Goodbye and hello

Hi everyone!

My blog today has two parts; the first is to the departing student blogger, Ana Paula, and the second is to the new victim… oops, I mean the new student blogger, James.

Dear Ana Paula,

Before I bid you farewell, I’ll quickly give you the answer to the final nasty questions. Just as a reminder, I asked you to find the grammatical problem in these sentences:

‘Just like you, I love coffee and books (and of course, films is among them), actually I think they make a perfect partnership, though I’ve never read a book sitting at a café beside a river.’

‘You mentioned my poetic mood in your blog, in fact, I felt like this because yesterday I read an article about a new temporary exhibition at Língua Portuguesa Museum (Museu da Língua Portuguesa) inspired by Clarice Lispector’s works.’

A few days ago, if you remember, we were discussing clauses and how we use clauses to build up sentences. We make sentences with one clause, like this:

‘Ana Paula likes books.’

We can also make two-clause sentences, like this:

‘Ana Paula likes books, and she also likes films.’

Of course, we can also make three-clause sentences, four-clause sentences, twenty-seven clause sentences, and so on. However, when we use two or more clauses in a sentence, it’s important to connect them together properly. Please have a look at this example of a WRONG two-clause sentence:

‘Alex likes tea, he prefers tea.’

Why is this wrong? It’s wrong because a comma is not strong enough to connect two clauses. We need to add an extra word here, in order to connect these two sentences properly.

‘Alex likes tea, BUT he prefers coffee.’

If you look back at the two sentences above, you’ll find that both of them contain clauses which are not properly connected. In the first example, we can fix the problem by adding an extra word, like this:

‘Just like you, I love coffee and books (and of course, films is among them), AND actually I think they make a perfect partnership, though I’ve never read a book sitting at a café beside a river.’

In the second, it sounds more natural to break it up into two sentences, like this:

‘You mentioned my poetic mood in your BLOG. IN fact, I felt like this because yesterday I read an article about a new temporary exhibition at Língua Portuguesa Museum (Museu da Língua Portuguesa) inspired by Clarice Lispector’s works.’

Yes, those were particularly evil questions. But if I’d given you easy questions, you would’ve been disappointed, wouldn’t you?

I’d just like to say thanks very much for all your hard work. I’ve enjoyed reading and responding to your blogs very much indeed – they’ve made me laugh, they’ve made me cry, they’ve even made me sick. Good luck in your future studies, and don’t forget to connect your clauses properly! And to look where you’re going while you’re reading! And keep in touch – we still want your comments, please!

Até logo,

Alex



And here’s the second part…



Dear James,

Hi! Good to meet you. I see you’ve been very busy in the last couple of days – thanks for your blogs, and for the questions you’ve asked. Paul will have to answer some of these questions, but I can answer a couple of them here.

You asked about different ways to say ‘hello’ to all of us. As you know, there are many different ways to do this. Some of them are more formal (like “Dear English learners of the world”, for example), and some are more informal (like “Hello everyone”). I think you made a good choice. “Hello there” is a friendly, informal greeting, and these blogs are friendly and informal, so this sounds good to me.

In your second blog, you asked how you should address Paul Scott when you speak to him on the phone. In this situation, you have three options. Firstly, you could be formal and polite and say, “Hello Mr Scott”. Secondly, you could be less formal and more friendly, and say “Hello Paul”. Finally, you could avoid the problem by just saying “Hello”. In fact, Paul is a very relaxed, friendly guy, so I’d suggest “Hello Paul”. “Hey man” is probably too informal, even for Paul.

I’m sorry about this, James, but the difficult questions are going to start straightaway. I’d like to take a look at a sentence from your first blog, and make some corrections. First, though, I’d like to tell you the same thing I told Ana Paula – mistakes are good! It’s very important for students to make mistakes! If you don’t make mistakes, you will never expand or improve your English.

So, let’s have a look at some mistakes. First, let’s have a look at this sentence.

‘I have learnt English since I was 12, quite a long time, but I have not being abroad to learn English.’

I can understand what you mean, but you have to be careful with the verb tenses here. In this sentence we need to use the present perfect simple and the present perfect continuous. The present perfect simple looks like this:

‘I have been to France many times.’

We normally use the present perfect simple to describe an action which is finished, but we don’t know when it happened. In the example, this action is finished – I’m not in France now, I’m at home in London writing my blog. Do you know when I went to France? No, I haven’t given you this information.

The present perfect continuous looks like this:

‘I have been living in London for three years.’

We normally use the present perfect continuous for an action which started in the past but is still continuing now. I started living in London three years ago, and I still live in London now. We very often use the present perfect continuous with ‘for’ or ‘since’.

So, let’s make some corrections to your sentence.

‘I have learnt English since I was 12, quite a long time, but I have not being abroad to learn English.’

The first part of your sentence uses ‘since’, so here we should use the present perfect: ‘I have been learning English since I was 12.’ The second part requires the present perfect simple, like this: ‘I have not been abroad to learn English.

So, the sentence should look like this:

‘I have been learning English since I was 12, quite a long time, but I have not been abroad to learn English.’

Does this make sense? I hope so, because I’ve got some nasty questions for you. How would you complete these sentences, using the present perfect simple or the present perfect continuous?

1. James __________ the student blogger for just a few days.
2. Alex ___________ the teacher blogger for a month already.
3. James __________ two blogs this week.
4. Alex ___________ has written two blogs as well.

Good luck!

Alex

Vocabulary

To depart means to leave or to go away.

In Britain, if we notice that we’ve made a mistake, we say ‘oops!’

‘To bid you farewell’ is a slightly old-fashioned and formal phrase; it means, ‘to say goodbye to you’.

‘Reminder’ is the noun from the verb ‘to remind’. A reminder isn’t a person; it’s a message which reminds you to do something.

Straightaway means immediately.


PS As JJ from HK rightly pointed out, in my last blog I wrote ‘embarassing’ when I meant ‘embarrassing’. How embarrassing!

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