Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Reported Speech Notes and Exercises--External Website

Notes and Exercises

To do the practice exercises do not click on the PDF files.  You will have to click on the links at the end of each grammar note section and copy and paste the exercises into a google document or a word document.  You can then type your answers in.

Reported Speech Quiz--External Link

Quiz

Monday, February 13, 2012

Discursive Essay

You are going to write a discursive essay that will be due on Monday Feb. 20th.

Here are some links that will explain what a discursive essay is:

http://custom-writing.org/blog/writing-tips/free-essay-writing-tips/228.html

http://www.ehow.com/how_5107873_write-discursive-essay.html

http://www.jamesabela.co.uk/exams/discursiveessays.pdf

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Quick Participle Grammar Notes

Participles - Present and Past – Verbs Ending in “ing” and “ed”

• Present participles end in “ING” (interesting)
• Past participles end in “ED” (interested)


Uses:

1. When present participles (ing) are used like adjectives or adverbs, they are ACTIVE in meaning:
 Modern art is interesting.
 Pour boiling water onto the pasta.
 She sat in the corner crying.

2. When past participles (ed) are usled like adjectives or adverbs, they are passive in meaning.
 I am interested in modern art.
 Look at that broken doll.
 He sat in his chair, filled with sadness at his mother’s funeral.

3. Participles used after a noun act like a relative clause.
I met a woman riding a donkey. (=who was riding …)
The car stolen in the night was later found. (=that was stolen…)

4. Participles used as adverbs can also describe:

• Two actions happening at the same time -- She sat by the fire reading a book.

• Two actions that happen one after another – Opening his case, he took out a gun.

Note: If it is important to show that the first action is completed before the second action begins, we use the perfect participle – (having had, having finished)
Having finished lunch, we set off on our journey.
Having had a shower, she got dressed.

• Two actions that happen BECAUSE of another.—Being tired, he went to bed early last night.

5. Many verbs are followed by “ing” forms:
I spent the holiday reading.
Don’t waste time thinking about the past.
Let’s go swimming.
He keeps asking me to go out on a date.

Relative Clause exercise

Here is a practice exercise for relative clauses.

Vancouver Island

https://docs.google.com/a/canada-english.com/document/d/19ithS7k46MoVb1DGCvvbohuSzFlw9qM0abzlGDyiP-k/edit?hl=en_US