New grammar points on the 'Back to School Topic' (III)

Hey guys,

I'm back with more grammar points. Here we go!

-REMEMBER: WEAR / WORE / WORN !!!!!!!
-REMEMBER: My uniform was/ my clothes were; education was/ classes were

-When you want to say you would like to do something, remember that the "to infinitive" is obligatory. So Daura, don't say "I would like be back" but "I would like to be back."

-In Spanish you can say "yo recuerdo" and "eso me recuerda" using the same verb (recordar). Not in English. In English you remember, but other people, or things remind you. So Nacho, you should ask other people not to "remind you of your school days," (you wrote "don't remember me my school days") because the memory doesn't stem from you, but it is evoked by other people. And remember that you don't "meet" secondary school or university. You go, you attend, you start... but you don't "meet."

-Hey Idaira! Remember that in the "have to" structure, the only verb in past tense is "have." So you can't say "I only had to wore it;" the correct way to say this is leaving the verb wear in infinitive form: "I only had to wear it."

-Remember that the order of the elements of the sentence when you work with adverbs of frequency changes depending on whether the main verb is "to be" or not. So Noemí, you should say "I was always a good student" instead of "I always was," because adverbs of frequency should be placed after the verb if the verb is "to be."

-Hey José Luis B! At secondary school you study science and humanities subjects or science and arts subjects (not "lyrics," Miqueas :-D), be careful with spelling. You wrote: "my average was a few low for I could to study engineering." Now, remember that the word "few" is either an adjective or a pronoun, so you can't place it before an adjective like "low." Also, be careful with translating subordinate clauses following Spanish grammar - "for I could to" is impossible in English. So the correct version would be: "my average was too low to study engineering."

- Hi Cristina! Be careful with subordinate clauses when they are part of the subject. They make the subject longer and thus you may lose track of the right syntax. You started your comments with the sentence "the first school when I went, it was horrible." You use a subordinate clause to specify the school you refer to, but you make a mistake with the pronoun. The subordinate clause gives you the impression that what you have just written is a complete sentence, but it's only the subject. This means that you can't repeat it by saying "it." To sum up: the correct version is "The first school I went to was horrible." You tend to repeat subjects when using subordinates, like when you say "I had a teacher that she forced me to write" when you mean "I had a teacher who forced me to write." Remember that you expel someone from a place, and your parents did not decide to "change you the school," but rather, they decided to send you to a different school :-) Also, about what the referee (coach?) told you, it was probably "you can train with the team but you will never play a match."

- Hey Juan Pedro! You don't say "professional formation" but "professional/ occupational training." If something scares you, you feel terrified of, not to ("terrified of English").

-Carlos, "decide" and "need" are verbs that take "to infinitive," so you say "I decide to study," not "I decided study" and "I need to learn" not "I need learn." The word "college" usually means university, not "school." You go to primary and secondary school. A Spanish "colegio público" is a "state school" in the UK, not a "public school." This is the same mistake I found in Deli's comments. Again, Carlos, If you use "because" to link two sentences with the same subject, you have to use a pronoun in the second sentence. You should say then: "I study English because it is an unresolved matter for me" (although I don't like very much that "unresolved matter" bit... I'd recommend something like "I study English because I could never learn to speak it properly at school" or something like that). Outside your country is abroad, not "in the foreign."

-Olivia, remember that you use the past continuous to specify that one given action took longer than other/s in the past. So in the sentence "I was a good student and I was doing exercise" there is no such need. The best option is using the past simple in both cases: "I was a good student and I did exercise." Also, when you compare, be careful because structures become more difficult. I think that what you mean when you say "the children are best forms" is "children are better educated today." Deli, comparing, as I say, is not easy in English. In your sentence "there are many possibilities for the students now than fifteen years ago" I think you used "many" instead of "more." The correct version would be: "there are more possibilities for the students now than fifteen years ago."

-Deli, be careful with difficult structures. To say what I understand you mean when you write "other thing is if we want to use them" I think you need elements you haven't seen in class yet. The best solution I can give you is to try to adapt what you want to say to what you can say now. The correct version of that sentence would be: Whether we are willing to make the best of these advantages or not is an entirely different matter."