Simple Sentences and Common Errors

Hello everybody. Welcome back to the course. In today’s lecture we’re moving into a new section and this section of the Course is all about grammatical range and accuracy. The final band descriptor category in the first lecture. We’re going to focus on simple sentences and common errors which are made basically achieving accuracy and avoiding typical mistakes. Constructing simple sentences. First of all. Now if you’re taking this course you should already know how to construct a simple sentence in English. It’s certainly a requirement even if you were going for like a band 5. Basically a simple sentence is made up of the most basic sentence elements subject and a verb and then often a completed thought or an object. However you want to put it the police there’s a subject catch. There’s our verb and criminals. Those Our object teachers in some countries. There’s a subject are not there there’s of verb and paid very well that are completed thoughts. The government as our subject should invest in that verbal verb phrase and the promotion of health education is completed. Thought or object as you can see. We are using other words as well as the standard typical pronoun verb an object. Using modal words were using prepositions were using articles but these can all be part of a simple sentence. So let’s focus on the common errors that are made in these types of sentences and in more complicated sentence types because although simple sentences may seem easy I often see mistakes in their construction. The first of these types of mistakes were going to focus on are Subject Verb agreements. So I want you to have a look at these following sentences now and tell me what is wrong with each of them. Teachers and parents has to work together to find a solution. Everyone know education is of vital importance. The number of people who live abroad are rising all the time. So what is wrong with each of these sentences. You can see that the verb has not agreed with the subject and we have corrected it so that the verb does agree with the subject. Teachers and parent have because were looking at a plural have to work together. Everyone knows to hear we’re looking at a singular pronoun. Everyone sounds like a plural but we treat it like a singular pronoun. Everyone knows education and the number of people who live abroad is because we’re focussing on the number which is a singular So the number of people who live abroad is rising all the time. So always check what your subject is and make sure that your verb agrees with that subject. The second common error is with article usage. Now there are a number of rules regarding articles much more than can be quickly covered here. However here are the most common mistakes I see and the most relevant for essay writing in task two definite articles to begin with. The. We use this article when we believe the reader knows exactly to whom or what we are referring. We use them with superlative adjectives. The biggest problem in big cities when mentioning something again after we’ve introduced it once we mention it again and then we can use the definite article people’s buying habits can be influenced by a particular celebrity the celebrity has such an effect because when you introduce it again then you can use the definite article when saying something about all things referred to by a noun. The laptop was a major breakthrough of the laptop the invention of that laptop was a major breakthrough when talking about groups of people the elderly the poor the rich the unemployed. So a lot of groups of people can begin with a definite article. And when the figure is the important part of the noun phrase the number of people who smoke is worryingly high not a number of people who smoke. That would be more concerned with the people themselves. If we say if we’re more concerned about the figure the actual number then we use the article in front of number. The number of people who smoke is worryingly high. What about indefinite articles. A. Or an if we’re going before a vowel sound. We use this article with singular countable nouns. When the reader does not know exactly to whom or what we are referring. When some when showing someone or something is part of a group. So there is a reason why crime rates are continuing to rise. It’s one reason out of several. It is not the only reason. A reason it’s part of a group when we want to say something about all things of that kind. So a student can not be expected to be well-behaved all the time. We’re not looking at a specific student. Is all things of that kind. We do not use articles when referring. We do not use indefinite articles when referring to plurals or uncountable nouns. There are many reasons why information on the Internet can sometimes be unreliable not an information on the Internet. So we never use indefinite articles when were flowing to plurals or accountable. With all that in mind. Let’s see if you can find the article errors in these sentences here. Maybe you’d like to pause the video. Go through this because there are a number of errors in these sentences and come back when you’re ready when you think you found them all. Hopefully you found them. Let’s see if you’ve got them right. Some people argue that teenagers not specific teenagers just teenagers in general. Teenagers spend too much time on the Internet. We always put a definite article before the when we’re looking at Internet as a noun. This is a problem not the only problem it’s a problem because if they do not get enough exercise they can end up suffering from obesity. We do not use an article with an uncountable noun like obesity as a result. The only result these children often struggle with health issues are a specific health issue to health issues in general and these issues can affect them throughout life. Now article there either as studies show we you know the reader doesn’t know which studies were talking about so we can’t use an article here. The rates of obesity is a specific rate the rate of obesity is rising all the time. Okay hopefully all of those make sense. Let’s look at the final common error which is regarding tensas. The majority of your essay will need to be written in the present simple as this tenses often used to give opinions. I think investment is good or facts and beliefs education leads to a competent workforce. However you need to be careful to realize when other tenses are necessary. This is particularly the case in some more difficult task to questions sometimes which ask you to talk about the future or the past. Can you spot the mistakes in these sentences. The best way to improve the economy you will be to lower taxes. Three years ago the government has decided to invest in health care. This leads to a huge improvement in public health. Sports facilities would be important because they would offer people an opportunity to exercise. To solve this problem the government should give teachers a pay rise as a result the levels of job satisfaction rise and work forman’s improves. Now the Ate the errors here are slightly more difficult to find them with articles and Subject Verb agreements. A little bit trickier. That’s why when we come to the checking the essay lecture I advise against checking for tenses when you finish. Check for easier areas but for this lecture today particularly when we’re thinking about giving it right at the time when you are actually writing your essay. It’s very important that you use the correct tense so see if you can work out where the issues are and then play the video again when you’re ready can take when you’re ready to continue. Okay let’s see how you got on. The best way to improve the economy is to lower taxes. So it’s your view. It’s your belief when we give these beliefs you only need to use the present simple. Three years ago the government decided to invest in health care. We have a specific time in the past three years ago. Therefore we used to their past simple. This led to a huge improvement. Public health again it’s something that happened in the past. So we use the past simple. Sports Facilities are important because they offer people an opportunity to exercise. That’s not some unlikely event in the future. It’s something that is true today. To solve this problem the government should give teachers a pay raise as a result. The levels of job satisfaction would rise and work performance would improve here. We don’t want to use the present simple because we are looking at a future result and therefore we need to use language which represents that future results. In this case would. So that was a look at simple sentences and the three most common mistakes which are subject verb agreement are to call usage and tense usage in the next election year. We’re going to look at how to accurately create a complex sentence.