March 2003 Archives

I ran across someone who said that it was wrong to teach the "i before e except after c" rule, because it was wrong more often that it was right. Is that true?

That depends on how the rule is taught. I was taught "i before e except after c and when the sound is ay as in neighbor and weigh and when cie makes a 'she/sheh' sound".

What is the advantage of classifying every verb followed by a preposition or adverb as a phrasal verb?

Inversion is writing which reverses the usual order of words (S-V-C structure). It may be used in poetry to help the writer to make a rhyme or put particular emphasis on a word. An example would be:

"Mad indeed would I be to expect it..."

"I would be mad indeed..."

Here it is about creating an effect used to draw you deeper into the story. In both examples above, the adjective "mad" is an attention grabber (probably stressed more in the first sentence than it would be in the middle of the clause).

In the first sentence it is presented at the beginning to give a kind of preface to the rest of the sentence and to catch your eye-mind-emotion chain. In the second sentence it takes your eye-to-mind reception a few milliseconds more to get to the dynamic adjective.

A student says: "Will you go to the barbecue tonight?" How do you respond?

Topic Area

The difference between Will and Going to for talking about future plans and arrangements.

How to respond...

With the disclosure today that when a 13-year-old student handed in her essay, her teacher discovered it had been written entirely as a text message, the question arises about the effect of text messaging on literacy and the effect of technology on our childrens mental ability. [Source: BBC] [Source: Evening Standard]

I believe a number of super languages will emerge and most small languages will die out. I tend to believe that the benefits of this may well outweigh the cultural loss, besides which it seems inevitable. Throughout history languages have died out; I can't see the point in trying to resurrect something like Cornish here. It is sad when they die, but ultimately, the fewer languages we have the better the communication.