PREVIOUS GRAMMAR QUESTION

Much stores and shopping centres prepare for chinese new year and Valentines day, there is a special display, traditionally Chinese food, and decoration, although chocolate and flowers for Valentines day,  greetings cards, and cloths with hearts and roses are common.

1.   Capitalization—proper nouns need a capital letter: Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day.

2.   Count noun—“stores” is a count noun; it needs to be qualifies by “many” not “much”.

3.   Verb tense—use the present progressive for something that is in progress: are preparing.

4.   Noun form—with the use of the plural “stores and shopping centres”, related items should also be plural: displays, foods, decorations, chocolates.

5.  Verb agreement—in the second clause, a number of different things are the subject of the expletive “there is”; for that reason, it should be “there are”.

6.  Punctuation—use a semicolon between independent clauses (…day; there…). Separate the ideas  relating to  Chinese New Year from those relating to Valentine’s Day. These could be separate sentences, or separate them with a semicolon.

7.  Word form—use an adjective before a noun, so change “traditionally” an adverb, to the adjective ‘traditional”; “greetings” is also used as an adjective; therefore, it cannot take the plural “s”. This idea of “traditional” should be repeated for Valentine’s Day.

8.  Word confusion—many of you confused the words “cloths” and “clothes”; they are related, but they mean something quite different.

Possible Answer: Many stores and shopping centres prepare for Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day; there are special displays, traditional Chinese foods, and decorations. Although chocolate and flowers for Valentine’s Day are traditional, greeting cards and clothes with hearts and roses are common.

GRAMMAR QUESTION, Feb. 15th, 2013

Please correct the errors in the following sentence.

As the matter of fact, she was a person who hard being convinced for instant, she certainly would likes to thinks that his opinion are the corrected then any one else view.
There are lots of possible answers--lots of opportunities to earn bonus points!

PUZZLE, Feb. 15th, 2013

Previous Puzzle:  Congratulations to Sarah, Brittany and Glenn for good, but different, answers.

Use real names to find the common word that is the name of their son or daughter—there were more than one correct answer to some of these:

Example: Mr and Mrs Voyant - Clare (as in Clairvoyant)
1. Mr and Mrs Tress--Mattress
2. Mr and Mrs Nasium—Gymnasium (Jim)
3. Mr and Mrs Tate—Dictate (Dick)
4. Mr and Mrs Anthemum—Chrysanthemum (Chris)
5. Mr and Mrs Mander—Salamander (Sally)
6. Mr and Mrs Mite—Dynamite (Dinah)
7. Mr and Mrs Time—Just in time (Justin)

New Puzzle: Add one letter at a time to make a new word: example a to adios (a/as/sad/dais/adios)

1. a … treat
2. a … flames
3. u … undress

There may be more than one correct answer, so more than one bonus point to be awarded. All words used must be in the dictionary not a proper noun.

ALL CHANGE! Feb. 15th, 2013

Change the words in the sentence below as indicated. You can only change the exact word in the sequence given; after someone else has posted the next change, then you can post another change. For instance, student 1 writes #1 Subject Noun, and changes the subject noun; Student 2 writes #2 Direct Object Noun, and changes that noun. Each student only makes one change at a time and keeps to the order indicated.If you complete all 7 changes, then start making more changes again from 1 to 7. Each student should build on the changes that the previous students make.

The weather channel unhappily forecast heavy snow in Europe last month.

Changes: #1 Subject noun      #2  Direct object noun         #3 Indirect object noun          
#4 Adjective               #5 Adverb          #6 Verb name                  #7 Verb tense

Please number the change you make and make only one change at a time.

COMPLETE THE SENTENCE, Feb. 15th, 2013

Use the type of clause, phrase, or grammar indicated to complete the following sentence; you can add the phrase or clause before or after the clause below:

... I wish you a happy birthday... 

Sentence 1. Add a phrase

Sentence 2. Add a dependent clause

Sentence 3. Add an independent clause

VOCABULARY, Feb. 15th, 2013

Vocabulary building is important for both reading comprehension and writing. Use the following two words (note the part of speech) in one sentence.

exacerbate         (verb)     +           miscreant      (noun)

ACTIVE & PASSIVE, Feb. 15th, 2013

Use the verb with the base ring in two different sentences. Sentence 1 should be in the active voice; sentence 2 should reword the sentence to the passive voice.

SENTENCE COMBINATION, Feb. 15th, 2013

Learning to combine ideas into more complex sentences is an important skill in writing. There are many ways to do this--many possible bonus points! Try to combine the following three sentences.

1. Many people celebrated Pancake Day by cooking pancakes at home .

2. Other people went to restaurants some of which offered “all you can eat” pancakes that day.

3. Pancake Day is more properly known as Shrove Tuesday, the day before Lent, which is when Christians start the Lenten fast.

PREVIOUS GRAMMAR QUESTION

My sons teacher talked to my husband and I about the difficulty he was having with reading, writing and he couldn’t complete the math homework. He said some testing is required.

1. Possessive noun: an apostrophe is missing from son’s.

2.  Pronoun: “my husband and I” are the object of the verb “talked”, so the pronoun needs to be in the objective case—“me”.

3. Ambiguity: who does the first usage of the pronoun “he” refer to? The nearest appropriate antecedent is the noun “husband”, but that doesn’t make sense. The noun “son”  needs to be specified.

4. Parallel construction: reading, writing and ?? these are gerunds, and  next noun needs to be a gerund, too: “completing math homework” would work.

5. Ambiguity: The second usage of “he” is also ambiguous. It should refer to the teacher.

6. Direct or indirect speech: The final sentence can be either direct speech in which case quotation marks are needed (The teacher said, “Some ….”) or indirect speech (The teacher said that some ….”).

Possible Answer: My son’s teacher talked to my husband and me about the difficulty our son was having with reading, writing and completing the math homework, The  teacher said that some testing is required.

GRAMMAR QUESTION, Jan. 31st, 2013

Much stores and shopping centres prepare for chinese new year and Valentines day, there is a special display, traditionally Chinese food, and decoration, although chocolate and flowers for Valentines day,  greetings cards, and cloths with hearts and roses are common.

PUZZLE, Jan. 31st, 2013

Previous Puzzle

Congratulations to Sarah for being the first to solve the puzzle.

The following list of words has been altered from the original word list:

Change the first letter of each word above with the first letter of another word in the list.
What are the words in the new list? See below. Is there a theme to this new list? Food.  And which one word which does not fit the theme? Test.

heat (meat)      jeans (beans)    ram (ham)           silk (milk)             mice (rice)           malt (salt)           
pest (test)         belly (jelly)      tears (pears)      drapes (grapes)       bill (dill)              gutter (butter) 

New Puzzle       

Use real names to find the common words that is the name of their son or daughter:

Example: Mr and Mrs Voyant - Clare (as in Clairvoyant)

1. Mr and Mrs Tress =
2. Mr and Mrs Nasium =
3. Mr and Mrs Tate =
4. Mr and Mrs Anthemum =
5. Mr and Mrs Mander =
6. Mr and Mrs Mite =
7. Mr and Mrs Time =

ALL CHANGE! Jan. 31st, 2013

Change the words in the sentence below as indicated. You can only change the exact word in the sequence given; after someone else has posted the next change, then you can post another change. For instance, student 1 writes #1 Subject Noun, and changes the subject noun; Student 2 writes #2 Direct Object Noun, and changes that noun. Each student only makes one change at a time and keeps to the order indicated.If you complete all 7 changes, then start making more changes again from 1 to 7. Each student should build on the changes that the previous students make.

Tom usually gives red roses to his wife on Valentine’s Day.

Changes: #1 Subject noun      #2  Direct object noun         #3 Indirect object noun          
#4 Adjective               #5 Adverb          #6 Verb name                  #7 Verb tense

Please number the change you make.

COMPLETE THE SENTENCE, Jan. 31st, 2013

Use the type of clause, phrase, or grammar indicated to complete the following sentence; you can add the phrase or clause before or after the clause below:

... Valentine’s Day is on a Thursday this year…

Sentence 1. Add a phrase

Sentence 2. Add a dependent clause

Sentence 3. Add an independent clause

VOCABULARY, Jan. 31st, 2013

Vocabulary building is important for both reading comprehension and writing. Use the following two words (note the part of speech) in one sentence.

disproportionate      (adjective)     +       antipathy      (noun)

ACTIVE & PASSIVE, Jan. 31st, 2013

Use the verb with the base form of discover in two different sentences. Sentence 1 should be in the active voice; sentence 2 should reword the sentence to the passive voice.

SENTENCE COMBINATION, Jan. 31st, 2013

Learning to combine ideas into more complex sentences is an important skill in writing. There are many ways to do this--many possible bonus points! Combine the following three sentences.

Sentence 1: The snowfall lay heavily on the ground.

Sentence 2: People were shovelling driveways and sidewalks and piling up snow into snow mountains.

Sentence 3: There was little traffic on the roads until the snow ploughs had cleared the major routes.

PREVIOUS GRAMMAR QUESTION

I wasn’t understanding what he means when in a speech he has given Mr Harper was saying the funding will help them suffering from mental illness and their family’s.

1. The underlying meaning: what were people suffering from? The current wording means that both mental illness and their families were the cause of suffering. Add wording after “and”: for instance “and also help their families.”

2. Verb tense:  instead of the past progressive tense which indicates that something continued to happen over time, use the simple past tense indicating that it happened at a point in time: change “wasn’t understanding” to “didn’t understand”.

3. Tense consistency: With the first verb in the simple past, keep others in the simple past, too, unless there is a good reason to change: instead of “means” (simple present tense) use “meant” (simple past tense); instead of “has given” (present perfect) use “gave” (simple past); and instead of “was saying” (past progressive) use “said” (simple past).

4. Modal: for future possibility use “would”, not “will”.

5. Pronoun: “them” is the 3^rd person plural, direct object pronoun; here use “those” to refer to people already mentioned or “understood”.

6. Plural: use the plural form “families” and not the possessive “family’s”.

7. Punctuation: remember to set off a non-essential (not grammatically needed) clause such as “in a speech he has given”, and remember to use a period after Mr.--it is an abbreviation.

Suggested solution: I didn’t understand what he meant when, in a speech he gave, Mr. Harper said the funding would help those suffering from mental illness and also help their families.

GRAMMAR QUESTION, Jan. 18, 2013

My sons teacher talked to my husband and I about the difficulty he was having with reading, writing and he couldn’t complete the math homework. He said some testing is required.