Search results for 'tag:Prepositions tag:Tenses' matching tags 'Prepositions' and 'Tenses'

Re: tense problems

Cool Breeze — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:42:18 GMT

In the first sentence the use of a present tense (think) emphasises what your opinion is now. The past tense (thought) refers to the past; your opinion may have changed by now.

"I told her that I am (was?) happy in my job" Both are right. The sequence of tenses would require was but if you are still happy, the present tense is also possible.

"I said to her that I do (did?) not know where Bob had gone to" I would use did in your sentence because of the that clause. If you had a quotation within quotation marks, even do would be correct in some contexts. The last preposition should be omitted.

Re: Please, help me with my questions

Grammar Geek — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:17:55 GMT

Hi Thammy,

1) Please, is the underlined order below, correct?

"It's a beautiful, big and great museum"

These three make an awkward combination. I think "great" is probably the problem. It's a big, beautiful museum. It's a terrific, big, beautiful museum. (Don't say "great big" because that sounds like it's very big insetadn of both big and great.)

2) - Is it also correct to write/say "coastal cities" for those that are spotted near the coast ?
You can certainly say "coastal cities" but I don't think you want to say "spotted." Do you mean "located" or "sited"?

3) What is the correct verb tense for this sentence:

" I have stayed for four weeks in 2007 and made new friends there."

(or)

"I stayed for four weeks in 2007 and made new friends there."

Generally when you refer to a specific time in the past ("in 2007") you use simple past.

3b. (In both sentences I believe it's better to omit the preposition "for" to avoid 'cacophony', isn't it?)

The first "for" may be glided over. I stayed fuhfour. I wouldn't omit it outright.

Please, help me with my questions

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:53:07 GMT

Hi!

Please, is the underlined order below, correct?

"It's a beautiful, big and great museum"

And:

- Is it also correct to write/say "coastal cities" for those that are spotted near the coast ?

- What is the correct verb tense for this sentence:

" I have stayed for four weeks in 2007 and made new friends there."

(or)

"I stayed for four weeks in 2007 and made new friends there."

(In both sentences I believe it's better to omit the preposition "for" to avoid 'cacophony', isn't it?)

Many thanks,
Thammy

Re: Grammar Suggestion

Mr Wordy — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 20:47:10 GMT

Hi Cute572

1. Sitting at my writing desk and working on my assignment, I become captivated by the soft evening rays, pouring in through the side window and gently covering my sheet in their yellow and orange shades.

"Become" is fine (if you've decided that you want to write the sentence in the present tense).

2. The evening rays, entering through the window, casting a gradient colors [or look?] to my smooth carpet.

The commas are OK, but there is no main verb, and this is not a proper sentence. The prepositions in the last part of the sentence also need fixing. You might say:

The evening rays, entering through the window, cast a gradient of colors on my smooth carpet.

Now "cast" is the main verb.

Re: tense - why wrong?

Kooyeen — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:56:46 GMT

Applicant: Hello. I'm here for that job for which you need a technician. My grammar is good. For example, I never end a sentence with a preposition. *smile*
Employer: Oh, that don't matter. *smile* We gotta do some stuff with computers, websites, y'know, crap like that. *light a cigar* *cough* Really, that ain't no problem... *smile*

Anyway, the rule "no past perfect with a specific point in time" doesn't exist in any ESL book. The rule you usually find is actually "no present perfect with a specific point in time". Nothing is said about the past perfect, which is perfectly ok even when we want to refer to very specific points in time. Sometimes it's even necessary:

I was so shocked. I had just checked it a few seconds before, and it was there. Then I turned my head and it was gone. There's a ghost there, trust me.
If I'm not mistaken, you can't use a simple past there, and say "I just checked". I guess it's because of that "just". Right?

Re: tense - why wrong?

Grammar Geek — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:55:00 GMT

26TMNTJG2PG
Why must we choose a way that infringes grammatical rules?

I think you are missing the point that this "rule" does not exist!

three disputed usages namely (1) 'that' for human antecedent (without any explanation), (2) split infinitive (with convincing reasonings) and (3) ending a sentence with a preposition (quoting Winston Churchill).

1) Although avoiding "that" for people is a style that I follow myself, you'll find MANY threads in this very forum that do not support insisting on this "rule" and citations going back hundreds of years using "that" for people.

2) This "rule" is now so antiquated that only the most pendantic would consider it wrong.

3) This "rule" NEVER existed and how you can say that quoting someone directly shows misuse is another oddity.

You would, perhaps, better help English learners by helping them sound natural, and not finding arcane or outright ficticious "rules" that they violate.

Re: tense - why wrong?

26TMNTJG2PG — Fri, 30 May 2008 10:16:53 GMT

The past perfect tense serves only to place a narration in the "more distant past," without determining its particular time or duration, as follows: "He had risen early that morning and had drunk coffee earlier than usual. â Wikipedia. There are many ways to express an idea. Why must we choose a way that infringes grammatical rules? How do you do it?
Easy.
Yesterday we finished our lunch and then Tom arrived. Yesterday we finished our lunch. Then Tom arrived.
Are they not equally good, if not better?
Notice that I used 'Easy' above. I say it is a sentence or a paragraph. Do you agree?
You don't. Everybody knows that "A sentence must have a verb and can stand on its own"; but then so many famous writers use this so-called effective style of writing (at the expense of grammatical rules) in newspaper articles and books including reference books teaching their users to speak and write better English.
"A sentence must have a verb and can stand on its own" has become a schoolroom rule. If you engage yourself in formal writing or if you are a student, are you not inclined to follow this rule?A job applicant using the sentence, "I like employers that (instead of who) take good care of their employees", is facing a risk of his/her application being turned down should his/her prospective employer consider such use (of 'that') as inappropriate; and the applicant will be left with no chance to defend himself/herself since normally no reason will be given for the rejection. 'That' for human antecedent is a disputed usage. If I use the word 'unidiomatic' in my thesis for a degree, I am facing the danger of marks being deducted for such usage because 'unidiomatic' cannot be found in online dictionaries but it is used in Wikipedia. What I am stressing is that if you don't follow the rules, there may be a cost to bear.Coincidentally, there is an article titled "Position matters" by Dr Lim Chin Lam in the popular national English daily today which article somewhat talks about the importance of following grammatical rules and which article, however, has three disputed usages namely (1) 'that' for human antecedent (without any explanation), (2) split infinitive (with convincing reasonings) and (3) ending a sentence with a preposition (quoting Winston Churchill).
HTH. HAND.

Mistakes made by Chinese Learners

Anonymous — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 14:30:26 GMT

Hi everyone

I 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 rude/inconsiderate, more serious transfer may affect comprehensiveness.
No inflections in L1 - tenses difficult to learn in L2 as L1 has no true tenses and concept of time is expressed by adverbs/implicit or contextual assumptions.
Difficulty distinguishing [r] & - Does anyone know why this is as I can't find a reason?!!
Prepositions such as 'on', 'in' & 'at' have one chinese translation in many contexts, 'zai' - may be confused resulting in phrases such as 'on Taiwan' instead of 'in Taiwan'.
Use of awkward gerunds e.g. 'no noising', excessive use of verbs ending in 'ing' e.g. 'do not climbing', confusion of 'ed' & 'ing' verbs e.g. 'i am bored' vs 'i am boring' --- all of these errors occur because verbs are not conjugated in chinese, for tense or pronoun.
No equivalent word for 'the' so may be used excessively when not needed e.g. 'The China' or missed out when needed. May also be confused with 'a'/'an'.
Confusion over countable and uncountable nouns, use of 'how much?' vs 'how many?' - leads to phrases such as 'I want a soup' & 'a lot of shoe'. This is due to there not being plurals in chinese - no inflections.

Switching between 'he' & 'she' - Does anyone know why this is?

If anyone can think of anymore it would be greatly appreciated or if anyone knows the answers to my questions about gender switching and distinguishing [r] & this would also help a lot!!

Thank you in advance.

Shannon

Re: it matters to know it

OrcaDeen — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:02:13 GMT

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 been" may express a very far incident that was finished long ago and doesnot express the sense or continuation in the past since the complaints have been heavily lodged in large numbers

Lastly, Thank you so much

Re: What makes English so difficult to learn?

Anonymous — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 21:30:34 GMT

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 and infuriating exceptions for just about every single rule, the two most puzzling features are the Verb+Participle+Preposition combinations and the sheer vastness of the vocabulary. Observe the former...

come+up+with

come+down+with

come+foward+with

come+out+for

come+down+to

Five different constructions which would be clear as day to any native speaker, are nevertheless mind-boggling to someone who is learning the language. Notice how they all start with "come", and then imagine that sort of illogical word-scrambling applied to every verb. Daunting, isn't it? Don't know how to break it to you folks, but I haven't even scratched the surface.

Now as to the latter, I am more than happy to have dictionary.com present proof of this phenomenon in my stead. Let's take a look at the word "jump". I mean, how many possible synonyms could there be for this word? Well, one simple search can help us find out. Here's the link:

http://thesaurus.reference.com/browse/jump

40 entries for the first definition alone. FORTY. Forty different ways to say jump. But when you break it down, do all 40 words have the same meaning? Of course not! Nosedive means to jump into something headfirst, as in a pool of water or (if you're very unfortunate) onto a hardwood floor. To spring is to jump up energetically, with an almost almighty "lurch" (another word for jump right there :P) whereas to "bob" means to make jumping motions without every actually taking your feet off the ground. The list goes on and on. No other language I'm familiar with has such variety when it comes to synonyms, be it for seemingly uncomplicated actions or deep philosophical concepts.

Although English is my native language, I am also a nearly native speaker of Russian (I give credit to my parents for preserving the language of the "motherland" and passing it on to me) and fluent in German. I find Russian to be an incredibly expressive language with just as many (if not more) nuances as English, and its ability to convey feelings of dislike, anger or downright hateful fervor (i.e. swearing) is, in my experience, unmatched. German is an incredibly logical language, and once grammar constructs are mastered, relatively straightforward in its application. Mastering German grammar is a challenge however, and word order is an utter nuisance in some situations.

Just my two cents.