Search results for 'tag:Learning English tag:Grammar' matching tags 'Learning English' and 'Grammar'

Please, help me with my studies...

seroMack — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:29:31 GMT

Â I'm moving to the second level of my English philology studies at the University. The following Saturday I'm sitting an entrance exam, a kind of interview. I'd like to ask you for a nice favor, namely...

Could any of You prepare for me a small talk, a speech on how I "love" descriptive grammar and how I am into it? I know it's not so difficult but I care about some realistic (native) approach which here, in my country, is rather difficult to achieve anyway. The field of my studies I'd love to take up is morphology/syntax.Â

I'd be very grateful for any concerning response.

Thank YouÂ

Gramma question

copysnake — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:44:20 GMT

"The mystery is that this should come as a surprise to any boss. Surely it should be obvious to the dimmest executive that trust, that most valuable of economic assets, is easily destroyed and hugely expensive to restore â and that few things are more likely to destroy trust than a company letting sensitive personal data get into the wrong hands."

I'm confused that why the author use "should" here. I thought "should" means "you'd better do " or "do something correct"
I'm a Foreign Language Learners and i'm very intrested in learning english ,so i will appreciate that someone can do me a favor.thank you !

Re: we best learn a language by using that language

PrinnySquad — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 00:47:03 GMT

I am not a teacher, but I feel inclined to respond.

The best way to study any language is to use that language as often as one can. There is no denying that. However, I know this question has something to do with TEFLese, which is known as a bad approach to learning English by simply repeating strict patterns, or trying to produce "correct" form of sentences, without really using it.
This method is horrible. But there is a way to remedy this illness.I think we should focus more on writing. Writing encourages creativity and forces one to fully use the language. Writing is also generally accepted as one of the harder of the four skills. Just being able to produce simple sentences, or fill in blanks, won't help in real life situation. Rather, the grammar, vocabulary, and idioms we know will only dwell on our receptive, not active knowledge of English. And someday they will just dwindle away to nothing.

Re: Adjective Prepositional Phrases vs. Adverb Prepositional Phrases

Raen — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:01:35 GMT

Avangi
This is exactly the point I was trying to make about the limitation of the rules. They're useful only in eliminating the adjectival function, not in asserting it. An adverbial / prepositional phrase, according to the two rules, may be placed anywhere, including directly after a noun which it does not modify. That is to say, just because a prepositional phrase follows a noun, that doesn't mean it modifies that noun.

(Yay, I got the quote thing down!) Thanks for your time Avangi, I truly appreciate it. But I must say I'm just about as depressed as can be :(, because now I'm think I, as someone learning English as a 2nd language, am.....(pardon my languaged here) screwed. I don't thik I have the ability to know what to eliminate nor asserting. You instinctively know (or feel) the right answer without fully know why is, I think, because of the fact that you are a native speaker. And I don't have the natural sense to know whether it's adverbial or adjectival, instead I have to strictly go by the grammar rules........... rules that seem to me right now not necessarily "definitive".

Thanks again Avangi, at least I know now I maybe need to be more relaxed or flexible in learning the mechanics of English grammar. Thanks, you are great!

Regards

Raen

Re: Nominative and objective case

Tanit — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 14:11:23 GMT

Yoong Liat
By the way, what is 'DUH"? Is it an abbreviation for a phrase?

Hi,
You might want lo listen to this mp3 file from BBC Learning English (warning: nearly 600kb).
Although it focuses on "do'h" ("I'm stupid!", "oh no, not another time!"), the speaker also mentions "duh" as an utterance meaning "everybody knows that!", "that's obvious!", "you're being stupid!".

That's not the sort of thing you'd find explained in a textbook or in a grammar book ... however, it's in some dictionaries (for instance, Merriam-Webster).

Re: Grammar practice: adverbs

CalifJim — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:09:54 GMT

Raen
I wonder if I can resort to that tactic if my pick is different from the official answer.

You can always try!

To reduce some of your frustration you may have to separate your study into two parts. 'Learning English' and 'Passing the Tests'. The two may differ in terms of the skills you'll need.

Re: movies for learning english

Lovebug — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 03:21:19 GMT

HI. I agree that older movies are much better as the spoken language is much slower. If you are learning English to improve your grammar, then you can also begin to watche all time classics like Peter Pan, or even Sount of Music. There are also Animal Planet Documentaries which have very interesting topics you may enjoy.

Re: there is/has been

Kooyeen — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:29:08 GMT

New2grammar
Can I say:

Grammar Geek
I've put my house up for sale for a month now

If not, why? This is confusing to me.

I don't think so, because once you have put it up for sale, it's for sale. You don't keep putting it up for sale. Once you've done it, you just have to wait for someone who is interested.

I think it's the same reason why you don't usually say "I've been starting to learn English for a year", but you say "I started learning English a year ago" and "I've been learning English for a year now".

In other words, a house can be for sale for a month, but the act of putting it up for same just takes a short time.

Teaching English using the Chatbot Game

amichail — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 15:35:48 GMT

I believe that the Chatbot Game can be used to help students learn English as a second language:

http://chatbotgame.com
http://chatbotgame.com/?cmd=chat_rs
http://chatbotgame.com/?cmd=chat_s

Players of the Chatbot Game shape the chatbot's personality and expertise by adding simple chat rules. The better their chat rules, the higher they will score. Higher scoring rules are more likely to be used to generate a chatbot response.

I think such a game may be useful for learning English as a second language. After all, to score lots of points, you will do well by focusing on common sorts of conversation fragments -- exactly the sort of thing that someone learning English should focus on. Moreover, you get to see how well your rules do in actual chats in terms of a rule score and actual conversation fragments.

If the player uses poor grammar in a chat rule, then that rule may not score well assuming that most people chatting with the bot already know English pretty well. Even if someone doesn't vote down a rule with bad grammar, he/she might comment on the bad grammar in his/her response.

In essence, the chat rules can be viewed as open-ended exercises that are graded by the people chatting with the bot.

What do you think?

Re: Hey Guys, Need Help

Tanit — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 12:37:47 GMT

Hi,

New2grammar
Could you try to convince me why the abrupt change of tense makes sense?

Why should it make sense? After all, we're talking about English grammar!
Anyway, somebody says it's an instance of unreal past ...

BBC Learning English

We sometimes use past tenses to describe things in the present or future that are imagined or unreal.
It's time we went.
We are using It's time... here to say that something is not happening, but it should be happening. Compare also the following:
It's time we left. Our son will be home soon and he doesn't have a house key.
It's about time you started looking for a job. You can't depend on us all the time. It's high time you started to fend for yourself.

...we can use the construction it's time to or it's time for + object + to as alternatives to the unreal use of past forms to express this idea:
It's time for you to think seriously about what you want to do in your life.
It's time you thought seriously about what you want to achieve in your life.
It's time to reflect on how you want your life to proceed.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/grammar/learnit/learnitv347.shtml

UNREAL PAST

The past tense is sometimes used in English to refer to an 'unreal' situation. So, although the tense is the past, we are usually talking about the present, e.g. in a Type 2 conditional sentence:
If an elephant and a mouse fell in love, they would have many problems.
Although fell is in the past tense, we are talking about a hypothetical situation that might exist now or at any time, but we are not referring to the past. We call this use the unreal past.
Other situations where this occurs are:

after other words and expressions like'if'(supposing, if only, what if);
after the verb 'to wish';
after the expression 'I'd rather..'
(http://www.edufind.com/English/Grammar/IF10.cfm)

... and somebody says it's subjunctive. See also:
http://www.englishforums.com/English/ChangingTenses/dqcdx/post.htm
http://www.englishforums.com/English/WhichSentencesAreCorrect/zjbhp/post.htm