Grammar

2020 ◽  
pp. 423-446
Author(s):  
Stacy Christiansen
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Parallel Construction ◽  
Writing Errors ◽  
Collective Nouns

The Grammar chapter of the 11th edition of the AMA Manual of Style focuses on how to avoid common grammatical and writing errors. Topics include often-encountered dilemmas: who vs whom, that vs which, the number vs a number, a vs an. Guidance on frequent stumbling blocks such as double negatives, subject-verb agreement, false singulars and false plurals, collective nouns, compound subjects, misplaced modifiers, verbal phrase danglers, and parallel construction is illustrated with updated examples. The discussion of verbs considers voice, mood, and tense. Avoidance of idioms, colloquialisms, and slang, as well as euphemisms and clichés, is advised in material intended for an academic audience. A subsection on grammar considerations in social media has been added, as well as inclusion of they as a singular pronoun. A list of additional readings and general references concludes the chapter.

scholarly journals Analysis of Written English: The Case of Female University Students in Saudi Arabia

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Islam Ababneh
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Life ◽  
English Language ◽  
Female Students ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Saudi Students ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The University ◽  
Writing Errors

This research sheds some light on the difficulties faced by Saudi students when writing in the English language by examining specific writing errors committed by the students. Fifty female students in their fourth year of study at the University of Tabuk in the department of languages and translation who were enrolled in the subject of error analysis (a kind of linguistic analysis that emphasizes the errors learners make in a target language) were given a quiz to write approximately one page about each one of three topics: effects of social media on Saudi social life, Saudi marriage customs, and Saudi economy. The quiz was graded and the writing errors were classified into four main categories: grammatical, syntactic, substance, and lexical types following Hubbard et al. (1996) classifications of errors. Then, the number of errors in each category was counted and the corresponding frequency was calculated. The findings of this study show that most frequent types of errors made by the students were in the categories of grammar (tenses, singular/plural, articles), syntax (subject-verb agreement), and substance (spelling).

scholarly journals English Writing Errors Committed by Saudi Students: A Study of Two Female University Groups

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 124
Author(s):  
Islam Ababneh
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Educational Material ◽  
Ministry Of Education ◽  
English Writing ◽  
Saudi Students ◽  
The University ◽  
Writing Errors

The main aim of this study is to highlight the writing errors made by Saudi students majoring in English. The study selected a sample of two groups of female Saudi students residing in two Saudi regions: Tabuk and Hafr Al Batin. The students were requested to write approximately three to four paragraphs about one of three topics related to Saudi Arabia: social media and its effects on Saudi social life, marriage customs in Saudi Arabia, or the economy of Saudi Arabia. In analyzing the collected writing data, the students’ writing errors were identified and classified into four categories: grammar type, syntax type, mechanics type, and lexical type errors. Then, the frequency and error percentages of each subcategory were calculated for both groups. The findings show that both groups produced most errors in the subcategory of spelling followed by tenses subcategory even though the students from the University of Hafr Al Batin made overall higher percentages of errors than the errors’ percentages made by the students from the University of Tabuk. Further investigation reveals that all students in both regions hardly practice English writing and that Arabic interference contributes to the students’ English writing errors. The findings also imply that the curricula specialists at the Saudi ministry of education might consider including more educational material to improve the English writing skills of Saudi university students.

scholarly journals The Study Of “Do” Auxiliary Produced by Indonesian Students Non-English Department

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-155
Author(s):  
Soflies Marry Bingku
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Online Games ◽  
English Department ◽  
Positive Contribution ◽  
English Sentence ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Informal Environment ◽  
L1 And L2 ◽  
Learning English

“Do” is one of the very important elements in English sentence. The Students learning English often make mistakes regarding the usage of this element, although English has been learnt for more than 6 years. This research intends to study about the inter language variations produced by English learners, who are learning English as one of the required subjects. Besides the researcher has tried to describe about factors, which give both negative and positive contributions to the participants in acquiring “do” auxiliary. After analyzing and discussing all of the collected data, the conclusions are written as follows: First, the inter language variations are Missing “do” auxiliary, which is appeared only in spontaneous data and missing “did” found in Recognition test. There are problems with subject-verb-agreement, “do” is replaced by “does” or vice versa. Another tendency is also the interchangeably use between “do” and “be”, and “do” and “did”. Second, it appears that L1 and L2 gives negative influences to the participants in their progress acquiring English. The complexity of English rules makes them unable to apply the correct rules for example by applying a trend to over-generalize the English rule. Third, the input from their informal environment including social media, movies, E-book, online games and English songs gives positive contribution to the participants in acquiring “do” auxiliary. Besides memorization and imitation play good role for this case.

scholarly journals Concord patterns with collective nouns in Hong Kong English. With illustrative material from the International Corpus of English (Hong Kong component)

2009 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
May Lai-Yin Wong
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
British English ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Hong Kong English ◽  
Illustrative Material ◽  
Collective Nouns

This corpus-based study reports on both a quantitative and qualitative account of the use of collective nouns in Hong Kong English, with particular reference to subject-verb agreement/concord patterns. Singular concord was found to be the preferred pattern among thirty-five collective nouns under interrogation in the ICE-HK corpus. It is argued that the preference for singular concord serves as a signal that Hong Kong English might be less conservative than British English in converging towards the norm of using singular concord with collective nouns across the globe.

Subject and Verb

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Hart
Keyword(s):  
Verb Agreement ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Collective Nouns

This chapter explains the subject-verb agreement rule for sentences. It gives situations in which it is difficult to recognize the subject in a sentence and then moves on to problems relating to collective nouns. The chapter also explores how the structure of questions is different from that of statements.

Collective nouns and language change

2006 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 321-343 ◽  
Author(s):  
MAGNUS LEVIN
Keyword(s):  
Language Change ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Strong Preference ◽  
British English ◽  
Cd Rom ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Lexical Diffusion ◽  
Collective Nouns

This study concerns the changing and variable agreement patterns with twenty-one low-frequency collective nouns (e.g. trio) in British English. The data come from the 1990 and 2000 CD-ROM editions of The Independent. The token frequencies of nouns do not appear to affect the preference for singular verb agreement. There are, however, clear differences between noun types, as is typical for lexical diffusion. Most nouns have developed a strong preference for singular verb agreement, some remain variable, and some prefer the plural. Many of the agreement patterns for individual nouns can be motivated with reference to the characteristics of the nouns rather than to the semantics of the verbs. This investigation found no evidence that singular verb agreement, which is argued in this study to be the unmarked alternative, is generally on the increase. Rather it seems that nouns which prefer plural verbs continue to move towards plural agreement.

Plurals

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda Gregoline
Keyword(s):  
American English ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Collective Nouns

The plurals of most nouns are formed by adding -s or -es. However, English is irregular enough that it pays to consult a dictionary for most forms.Collective nouns may take either singular or plural verbs, depending on whether the word refers to the group as a unit or to its members as individuals. In American English, most nouns naming a group regarded as a unit are treated as singular. (See also 7.8.5, Grammar, Subject-Verb Agreement, Collective Nouns.)...

scholarly journals Common Writing Errors Among EFL Students at Dhofar University in Oman: An Analytical Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 402
Author(s):  
Yasser Muhammad Naguib Sabtan ◽  
Abdelkader Mohamed Abdelkader Elsayed
Keyword(s):  
First Year ◽  
First Year Students ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
Grammatical Errors ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
The Common ◽  
Writing Errors ◽  
Verb Tense

The present study aims to analyze the common writing errors made by EFL students at Dhofar University in the Sultanate of Oman. The study included 93 first-year students enrolled in a university requirement course. The students’ written English essays were collected to carry out the analysis. A number of errors in the students’ essays are identified and classified into various types. The results of the analysis of the students’ writing samples show that the common errors of EFL students at Dhofar University are basically related to spelling and grammar. Spelling and grammatical errors are classified into different types, with a frequency count for each type of error. Grammatical errors account for the biggest number of errors which are distributed on eight different types. These types are listed in order based on their frequency as follows: (1) verb tense and form, (2) plurality (3) subject-verb agreement (4) prepositions (5) part-of-speech (6) word order (7) articles (8) adjective form. Spelling errors, on the other hand, are classified into four types which are listed in order as follows: (1) omission (2) substitution (3) insertion (4) transposition. Based on these results, a number of recommendations for treatment of writing errors are suggested.

Pragmatic versus Morphological/Syntactic Criteria for Language Referrals

1980 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 85-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Damico ◽  
John W. Oller
Keyword(s):  
Grade Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Remedial Programs ◽  
Service Training ◽  
Traditional Approaches ◽  
Communicative Effectiveness

Two methods of identifying language disordered children are examined. Traditional approaches require attention to relatively superficial morphological and surface syntactic criteria, such as, noun-verb agreement, tense marking, pluralization. More recently, however, language testers and others have turned to pragmatic criteria focussing on deeper aspects of meaning and communicative effectiveness, such as, general fluency, topic maintenance, specificity of referring terms. In this study, 54 regular K-5 teachers in two Albuquerque schools serving 1212 children were assigned on a roughly matched basis to one of two groups. Group S received in-service training using traditional surface criteria for referrals, while Group P received similar in-service training with pragmatic criteria. All referrals from both groups were reevaluated by a panel of judges following the state determined procedures for assignment to remedial programs. Teachers who were taught to use pragmatic criteria in identifying language disordered children identified significantly more children and were more often correct in their identification than teachers taught to use syntactic criteria. Both groups identified significantly fewer children as the grade level increased.

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