Search results for 'tag:Vocabulary tag:Contractions' matching tags 'Vocabulary' and 'Contractions'

Re: How to pronounce often?

Anonymous — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 07:46:01 GMT

Dear Howard Leigh Ph.D., If we are going to get into silly mudslinging battles over the word "often" and claiming illigitimacy of posts due to lack of name, qualifications, and misspellings then I suggest that you start with the very word misspelling which contains two of the letter "s". That is, of course, unless you intended to say that the previous poster pelled something incorrectly, but unfortunately I am not the beholder of a Ph.D. and therefore pell as a verb is not in my vocabulary, nor is it in my trusty old Webster's. Again if we follow your rules that misspellings invalidate a post let us return again to your second sentence where you used the contraction for "You are" when I believe you meant to use the posessive form "your", unless you intended to write "yore" and refer to some other ancient post that you believe to be unreliable. Also I should further point out to you that when you spelled "hat" at the beginning of your last paragraph, your word choice does probably contain a "w" at the beginning to make the word "what." But alas, you have a Ph.D. (in some field that you did not mention - grounds for an unreliable post perhaps?) so you were surely aware of these slight misspellings before criticizing those of others. As for me, I happen to pronounce "often" without the "t" because that is how I learned it, but also to keep with pronunciation schemes words like soft - soften, haste - hasten, chaste - chasten, and also hustle, bustle etc. It does make me cringe a little inside when I hear "often" pronounced with the "t," but if, as several have suggested, this pronunciation has resurged as a result of better and broader education and literacy throughout the world, then I believe that coping with the occasional pronunciation with a "t" is something I dearsay I would be happy to accept as a consequence. I apologize for the somewhat pomptuous (yes, with a silent t - props to that comment by the way) nature of this post, but we all should know that advice we receive from the internet on forum websites should be taken with a grain of salt and misspellings and typos are a reality of the high speed electronic age. Cheers, Peter Broch (sans Ph.D.)

Re: At the stationery shop

RayH — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:51:13 GMT

Barbara, Delmobile and anyone else who cares to comment,

This probably isn't the best place to ask but this post and the responses bring up a question I've been wondering about. The dialog here is a perfect example of correct grammar and vocabulary but it contains several examples of what a native speaker would consider stilted phrasing. When checking someone's language do you simply check for grammar and vocabulary or do you also attempt to correct it for "colloquialness" or "idiomaticness", if you will? And if so, how far do you go? I seems unfair to rewrite someone's work just because he doesn't use the contractions and idioms a native speaker would use. I look forward to any guidance anyone cares to offer.

Re: Persuasive Essay Thesis Statement

Mister Micawber — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 07:20:33 GMT

Hi Crazy-- I finally got here. I have added some comments in brackets after underlined 'problems':

Do Sports and Drugs Mix?

Since the dawn of time [a ridiculous exaggeration; delete it] it seems that you canât [do not use contractions in essays: change to cannot] think of sports without some sort of drug scandal creeping into the thought as well. Itâs [contraction: it is] not just baseball that is tainted with scandal; it is every sport from football to gymnastics.

When you think of sports, what comes to mind? The different sporting events, the many unique players that make up their sport or the drug scandals spread throughout. Maybe itâs a little bit of each. [the first is not a complete sentence; the second is an afterthought: combine them into a single complete sentence: 'What probably comes to mind is....'] To level the playing field for those players that chose not to use performance-enhancing drugs, why donât the big wigs [slang: change to officials] drug test everyone before their game or events that they are in? Itâs [It is. I won't make this note for further contractions below] bad enough that sports players have more perks than the normal civilian [wrong word; civilian is the opposite of soldier; use e.g. person], if my brother, who played baseball in high school, would have used [wrong verb form: use had used] steroids to help his game he would have been kicked off the team. So [essentially conversational and meaningless; delete] why isnât the same true for professional sports players? Maybe the owners of the teams donât want to lose their star players, so they cover it up somewhat, but why not drug test each and every one of the players so that there arenât any favorites? That way, when someone comes up positive they can be reprimanded in the proper, professional manner.

OK, I'm going to stop here, Crazy, and leave you with some general comments to take into consideration for your essay revision.

First, I think your essay so far is quite good. Your flow of language is natural, easy to follow, straightforward and to the point-- and these are key features of a good essay. You have an admirable ease of expression.

A big potential problem (and I say potential because it much depends on who is grading your essay) is that it is overall too informal in register: you are writing naturally, and much as you would speak. If your teacher requires a more formal approach to essay composition (and most do), then your use of contractions (isn't, don't), slang and casual English (bigwigs, kicked off, perks), and conversational structures (What comes to mind? The events, the players.... That way,...) are going to lose you points. In your revision, put your head to saying what you want to say in a more formal manner and with a more formal vocabulary. It is easy to go overboard on this (and most essayists in fact do, making their writing turgid and convoluted in the process), but trying to be bit more businesslike in language should improve your essay. For the rest below, I shall just embolden some areas to think about:

Not only do the players that use performance-enhancing drugs get an unfair advantage they also put themselves at risk for many different things from sterility, infertility, liver damage to even death. Are the risks worth all that? Some players may think so.

There are many different types of performance-enhancing drugs that players can use to help them in their sport. One type is Anabolic Steroids. This type of drug increases muscle strength by encouraging new muscle growth. They also allow the person using them to train harder and longer for any given period. Yet this drug has damaging side effects, liver damage, sterility in men and infertility in women, and it can lead to death.

Another type of performance enhancer is (hGH) Human Growth Hormone, while this natural and important for human growth, especially in children and teenagers, excessive hGH levels increase muscle mass. Some of the side effects of this drug include overgrowth of hands, feet, and face, enlarged internal organs, and heart problems.

If theses drugs were safe for use by athletes or anyone for that matter, then why can they lead to the playersâ early death? Because they over stimulate the natural growth of the body and itâs muscles and organs.

Sammy Sosa admitted to using performance-enhancers while playing baseball and stated â Steroids are very lethal and very bad for you.â Many fans of sports feel cheated having learned that some of their favorite athletes have admitted to using performance-enhancers to increase their âgame.â Dr. Dean Edell said âMost drugs, steroids, or supplements don't live up to their billing and even if they did, the side effects can be dangerous to your health.â If doctors will tell you that these drugs are not safe for consumption then why do people take them and use them on a regular basis? To make them feel good about themselves. To give them a better advantage over the âregularâ players. To make them stand out above everyone else in their game or sport. These seem like the logical answers.

One classmate of mine in high school used steroids for 3 [write out small numbers: three] years while playing football and was the quarter back of our team. Everyone thought he was going to make it to the NFL but during our senior year of high school he was drug tested before the homecoming game and was found to be positive. When confronted with this information only then did he admit that he had been using steroids on a regular basis for 3 years. He was immediately kicked off the team and stripped of the chance to play football in college. He was labeled a druggie and a fake by everyone in town. No one wanted to be associated with him from that point on. Fellow classmates wouldnât talk to him and so he and his family moved but not before he gave a speech to everyone in our school. He stated âI know what I did was wrong and I know the risks that I was taking when I chose to take steroids but I wanted to be the best player I could be and I thought this was the way to be that âStarâ player, it made me that star player for awhile. I am sorry that I hurt our school and my fellow players and I only wish that I could go back and undo the damage I have caused.â

So far so good. Study the use of the comma- there are a number of grammar websites. Do not abuse quotation marks.

Good luck!
MM

Re: Questions for non-native speakers of English.

WaÃ¯ti — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 11:50:17 GMT

Hiya YC,
It sure feels good that a native shows interest in how we perceive english... Let me try to understand the best I can...

Specific elements of language posing problem :
I'm comfortable with tenses and conjugation. I find myself sometimes troubled with vocabulary and spelling ; whenever the word is close to one in my mother tongue with a different meaning or spelling (faux-ami).
A main difference I've found compared to my native language is the extensive use of phrasal verbs. It took me some time to start thinking in terms of phrasal verbs rather than trying to find a corresponding latin-derived verb that often exists but makes you sound a little bit 'off-key' if not pretentious.
Written vs spoken english :
I definitely find spoken english more difficult. Too much difference b/w the various accents (US vs UK, even within UK or within US. Also I have difficulties with relaxed speech forms of spoken english (contractions, elisions and so forth...).
Pronunciation and stressing the right syllable of the word is another thing I'm still struggling with : it's kind of frustrating when you know the word and how to spell it but still nobody understands you because you don't emphasize the right syllable.
How english sounds :
To my ear, it does not sound like or compare to anything else. Or I should say it's hard to remember my early stages in learning english where it may have sounded weird or where I may have mistaken it for something else. Definitely not a harsh language. I'd say 'mellow' is what comes to my mind. Also 'efficient' (or is it 'effective') as I find it a powerful tool to express thoughts in a concise way.

Hope this answers the questions from your survey.
WaÃ¯ti.

Questions for non-native speakers of English.

YoungCalifornian — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 07:16:05 GMT

I have some questions for those who speak English as a second language:

What elements of the English language (spelling, vocabulary, tenses, conjugation, contractions, et cetera) do you find simple and easy to learn compared to your native tongue? Which elements do you find more difficult?
Do you find that English is more difficult to speak than to read and write, or vice versa?
Lastly, what does English sound like? What I mean is, before you could comprehend the language fully, how would you have described it when spoken? Is it a harsh sounding language? What other languages do you think it sounds similar to (for instance, I sometimes have trouble distinguishing between spoken Spanish and Italian)?

Re: Please help improve my paragraph

Mister Micawber — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 12:16:50 GMT

Learning Biology -- capitalize all the main words of a title.

Biology is considered one of the hardest subjects that students have to learn.-- Try to use more formal vocabulary for essays; here, hardest should be replaced with most difficult.

It is because biology exercises are impossible to solve if we don't have a strong basic knowledge.-- It does not refer clearly to anything here; when referring back to a complex statement, use this. Do not use contractions in essay-writing; change don't to do not.

Even if we have, there are a lot of difficulties in solving them without mastering exercise skills.-- a lot of is too informal; use considerable or another synonym (but not much in affirmative sentences).

For instance, a student who knows a lot about biology theory still can't reach 5/10 marks in his contest just because he hasn't ever solved the kind of exercises given in the test before.-- 5/10 marks is unclear, though it must be the way your school marks scores; be sure that you use words and phrases generally understood by your reader. An examination is not a contest.

Another reason explains why students feel sick of biology is lack of learning equipment.-- reason and explains and why are redundant: Another reason is...

This factor makes the students confused in what they've already learned.-- this sentence displays shaky logic: lack of equipment does not explain student confusion.

For example, we must learn about " DNA definition" but we still don't have an imagination on its sharp, its color, its structure... -- the definition of 'DNA'. We still cannot imagine. Do not use ellipses except to show omitted words of a quotation.

In conclusion, studying biology is not an easy work for most students all over the world -- delete all over the world as redundant. Work here is uncountable.

Overall, your essay has good basic structure, but it is not long enough; you must explain each point more thoroughly before you introduce your examples. Your conclusion also needs more than a simple repetition of the thesis.

Re: Correcting mistakes

migo — Sun, 04 Jul 2004 22:46:09 GMT

"I am not understanding" isn't wrong, it's just uncommon and awkward. "I am understanding" is present continuous and "I don't understand" is simple present. In some contexts "I am not understanding" could be more correct than "I don't understand" as the latter implies a lack of capability in understanding while the former just implies a current inability to understand. That's something you'd have to explain to them on a case by case basis, that colloquially "I don't understand" is used instead of "I am not understanding" because grammatically there isn't anything wrong with it. You could also explain that the sentence as constructed expects but doesn't explicitly require some form of qualifying completion, so "I am not understanding what you are saying/talking about/telling me" would be expected in most cases but not all.

"He's from Riverpool" is a contraction of "He is from Riverpool", which unless Riverpool isn't the name of a place is completely correct. I'm assuming "Riverpool" is actually "Liverpool"

"The life is good" would usually be said "Life is good", but depending on context "The life is good" could be correct - it would have to be in response to something. So without the context that it was used in it's going to be hard to pinpoint what the problem really is. It's another case of it being correct but uncommon usage.

"I've met him yesterday" is also correct, although again uncommon. "I did meet him yesterday" and "I met him yesterday" would be more common usages. "I've met him" would be used in the context when the question "Have you met him?" would be used. In this case "Yesterday" is pre-empting the question "When?" It's a giveaway that the student's a non-native speaker but grammatically there isn't anything you can correct, you just have to explain that it's not what is used.

"He is happy despite he is poor" looks like they just learned how to say "despite" as "He is happy although he is poor" is correct. So depending on the students existing vocabulary it could simply be a problem of assuming that despite means the same thing or works in the same way as although or even though. Despite is a preposition and requires an object, while although is a coordinating conjunction, the student is using despite as if it were a coordinating conjunction.

I hope this helps.

Re: Pleas...........................

miriam — Thu, 03 Jun 2004 10:56:30 GMT

~girding on my armour~ I'm coming to rescue my mother tongue from the evils of translation engines!! ~chuckle~
I've never liked those translation programs, and I see I have good reasons for it!

"Hola a todos; mi espaÃ±ol es muy pobre, sÃ© lo que nnecesito escribir en mi propio idioma pero no puedo encontrar las palabras en inglÃ©s. TambiÃ©n, pueden (ustedes) darme algunos consejos sobre cÃ³mo escribir un ensayo?"

That is a (possible) good translation of the sentences first posted in English, it is a translation that would make sense to a Spanish speaker. The differences between Spanish and English go beyond vocabulary. There is not a one-to-one correspondence between the two languages. If there were, then one would need only a dictionary to build a correct and meaningful sentence in either language. Unfortunately, the grammar of Spanish is different from that of English in many aspects, and if we don't take those differences into account when we translate from one language into the other, we can end up with an unintelligible and meaningless text.

There are several important things which the translation program overlooked:
1. In the first translation, "puedo'T encontrar" is plain wrong; it just doesn't exist in Spanish. That was supposed to be "I can't find". But in Spanish we have only two "contractions", and they have nothing to do with verbs. In order to turn a verb into the negative, we simply add "no" before the verb. The correct form is "no puedo encontrar". The negation, in the first translation, is lost, and that makes quite a difference in meaning.

2. "tipos" is indeed the Spanish word for "guys". In Spanish, however -at least in my country- it is very very informal; you wouldn't use it in writing and you'd use it in actual speech only if you are very familiar with the person you're talking too. Also, you have to be careful because "tipos" can have a derogatory connotation in some contexts. In Spanish, we don't use "tipo" in exactly the same way "guy" is used in English.

3. "inclinan acerca de...". This, unfortunately, doesn't make any sense at all in Spanish. If I had to say the same in English (of course it would sound meaningless as well), I'd say "they tip about...".
In Spanish, "inclinan" is the form the verb "inclinar" (infinitive) takes for the 3rd person plural in the simple present of the indicative mood, and the verb means "to tip" as in "to lean at an angle". In the translation, a noun should have been used (since "tips" is a noun in the original sentence in English). A "tip" is a "consejo" or "dato" in Spanish. Nothing to do with "inclinan".

4. "escritura de ensayo". In Spanish, there is nothing wrong with that in terms of construction. But the problem here is that we Spanish-speakers don't normally use nouns as premodifiers of other nouns. That's probably one of the reasons why we have very few compound words. "Escritura de ensayo" (which should have been actually "ensayos") sounds somewhat awkward in Spanish. A better choice is "acerca de/sobre cÃ³mo escribir un ensayo", meaning "about how to write an essay".

As a final note:
Aileen, *please* don't take this personal? I've read your posts and I you are always helpful. I'm not blaming you for the problems of translation programs.

But I just wanted to "warn" people. I've tried several of these programs but, so far, I couldn't find a single one that will come up with a decent translation. Perhaps the mistakes in this example are not too gross but, depending on what you wish to translate, you might end up saying exactly the opposite of what you mean.
Please, be very careful with those "miraculous" translators. In general, they are far from reliable.

Miriam

Re: question with preposition at the end

moijelesuis — Fri, 05 Sep 2003 18:11:10 GMT

good clarification raul! on further reflection, i think that sentences such as "where is he at?" come from a general tendancy to make contractions - and would always be pronounced "where's he at?" (never as four distinct words, the "is" being melded with "where"). as a two-syllable expression, "where's he?" (minus the "at")... it just does not work, since the stressed part of the sentence is the verb. how on earth the "at" came in to play, when "where IS he" is a perfectly valid stressed sentence, who knows. i have no idea where that comes from... i mean, i have no idea from where that comes... after all, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which i shall not put. (here we have an extremely bizarre hypercorrection of a common expression rendered nearly incomprehensibe by grammar "rules")

last word: if better vocabulary were used rather than resorting to monosyllabic verbs bolstered by prepositions, much of this debate would be moot! (ex. "tolerate" rather than "put up with") i love the variety of english, but the "old rules" do not always comform to new usages.