grammatical errors in the sentence
By RUBESH
@Manasha (2819)
Pondicherry, India
February 28, 2013 10:40am CST
My students wrote some of the following sentences with some mistakes
1. Rain is falling
2. he is going to abroad
3. I had met him in last week
4. I was passed
I corrected them as follows
It is raining -present tense
it rained -past tense
He is going abroad
I met him last week (however I wonder when should we use HA AND WANTED to know the difference between had met and met)
4. I passed
Am I correct with the corrections? pl share your thoughts
3 responses
@DoctorDidi (7018)
• India
28 Feb 13
You are correct except in the first sentence that is 'Rain is falling'. It will be corrected by only 'It is raining' and it is not present tense but present continuous tense. 'Rain is falling' can never be corrected by ' it rained' due to difference in tense.
1 person likes this
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
28 Feb 13
Your corrections are, indeed, correct
"Rain is falling" is perfectly good English, though not something one might say often. It's more the sort of expression you might find in a poem or a novel. As a general observation, we would usually say "It is raining!". On the other hand, you might say, "Rain is falling on the hills over there but here it's bright sunshine!"
Words like 'abroad', 'away', 'afar', 'behind', 'before' and so on have their own prepositions "built in". The 'a-' and 'be-' are remnants of Old English prepositions (meaning roughly 'to' or 'at') which, because the words are so common, have become incorporated into the words themselves, so one never says 'to abroad', 'at afar', 'to behind', for example. However, one DOES use other directional prepositions with them: "He is arriving from abroad", "She called from afar".
When talking about time (year, month, week, day, hour and so on). "I met him last week" is correct. If you want to express a certain period of time during which something happened then "I met him in the last week" is correct.
In talking about an exam or a test, we normally use the active mood of the verb 'to pass', therefore "I passed [my driving test]" is normally the correct form. If one is speaking of something done to one (specifically by an examiner), one might say: "The driving examiner passed me" (active form) or "I was passed by the examiner" (passive form). Likewise, "I passed the old man on the road" and "I was passed by a black Mercedes travelling at high speed" (passive) or "The black Mercedes passed me just before it crashed into the barrier" (active).
@owlwings (43910)
• Cambridge, England
28 Feb 13
"I had met him" is used when talking about an action which was already completed at a time in the past which is being referred to.
Note the difference between:
"Mrs Williams introduces me to her husband but I have already met him."
and
"Mrs Williams introduced me to her husband but I had met him already."
The first sentence is talking about an event which is currently happening, so we use the present tense of the auxiliary 'to have' to express something which happened previously. The second sentence is talking about a past event (the introduction), before which something else happened (the previous meeting), so we use the past tense of the auxiliary.
Everything depends on the time at which the main action described is assumed to take place. Even in the future tense it depends on whether the subsidiary action happened already or will have happened by the time the main action takes place, so:
"Mrs Williams will introduce me to her husband on Tuesday, but I have already met him." (indicating that, as we speak, I have already met him)
and
"Mrs Williams will introduce me to her husband on Tuesday, but I shall/will have already met him." (indicating that I haven't yet met him but shall do so before next Tuesday).
@jirojoyman (458)
• Indonesia
1 Mar 13
wow nice explanation's it was very helpful for me too....thank a ton for explain this.