Search results for 'tag:Modal verbs tag:Speak english' matching tags 'Modal verbs' and 'Speak english'

Re: It has alot of / there are alot of

CalifJim — Fri, 27 May 2005 04:14:33 GMT

There are [a lot of / lots of] advantages to speaking English.
Being able to speak English has [a lot of / lots of] advantages.

The sentences above are probably what you want.

"to can" is impossible. Modal verbs are defective verbs in that they have no infinitive forms.
I didn't understand exactly what you wanted to say in the second part of your post.

CJ

Would you be so kind to correct my essay? thank you

eagertolearn — Sat, 19 Mar 2005 14:40:28 GMT

I'm taking a course to become an English Teacher in Spain and I have to write a summary of all the lessons I attend during the course. Once I have all the summaries I'll have to hand them in to my teacher and I wouldn't like to have any grammar mistakes. Could you take a look and check everything is OK? thanks in advance. By the way, I haven't checked my punctuation so you will probably find many mistakes in this field. One more thing, I would be interested in knowing your opinions about the things said in the essay. Here you are:

CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT:
DEVELOPING SPEAKING ATTITUDES

After spending a quarter of an hour in the class, I started thinking I had gone to the wrong building or maybe classroom. Everything was completely different from any previous classes I had had at University. The atmosphere had nothing to do with the one you found at University. In this case, even though it was a Saturday morning, the students were relaxed and eager to learn. But the atmosphere was not what struck me the most. Once LuÃs FernÃ¡ndez entered the class and introduced himself, two thoughts came to my mind. First, I thought that maybe I would not learn a lot with him but at least I would have great fun. Second, I thought that was the kind of teacher I had always wanted to have when I was at school. Someone who could make the student feel at ease, which is specially necessary in an English class.
To my surprise, I did learn some valuable advice that day. One of the things he said was that in order to become English teachers we had to know more than a native speaker. I was not surprised to hear that, since I have always thought non native speakers have to be familiarised with the way grammar works in order to teach it. Whereas native speakers do not have to since they learnt English naturally and without great effort. Even though I agreed with LuÃs FernÃ¡ndez in this point, he said some things which I absolutely disagree with. For instance, the idea that we have to be aware that some of our students will never be able to learn English, no matter how hard we try to teach them. My experience in teaching English is very little but I think that anybody can learn something if he or she wants to. Maybe those who have difficulties in learning will have to work harder and will need more time than the average student but, in the end, they will get to speak English. Maybe what the teacher meant was that some students are hard to teach no matter how much effort we make because, after all, the ones who have to make the effort are the students themselves.
Some of the things that were said in class that day changed the way I teach my classes now. The teacher said that we have to get to know our students. Know what they are interested in, what worries them or what motivates them. Even though I consider I have a good relationship with my students I try to keep some distance because I donât pretend to be my studentâs friend. I do speak with my students about many things but I try not to talk about my personal life or to make them talk about theirs. Since LuÃs FernÃ¡ndez gave us that piece of advice I try to know more about my students and their likes and dislikes and I can say it helps create a better and more relaxed atmosphere.
We not only have to know our students but also help them know one another. This way they will be willing to use English to explain one another what they like or what they have done this weekend. Moreover, they will be given the chance to put into practice those structures and vocabulary we have taught them.
In order to put into practice all that was said in class, we did some exercises. The teacher told us that if our students are not concentrated and relaxed, they wonât be able to learn anything. A good way to keep their attention is to ask them to close their eyes and relax at the time we are explaining or whispering a story. With this exercise the student relaxes all his/her body and mind too. Once the exercise ends they are fresh to learn again. That day we had the chance to put it into practice and even though I was more sleepy after coming back to earth, I do think it may be an original and interesting way to create a good atmosphere in class.
Although this session was not supposed to deal with how to mark and correct our studentsâ exercises, the topic was already introduced. We were given a fill in the blanks exercise to practise modal verbs. After doing the exercise individually we corrected it altogether and realised that, in some cases, there was more than one possible answer. This way we learnt that marking an exercise is not a simple task and sometimes it is better to give a mark instead of correcting every single mistake. Specially with young students who are not interested in writing properly but in getting a good mark. Moreover, this way we safe time since correcting can take us long and, as FernÃ¡ndez said, all teachers have to find time to keep learning and studying to become better professionals.

Subjunctive mood in English

paco2004 — Tue, 08 Mar 2005 20:08:13 GMT

Hello

This is a garbage-like posting written by a poor English learner who has been and still now is agonized by subjunctive things which supposedly underlie English collocations.

My way of understanding English grammar

The English language uses two moods (indicative/subjunctive) and two tenses (present/past). Accordingly, all English verbs including modals and auxiliary verbs have four inflective forms beside finite forms (-ed, -ing). The four are;
(1) indicative: present / past
(2) subjunctive: present / past
For example, 'can', 'have', 'be', and 'smoke' inflect the ways like:

(1) indicative: can / could
(2) subjunctive: can / could

(1) indicative: have, has / had
(2) subjunctive: have / had

(1) indicative: am, are, is / was, were
(2) subjunctive: be / were

(1) indicative: smoke, smokes / smoked
(2) subjunctive: smoke / smoked

We have to understand that tense and time are things a little different. The time is a concept to section the time flow in universe. There are three times: past, present, and future. This concept of time, especially that of 'future' is the one that can be owned only by the modern world where many people feel rather sure they can live next year. Contrary to this, the tense is a concept owned by the people who lived in the remote past and created languages. In such remote past, I think, people must have been unable to be sure they could live in 'future', even tomorrow, because their living environment was so harsh. So 'future' wouldn't matter a lot to them. It is why many languages including English basically lack verbal forms for future. Anyway 'future tense' is not a real tense built in the English language. The future tense is something like an extension of the present tense and therefore it should be expressed only with help of the modal verb 'will'. So, we could say, basically, English has only two tenses, present and past.

Mood is a convenience contrived by the old people to differentiate their speech into fact-statements and thought-statements. The indicative mood is the one for fact-statements and the subjunctive for thought-statements. In our modern world people can know many things proved to be facts owing to education and science, and therefore, our speech is more abundant with indicative sentences to compare with subjunctive sentences. But in the old days, people could not confirm many things they know to be fact. And so, I suppose, they would speak a lot in collocations like "Methink + subjunctive mood". It seems nowadays native speakers are getting uncosciousness that they are using the subjunctive mood in their collocations. But still, I feel, it would be better for us (ESL) to know the subjunctive mood underlies many of current English collocations, especially those using modals.

Now this posting is coming to what I really would like to say. I was taught and even now many Japanese students are being taught that the protases in English imaginary conditionals are expressed by 'past tense' (for imaginary present) and 'past perfect tense' (for imaginary past). And teachers told us that, exceptionally in the case the verb is 'be', we should use a special word, 'were'. But I think this way of understanding would get the thing more complicated. I think we (at least me) had better understand that the finite verbs in the thought-statements in English are all in subjunctive forms.
(EX) If I had been a diligent student, I would be able to speak English better. ['had' and 'would' are subjunctives]
(EX) I wish I were a bird. I wish I could fly like a bird. ['could' is subjunctive]
(EX) (I wish) I could kill him. ['could' is subjunctive] I could swim when I was young. ['could' is indicative]

paco

Re: Emphasize

miriam — Sat, 26 Jun 2004 09:07:17 GMT

Of course I don't mind your asking
I don't know what your first language is, but in my country, Spanish speakers find it difficult too to understand that the "s" is necessary to form the simple present of a verb for the 3rd. person singular. The reason is that we associate the addition of an "s" at the end of a word only with plural forms.

In English, most nouns add an "s" to form the plural:
example (singular) --- examples (plural)
Some nouns add "es", and there are several irregular plurals.

Now, the "s" you may add to the word "mean" is not the same "s" that you add to a nounn in order to from the plural.
You intended to use the verb "mean" in the simple present in your post. Now, the rule for forming the present simple of verbs in English is the following:
You use the base form of the verb (that is, the infinitive, the verb as it appears in a dictionary entry) for all the persons but the third person singular, for which you have to add an "s" (or "es") to the verb. To form the negative and the interrogative, you need the auxiliary "do" for all persons except the third person singular, which uses "does".
The exceptions to this rule are the verb "to be", which is the most irregular of the English verbs, and the modal verbs (can, could, may, might, should, will, would, etc).
The verb "mean" in the simple present would be:
I mean
you mean
he, she, it means
we mean
you mean
they mean

In the case of verbs, the addition of the "s" does not mean pluralisation.

Other examples of the simple present:

"I go to school."
"He goes to school."

"My sister and I like icecream."
"Susan likes icecream."

"I speak English."
"You speak English."
"She speaks English."
"The boys speak English."
"We all speak English."

"The word 'easy' means 'not difficult'."
"What does this word mean?"
"What do these words mean?"

Let me know if you still find it confusing?