NEW BLOG

There is a new blog site for this blog: English Skills Blog. It has all of the old features plus a lot of new ones. Check it out!

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

MODULE 1 AND ASSIGNMENT 1

Complete either the telephone quiz or the alternative assignment. If you want to practice for the telephone quiz, use Wimba.

Check out the Present Progressive verb tense with the help of Road Runner Grammar. And here's another link for the Simple Past.

Please post any questions that you have.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Veronica,

I was wondering if you could explain, what is the difference in meaning between verbs lay and lie?
Does the chicken lay or lie an egg? I am sure we all can use some help on this one.

Thank You Irena

Veronica Baig said...

"Lay" is a transitive verb--it must have a direct object, so chickens lay eggs. "Lie", however, is an intransitive verb--it does not have a direct object, but it may have an indirect object. For that reason a chicken cannot "lie" an egg, but an egg may lie in a nest.

Anonymous said...

For a sentence like:"My earliest memory is of MOVING"
Would moving count as past progressive or present progressive?

Veronica Baig said...

Hi Ed:
Neither! In this situation,moving" is a gerund. It looks something
like a verb but is actually a noun. This is a common mistake, but I
think part of the confusion in this sentence is because you have the
main verb "is". When you think about this, however, you will see that if it were a progressive tense, then "move" would be the main verb, e.g. He is moving to a new place (pres. prog); He moves to a new place today(Simple pres.). A quick check of whether a word is a noun is to try to replace it with the word "something"--if you can do this, you have a noun!

winsrock said...

Hi everyone,

Please check if I'm on track with sent. example from the book:

1."Before I came here, I had never bought anything from a vending machine."

First: bought
Second: came

2."Janet has worn her new blue dress only once since she bought it."
First: worn (happened once at unspecified time)
Second: bought (up to now)

Thanks,
winsrock

Veronica Baig said...

Hi Winston:

Those sentences and verb tenses look good!