THE AMERICAN ENGLISH EXPRESS Chapter 10 page 1

Especially Troublesome Grammar

Some American Idioms, English Language Proverbs & Clichés

How not to get totally confused when confronted with the unknown.

English grammar is extremely difficult to master. Even a lifetime of study will not ensure complete knowledge of the language.

It is okay not to know, it is NOT OK to fake it.

If you don’t know something, ask questions. This is wisdom, as we discussed earlier. A learning environment is a place to learn and one cannot learn without asking questions, questioning themselves, being open to being questioned, questioning others (students, teachers, parents, friends, associates, etc.)!

In your case, pick up your grammar handbook and, Look it up!

As I stated earlier, this text will not teach you everything you need to know about English grammar.

To get you started, I have identified some of the worst culprits, the grammar issues that are most common to many new students of formal English.

Everyone has his or her own style of writing. As you learn to write and are able to express yourself more clearly in English, you will develop and improve your own style of writing.

When you try to do this, do it with the goal of having your readers understand what you are attempting to communicate.

Here I have listed some of the most frequent English grammar issues that students encounter when learning to speak, read and write formal or standard English:

1. Singular/plural Agreement

This is one of the fundamental grammar rules in English: the nouns must agree with each other and the nouns must agree with their adjectives.

a. For example, in an essay about war, a student wrote:

Incorrect: “People must lose their life.”

You will note that ‘people’ is the plural form of the noun ‘person’. If ‘a person’ dies, then a person loses his or her ‘life’ (singular), but if ‘people’ die (plural, more than one person), then they lose their ‘lives’:

Correct: “A person must lose his or her life.” Or

Correct: “People must lose their lives.”

b. Another student wrote:

Incorrect: “Many time we read in the newspapers about crime.”

The noun time (singular, which in this usage means ‘occasion’, ‘event’, ‘occurrence’, ‘instance’, or ‘moment’) does not agree with the adjective many (which means more than one). The sentence should read:

Correct: “Many times we read in the newspapers about crime.”

This type of error is very basic and stands out when a teacher reads your writing. To avoid singular/plural disagreements, you must carefully proofread your work, asking yourself each time, “Do the nouns agree? Do the adjectives agree? Have I used singular with plural or plural with singular?” (see proofreading steps in Chapter VII)

2. Subject and Verb Agreement

Another fundamental concept in English grammar is that the verb and the subject must agree in case (person) and number (singular or plural). The conjugation tables you will find in your grammar books demonstrate this. For each ‘person’ (first person, second person, third person, see Chapter II), singular and plural, there is often a different form of the verb.

For example, the third person singular (he, she, it, singular nouns) most often ends in the letter S.

Examples: He drinks, it walks, she dances, the car moves…etc.

More about Subject and Verb Agreement: If there is a singular noun, then there should be a singular verb. If there is a plural noun, then there should be a plural verb:

a. For example, another student wrote, in an essay about inter-racial marriages:

Incorrect: “As a matter of fact, there is a large amount of intergroups mixing their race and culture.”

First of all, ‘intergroups’ is not a word. The correct phrase is ‘inter-racial groups’.

Second, the singular verb form is (present tense of the verb ‘to be’) does not agree with the subject ‘inter-racial groups’ (which is plural) and should be corrected as follows:

Correct: “As a matter of fact, there are a large number of inter-racial groups mixing their race and culture.”

b. In another example, a student wrote a sentence about ‘society’. Please note that this word is a ‘collective’ noun, meaning that although it designates a group of people, it takes the third person singular (just like ‘he, she and it’), rather than third person plural (just like ‘they). The student wrote:

Incorrect: “Society keep changing in response to how teenagers act.”

Here, the verb form keep (from the verb ‘to keep’, one meaning of which is ‘to continue’) has not been written in the singular form to accommodate the singular subject society.

Correct: “Society keeps changing in response to how teenagers act.”

Or, depending on what the writer wanted to say, the sentence could be rewritten in the past tense as:

Correct: “Society kept changing in response to how teenagers act.”

c. Another student wrote:

Incorrect: “However, technology also have its bad side.”

Here, the subject technology is singular but the verb have is plural. The sentence can be corrected using the present tense of the verb ‘to have’, as follows:

Correct: “However, technology also has its bad side.”

d. The last example comes from a student essay about “The Right To Be Different”, an American cultural value:

Incorrect: “The white and black men and women who gave testimony all said that the fact that they belong to another culture or carry a different skin color have not interrupted at all their normal life.”

First, what is the subject of the verb have? It is “the fact that they belong to another culture or carry a different skin color”. The fact is a singular subject. Therefore, the sentence should be corrected using the singular form of the verb ‘to have’ which is has.

Second, the noun life refers to ‘their’ (the pronoun that stands for “the white and black men and women who gave testimony”). This is a plural pronoun (with a plural antecedent, or, the word or words for which the pronoun stands). Hence, the plural form of the noun life is required, which is lives.

Corrected: “The white and black men and women who gave testimony all said that the fact that they belong to another culture or carry a different skin color has not interrupted their normal lives at all”

3. Control over usage of verb tenses

Maintaining control over verb tenses is another major difficulty for students. Readers will find your thoughts difficult to follow if the tenses are not consistent. Remember, when you are writing you are creating a ‘road map’ of ideas that the reader must follow (logically, conceptually) in order that they may understand you.

For example, a student wrote:

Incorrect: “Interracial relationships, or better defined as intermarriages, has been a major issue many years ago.”

First of all, the subject of the sentence, interracial relationships, is plural, not singular.

Furthermore, the verb form has been is the past progressive of the verb ‘to be’; indicating that the action referred to began in the past and is still continuing. This tense does not agree with the idea expressed by the phrase ‘many years ago’, which indicates that the action took place and ended in the past.

There is often more than one way to correct such an error, depending on what the student meant to write.

1. Either the grammar is incorrect because the tense used has been does not agree with the logic of the sentence,

in that the action took place ‘many years ago’ and should be correct as follows:

Corrected: “Interracial relationships, better defined as intermarriages, were a major issue many years ago.”

2. Or the grammar is incorrect because the tense used has been does not agree with the logic of the sentence, in that the action began in the past and is still continuing and should be corrected as follows:

Corrected: “Interracial relationships, or better defined as intermarriages, have been a major issue for many years.”

The verb form ‘have been’ of the verb ‘to be’ and indicates that the action continues in the present. If the action were completed (no longer continuing), you could write ‘had been a major issue’.

Hint: Begin your writing with the present tense!

I generally advise my students to remain in the same tense throughout their early attempts to write essays. To make things easier for the student at the beginning, I usually suggest the present tense, but sometimes the past tense is required.

I explain to my students that staying in the present allows them to move back and forth in time easily, by using the simple future or the simple past tense.

Later, I tell them, when they have mastered these tenses, they can move on to more complicated temporal relationships (relationships having to do with time). In other words, I tell the students to keep their writing simple in the beginning. What is more, I tell them that I know that they have complicated thoughts and they are used to (meaning ‘comfortable with’, or ‘familiar with’) expressing these ideas (often in their native language).

However, I remind them that, for all human learning, there is a learning curve. I observe that one must crawl before on walks and then runs. I point out that that they are at the crawling stage now and need to build up their English expression skills before they will be able to express their more sophisticated ideas.

A Tip for remaining in the Present Tense:

Try writing in the present at first, allowing yourself the ease of staying in the same tense throughout your first few essays. Of course, when necessary feel free to use the past or future tenses. This will be easier to do when you begin in the present tense.