Hendrik SUK3 WS13 Part 1
Having proofread my “Dear Mr Bower
Letter” I am to summarize what I have learned.
Actually, my week points are:
Articles (my mistakes were: __Russian language, __ Ukraine)
Having proofread my “Dear Mr Bower Letter” I am to summarize what I have learned.
The definite article is required before the name
of the language. Thus, I should have written “good command of the
Russian language”.
The Ukraine. I was really surprised by the
article “the” preceeding Ukraine. I have found
the article written by historian Andrew Gregorovich on this controversial issue.
According to this
article, the name Ukraine, which first appeared in the historical chronicles in
1187, has been common in the English language for almost 350 years. In the
earliest years it appeared without the definite article "the" but in
this century the definite article increasingly preceded the name Ukraine.
The reason for this is
that many Ukrainian immigrant scholars, due to their imperfect knowledge of
English, used the form "the Ukraine" in their books thus helping to
perpetuate this usage.
But what about the
regular daily press in the USA, Canada and England? Even The New York Times
(which once required it in its Style Guide) does not use it now. Neither do The
Times (London), The Economist (London), Washington Post, TIME, Newsweek or
Maclean's. News services such as Canadian Press, Reuters, CNN and Associated
Press do not use the article. When the December 1991 referendum confirmed the
independence of Ukraine the White House in Washington, D.C. officially
announced that it would discontinue use of the definite article before the name
Ukraine. You can read the whole article here: http://www.infoukes.com/faq/the_ukraine/
Prepositions (mistakes: interest to, helpful in + Gerund)
1.
The preposition "in" should
follow the noun "interest".
For
instance:
My
English teacher has awaken my interest
in foreign languages and especially in English.
2.
The structure "to be helpful in" is considered to be the gerund
following phrase. That is why:
My roommate is very helpful both in correcting my mistakes and telling me interesting facts about American culture.
Style (mistakes:
Our task was to write a formal letter. It implies that full forms are preferred to contractions.
- As I would like to… ; I have to...
I refreshed my knowledge with the help of this link:
Punctuation
Comma
is needed after the subordinate clause of reason.
For
instance: As I don't know the way, I'll take a taxi.
Thus,
I have corrected my mistake:
The classification of subordinate clauses and
Other Inaccuracies
Rather curse than blessing. I do agree this idiom might be incorrect. I
have found it in Upstream by Virginia Evans and maybe I have memorized it
wrongly. I will check it as soon as possible (I don`t have my book here). I am to be more careful while using
idioms. Anyway, I decided to substitute it with the phrase "perfect torture": I have watched CNN News (which
for the first time seemed to be a perfect torture and
is still very challenging).
W. Shakespeare and R. Burns. As this is not standard English, it is better to focus on something more useful. Now I search for verses in standard English http://www.english-for-students.com/English-Poems.html A couple of days ago I have found a film My Fair Lady based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. I have learned the song “Why can`t the English teach their children how to speak?”. I like both the style and pronunciation!
Luckily, now I now
where to channel my efforts!
