Languagelab.com Blog

on May 6, 2009

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Nouns and Verbs ending in /s/

Observing the spelling of a word might help you improve your pronunciation of the word. For example, the endings -s and -es are pronounced as /s/– /z/, or as an extra syllable /iz/ at the end of third person singular verbs and plural nouns. The pronunciation depends on the final sound of the simple form of the verb or noun.

Here are some examples of verbs and their pronunciation:

slice —- slices (c = /s/)

lose —- loses (s = /z/)

wash —- washes

watch —- watches

judge —- judges

relax —- relaxes (x = /ks/ )

Here are some nouns:

price —- prices (c= /s/)

size —- sizes

dish —- dishes

garage —- garages (ge = /zh/

inch —- inches

language —- languages.

Next week we’ll look at a rule for the pronunciation of ‘ed.’

Does Grammar Girl live IN or AT English City?

Published

on April 26, 2009

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Last week I promised to follow up on the discussion of ‘at’ and ‘in’ with some interesting expressions that you may find them in. By learning the whole expression you’ll also learn the grammar girls. As I’ve mentioned before, you can use vocabulary to learn about grammar and grammar to learn about vocabulary. Intermediate and Upper-Intermediate students shouldn’t really be separating the two. They should be escaping grammar rules and I should really be Grammar/Vocabulary Girl.

Here is an expression that use ‘at:’

If things are AT SEA, or ALL AT SEA, they are disorganized and chaotic. So, if you don’t organise your understanding of grammar into rules you might find yourself all at sea.

Here is an expression with ‘in:’

If something vanishes or disappears without trace, IT VANISHES INTO THIN AIR; no-one knows where it has gone. So Grammar Girl’s glasses have finished into thin air. You won’t see them in her picture any more.

I’ll finish this week with the answer to the question in the subject line, which is that Grammar Girl lives in the English City and not ‘at.

See you soon !

Choosing the right grammar book….

Published

on April 6, 2009

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Scott Thornbury is a teacher, teacher trainer, text book writer and an inspiration to many people and this is why I suggest that when you’re trying to decide on what English language learning book to buy, you look for one that he’s written.

If you go to his website you’ll not only be able to find the right book for you but you’ll also be able to follow him on ‘twitter (write to jessie@languagelab.com if you want to know more about what ‘twitter’ is and how to do it).

Scott Thornbury encourages teachers and students to think about the best way to learn vocabulary and grammar. He refers to something called ‘collocations.’ A collocation is a grouping of words in a sentence. When we learn which groups of words go together we may find it easier to put phrases together.

For example, do we say ‘turn on the button’ or ‘push the button?’ Do we say ‘watch television’ or ’see television?’

In my next blog, I’ll be looking at collocations,

See you next Monday!

Grammar Girl at Languagelab

Time and time again - Grammar Girl tells you why….

Published

on March 24, 2009

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Teachers of English use lots of strange words that may not always seem clear. The words are used as a ’short cut.’ They’re labels that educators define so that next time you hear the word you can understand the whole meaning behind it. I suspect that if you asked a teacher of English they might not always be able to explain ALL the words in a way that would make you understand them because the meaning is too technical or has been misunderstood.

Take the word TENSE, for instance. I still have nightmares about the time I first started teaching and said to my students ‘Today we’ll look at the present perfect tenses.’ I hadn’t realised that they would need more than an explanation of the ‘present perfect’ when a student said ‘Miss Miss. What does ‘tense’ mean?’ I knew what it meant and how to use it but I couldn’t explain it in a clear and simple manner for an elementary student. I said ‘Er … erm … when we look at the present perfect the meaning of the word ‘tense’ will become clearer.’

Today I’m giving myself a second chance to explain the NOUN ‘tense’ and here it is:

It is an expression of a location of an ACTION in TIME.

Does that help? Of course there is much more to it than that but as long as you remember that it is about the time or the ‘kind’ of time, you’ll be all right.

Grammar Girl - Impresses with some long, long words !

Published

on March 9, 2009

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A vocabulary challenge – impress with your long, long words

We’ve all been in the situation, where someone wants to impress someone with the breadth of their knowledge.

I’m going to give you 10 horribly long words. Can you match the word to its synonym? The first one has been done for you. It is 1. e)

1.    munificent
2.    parsimonious
3.    lachrymose
4.    litigious
5.    pusillanimous

a)    poor-spirited
b)    penurious
c)    contentious
d)    tearful
e)    lavish

munificent - Very liberal in giving; generous.
Synonyms: lavish, overgenerous, prodigal, too-generous, unsparing, unstinted, unstinting
Usage: Munificent as life was to me, I added to that munificence.

parsimonious - Excessively unwilling to spend.
Synonyms: penurious
Usage: He was, I had discovered, parsimonious about small expenditures– a trait absolutely inconsistent with his general character.
L
achrymose - Weeping or inclined to weep; causing or tending to cause tears.
Synonyms: dolorous, weeping, tearful, sorrowful
Usage: He was by turns devout and obscene, merry and lachrymose.

litigious - Related to or tending to engage in lawsuits or disputes.
Synonyms: contentious, disputatious, argumentative
Usage: The aide had been so litigious that she was eventually fired for insubordination.

pusillanimous - Lacking courage; cowardly.
Synonyms: poor-spirited, unmanly
Usage: This counsel was indignantly derided by Grammar Girl as pusillanimous.

I have been guilty of using big words to impress my colleagues but I also believe that it’s also all about knowledge. You must make yourself easy to understand. Before you decide which path to choose, have a look at this great site.

Grammar Girl bids you adieu !

Grammar Girl on Grammar and Writing

Published

on March 2, 2009

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Yes, I am back with more and more on grammar and how you can improve your English, as a whole, through pronunciation, spelling, reading, writing and speaking.

Most of the learners of English that I meet are adults. They already know how to communicate in English very well. Generally, I find their questions harder to answer because they are so specific. One question that I am often asked is about choices of grammar in writing.

Yes, you can choose which type of grammar you want to use, depending on what or how you want to say something!!

The most common question I am asked is whether they should write their formal essays in the ACTIVE form or the PASSIVE form. For example, should the sentence be:

Grammar Girl wrote an essay. (ACTIVE)

The essay was written by Grammar Girl (PASSIVE)?

This is a difficult question to answer and all I can say is that it depends on what you want to say, the type of writing, how clear you want to be OR on how much information you have.

Except in scientific journals or police reports (and I am neither a scientist nor a police woman), I prefer the ACTIVE voice. I would say that you should use active voice whenever possible. The active voice means the subject is performing the verb. The ACTIVE voice is a bit more modern, clearer, more concise, more concrete.

In most non-scientific writing situations, the active voice is preferable to passive for the majority of your sentences. Even in scientific writing, the overuse of passive voice or use of passive voice in long and complicated sentences can cause readers to lose interest or to become confused. Sentences in active voice are generally–though not always– clearer and more direct than those in passive voice. The passive voice is BORING (I think :-))

But let’s not neglect the passive voice completely.

In scientific writing the passive voice is more readily accepted since using it allows one to write without using personal pronouns or the names of particular researchers as the subjects of sentences. This practice helps to create the appearance of an objective, fact-based discourse because writers can present research and conclusions without attributing them to particular agents. Instead, the writing appears to convey information that is not limited or biased by individual perspectives or personal interests.

I won’t recommend any particular website to help you with the active or the passive this week because I believe the choice is yours. Free your grammar.

Grammar Girl

Grammar Girl is back with ‘who’ versus ‘whom’

Published

on February 23, 2009

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A wise woman once said that both ‘who’ and ‘whom’ mean the same thing. When you choose one over the other, all you are doing is changing the word order and the formality or informality of the sentence.

Personally, I find ‘whom’ very nineteenth century and would like to throw it in the bin BUT if you are writing for an international examination (like IELTS), writing a thesis or an academic article, you might want to vary your sentence structures with a little bit of ‘whom.’

Here is the answer and an example of each one.

Use the he/him method to decide which word is correct.

he = who
him = whom

Examples: Who/Whom wrote the letter?

He wrote the letter. Therefore, who is correct.

For who/whom should I vote?
Should I vote for him? Therefore, whom is correct.

We all know who/whom pulled that prank.
This sentence contains two clauses: We all know and who/whom pulled that prank. We are interested in the second clause because it contains the who/whom. He pulled that prank. Therefore, who is correct. (Are you starting to sound like a hooting owl yet?)

We want to know on who/whom the prank was pulled.
This sentence contains two clauses: We want to know and the prank was pulled on who/whom. Again, we are interested in the second clause because it contains the who/whom. The prank was pulled on him. Therefore, whom is correct.

And there you have it. There is more to ‘who’ or ‘whom’ than that of course, but this little method should send you in the right direction.

Bye for now,

Grammar Girl

Grammar Girl on English Language Spelling and Grammar

Published

on February 16, 2009

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Last month I wrote about the spelling of words with long and short vowels.

I think that the best way to improve your spelling is to read, observe the spelling of new or difficult words, copy them down and learn them. Keep doing a ’spell-check,’ which my recommendation for the week should help you with.
Check out this site - Fun brain

Rules can be very difficult to follow unless you have got the concept itself in your head. So today, I’m going to keep it short and sweet.

I want you to think about how reading and observing the spelling of a word can help you with grammar.

I’m going to give you 8 words. Look at the letters at the END of each word to tell me whether it is a noun, a verb, an adjective or an adverb.

The first one has been done for you:
1.    advertise - VERB
2.    musical
3.    dangerous
4.    nursery
5.    already
6.    recommendation
7.    recommend
8.    audible

Do look them up in a dictionary to find out what they are and/or what they mean. The answers are below.

Now, when you see words ending in ‘ise,’ ‘al,’ ‘ous, ‘ery,’ ‘y,’ ‘ion,’ ‘end’ or ‘ible’ you’ll know what they are.

Answers:
1.verb 2.adjective 3.adjective 4.noun 5.adverb 6.noun 7.verb 8.adjective

Grammar Girl - What is an Apostrophe?

Published

on February 9, 2009

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In my last blog I mentioned commas and apostrophes. Of course, we’ve all used commas and apostrophes. Try the game on this site to see how comfortable you are with them.

How did it go?
Today, we could have a wee bit of a closer examination of apostrophes, which you will have found at the end of the game. There are 13 apostrophe rules but since 7 is a luckier number than 13, I’ve only written the 7 most important ones.

Rule 1.
Use the apostrophe with contractions. The apostrophe is always placed at the spot where the letter(s) has been removed.
Examples: don’t, isn’t
You’re right.

Rule 2.
Use the apostrophe to show possession. Place the apostrophe before the s to show singular possession.
Examples: one boy’s hat
one woman’s hat

Rule 3.
Use the apostrophe where the noun that should follow is implied, in other words we know what the noun should be.
Example: This was his father’s, not his, jacket.

Rule 4.
To show plural possession, make the noun plural first. Then immediately use the apostrophe.
Examples:
two boys’ hats
two women’s hats

Rule 5.
Do not use an apostrophe for the plural of a name.
Examples: We visited the Sanchezes in Los Angeles.
The Changs have two cats and a dog.

Rule 6.
With a singular compound noun, show possession with ’s at the end of the word.
Example: my mother-in-law’s hat

Rule 7.
If the compound noun is plural, form the plural first and then
use the apostrophe.
Example: my two brothers-in-law’s hats

Don’t worry about the other 6 rules. Pay particular attention to these 7 tips and you’ll be apostrophe-perfect.

Good luck,

Grammar Girl

UK or USA - British or American English English ?

Published

on February 4, 2009