Student Stumper 33: Is “would” more polite than “could”?

QUESTION: What’s the difference between would and could? ANSWER: This question was posted on my forum, and it began a discussion on modals. I first explored differences in meaning. I listed uses of would, including future in the past (You promised you would tell me!) and habitual past (When I was a child, I would ask [...]

Student Stumper 32: Can TO and FOR both express purpose?

QUESTION: Should I say that a knife is used to cut things or for cutting things? Can both TO and FOR express purpose? ANSWER: This was a question posed by a YouTube viewer. I responded by acknowledging that both forms were possible in the given example. I speculated about differences in context, but I didn’t explore them. [...]

Student Stumper 31: Can abstract nouns be specific?

QUESTION: How can I know if an uncountable noun, which is modified by an adjective, is specific or not? Should I ignore the modifier when deciding the use of the definite article or zero article? ANSWER: This question was recently posted on my YouTube channel. The advanced ELL provided lengthy examples of abstract nouns in context [...]

Student Stumper 30: Is “rather than” a preposition?

Click to listen to my introduction to Student Stumper 30. QUESTION: Is “rather than” a preposition? ANSWER: Good question! Let’s study some of the examples from Student Stumper 29 and see if we can come to a conclusion. First, let’s not confuse rather than with would rather (…than). EXAMPLE 1: She said she‘d rather stay [...]

Student Stumper 29: Rather vs. Rather than

QUESTION: How do we use rather than? ANSWER: To help students understand one piece of grammar, it’s often helpful to compare and contrast it with another. Rather as a single word is an adverb. We use it to express a degree. Usually it lowers the degree of an adjective. For example, if I say she’s rather [...]

Student Stumper 28: Gerunds v. Present Participles

Please click here to listen to my discussion of Student Stumper 28. QUESTION: What are all the ‘-ing’ words in the following sentence? He doesn’t like to waste time sitting around talking and drinking coffee. ANSWER: I know there are some who don’t like using the term “gerund”, but I’m not part of that camp. In my [...]

Student Stumper 27: Embedded Questions

Click here if you’d like to listen to my discussion of Student Stumper 27. QUESTION: What’s an embedded question and how do we use it? ANSWER: These are the questions I’m trying to answer for my YouTube audience. A viewer made this inquiry a while ago, and I promised to address this topic in a [...]

Student Stumper 26: Phonetic Symbols

QUESTION: Why are there different phonetic symbols for the same sounds? Which ones should I learn? ANSWER: First of all,  I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary for students to learn the IPA or any other set of phonetic symbols in order to master English pronunciation. However, I do think that familiarity with the symbols is [...]

Student Stumper 25: Identifying the Uses of “As”

QUESTION: I don’t understand the grammar in the following sentence.  Both paintings have as their focus women from that era amidst their everday lives. Can you break it down for me? ANSWER: This question was posed by a YouTuber who had faith in my ability to make sense of that long sentence. I got as [...]

Student Stumper 24: Causative Verbs

QUESTION: What are causative verbs? Can you give me a list of them? ANSWER: “Causative verbs [...] indicate that some person or thing helps to bring about a new state of affairs” (Biber, Conrad & Leech 108).  In other words, we use a causative verb to show that someone or something somehow causes something to happen. [...]