Search results for 'tag:Word order tag:Articles' matching tags 'Word order' and 'Articles'

Re: Correct or Not

Eimai_Anglos — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 11:42:56 GMT

"why was late reply" is not a sentence. It has no meaning. In English a sentence begins with a capital letter and ends with a punctuation mark (. ; : ? !)

In addition, you seem to have omitted a definite or indefinite article or a possessive pronoun and mixed up the word order.

"Why was his reply late?"

"Why was the reply late?"

Re: Check for "nativeness"

Huevos — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 12:59:18 GMT

Iro4eka
The problem is following: being not a native speaker I wonder what "good standard English composition" means rather than about the assertion of its necessity.

I see the greatest problems as follows:

Foreigners' errors, leaving out articles etc.
Often valid, but alien word order.
Incorrect verb selection; your verbs seem to have been selected directly from a bilingual dictionary.

The only way to sort this out is to read plenty of well-written books, mix with native speakers who correct your errors, and write texts and have them corrected by educated native speakers.

Looking for some tips and/or curriculum suggestions

mikesusangray — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:50:11 GMT

Hi all!

I've been giving English conversation lessons to a theology professor for about a year now. He's getting on in the years - a couple years from retirement - and his primary goal has been just to get his spoken English going a little stronger. His mother tongue is French but he's been teaching at a German language university for many years.

I'd like to add some more specific inputs to our lessons but I can't seem to find the right material. His passive skills are excellent - he reads widely and with perfect comprehension in his field - and he can communicate quite understandably. He is a linguistics specialist and can grasp any concept about the language immediately. I brought along Cambridge Advanced Grammar in Use and he could plow through a chapter in five minutes with perfect conceptual comprehension.

However, he also continues to make very simple errors - for example, he has trouble choosing between present simple and continuous or often uses the present tense for past events. Sentence order tends to get wander hither and yon while definite and indefinite articles come and go with the tide. (Prepositions are a problem too, but I won't beat him to hard there - prepositions are difficult in any new language.) In many cases his mistakes are typical of French or German speech patterns.

One other limitation is that he enjoys the weekly lessons (a good hour), but doesn't have much time to study in between.

Right now we spend about 15 minutes reading a chapter from Advanced Grammar in Use and about 45 minutes talking about just about anything under the sun, while I take notes and show him problems under the categories Pronunciation/Articles & Prespositions/Word Order/Other Grammar/Vocabulary/Idioms. However, I don't think the work book is a good choice - particularly since he doesn't do the homework - and it seems like he isn't making very good progress with his typical problem patterns - though he greets them like old friends when I point them out.

Any tips here?

Re: Different word order of the "a" article

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 05:12:20 GMT

That is exactly what I have been taught. And yet the second example is what I come across from time to time both in books and films. It seems to me that the position of the article in the second sentence emphasizes how beautiful the ship is (in this case anyway) even more than in the first sentence. But then again, I am no English native speaker.

Re: About the meaning of "where"

Velimir — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:11:58 GMT

I'll try to give some information on this as a non-professional.This is how it looks like in the serbian language,and I suppose,it is very similar in all other slavic languages and also the latin language.

For indicating a location the locative case of a noun is used.If the english language had similar declension of nouns then the nouns following the prepositions "in" and "at" would be in the locative case.The presence of the preceding preposition is obligatory when the noun is in the locative case.

But,if the verb indicates motion,or in plain english,if you are :
going to, flying to, traveling to..

like in the question given in the opening post,then the noun will be in the dative case.This case you can connect with the nouns following the preposition "to" although the preposition is not necessarily present.The word "dative" derives from latin "dare" which means "to give" and the usage is most obvious on the example of that verb:

I gave my girlfriend a flower.

If you translated this in serbian,"girlfriend" would be in the dative case.Indirect object is in the dative case.The direct object ("a flower") is in the accusative case.

"Cases play a major part in determining a noun's syntactic role in the sentence, so word order is not as important in Latin as it is in other languages, such as English. Because of noun cases, words can often be moved around in a sentence without significantly altering its meaning, though the emphasis will have altered" (from a Wikipedia article on the latin language)
Btw,changing nouns,adjectives,pronouns and numbers to different cases is pretty tough area of the language with more cases,and is often lifelong mistery for many natives,and I know that well.Luckily,english is not a case-sensitive language.

Best regards

Re: Anymore / Any more

CalifJim — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 03:11:44 GMT

The standard word order is

Have you managed to find any more articles?
I want two more.

any articles more is very unusual, and want more two is incorrect.

CJ

'so', 'too' - word order

Atreyyu — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 15:28:24 GMT

I have recently come across some strange looking sentences:

'I haven't been to so enjoyable a party for ages.'
'That was too boring a book to read.'

I thought it was wrong, because I was accustomed to the word order as with 'such': "This is such an enjoyable party". Why is here the article between the adjective and noun? What is that pattern called, what does it exactly say, and what other words also come before the article?

Re: Could anyone help me look throught this short article.

Fandorin — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 21:02:47 GMT

Hi there. I think that your first publication is very very good. Where are you from? Where do you want to publish it? But some things seems suspicious, i meant using tenses and grammatical constructions.

Do You know what? - use do is necessary, but in informal way of writing skipping is possible

It's not an easy decision at all. In fact, it was the biggest decision I've ever made. But, it is also the best decision too - using word decision many times isn't good idea and makes your level down.

I've never regretED

barely

speaking family who neither know you nor is a relative or yours - Simply, on my own say: speaking family who neither know you nor your family. =)

and neither do they understand most of what you say - construction contradict word order in sentence. Simply to say,if you want to use such construction: There is no way they can understand me.

Also, I got to do things I'll never have a chance to do like made my own schedule, performing a show on a stage, and going to the Prom(the biggest high school dance) - sequences of tenses. I did such things which I never should do like made ....

world fulled - is fulled

truely -truly

open my world-view - my advice - use "open my mind" ))) and use made instead of make (sequnce of tenses_

WHAT YOU ARE WAITING FOR!, - what are you waiting for?

In the end, I hope that this advices should help you in hard work of being good in English.. Sincerely your's =)

Re: the

Clive — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:12:20 GMT

Hi,

What if "Newcomers Guide to Immigration to the UK" was a newspaper headline? Would be fine then to write "Newcomers Guide to Immigration to UK" without "the"? Yes, newspaper headlines often omit articles.

How about: Newcomers Immigration Guide to the UK, would it sound fine with this word order? It's OK, but #1 above sounds better.

Clive

Re: subject verb agreement check

Cool Breeze — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:22:27 GMT

I see nothing wrong with your sentences. There are other possibilities; for instance, if you were a pop star or a famous writer, you might say People who love me... without the article. This would imply you have lots of "lovers".

You have resorted to variety yourself by using a different word order and a slightly different structure after matter/matters.

CB