Search results for 'tag:Grammar tag:Numbers' matching tags 'Grammar' and 'Numbers'

Re: Best ways to learn irregular verbs

CalifJim — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 20:41:18 GMT

I think language is better learned by real contact with real language than through a quasi-mathematical approach with drills. It seems to me that mistakes are normal in learning, and there is no need to stress students with artificial exercises to master. Personally, I never got a lot out of such drills when I learned foreign languages.

If the students are gradually brought into contact with the irregularities of language (whether verbs or other elements), I think they do just as well or better than if a whole batch of irregularities are dropped on them at once with the injunction to "Learn this!"

Ideally, an acquaintance with certain adjective forms in conversational settings (well done, thoughtful, lost dog, newly fallen snow, a poorly fed parakeet kept hidden in a stolen cage!), originally learned by rote, can set up the desired "ho-hum" reaction to past participles like done, thought, lost, etc. (I think that sometimes teachers are more panicked by irregularities than students, and teacher panic spreads to the students -- especially once the difficulties are officially recognized in the form of special drills! "Whoa! This is SO difficult we have to spend hours slaving away at it!" )

Other irregularities, preferably related by semantics rather than by grammar or morphology, can also be learned by rote at first: came and went, bought it, brought it home, wore it once, and took it back (or threw it out), had (s.o.) over - came over - drove over, sat down and stood up, sat down and shut up, stood up and spoke out, fell down and got (back) up, put it on and took it off, made a choice - chose, had a meeting - met, held a sale - sold, took the lead - led, took a drive - drove, got some sleep - slept, had a fight - fought, etc. There are any number of dialogs you can construct that emphasize the use of such forms, and any number of topics for free conversation which will naturally lead to the use of such forms.

Note that many irregular past participles occur after got. This might be a factor you can use to your advantage in presenting some of the irregular forms. got hurt, burnt, struck by lightening, stung by a bee, stuck in traffic, bitten by a dog, left behind, paid, ...

Students who "want to understand" irregular verbs probably just want to see them grouped in some logical way -- either because it helps them to memorize them that way, or purely out of intellectual curiosity. Just showing them the three basic groups is often enough: Those with t or d endings in both the past and the past participle; those with ng, nk, or g endings; those with -en past participles.

But I think what you really want is better exercises to drill these verbs, that is, exercises that more efficiently drum in the forms and consistently "reduce student error rates", and I'm afraid I can't help you with all that "learning technology" stuff. The ones you've found seem to do the job, and I'm not aware of any "magic bullet" that addresses that goal perfectly.

Re: reported speech

richard_s — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 04:44:36 GMT

Well, you know there are a number of terms for virtually everything relating to do with language. Â The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language calls it 'indirect reported speech'. Â I think the 'reported' part of the name is important to distinguish it from 'indirect speech' in which the person doesn't directly say what they mean (in which they imply the meaning).

Please help me to check English grammar

Anonymous — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:20:00 GMT

Hello,

I have written a short draft which I am going to use in my report. I am not native English speaker and I make grammatical errors in my writing. Could someone help me to check grammar in this draft please? Thanks!

Report Proposal

Topic D: Weather Forecasts

Step 1

Before we do data analysis in this report we need to be certain we understand the questions we need to answer. Two recommended questions are provided in the reportâs instructions.

There are several issues needed to be addressed first before answering the questions.

We need some data for this analysis. We need to know how we are going to collect the data and for which regions we are going to collect the data. Also, we need to know who the authority on providing accurate daily temperature forecasts is. What is the population on which we going to project our inferences. How are we are going to produce samples of data for our analysis: ourselves or use the data from another source. Whether or not the data samples can be selected randomly. What sample size we are going to use. If two data samples can be obtained from two independent sources. So we need to design an experiment to collect the data making sure itâs accurate, relevant and does not violate any of the assumptions of our analysis.

The first question we are going to answer states that we need to determine if forecast maximum daily temperatures significantly different from true maximum temperatures. How do we determine what difference in these temperatures is significant? Do we use a conservative approach or a larger difference in temperatures is acceptable for this analysis? Similarly, we need to decide what of level of significance to use in our hypothesis tests.

Once accurate and relevant data samples are collected and the calculations are carried out we then need to interpret our findings and draw a conclusion. The following questions need to be considered: can we use our findings for the future temperature forecasts in the two regions? For immediate future only, for the next 10 years? Can we assume our findings are applicable to the period when temperature forecasts were at an early stage in the two regions of interest?
Furthermore, if it is found that the proportions of correct forecast temperatures differ for the two regions significantly then what do we do next? We assume this fact or do we investigate further to determine the cause for this difference?

Step 2

In this hypothesis test I will use a conservative measure with the average of differences of 2 degrees Celsius or more (â¥2) between forecast maximum daily temperatures and true maximum temperatures to be considered significantly different.

In hypothesis test I am going to use 5% significance level to determine wether the average of differences between forecast maximum daily temperatures and true daily maximum temperatures recorded for each region is significantly different.

Assume the average of differences between the temperatures is equal to or less than 2 degrees in Celsius.

H0: Î¼ â¤ 2
H1: Î¼ > 2

Î¼ is the average of differences between forecast maximum daily temperatures and true daily maximum temperatures recorded for each region.

To determine if proportions of correct forecast temperatures (to within 1 degree Celsius) are the same between the two regions I will use the following hypothesis test:

H0: Ï1 = Ï2 => H0: Ï1 - Ï2 = 0
H1: Ï1 â Ï2 => H1: Ï1 - Ï2 â 0

Ï is proportion of the population of correct forecast temperatures to within 1 degree Celsius.

Furthermore, I will calculate 99% confidence intervals for the average of differences between forecast maximum daily temperatures and true daily maximum temperatures recorded for each region.

The assumptions for the hypothesis tests are:

Two data samples are randomly selected;
Two data samples are independent. Two sets of data were produced by two different meteorological stations for two different regions;
Two sampling distributions of the means for temperature differences are approximately normally distributed. By Central Limit Theorem this condition will be met if the samplesâ sizes are sufficiently large (n â¥ 30). Our samplesâ size will be at least 30.

Step 3

In this report I will use data I have obtained from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. The Bureau keeps archives of historical data on climate statistics for various locations around Australia and provides it to the public on request.

In Australia there are regional meteorological stations responsible for reporting weather forecasts for their respective regions. I obtained the data for Adelaide metropolitan area produced by Kent Town meteorological station (station number: 23090) and for Perth metropolitan area produced by Perth East meteorological station (station number: 9225) for the period of 01/01/2006 - 24/07/2008.

The two meteorological stations forecast highest and lowest temperatures for the next 3 days each day and update their weather forecast reports several times during 24 hours. The latest weather forecast update for the day is done in late afternoon or during evening. In this report I will use latest updates on weather forecasts released by the meteorological stations during the days for the following days. In doing so I will ensure that the latest, most accurate and consistent temperature forecast readings are used in our data analysis.

I have also obtained a file of historical records on the actual highest and lowest temperatures recorded in Adelaide metropolitan and Perth metropolitan areas for the period of 01/01/2006 - 25/07/2008. In total there are 937 temperature records for each region.

I used random generator to randomly select 30 dates from the period of 01/01/2006 - 24/07/2008 for each region separately. I then, for each region, selected a pair of temperature records from the two data sets for each randomly selected date: the maximum temperature recorded on a selected day and the maximum forecast temperature on the previous date during the evening of the selected date. Once random pairs of records for each region are determined then I calculated the differences between the temperatures pairs taking absolute magnitude for each value to account for some negative results e.g. when forecast temperature is underestimated. I assorted the list of differences in ascending order.

The archive of files of raw data I obtained from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology is located at
http://www.spunge.org/~alexg/008_markin.zip

Data of randomly selected dates and computed differences between the temperatures for the dates is located at
http://www.spunge.org/~alexg/data_forecast.xls

Step 4

Once two data samples are randomly selected and presented in appropriate form for statistical analysis Excel 2003 will be used to carry out necessary calculations.

For hypothesis tests and for 99% confidence intervals I will use PHStat2 package (add-in for Excel) which comes with various statistical functions and procedures producing quality outputs. A free version of the package can be obtained from http://www.prenhall.com/phstat/

The assumptions for hypothesis tests I have described above which are:

Two data samples are randomly selected;
Two data samples are independent. Two sets of data were produced by two different meteorological stations for two different regions;
The two sampling distributions of the means for temperature differences are approximately normally distributed. By Central Limit Theorem this condition will be met if the samplesâ sizes are sufficiently large (n â¥ 30).

In this analysis the population is all available forecast temperatures ever produced by the two meteorological stations for the two regions. A large sample of 937 temperature records I obtained is not really entire population. However, knowledge and expertise as well technological advances in meteorology have changed significantly in the last 30-40 years. This factor has to be taken into account and probably a subset of the entire population, all forecast temperatures reports produced in the last 10 years for the two regions, for example, would be more appropriate for our analysis. As forecasts are more accurate and consistent for the current period of time.

until now+ present perfect

Tuongvan — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:30:06 GMT

Hi teachers,
My grammar book says the present perfect is used with "Until now", but why do they use the past perfect in the following sentence that I have picked up from a British newspaper

The West Country â where the Ministry of Defense has a number of high-security establishments â had until now only been considered "a low risk."

Thank you in advance

Re: Was or Were?

innamuris — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 14:24:05 GMT

'a number of people' is considered plural. so we say 'a number of people are..'

comparitive conjunction

innamuris — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:42:09 GMT

can anyone help me in choosing the correct answer below?

The underlined portion below may have some grammatical mistake.

After the Colonial periodâs 50 percent mortality rate, life expectancy improved for children, but as late as the nineteenth century about one child in three died before reaching the age of six.

(A) After the Colonial periodâs 50 percent mortality rate, life expectancy improved for children, but
(B) Even though childrenâs life expectancy, which improved over the Colonial periodâs 50 percent mortality rate,
(C) Although life expectancy for children improved after the Colonial period, during which the mortality rate was 50 percent,
(D) While there was an improvement in life expectancy for children after the 50 percent mortality rate of the Colonial period, still
(E) Despite childrenâs life expectancy improvement from the Colonial periodâs 50 percent mortality rate,

The key for this question is 'as late as' which express the sameness in value w.r.t numbers or frequency or quality.

Re: Which language is most difficult language for people to learn?

richard_s — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:31:29 GMT

Surely this depends on your native language. Â Obviously, French is easy enough to learn for English speakers, whereas it is just as hard as English for a Chinese speaker.

I see no reason for thinking that Russian is a particularly hard language to learn; the grammar patterns are no more difficult than other SlavicÂ languages. Â Japanese is of course hard to learn to read and write; it is impossible to remember all of the Kanji, but the language is not hard to learn to speak. Â I speak it quite well. Â Chinese on the other hand, suffers from anÂ innumerableÂ number of characters to learn to read and write (remember, in Japanese you can useÂ hiraganaÂ instead of Kanj), and it has all of those different tones to learn to pronounce.

But then, one shouldn't forget English. Â The spelling is so irregular, that it is almost as hard as learning Japanese kanji, the grammar is irregular, and the complexity of the word forms is quite daunting.

'Empires of the Word' has an interesting discussion on this topic. Â I forget the author's name - Nic O....

Re: Grammar

Clive — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:29:37 GMT

Hi,
Is there any grammar mistakes

I was transfered the amount of 1000 $US for the account number 1234

I have transfered the amount of 1000 $US ~~for~~ to ~~the~~ account number 1234

I assume you mean that you sent the money. Only #2 is correct.

Best wishes, Clive

Re: Grammar

Clive — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:29:22 GMT

Re: Grammar

Clive — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 17:29:09 GMT