Sentence Structures & Grammatical Errors
Sentence Structures & Grammatical Errors
Question 1
The first sentence of the first pair means that she intentionally told lies to the police while the second sentence in the same pair means that she told the police all the facts she knew, although she did not do it intentionally.
Both sentences in the second pair have the same meaning. However, the word “brother” in the second sentence has been capitalized to put more stress on the subject.
In the third pair, the first sentence means that we are not anticipating their acceptance of the offer, while the second sentence means that we anticipate that they will decline the offer given to them.
Question 2
In the first sentence, the definite article “the” has been used before the word “vase” since it is addressing a specific noun. Besides, the definite article “the” is used in the second sentence before a particular noun “screen.” It is also used since the speaker had initially talked about a laptop, so it is evident to the reader on what screen they are talking about. The third sentence uses “the” to mean that Jack married a specific woman, not just any other woman. In the last sentence of the question, “the” has been used to talk about one particular couple, the man and woman who entered the restaurant.
Question 3
Most English learners have found problems in answering tag questions since they are typically answered differently from other languages. The main reason why most Korean EFL learners make the above mistakes is that they are used to Korean words, which pronouns and auxiliary verbs are never used when someone disagrees or when something is not right. The basic instructions that can be given to these students are that, before answering a tag question, they first need to know whether they agree or disagree with the positive statement of the speaker. If they agree, the auxiliary verb should follow with a positive comment. At the same time, if they disagree with whoever is asking the question, then their auxiliary verb should be a negative statement.
Question 4
Before handling the question, we need to understand what antecedents and reflexive pronouns are and how they are used. Antecedents are grammar expressions that give their meaning to pro-form while a reflexive pronoun is a word ending with “-self” and are usually used when the subject in a sentence is the same with the object. In the first sentence, “Bruce” is the antecedent of the reflexive pronoun “himself.” In the second one, “Cathy” is the antecedent of the reflexive pronoun “herself,” and “Jane” is the antecedent of the reflexive pronoun “herself” in the third sentence. In the last sentence of the question, “Mark” is the antecedent of the reflexive pronoun “himself.”
Question 5
The errors in both sentences are identical. Most English learners typically omit antecedents in most sentences. They think that if they use many antecedents in a sentence, it will cause a repetition of words and their meanings. The first sentence should be, “Adam found a vase and put the flower in. It was really beautiful, he said to himself. But he was not sure where to put.” The pronoun antecedents “it” and “he” have been omitted in the sentence. The second sentence should be, “Finally, the society’s customs and beliefs do not always pass from one age group to another.” In this statement, “do” was not included, yet it is a plural pronoun-antecedent of “customs” and “beliefs.”