/

It's ignored as far as I can see by Lynne Truss in Eats, Shoots and Leaves  - The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. It has no place in The Economist's Style Guide - The best-selling guide to English usage, and I recall no mention of it in English lessons at school.

 

I'm talking about the oblique/slash. And yet it seems to be coming more and more popular: "Delete one of the following - 'male/female'."  "Do you smoke?'Yes/No'. " Or simply: 'S/he'. One wonders whether the reticence of grammarians and other pedants to deal with this gripping topic is simply due to the vagueness of nomenclature - oblique/slash/forward slash/virgule, etc. Or is it simply that schoolboys might titter at the rudeness of one of these, and so sensitive teachers move swiftly on to less controversial subjects like the French Revolution or what caused the banking crisis.

 

So what does an oblique mean and when can/should it be used? One might conclude from the above examples that '/'  is simply a lazy way of writing 'or' - particularly when the choices are mutually exclusive. How about when the choices are clearly not mutually exclusive, such as "Grand-parents/parents may come with their children to the school open day" or "Help yourself to knives/forks/spoons from the sideboard" (as is now the case in Brown's in the Covered Market now that the waiters have got so idle, although I still pop in for the 'All-day Breakfast' from time to time)? So perhaps it would be incorrect to limit the oblique to the mutually exclusive. It would seem as if one could replace the oblique with either 'or' or 'and' in these examples, with the 'or' being of the non-exclusive variety.

 

Perhaps therefore the oblique has developed into a neat way of writing 'or' (exclusive or inclusive) or 'and', particularly if you're not quite sure yourself. In other words it's deliberately vague. How about 'and/or'? This is an expression much loved by legal draftspersons, the reason apparently being to try to indicate the inclusive 'or': "Would you like sugar and/or milk?" would seem to mean that you can have sugar, milk or both. But surely lawyers (those most popular and useful members of society) who use 'and/or' to try to achieve unambiguity as above fall into the same trap:  if '/' itself can mean 'or' or 'and' then the 'and' and the 'or' of 'and/or' are superfluous/misleading. Confusing/wrong? Answers by 15/4/14 please.

 

Recommended further reading: the last word on this subject is of course the Danish work "Either/or" by the philosopher Kierkegaard. Good/luck!

Third Conditional

Third Conditional

Source: www.falibo.com 

Let's analyse who you are and how we can help you!

This blog has now been up and running for approximately one month and we have had a total of 3,200 views. What we, the staff at OISE Oxford, find particularly interesting is not the quantity of views the blog gets, but where you, the people viewing the blog, come from. Blogger (ran by Google) very kindly provide the owners of their blogs with the nationality breakdown. Excluding the English fan base we seem to have acquired (mainly from Burton-on-Trent and Leicester FYI), please see below a list of the top 8 nationalities to view this blog:

Russia - 24%
France - 21%
Spain - 14%
Italy - 13%
Japan - 10.5%
Turkey - 7%
Germany - 6.5%
Czech - 4%

You might be asking yourselves what is the point in us telling you this information. The answer is simple. Every so often we are going to pick one of the top viewing nationalities of our blog and briefly discuss one of two specific difficulties that this particular nationality has when learning English. We figured that this would be an effective way to interact and provide relevant information to our readership.

We will start with France. I asked two of our highly experienced tutors to pick one difficulty each:

1) The Present Perfect
The French sometimes struggle to comprehend the unique nature of bringing past and present actions together in one present perfect continuous tense. For example the French would say 'I am studying English since two years' instead of 'I have been studying English for two years'. In English, the logic is this; I started to study English two years ago. I am studying now = I have been studying for two years.

2) False Friends (Les faux amis)
There are many words in English that resemble French words and vice versa, but that have completely different meanings. Here is a list of some of the most common French false friends:

to control = diriger, maîtriser * contrôler = to check
deception = tromperie * délais = time, time-limit
to demand = exiger * demander = to ask
deputy = adjoint * député = Member of Parliament
eventually = finalement * éventuellement = perhaps, possibly
to resume = recommencer * résumer = to summarise, to sum up
sensible = sensé, raisonnable * sensible = sensitive
to support = soutenir * supporter = to stand, bear, put up with

If you are a teacher or a French student and can think of any other specific difficulties that the French have when learning English, please feel free to comment below!

Next time we will focus on the Russians! If you are a Russian learning English, or have experience in teaching Russian students English, please let us know the difficulties you think Russian students have while learning English.

We were stood at the bar talking about continuous tenses. . .

Shock horror – Auntie ventures into non-standard English!

Call me a dyed in the wool reactionary, but the BBC (familiarly known as ‘Auntie’ because the broadcaster is regarded as the UK’s rather staid maiden aunt) has surprised me twice recently. Firstly, I was shocked to encounter someone saying ‘sh** happens’ at around 11.45 a.m. on Radio Four – and it was a Sunday to boot! Nowadays many people (including me) use this word, but context is everything. Four-letter words (indeed, any obscenities) aren’t standard English and are rightly disapproved of in most public and formal situations (for example, you’d never use them in a job application). In broadcasting, such words used to be relegated to late-night programmes: our dictionaries still mark them as taboo or vulgar slang, after all.

Secondly, I’ve noticed several instances of, for example, ‘She’s sat at the table eating breakfast’ or ‘we were stood at the bar waiting to be served’.  Aarrgghh!!!  This construction is still regarded as non-standard by usage guides and (being a sensitive soul when it comes to incorrect grammar) it gets to me just as much as hearing four-letter words on daytime radio.

The decline and fall of continuous tenses?

What’s grammatically amiss with ‘we were stood at the bar waiting to be served’? Well, the speaker is describing an action that, although it was in the past, was continuing rather than completed: we were standing and waiting to be served for a length of time, probably because the bar staff were busy.

To describe a continuing action in English we use continuous (also known as progressive) tenses. There are three of these: present, past, and future. They’re respectively formed with the present, past, or future of the verb to be but, no matter when the action happened, are always followed by the present participle (the form of a verb that ends in –ing), for example:

I’m thinking of you.
We were standing at the bar waiting to be served.
She’ll be singing in the choir tonight.

‘We were stood. . .’ is not a well-formed continuous tense, because it uses the past tense of to be (were) with the past participle of stand (stood) instead of the present participle (standing). Sit and stand are both irregular verbs, but their continuous tenses are formed in exactly the same way as a regular verb such as jump, that is, with the relevant tense of to be plus the present participle. You can see a full run-down of the English verb tenses here, but the following table shows the ones which we’re focusing on:

So are we witnessing a general decline of continuous tenses? Thankfully, no: this error predominantly seems to crop up with ‘stand’ and ‘sit’ – to test this, would you say ‘I was ran down the road when I tripped and fell’ or ‘He is flown to New York later today ’? No, you’d rightly opt for the past continuous ‘I was running down the road….’ or the present continuous ‘He is flying to New York …’ – so why, oh why do many people say ‘I was sat’ or ‘we’re stood’?
The answer’s not clear, but my research shows that this usage (which used to be restricted to some regional British dialects) is becoming more widespread in British English, and is even appearing in edited writing such as newspapers and magazines. There are over 3,000 instances of this construction on the Oxford English Corpus (OEC), for example:

It is 2pm and I am sat in my parents’ living room, talking to one of the cats.

Three hooded kids are stood around the corner drinking alcopops and it’s raining.

The OEC reveals that, while uncommon in US English, the usage isn’t completely unknown there, with around 340 examples (11% of the total):

My Mom and Alison were stood in the hallway watching me as I limped down the stairs.

It’s also found in Australian, Indian, Canadian, and New Zealand English:

Lonely, bored, excited people are sat at the bar.

Passive or active?

Some commentators (including Pocket Fowler’s Modern English Usage ) categorize this usage as ‘quasi-passive’ but I’m not convinced that there’s a strong sense that the person has been put in a sitting or standing position by someone else: the above examples all seem active to me.

Of course, it’s perfectly acceptable to use sit and stand in the passive voice, as these verbs can be transitive in some contexts:

We. . . showed up 20 minutes early and demanded a table. . . We were sat by a redhead and were soon greeted by a rather stiff waiter.

This example is a true passive:  in a restaurant, we were placed at a table by a redhead.  Here’s another clearly passive example, in which an unknown agent has put the mirrors in this position:

The mirrors were stood on edge and were arranged to. . . form an equilateral triangle.

Over to you

However we categorize ‘we were sat at the bar’ and similar usages, they’re still non-standard English and should be avoided. I hope this blog has helped those of you who (perish the thought!) use this construction to see the error of your ways. While researching this topic I discovered that it’s frequently raised in online language forums. Some contributors regard it as non-standard but others seem to be prepared to accept it. I’m still firmly in the ‘anti’ camp: perhaps I’m fighting a losing battle, given that this usage is now so widespread that the BBC and newspapers such as The Guardian implicitly appear to endorse it as well.

What are your views on this? Use the Comments section below to tell me what’s happening or acceptable in your part of the world.

Source: Oxford Dictionaries

Reported Speech

Reported Speech

If someone tells you something and you want to tell another person, you can use 'direct speech' or 'reported speech'. 

In reported speech, we usually put the verb in the reported clause back one tense:

Direct speech		Reported speech
Present "I'm from Spain." Present Perfect "I've been married for years." Past "I stole it."		Past She told me that she was from Spain. Past Perfect He said he had been married for years. Past Perfect She admitted she had stolen it.

In direct speech we use inverted commas to show the exact words the person said.
For example:

"I'm from Spain."

In reported speech, we don't use inverted commas.

Source: www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish

Using the Passive

Using the Passive

The passive voice is often used to explain how things are done. But that’s not all. If you want to be more diplomatic, choose the passive, too.

The passive voice is often used when people want to describe processes and procedures at work. Here, we look at some authentic examples of the passive voice being used.

1. Procedures: the “be”-passive
In this dialogue, Ann is training a new employee, Meg, and explaining how to handle invoices and other documentation.
The “be”-passive is used in a number of cases here because it is the procedure that is important, not who does it:

Meg: I wanna ask you about things I wasn’t sure about sorting bills of lading?
Ann: That comes with every order and it can be thrown away.
Meg: OK.
Ann: I don’t know if I explained this already or not, but the stuff that’s already been paid COD, which is indicated by that little green stub, is not that high of a priority to code and enter until around the end of the month, and if something has to be put off...
Meg: ...and we leave it for last.
Ann: That’s why GM and West Farm and Tree of Life, and some other miscellaneous pay things, are always at the back of the pile.
Meg: OK.
Ann: Because they’ve already been paid.
Meg: OK.
Ann: That’s the most important thing.
Meg: Right. So, the priority is... the things that still need to be paid.

2. The “get-passive” and “have something done”
Sometimes, we form the passive with “get” instead of “be”. This is more informal and used mainly in spoken language. Ann uses this variant when Meg shows her a document:

Ann: That’s for the Save the Earth stuff. It will eventually probably get thrown away, but if you haven’t come across a packing list for Save the Earth products, hang on to it.
Another construction is “to have something done”. This is
often used to talk about getting a supplier to do a job for you:

■ I had some envelopes made by J.G. Mark’s the other day, and it took a couple of weeks.

3. Explaining your services
If we want to emphasize who is doing something, we often prefer to use the active voice. In the next example, Ian, a representative from a paper supplier, uses “we” and an active verb to describe a production procedure. He wants to emphasize the services that his company provides:

Ian: So, what we’re doing is... we run the wheels until we’ve got enough paper made for you. And then we make, you know, a few hundred sheets extra, and then we just revert to stock sizes.

4. Being diplomatic
The passive is also commonly used when people want to be diplomatic and avoid blaming someone directly:

Maria: How come that wasn’t done much sooner?
Maria uses the passive (“How come that wasn’t done...?”) because the active would have sounded more aggressive (“How come you didn’t do that much sooner?”).


Source: www.falibo.com

Common Mistakes with some Adjectives and Adverbs

Common Mistakes with some Adjectives and Adverbs

Some words ending in –ly are adjectives, and not normally adverbs. Examples are: costly, cowardly, deadly, friendly, likely, lively, lonely, silly, miserly and unlikely.

Incorrect: He behaved cowardly.
Correct: He behaved in a cowardly manner.
Correct: He behaved like a coward.

Incorrect: He laughed silly.
Correct: He gave a silly laugh.

Incorrect: He lives miserly.
Correct: He lives in a miserly way.

In the sentences given above the words cowardly, silly and miserly are all adjectives which cannot be used to modify verbs. And because there are no adverbs for these meanings we have to use adverb phrases like ‘in a cowardly manner’ and ‘in a miserly way’ to express the same idea.

Incorrect: Just I had gone when he came.
Correct: I had just gone when he came.

Incorrect: Still I love you.
Correct: I still love you.

The adverbs still and just go before the verb. If there is an auxiliary verb, the adverb goes after the auxiliary verb and before the main verb. If there is no auxiliary verb, the adverb goes before the main verb. If there are two auxiliary verbs, the adverb goes between them.
I am still waiting for your reply. (NOT I still am waiting for your reply.) (NOT I am waiting still for your reply.)

They have just been informed. (NOT They have been just informed.)
She has just arrived. (NOT She just has arrived.)

source: www.practiceenglish.com

Pronouns

Pronouns

There are four types of pronouns: Subject Pronouns, Object Pronouns, Possessive Pronouns and Demonstrative Pronouns. Here is a list and explanation showing the different types of pronouns:

• Subject Pronouns - I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they function as the subject of a sentence:
  I live in New York.
  Do you like playing tennis?
  He doesn't want to come this evening.
  She works in London.
  It won't be easy.
  We are studying pronouns at the moment.
  You went to Paris last year, didn't you?
  They bought a new car last month.
• Object Pronouns - me, you, him, her, it, us, you, them serve as the object of a verb.
  Give me the book.
  He told you to come tonight.
  She asked him to help.
  They visited her when they came to New York.
  She bought it at the store.
  He picked us up at the airport.
  The teacher asked you to finish your homework.
  I invited them to a party.
• Possessive Pronouns - mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, yours, theirs show that something belongs to someone. That house is mine.
  This is yours.
  I'm sorry, that's his.
  Those books are hers.
  Those students are ours.
  Look over there, those seats are yours.
  Theirs will be green.
• Demonstrative Pronouns - this, that, these, those refer to things. 'this' and 'these' refer to something that is near. 'that' and 'those' refer to things that are farther away.
  This is my house.
  That is our car over there.
  These are my colleagues in this room.
  Those are beautiful flowers in the next field.
• Possessive adjectives - my, your, his, her, its, our, your, their are often confused with possessive pronouns. The possessive adjective modifies the noun following it in order to show possession.
  I'll get my books.
  Is that your car over there?
  That is his teacher, Mr Jones.
  I want to go to her store.
  Its color is red.
  Can we bring our children?
  You are welcome to invite your husbands.

If you think you've mastered pronouns, try out this quiz!



Source: esl.about.com

Future Perfect Continuous

Source: www.edufind.com