Hi galaxydreams: My computer science graduate students are mostly non-native speakers, mostly Far East Asian this year. Leaving out "a" and "the" is their most frequent writing problem. My guess is that by graduate level, most of their teachers don't bother to correct this. I keep sending them little on-line tests, so thanks for this one. Who are you and why are you posting these on hubski?
Hi Lil,
Thank you for your interests in English Tests. We are a team of translators, web designers, and computer programmers focusing on translation and English learning. We just fired the English2Test.com website and our plan is to develop it for free to everybody who is interested in English learning. We add English tests in various grade levels everyday. So, any suggestions from you would be highly appreciated. Thank you :)
I don't see a place on the English2Test.com website where I can send suggestions. I've written all kinds of similar quizzes (hyphens, apostrophes, less-fewer, parts of speech, and on and on). I'd love to get them posted for anyone to use (especially my students). There are various websites that allow self-checking, but yours seems very user-friendly.
Lil,
we are anxiously very open to use your quizzes. Please give my colleague a couple of hours to complete contact page then send us as much as quizzes you can. We will use all of them with a reference back to you (whatever you specify: your site or email) :)
I come back to you soon... Thanks
Lil, During completing contact form of the site, you can send your multi answer quizzes to us by email: info (a) english2test.com. Please let us know the address which we can use it as the reference back to you. Thank you very much
Lil, You can contact us using the contact form of the site or the email address I specified above.
Ah yes. The hotly debated Oxford Comma. I'm a fan myself, but it seems to be out of fashion these days.
for serious. i'd take pepperoni and mushroom over bacon and mushroom any day. on a pizza that is. in a marsala? well that's a comma of a different color...
*....I've seen those English dramas too, they're cruel* I actually think its redundant and don't use it. I don't find it offensive or unusual though, to each their own.
With the Oxford comma: We invited the strippers, JFK, and Stalin.
Without the Oxford comma: We invited the strippers, JFK and Stalin.
I was avoiding entering this conversation until I saw this example on the song linked by thenewgreen. Great example - one of many. I tell my students to use the comma as long as they are in my class and writing for me. I also tell them that if they use it once (as they inevitably do for the clarity necessary when discussing those famous strippers: JFK and Stalin) then to use it consistently. I understand that it's all a question of what habits were drilled into us by our iron-fisted grade 3 teachers who said that the comma meant "and." So why would we say and and? (deep sigh) This is a question of clarity, not mere preference. The spaces after a period are, however, a question of preference.
The colon is also correct. In the case of the strippers, JFK and Stalin, "strippers" and "JFK and Stalin" are called nouns in apposition. The second noun - the thing named by the first noun - is typically surrounded by commas. You would say, for example, My English teachers, Ms Dabacle and Mr. Frost, taught me about semi-colons. Similarly, the strippers, JFK and Stalin, delighted the Poles. Even so, you can opt for the colon.
In the example above, a colon would interrupt the flow of the sentence. Luckily, if you do not like two commas in a sentence, rewrite and edit. You can say "JFK and Stalin were strippers in Warsaw. They frequently performed at the Sin Gentleman's Club, Warsaw's best lap dancing venue, much to the delight of the Poles."
That was a wonderful example Lil I now have seen the light.
Stalin died in 1953 when JFK was in his first year in the Senate, but you never know. JFK and Stalin might be names used by performers in a cross-dressing, transgender strip club in Berlin..
Thank you for the link :) I usually use the Comma in my official writing, but here is quite different. Thanks again
Yeah, I guess writing for this platform is quite different than a formal language school might teach. Although shouldn't they strive to be the same thing? I've spent some time in Europe and at one point even lived with a German family. They loved this little anecdote about the language school up the street. How proud the school was of their academic heritage! And gosh, how they managed to sustain pure linguistic lines. Just incredible! Thing is, all the students came out speaking 200 year old German. People loved it! It was beautiful to hear. But no one talks that way any longer, and the students were politely patted on the back as general oddities of a different time. I wondered if the school was doing a service or a disservice to the students?but here is quite different.