[Vocabulary] recommend

kite · Oct 25, 2013

#1 "My English professor recommended that I better take an intensive English program in an English country in order to gain a quick improvement of English."
#1a "My English professor recommended I better take an intensive English program in an English country in order to gain a quick improvement of English."

2# "My English professor recommended me to take an intensive English program in an English country to gain a quick improvement of English."

Dear teachers,
Would you please check my sentences whether they are correct to be used, grammatical and natural?

Thanks.

kite · Oct 26, 2013

Teachers, any comment please.

MikeNewYork · Oct 26, 2013

kite said:
#1 "My English professor recommended that I better take an intensive English program in an English country in order to gain a quick improvement of English."
#1a "My English professor recommended I better take an intensive English program in an English country in order to gain a quick improvement of English."

2# "My English professor recommended me to take an intensive English program in an English country to gain a quick improvement of English."

Dear teachers,
Would you please check my sentences whether they are correct to be used, grammatical and natural?

Thanks.

I don't find any of your sentences natural.

I would say: "My English professor recommended that I enter an intensive English program in an English country to quickly improve my English."

kite · Oct 26, 2013

Clear. But how about grammar? Are they grammatical although they are not natural?

Rover_KE · Oct 26, 2013

In 1 and 1a I'd say '...I had better...'

In both I'd say '...improvement in English'.

5jj · Oct 26, 2013

kite said:
Clear. But how about grammar? Are they grammatical although they are not natural?

We are often asked this question. I see little point in discussion of whether a construction is theoretically 'grammatical' if it is unnatural.

kite · Oct 26, 2013

So 5jj, do you mean that we should focus on the naturalness more than grammar?

5jj · Oct 26, 2013

kite said:
So 5jj, do you mean that we should focus on the naturalness more than grammar?

Yes. There is no point at all in saying/writing something that is in theory grammatically correct if it sounds unnatural to native speakers.

Some grammarians would argue that if a construction sounds unnatural to most native speakers, it cannot be grammatical.

emsr2d2 · Oct 26, 2013

There are millions of technically grammatical sentences which no native speaker would ever naturally utter. (Sadly, the reverse isn't true!)

[Vocabulary] recommend

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