[Grammar] Is this sentence grammatically correct?

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Super Sonic

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"Teachers who lack knowledge either in the micro or the macro fields of Linguistics will only be able to tell what the students should not say, whereas I will also be able to tell them why they should not say it and whether they may actually say it in certain contexts."

1- Is this sentence grammatically correct?
2- May I omit the definite article "the" before the word "macro" in this sentence?

Thank you for your reply in advance.
 

emsr2d2

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"Teachers who lack knowledge either in the micro or the macro fields of Linguistics will only be able to tell [STRIKE]what the[/STRIKE] students what they should not say, whereas I will also be able to tell them why they should not say it and whether they may actually say it in certain contexts."

1- Is this sentence grammatically correct? See above.
2- May I omit the definite article "the" before the word "macro" in this sentence? I would say yes.

Thank you for your reply in advance.

See above.
 

Super Sonic

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Thank you, emsr2d2. What would you say about putting "the" before "students"?
 

emsr2d2

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Thank you, emsr2d2. What would you say about putting "the" before "students"?

I think it's just not necessary as you're not specifying any particular students. A teacher teaches students. It's more of a general term.
 

bertietheblue

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"Teachers who lack knowledge either in the micro or the macro fields of Linguistics

PS: 'fields' should be in the singular. You are talking about one field or another field and not 'fields'. If you used 'and' instead of 'or' you would use the plural. Also, purists would put the 'in' before the 'either' so that the 'either, or' structure is balanced with identical forms of speech - as you'd expect because the choice is between equivalents, ie 'either [noun] or [noun]' and not 'either in [noun] or [noun]'. Both these are such common errors by native speakers that you could call it pedantic to correct them. Which raises the thorny question of, when is an error so common that it becomes normative?
 
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