O-Level English
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Can you share how to do well in O level English?Any good resources to share?
Thanks -
kitty2:
This is a tough question. It's like asking what to eat so that you will be in good health. There are too many different considerations.Can you share how to do well in O level English?Any good resources to share?
Thanks
The fundamentals of English are grammar and vocabulary. The latter can be easily settled through reading widely and checking up new words encountered during reading in a good dictionary. However, grammar is a little trickier as it is not easy to self-teach yourself grammar properly. A competent English teacher is recommended to get one's grammar up to scratch.
At the secondary level, it is not easy to recommend any resource that will definitely result in sudden improvement in English, especially for the new syllabus introduced last year. The main reason is because the new syllabus requires candidates to demonstrate overall English competency across all the papers and sections. Reading widely will help, but the efficacy of reading widely also depends on the strength of the fundamentals. Someone with poor English fundamentals and attempting to improve himself reading say The Economist is wasting his time. -
Hi teacher aaron. May I know what tenses is to be used with sentence involving before and after. Question 1: Peter ______ his homework before he had his lunch. Question 2. Mary _______ her homework before going to play yesterday. Thank you.
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PiggyLalala:
Hi teacher aaron. May I know what tenses is to be used with sentence involving before and after. Question 1: Peter ______ his homework before he had his lunch. Question 2. Mary _______ her homework before going to play yesterday. Thank you.
This is going to be a little confusing, so bear with me!
Question 1 uses the word \"before\" as a conjunction to connect two clauses. A clause is a simple sentence containing only one subject-verb pairing.
[list]- Clause A: Peter completed his homework. (subject: Peter, verb: completed)
[/list][list]- Clause B: He (Peter) had his lunch. (subject: He, verb: had)
[/list]So, to connect both clauses together, we use the conjunction \"before\" to join both clauses together, putting clause containing the action that was completed first in front of the conjunction. Hence, we get the following complex sentence:
[list]- Peter completed his homework before he had his lunch.
[/list]We will need to reverse the order of the two clauses if we change the conjunction to \"after\":
[list]- Peter had his lunch after he completed his homework.
[/list]In general, if we are use \"before\" and \"after\" as conjunctions to connect two clauses, we will have to use the present simple or past simple, depending on whether the actions are already over, or whether we are stating general truths or facts.
[list]- [*] She brushes her teeth before she sleeps every night. (general truth, so use present simple)
- [*] The lights went out after the electricity was cut. (both actions are over)
[/list]For question 2, the situation is different. The word before is not functioning as a conjunction because after the word \"before\", we do not have a clause. Instead, we have the present participle form of the verb \"go\" (present participle means the \"ing\" form) after the word \"before\". In this case, the word \"before\" is functioning as a preposition relating the \"going to play\" with the completion of homework, hence giving us the following:
[list]- Mary completed her homework before going to play yesterday.
[/list]Note that in front of the preposition \"before\", you need a clause that uses either the present simple or the past simple tense.
The word \"after\" can also be used as a preposition following the same rule of having a simple clause first and then making sure the verb that follows \"after\" must take the present participle (i.e. the \"ing\" form). To express the same idea about Mary's homework and her going out to play using the word \"after\", the sentence will look like this:
[list]- Mary went out to play after completing her homework yesterday.
[/list]Here are some more examples that are in the form of a simple clause followed by the prepositions \"before\" or \"after\".
[list]- [*]The burglar ransacked our house before escaping with our valuables.
- [*]She lost her temper after reading her son's report card.
- [*]My brother takes a quick shower before leaving for work every morning.
- [*]We finally landed at Changi Airport after flying for 12 hours.
[/list] -
Thank you for your detailed explanation, teacher Aaron.
For the two questions, is it wrong to use the past perfect tense?
Peter had completed his homework before he had his lunch.
Or Peter had his lunch after he had completed his homework.
Mary had completed her homework before going to play yesterday.
Lastly, do you have any good assessment/guide books to recommend for synthesis?
Thank you very much. -
PiggyLalala:
Regarding the past perfect tense, one of the main uses is that we use the past perfect tense to refer to an action in the past that was completed by a certain time point (which is also in the past).Thank you for your detailed explanation, teacher Aaron.
For the two questions, is it wrong to use the past perfect tense?
Peter had completed his homework before he had his lunch.
Or Peter had his lunch after he had completed his homework.
Mary had completed her homework before going to play yesterday.
Lastly, do you have any good assessment/guide books to recommend for synthesis?
Thank you very much.
Using your examples of Peter, to use the past perfect tense, the sentences should be in the following forms since both sentences are really about a time point in the past where an action was completed by:
[list]- [*]Peter had completed his homework before lunchtime yesterday. (lunchtime is the point of time in the past in which Peter's action of completing homework was completed)
- [*]Mary had completed her homework by the time she went out to play. (again, the time which the first action had to be completed by is indicated in the sentence)
[/list]The past perfect is also used when talking about two actions that occurred in the past that are related to each other. The form of the verb of the first action would be in the past perfect form. Here are some examples:
[list]- [*]John ran to the train station, but the train had already left. (Train had left first)
- [*]The government built a memorial to remember those who had died during the Second World War. (People had died first)
[/list]As for good assessment books on synthesis, I need to check again. Most of them are okay for the most part, but I do see things from time to time I don't agree with, and I correct my students there and then. -
:thankyou: teacher aaron.
The answers given by the assessment books used the past perfect tense for the following questions. Are the answers correct? Thanks.
1.Mark ________ (lock) the door before he went to school.
2. After we _________ (eat) dinner, we went home.
3.After she ________ (speak) to the principal, she went back to class.
4. Before her father came home, jenny ______(cook) dinner.
5. Before the fireman arrived, the fire _______ (gut)
the row of houses. -
PiggyLalala:
It appears that the word \"before\" is being used as a conjunction connecting two clauses of the same structure, so the correct answer should be \"locked\".:thankyou: teacher aaron.
One last question.
Mark (had locked/locked) the door before he went to school. Which is the answer? -
Thank you slmkhoo and Teacher Aaron for your sharings.
I feel like I'm learning English again. LOL.
:thankyou: -
PiggyLalala:
Hi PiggyLalala,:thankyou: teacher aaron.
The answers given by the assessment books used the past perfect tense for the following questions. Are the answers correct? Thanks.
1.Mark ________ (lock) the door before he went to school.
2. After we _________ (eat) dinner, we went home.
3.After she ________ (speak) to the principal, she went back to class.
4. Before her father came home, jenny ______(cook) dinner.
5. Before the fireman arrived, the fire _______ (gut)
the row of houses.
I didn't realise you posted a few more questions, and I think I need to explain the correct answer(s) a little more than what I have previously answered.
You said the assessment books have given the answers to all these questions in the past perfect tense. The answers are correct from a technical standpoint, but the past perfect tense is not the only answer for some of them if we factor in meaning, and meaning should be the basis of choosing a tense.
Tenses are the hardest to master in English precisely because they are all about meaning, and the correct tense is the one that reflects exactly what you intend to mean.
Take question 1 for example. Both the following are correct, but their meanings are different:
[list]- [*]Mark locked the door before he went to school. (No suggestion of a relationship between locking and going to school; one just so happened before the other)
- [*]Mark had locked the door before he went to school. (Suggests that Mark intentionally locked the door before going to school)
[/list]The same logic can be applied to question 4.
[list]- [*]Before her father came home, Jenny cooked dinner. (No suggestion that the cooking was related to the father coming home; one just so happened before the other)
- [*]Before her father came home, Jenny had cooked dinner. (Suggests that Jenny intentionally cooked before her father came home)
[/list]So for questions 1 and 4, both the past perfect and the simple past are possible if we look at the questions from the standpoint of being grammatically correct. However, from the standpoint of meaning, only one of them can be correct since we cannot intend to mean two different things in the same sentence.
For questions 2, 3 and 5, it appears that both parts of each sentence should be logically related to each other such that one must happen before the other, so the past perfect tense is likely the only correct option.
[list]- [*]After we had eaten dinner, we went home. (A possible variation using simple past could be \"After we ate dinner, we stopped by a petrol station.\")
- [*]After she had spoken to the principal, she went back to class. (A possible variation using simple past could be \"After she spoke to the principal, the fire alarm rang.\")
- [*]Before the fireman arrived, the fire had gutted the row of houses. (A possible variation using simple past could be \"Before the fire died down, it gutted the row of houses.\")
[/list]For each of the variations listed above, if you examine their meanings, the thing that happened first isn't logically related to the second, so it isn't appropriate to use the past perfect tense to indicate that one of the two actions occurred before the other in the past.
As for the quality of questions in assessment books, standards can vary greatly. Many people who are proficient in English think that as long as one action happened before the other and both actions happened in the past, the past perfect tense must be correct. Unfortunately, it is NOT the case. One has to consider if first action is logically connected to the second action the past perfect tense can be used.
Therefore, questions 1 and 4 are poor questions in my opinion as they are ambiguous in meaning and not sufficiently clear that the past perfect tense is clearly warranted.
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