Look at these two sentences. Are both sentences correct?
The answer is yes.
Near can be used as a preposition .When near is a prepostion , near to is less common but also possible .
Source : Practical English Usage (Michael Swan/Oxford) and Oxford Dictionaries
Do you know the difference between these three seemingly identical terms?
Let’s start by stating the obvious, all of them are related to “teaching”; but is there a difference between them? Indeed there is, as otherwise I wouldn’t be bothering you with this issue and well you know it! 🙂
Alright, let’s get down to the point. I know you’re all on tenterhooks and I don’t want to see you suffer.
At school, there are teachers. At university , there are lecturers and professors.
♥A lecturer is a university teacher who has just started teaching at college or university. Lecturers do not have tenures ( permanent position) and they are at an early stage of their careers.
Some words that collocate with lecturer are:
♥A professor, on the other hand, is the principal teacher in a department and he usually has a doctorate degree. When he first gets his doctorate degree, he becomes an assistant professor and teaches for 5 or 6 years. Then, he is given tenure and becomes an associate professor and finally he can promote to become a full professor. So, professor is the highest rank an academic can get.
Some words that collocate with professor are
I spent a year as a visiting professor at Oviedo University. He is a distinguised professor of history.
Can you tell the difference between farther and further or especially and specially? Do you know for certain when to use arrive in or arrive at? Which one is American English at the weekend or on the weekend, math or maths? Is it think of, about, in or on?? Do you have problems using and/or pronouncing weigh, weighed and weight? You are pretty certain you know how to use boring and bored, but does it work the same for stressed and stressing? If these questions have raised serious doubts, then this post is for you. 🙂
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I sometimes have to remind my students I’m not a walking dictionary !! I honestly believe what makes a good teacher is not how many words he knows in the dictionary or whether he knows a given idiomatic expression. I don’t think knowing what “stuck in a rut” means makes you a good or a bad teacher. I firmly believe a good teacher is the one who loves his work and is able to transmit his love for what he does to his students and is able to keep them motivated whenever they want to give up. I have learned that being a good teacher is not teaching to those who want but to those who don’t.
Although initially English is not such a difficult language to learn, it cannot be argued that for some students it is easier than for others. Take for example , a native speaker of Dutch or German and a native speaker of Japanese or Russian. Obviously, German and Russian are closely related to English whereas Japanese or Russian are completely unrelated so I’m sure you can draw your own conclusions in this matter.
Very often students tend to systematically makes mistakes with a given word either in its pronunciation or in the way it collocates with certain prepositions, adjectives …etc and we cannot forget here the issue of false friends which causes so many problems and, trust me, sometimes funny misunderstandings, like in Spanish, the false friend “embarrassed ” and “pregnant”.
To help my students and readers of this blog overcome these difficulties, I have created a new section in this bog called CONFUSING WORDS. I hope it’s helpful!
I sometimes wonder if I get a little too excited about the things I teach. Perphaps , I should tamp down my enthusiasm when I tell my students that so and so is veeerry eeeeasy! I wonder if they are beginning to doubt my sincerity but the truth is that English grammar is very easy to teach/grasp, especially when compared to the Spanish one.
Albert Einstein once said : “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”
Anyway, what I really wanted to ask you is : “Do you really know the difference between Among and Between?”
I bet you’ve been taught, as I was, that the difference between Among and Between is that Between is used when we are talking about two items and Among when we are talking about more than two. Hey , listen , don’t panic, most of the time it works…. but unfortunately not always . The definition is good enough to explain some sentences but then … how do you explain that this sentence below is also grammatically correct?
My house is between the forest, the school and the lake
The thing is that between is normally used when we are talking about two people or two things but it can also be used to refer to three or more clearly separate people or things.
Among is used when talking about people or things in a group, a crowd or a mass of people which we don’t see separately, ie, we don’t have a definite number in mind though clearly more than two
My house is among mountains
Let’s compare these two sentences. Imagine you are going to a party and you cannot decide what to wear.
1.I am trying to decide between the blue shirt, the white shirt or the green shirt
2. I am trying to decide among my shirts
In sentence number 1 I am choosing between a specific number of items
In sentence number 2 I am choosing between an indefinite number of items
Two more examples might help:
There is a lot of disagreement between Germany, Spain and Finland (three specific countries)
There is a lot of disagreement among some European countries (you don’t name them specifically)
Hope it helps!
Although my favourite expression in class is ” It is very easy”, there’s no point in denying English prepositions are hard to learn, if you can ever say you learn them. I don’t know about other languages but Spanish students seem to consistently make mistakes when using prepositions after these two verbs. Let’s study them:
♥TO MARRY AND TO BE/GET MARRIED
Please, marry me !! he said
I married a person I am still in love with
She used to be married to my brother
I got married to my childhood sweetheart
♥ TO DREAM
Last night I dreamt about the exam
I have always dreamt of visiting Japan
She had this romantic dream of changing the world
Hope it helps!! 🙂
A little quiz , perhaps?of
about
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