Saturday, July 2, 2011

Oh yes! New question on stackexchange...

So I also asked a new question on stackexchange. My students have all started to say things like "Do you can play tennis?" Or "Where went you last night". Over- and underuse of 'do' in English! I asked for a little help figuring out why these were wrong and why we use the 'do-formation' in English. Well, I got way more than I needed! Lots of people went so far as to explain the technical linguistic reasons! Which, I must admit, reminded me why I fell in love with Linguistics in University...and makes me desperately want to study it some more!
However, I ended up choosing the answer that explained, quite succinctly I thought, the reason we need or don't need to use 'do' in English.

P.S If you noticed the link on succinctly I highly recommend that website for definitions! They provide definitions in increasing levels of English!

Booking a Hotel Room

So similar to my telephone cards I also made booking a hotel room and a reserving a table at a restaurant. Same idea, a couple of different phrases and with the all important, "Can you spell your name please", question. None of my students like that one! They hate having to spend their names, it seems to be very difficult to remember the letter "h" for Germans...I'm not quite sure why.
Wow, so I have had this post half-finished for three days! I came home from work on Thursday night and the internet had decided to go away! Silly internet...