What I Learned (articles, prepositions, stylistic peculiarities, punctuation etc)

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)

      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.

Useful link http://usefulenglish.ru/grammar/infinitive-or-gerund

Style (mistakes: I'd like to...; I've to)

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:

http://www.unam.na/centres/language/formal_academicwriting.html

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: 

As I would like to acquire British pronunciation , there is still room for improvement. 

The classification of subordinate clauses and 

Quotation marks.   In English they are always " " not « ».

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!