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Poetry and Nasty Questions

Dear Ana Paula, and all our other readers,

My goodness, you are in a poetic mood today, aren’t you? Your descriptions of the weather in the afternoon, and the Pinacoteca, were wonderful. I’m particularly impressed that you used the word ‘nuance’. I’ve been teaching English for about ten years, and I can honestly say that until today I had never seen the word ‘nuance’ in any student’s writing. I take my hat off to you!

I’m sorry to say that I’ve never been to South America, but someday I will, and when I’m in São Paolo, I’ll make sure I visit the Pinacoteca. Personally, when I have a free afternoon in the summer and I just want to loaf around, I often go to an area of London called the South Bank. It’s called the South Bank because it’s on the south bank of the river Thames, and it’s the home of some of London’s most important arts venues. I like to browse at the second-hand book stalls, and then to sit at a café beside the river and sip my coffee (I love coffee almost as much as I love books), and then perhaps to go and watch an obscure old movie at the National Film Theatre. In the evening, after the sun goes down, you can stroll beside the river and look at the beautiful lights of central London. Ah, just thinking about it makes me want to go back there… Maybe I’ll go this evening.

However, before I go out and enjoy this beautiful evening, I have to fulfill my promise and ask you some difficult questions. As usual, I read your last blog carefully, looking for grammatical mistakes which I could discuss, and as usual it was quite difficult to find any. However, I did notice these two sentences:

‘The green colour of the grass becomes more vivid when starts to rain.’

‘Sometimes is really good to find yourself alone.’

As you know, sentences in English are made of clauses. Some sentences have only one clause, like this:

‘Alex likes coffee.’

Some sentences have two or more clauses. For example:

‘Alex likes tea, but he prefers coffee.’

A clause is always made of a subject, plus a ‘main verb’, and sometimes some other information. For example, in this sentence:

‘Alex likes coffee.’

The main verb in this sentence is likes, and the subject is Alex (who likes coffee? Alex likes coffee).

Are you with me so far? Good. Now let’s look again at one of the sentences from your last blog:

‘The green colour of the grass becomes more vivid when starts to rain.’

There are two clauses in this sentence. The first clause has a subject (‘the green colour of grass’) and a main verb (‘becomes’), so there’s no problem there. However, the second clause is problematic. There’s a main verb in the second clause (‘starts’) but this verb doesn’t have a subject.

There’s a similar problem in the second sentence:

‘Sometimes is really good to find yourself alone.’

This is a one-clause sentence, but the main verb (‘is’) doesn’t have a subject either.

Can you find a way to fix these sentences, so that the main verbs have subjects? In fact it’s very easy, you simply have to add one extra word to each sentence. To make it even easier, I’ll show you where the missing word should go:

‘The green colour of the grass becomes more vivid when _____ starts to rain.’

‘Sometimes _____ is really good to find yourself alone.’

There, those questions aren’t so nasty, are they?

Good luck!

Alex

Long ago, when people in Britain normally wore hats, you could show respect for someone by taking off your hat. Of course, we no longer do this, but we can still say ’I take my hat off to you’ if we want to express respect for someone in a slightly old-fashioned way.

The phrasal verb ‘to loaf around’ means to spend your time being lazy and doing nothing in particular.

Of course, a bank is a big building or institution that deals with money, but it also means the land at the side of a river.

A venue is simply the place where something happens. Art galleries, theatres, and cinemas are example of arts venues, because art exhibitions, plays, and movies happen there.

To browse is to look at things which are for sale, without really wanting to buy anything.

If we describe something as obscure, this means that very few people know about this thing. I generally don’t like big, popular, Hollywood movies, I prefer obscure old movies.

To stroll is to walk in a slow and relaxed way.

Nuance is an excellent word. If you want to know what it means, go and ask Ana Paula – she used it, not me!

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