due to, because of, thanks to?

[Molly]

[Alan]

Hi Molly,

I accept your criticism but it was a riposte to this obsession with rushing to Dolly Google and her like as if they were the final arbiter on matters of language whereas in fact they simply record. By widening the scope to reading and listening the learner can see by the context the use of the word(s) on a greater scale and hear it/them from the lips of different speakers.

Alan
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[Molly]

I suppose you'd then say the same of this obsession with rushing to Daddy Grammar Book, Mummy English Test sites and Brother/Sister Native-speaker as they were the final arbiters on matters of language, right? :wink:

So please tell us what value and use you think corpora (or do you prefer the word "corpuses"?) can have in the world of ESL.

[Yankee]

[Molly]

[Nessie]

Hi everybody,

I'd like to say that as a non-native learner, I highly appreciate all your advice :) After studying English for a certain time, I've realized that nothing is absolute,and so are languages. :)

To Amy:
Hi Amy,
Here in my country, there are just multiple choice tests for students (there used to be test of other kinds, but they have all been abrogated now), and so our teachers here often teach us some "tips" for those MCQ.(Those MCQ given by non-native test-makers may sometimes be quite odd, like many test questions I've posted here and then get this question from many teachers: "Where did you get this question?" :P) But if that "tip" to distinguish between "due to" and "because of" is not always right, then which is the correct answers? It seems that both phrases are ok...

To Molly:
Hi Molly,
Could you please tell me what "CAE" mean? Is it another corpus?
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:(... something we never have again, I know... I guess I really really know.. :(

Sorry seems to be the hardest word...

[Ralf]

Dear language learners,

Listen to uncle Jamie, auntie Amy and grandpa Alan. That'll help you more than any numb, dumb and deaf corpus. If you should however feel like learning a computer language, learn the rules by heart.
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Test of English as a Foreign Language
TOEFL Preparation & TOEFL Vocabulary
Learn more: How to Become an English Teacher

[Molly]

[Molly]

Hi Molly,
Could you please tell me what "CAE" mean? Is it another corpus?

Yes, it is.

Here's the link:

http://www.americancorpus.org/

"In February 2008 I placed online a 360+ million word corpus of American English. This is the only large-scale corpus of American English, and it is in fact the largest (and hopefully most useful) structured corpus of any language freely available on the web. The corpus contains twenty million words in each year from 1990 to the present, with four million words each year in the five genres of spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic. Best of all, the corpus will be continually updated -- 20 million words each year -- from this point on."

It's made up from the utterances of people just like "Uncle Jamie, Auntie Amy and Grandpa Alan". :wink:

[Nessie]

I myself think English learners should learn from many sources, and of course, they should know how to select which is correct and which is not. Read more and listen more and we'll see more how tiny we are ;) (I'm refering to us learners, of course :P)

By the way, I find "Uncle Jamie, Auntie Amy and Grandpa Alan" so sweet and intimate :) :P ;) Do you mind if I address you that way? ;)
(And how about Auntie Molly, Uncle Torsten, Uncle P, etc.?) :P ;)

P.S: To those who think I'm toady: I'm simply not, this way of addressing people you love is quite (or extremely) common in my culture. I just wonder if it is ok in Western culture... ;)
_________________
:(... something we never have again, I know... I guess I really really know.. :(

Sorry seems to be the hardest word...

[Molly]

[Ralf]

[Molly]

It's got me to where I am, which, compared with your use of English, seems a good place.

[Lost_Soul]

[Ralf]

Everybody makes mistakes, and I make mistakes because I'm sloppy.

Molly points to "too much native speaker intuition", because she keeps making mistakes she can't avoid. If you criticise her, she bends some corpus or other her way to support her point. If you or Alan or Torsten or anybody makes a mistake, she lifts her disparaging fingers to distract from her own shortcomings.

I would argue that this attitude is both a sign of weakness and ignorance. But it keeps her busy using the English language, and on the long run she'll improve her writing skills.
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Test of English as a Foreign Language
TOEFL Preparation & TOEFL Vocabulary
Learn more: How to Become an English Teacher