By Prepositions, Tenses

Mistakes made by Chinese Learners

Hi everyoneI 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...

Re: it matters to know it

Thank you for your interest to share us But, your sentence may mean that the main concern of the topic is the council while it is really not And by deleting the preposition "at", this ignores that the complaints were lodged to that council Also, the past perfect tense in "had...

Re: What makes English so difficult to learn?

As a native English speaker (well perhaps not entirely native, I was born in Russia and immigrated to the U.S. at the tender age of 7) I would have to say that apart from the obviously difficult aspects of the English language such as tenses, an unorthodox phonetic system employed in the language...

Re: when and after

Radford (Transformational Grammar) argues that these (when, while, after, before, since, until, ...) are all (always) prepositions. However, his is not a traditional approach. He even denies that there is any necessity of having a category for conjunctions!So you see there are a variety of...

Re: adjective or part of a passive

Yes. I think I understand what you are getting at -- although for non-native speakers some of the guidelines may appear to be circular in nature. According to Palmer (The English Verb), besides the plain vanilla 'passive' with an agent introduced by by (The man was killed by his...

Re: sell out vs sell out of

Hi Hoa ThaiThere were a number of details that I considered in my last post. These included the following:- Sold out used strictly as a verb vs sold out used like an adjective - Verb tense- Using sold vs sold out (particularly in combination with the word 'all')- Word order (i.e. Does...

Re: Wh grammar question...

It's correct. What is used in questions at the beginning of a clause. Are must be before the subject (you) in a question. The continuous present tense is often used to denote future action. No preposition is used before this when this refers to time.CB

Re: relating to/ related to

Hi Christanford, present participle vs past participle - The past participle by itself (related) functions like an adjective and fits your definition, "connected in some way." "the heart and its related organs." I can't immediately think how the present participle (relating) would work by...

Re: several grammar questions (2)

Hela wrote: Dear teachers, 1) How would you qualify this time of genitive, please? Which "title" would you give it? Is it some sort of "human activities"? but I don't really like this. love's spirit, science's influence, my life's aim, duty's call . wow! I remember genitive as a Latin case...

several grammar questions (2)

Dear teachers, 1) How would you qualify this time of genitive, please? Which "title" would you give it? Is it some sort of "human activities"? but I don't really like this. love's spirit, science's influence, my life's aim, duty's call . 2) Which tenses would you use in the following...