Jaleel.nt, in the first instance, we deal with a phenomenon that is conventionally known as a passive gerund ; the whole clause with being... can be substituted with a noun phrase, eg, ...this award . Therefore, we refer to being... as a nominal

either "learners of the English language," or "English language learners." Why is article the essential here? There is only one English language. e.g. I'm learning Chinese language these days. Is there any need to specify

What is the word sucks in " Homework sucks " ? Is it a verb or an adjective? If it is a verb, what does homework suck? This brings up an excellent point, and a wonderful opportunity to discover the beautiful syntactic structure of the English

CalifJim wrote: If a student points to some construction and asks me if it's the subjunctive or not, I can't reply, 'No, it's a monkey!' Now there you are wrong! You are the teacher and can say any dang thing you want! In fact a smart retort

If a student points to some construction and asks me if it's the subjunctive or not, I can't reply, 'No, it's a monkey!' Now there you are wrong! You are the teacher and can say any dang thing you want! In fact a smart retort like that might

It should be 'his'. Others will be able to tell you why. Still others will, doubtless, differ. I would have said "he" in that sentence. But "with his not being" would work for me. I'm looking forward to a