common errors
German and English
Tweet German-speaking friends are visiting us. Their vocabularies, cultural knowledge, and structural command of English are impressive, and we speak together fluently. This afternoon we worked on the little bit of accent that remains in my friend’s English speech. It involves voicing the “g” of “German” or of “joy,” and getting used to pronouncing “th.” […]
A teacher’s dilemma
Tweet A consistent mistake made by my students is using “everyday” instead of “every day.” “everyday” is an adjective, as in “That is an everyday concern of mine.” The other is a noun with a modifier, as in “Every day I brush my teeth.” While on an unrelated Internet quest (looking for the website which […]
A confession
Tweet What do you do when a college freshman, who has passed the required classes and tests to get into college, says the Subject of the sentence, After being forced to look into a deeper meaning I realized how that one little factor could alter your mood, is “mood?” (Please ignore the other problems with […]
Grammar Exercises: Site One
Tweet This blog, http://blogs.newsobserver.com/grammar/home, has a series of quizzes, called “Grammar Guide Quiz,” which have multiple choice exercises aimed at clearing up common misunderstandings, mainly semantic, such as the difference between “reign” and “rein” and “loath” and “loathe.” It’s superficial, quick, but I found that there were certain usages which I was not clear on, and […]