix4583 — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 22:08:35 GMT

Re: The Original Ten

paco2004 — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 22:56:09 GMT

Historic Lughnasadh
Lughnasadh is a harvest celebration named for Lugh (Irish), Llew (Welsh), Lug (Britonic),or Lugus, the Celtic sun god. Lugh was one of the most popular of the Celtic gods. He gave his name to many towns around Europe including Lugdunum (Lyons) and perhaps even Londinium (London).

down
Etymology online
O.E. dun "hill," from Celtic word for "hill, citadel" (cf. O.Ir. dun "hill, hill fort," and second element in place names London, Verdun, etc.), from PIE base *dheue- "to close, finish, come full circle" (cf. O.E. dun "hill," M.Du. dune "sandy hill"). Meaning "elevated rolling grassland" is from 1297.

OED
Forms: 1 dÃºn, 2â4 dun, 4â5 doun(e, 4â7 downe, 4â down. [OE. dÃºn fem., hill = ODu. dÃºna (MDu. dÃºne, Du. duin, whence mod.LG. dÃ¼ne sandhill, F. dune). Supposed to be of Celtic origin: cf. OIr. dÃºn hill, hill-fort, Welsh din, and place-names in -dunum.
Since dÃºna must have been in use at an early date in the West Germanic dialects of Batavia and Lower Saxony, it is doubtful whether the word was brought by the Saxons from the continent, or adopted, after their settlement here, from the Britons; the former alternative is favoured by the exact correspondence in form and gender of the OE. and ODu. words, and by the fact that in local nomenclature OE. dÃºn seems to have been confined to the Saxon area. It is, however, in English only that the word has given rise to an adverb and a preposition]

paco

Review of The Grouchy Grammarian by Thomas Parrish

John C. — Sat, 29 Nov 2003 08:55:41 GMT

This book looked promising â it was subtitled A How-Not-To Guide to the 47 Most Common Mistakes in English Made by Journalists, Broadcasters, and Others Who Should Know Better â and in the first few pages I came across a passage referring to that group:

What did these people study in high school and college? Headline writing? Advertising techniques? No English, no history? Have they never loved words and ideas, the way a carpenter loves wood or a chef loves herbs? Didn't they want to know subjects and verbs, adverbs and prepositions, as the carpenter knows nails and sandpaper and hot glue? Have they never taken a sentence apart to see what made it run?

Good stuff. He had me very much on his side right at the start.

However, I wasn't much further into the book before I realised it was actually full of unsupported assertions that even a beginning grammarian like me could see were dubious.

Pettiness arises early in the piece. The author takes exception to a Hong Kong jeweller being quoted by a journalist as saying that, "he had dreamed all his life to have enough money to â¦". Of course the "to have" should be "of having", but what's his point? That people who live in Hong Kong don't always speak perfect English? Some news flash. Or perhaps he feels that journalists ought to rework direct quotes to improve the grammar â thereby having their interviewees speaking better than they actually did. Few native English speakers would utter a sentence like that, and certainly none who would be in the target audience for the book.

Even when he's making a valid and important point, instead of giving a few representative examples, he hammers away with case after case after case until the reader becomes exasperated: "Yes, yes! I get it, for heaven's sake â move on!"

For instance, subject-verb agreement, an easy point to demonstrate, is given fourteen examples, before he writes, "At this point, I felt I had probably chosen enough examples of subject-verb disagreement to make the point clear." But then, at the urging of the grumpy grammarian, he goes on to cite another twenty-two (!) examples that add nothing whatever to the argument. This kind of spoon-feeding is counter-productive. The informed reader has long since become bored, and the novice is misled into believing there's something diabolically subtle about the concept.

Two important issues were mishandled: Firstly, the difference between may and might, and secondly, the lie/lay problem. In both instances I finished the chapter a bit less clear in my own mind than at the start, although the issues are not actually that hard to explain. A few minutes browsing much shorter passages in my other reference works restored my clarity.

Then there were the places where the author had pointed out a common mistake, and pretended to be astonished that people could be so idiotic as to make it, when the error was in fact quite understandable. For instance, he gets all bent out of shape about people using lead instead of led as the past tense of lead, when it's obvious that people are unconsciously working on the analogy of read/read. English is tricky; sometimes you engender more goodwill by acknowledging that fact instead of battering people around the head for trivial slips.

The book lacks an underlying philosophy. Sometimes the author strains to be liberal, but at other times he's pedantic on minor points; the overall impression is of a grab-bag of personal prejudices rather than a coherent view of English usage.

Another problem I had was with the presentation. The device he uses is that he has a friend (the grouchy grammarian of the title), whose clippings he mines for examples of egregious errors. But the method quickly becomes tiresome and artificial, and the grouch is poorly characterised â he's pretty much an empty clichÃ© of a grump (e.g. he says "humph!" a lot). At no time was I able to believe or pretend that the grouchy grammarian was anyone other than the author.

The last problem I have with the book, and I admit that this may be specific to me, is that there's a great deal of sports talk â mostly about baseball and American football. The author is clearly a fan of these two sports, so many of the solecisms he cites are from TV or newspaper sports commentators. For this non-American, non-sporting reader, that made much of the content foggy and incomprehensible.

To be fair, there is much of interest, and even a few gems, in the book, but if you purport to write about correctness in language then you have make sure that everything you write is actually correct. I don't mind people putting forward suggestions or opinions about usage, but when these are clearly debatable, yet presented as incontrovertible facts, the integrity of the whole enterprise is thrown into doubt.

Fortunately, I got this book out of the library; I would have been very disappointed if I had paid good money for it. I'll photocopy a few pages when I take it back, but I won't be sorry to drop it in the returns slot after that.

Re: Their / there

wumanfu — Sat, 27 Sep 2003 04:07:42 GMT

Hi, these words sound the same but they mean very different things. The word âthereâ is a word that points to a place. âTheirâ means that something belongs to a group of people. âTheirâ is also used instead of his or hers as a generic pronoun. Please read the example below about food cooking over charcoal. In that sentence, the word âtheirâ is used as a generic pronoun. It is used as a substitute for his and/or hers. I guess the problem is that the gender of the person cannot be known without more specific information about the neighbour. Does that make sense? I think itâs also possible to use the word âyourâ rather than âtheirâ as a generic pronoun.
I used a free website called
www.dictionary.com
for information about this question. Itâs very easy to use. Sorry if this answer is too long but Iâve taken care to read about it because itâs a little bit tricky.

References
1 there
Function: adverb
There used in a few sentences
(a) Stand over there until I call you.
(b) Put it there on that table
(c) Please go home and stay there.
A word with the opposite meaning: here
Definition:
(a) in or at that place
(b) in or at a place other than that of the speaker -- opposed to here

2 their
Function: adjective. It is Used as a modifier before a noun: their accomplishments; their home town.
Their used in a sentence: the delicious aroma drifting across a neighbour's fence of food cooking over charcoal is enough to make anyone yearn for a barbecue of their own.
Definition: the possessive form of
they.