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| Verb problems: tense and form |
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Verbs are complicated to study, not because some ancient, devious grammar teacher conjured conjugations to confuse English students, but because as English developed over the centuries, it adopted words and language patterns from several early languages in an unplanned, unruly way. If you do not like the messy maze of English grammar, write your congressman to legislate language simplification the way Congress tried to mandate metric utilization. For now, this chapter will review some principles of verbs which are unavoidably complicated but will help you avoid errors in your own writing and on tests. Part 1 Regular Verbs What is the difference between the underlined words in these two sentences? I walk to school today. I walked to school yesterday. The -ed added to walk in the second sentence shows that the action of walking took place in the past. Words representing actions, such as walk, are called verbs. Verbs change their spelling to show when an action takes place -- the time of the action. In grammar the time shown by a verb is called the tense of a verb. Most verbs (called regular verbs) have -d or -ed added to show that action occurred in the past. For words that end in e, just -d is added. Otherwise -ed is added (final consonants are sometimes doubled if preceded by vowels). Here are examples:
In the following table, notice that -s is sometimes added to walk in the present tense, as explained in a previous chapter. But -s is never added in the past tense. Present Tense I walk. You walk. We walk. Carla walks. She walks. He walks. A cow walks. Carl and Katie walk. They walk. Past Tense I walked. You walked. We walked. Use these patterns in doing the following exercises. Exercises Each exercise has three sentences with one blank in each sentence. Fill each blank with the correct form of the verb given in parenthesis at the beginning of the exercise. The first exercise has been done as an example.
Research suggests it is generally best to assign usage correction exercises on the basis of diagnosed need. Rather then make a blanket assignment for an entire class to do exercises on verb tense or pronoun problems a teacher may reserve such exercises only for students whose papers show they have difficulty in these areas. The above exercises are from Analytical Writing & Thinking: Facing the Tests, which is designed to improve general writing and reasoning skills. However, the book has the ostensible goal of raising students' Scholastic Aptitude Test and high school graduation writing-test scores, and some students voluntarily cover all the chapters in the book rather than pay several hundred dollars to a test-preparation company like Kaplan's. In completing all of the chapters on usage problems, students often learn worthwhile knowledge or techniques for expressing themselves effectively in writing. But such a blanket program should not be forced on students who do not have the intrinsic motivation of wanting to score well on some test. Normally students may just be assigned to usage chapters covering areas in which they make errors in the papers they write. While drills may be useful following the diagnosis of specific weaknesses, drills are not a substitute for whole-language experiences such as sentence combining and text reconstruction, in which students read and write complete communication units -- sentences and paragraphs-in standard written English. In explaining SC patterns, it is sometimes convenient to introduce grammatical terminology. Here again, the grammar is presented in a functional rather than formal way, as shown in this example from Analyze, Organize, Write: Combining Sentences Having The Same Subject Or Predicate A complete sentence always has two parts: (a) A subject; and (b) Information about the subject (called the predicate). Here is an example. When two sentences have the same subject, they often can be combined into one sentence with the word "and" like this. The ship hit a rock. Combined: The ship hit a rock and started to sink. Three sentences with the same subject can be combined with commas and the word "and" like this. The cookies in the jar are freshly baked. Combined: The cookies in the jar are freshly baked, filled with chocolate chips, and so soft they melt in your mouth. If two sentences have different subjects but the same predicate, they also may be combined with "and," as shown here. Roses are used in making perfumes. Combined: Roses and violets are used in making perfumes. Three sentences with different subjects but the same predicate can be combined by using commas along with "and." Democrats want lower taxes. Combined: Democrats, Republicans, and Independents want lower taxes.The following exercises illustrate additional opportunities for combining sentences with the same subject or predicate. EXERCISES Instructions. Combine the sentences in each exercise by using "and" along with any necessary commas. Use the examples just given as models.
Note that the exercises are not drills on grammatical nomenclature. They avoid terminology and focus completely on using language. While SC does not try to teach grammar, it may impart a strong understanding of grammatical concepts. Prepositions, for example, are not easy to pin down with an explicit definition. In a typical grammar lesson, prepositions are defined as words showing relationships, particularly with respect to space and time, and then a representative list is presented -- usually including before, after, above, below, for and of -- for students to memorize. The words for and of are different from above and after. For one thing, they are not about space and time. In trying to understand exactly what prepositions are, you might look back to the definition which says they are "words showing relationships. . . ." But consider this sentence: Bob has more marbles than Ted. The word more represents a relationship between quantities, yet in this sentence it is not a preposition but an adjective. SC gives students a sense of what prepositions are by experiencing how they function in a sentence, as illustrated in this lesson. Combining Sentences With Prepositional Phrases Prepositions are words like "in," "under," "after," "to," "of," and "without" that are used to describe relationships between things, such as spatial and time relationships. Here is a sentence with three prepositions underlined. Bob went to the store in the truck after dinner. A prepositional phrase is a phrase starting with a preposition. In the above sentence, the three prepositional phrases are: to the store in the truck after dinner Combining prepositional phrases is one way to lengthen sentences. The prepositional phrases are underlined in the following examples. Example 1. The new girl sat by Bob. They sat on the sofa. The sofa was near the window. Combined: The new girl sat by Bob on the sofa near the window. Example 2. The young boy was racing. He was racing across the glistening ice. He was from the hockey club. He was racing with new skates. Combined: The young boy from the hockey club was racing across the glistening ice with new skates. Note that "from the hockey club" is placed after "boy" and "across the glistening ice" is placed after "racing." Place prepositional phrases where the information they add will be understood most clearly. Now try these exercises. EXERCISES Instructions. For each exercise, lengthen the first sentence by adding the prepositional phrases from the other sentences. Here are the prepositions to look for. in, with, from, under, after, for, to, on, during, of, next, across
Seeing where prepositions can be inserted in sentences -- and the information they introduce -- builds an operational understanding of the linguistic similarity shared by prepositions and an intuitive sense of what they are as a class. Drawing together his own research and that of Mellon, Cooper concludes that usage correction coupled with sentence combining is more effective for improving writing skill than formal grammar instruction: My considered opinion is that teachers should be using . . . sentencecombining problems on a regular basis with their students. Used with an informal approach in correcting deviancy from standard English usage and punctuation, they permit the teacher to guiltlessly eliminate the teaching of a formal grammar, since both these activities -- informal approach to deviancy and sentence-combining problems -- fulfill the traditional goals of a grammar study: standard usage and control of written syntax. |
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