18 April 2013

PREVIOUS GRAMMAR QUESTION



Driving to the mall last week my car was near disappearing in a pothole: deciding to call the cities administration reporting the problem, I was hoping the problem was to be fixed quickly however its still their and its to be avoided.

1. Dangling modifier: There is no subject for “driving to the mall”—currently the only one available is the car”. Therefore it needs a subject such as “ When I was driving …” That is now an adverb clause of time—it needs to be followed by a comma.
2.  Wording: “was near disappearing” is bad grammar and non-idiomatic—reword to something such as “nearly disappeared.”
3. Gerund or infinitive? The gerund “reporting” doesn’t work here; use the infinitive ‘to report.”
4. Possessive: “Cities” is a plural form; the singular possessive is needed—city’s (no capital).
5. Verb form: instead of “was to be” use the modal passive “would be.”
6. Word confusion: When “its’ means “it is”, use an apostrophe (it’s); when “their” refers to a place and is not a possessive pronoun, use “there.”
7. Awkward wording: “to be avoided” is awkward in this sentence—it would be more usual to use “should be avoided.”
8. Punctuation: replace the colon with a semicolon. The comma after “problem” is insufficient—more of a break is needed. Use either a semicolon or a period. The word “however” separates 2 independent clauses—either make them separate sentences or separate them with a semicolon. After an introductory “however”, use a comma. In the last sentence, “and” separated 2 independent clause; use a comma after “there.”

Possible Answer: When I was driving to the mall last week, my car nearly disappeared in a pothole. I decided to call the city’s administration to report the problem.  I was hoping the problem would be fixed quickly; however, it’s still there, and it should be avoided.

**GRAMMAR QUESTION, April 18th, 2013**

There are a number of grammatical errors in the following sentence. Rewrite the sentence to correct for those errors. There are many possible solutions.

Studying on my own pace is a lot of benefit for me do to I am not needing to be worrying about no time for attend class. Being a single parent, the classes allows me working and studying and to spend time with my children.

The problems, and their corrections, will be posted in the next edition of the blog.

PUZZLE, April 18th, 2013



Previous Puzzle: Congratulations to Marina for being the first to solve it.
Five words that contain GM as a letter pair have had all of their other letters removed and placed into a pool. Put those letters back in their proper places. What are the words?

**GM*, **GM**, ***GM*, ****GM, **GM***

Pool: A, A, A, A, B, E, E, H, I, L, N, N, P, P, S, T, T, U, Y, Y

Answer: (PYGMY, BAGMAN, STIGMA, PHLEGM, AUGMENT)

New puzzle:
There are two groups of four-letter words used in the sentences below. The first missing words (A) of each sentence are anagrams of each other, and the second missing words (B) are also anagrams of each other. Can you find them? (All the A words are anagrams of each other, and all the B words are anagrams of each other).

1. The hunters set a __A__ for the hare. How else were they to enjoy its succulent __B___ ?

2. They all listened in __A__ attention as their leader spoke and motivated them to work as a __B__.

3. There will always be a small __A__ of wildness in a cat, though it is considered to be a __B__ animal today.

*First student with the correct answer gets the point.

IDIOMS, April 18th, 2013



There are three idioms that use the word HEAD:
Watch this video and then write a sentence of your own that uses one of these three idioms.

**ALL CHANGE! April 18th, 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. Please number the change you make.

Yasmin excitedly rode her new bicycle to school.

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

AFFIXES, April 18th, 2013



The word stem –MIT or --MISS --meaning SEND--occurs in many words. Add an affix (either a prefix or a suffix) to this stem to make another word. Each student should add a different word to the list.

**SENTENCE COMPLETION, April 18th, 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:

...we are already one-third of the way through the year...

Sentence 1: Add a phrase
Sentence 2: Add a dependent clause
Sentence 3: Add an independent clause