English Language Learners

Theta30

17:45

@WendiKidd ELL is quite interesting and many of those who question have a good control of grammar and English knowledge, which surprises me

Sudhir

Hi @Theta30

Theta30

hi

Sudhir

18:01

@Theta30: I've one doubt

I never seen/saw such an amazing video?

Cerberus

Hi!

Sudhir, I told you you needed have there: you can't use seen like that without have.

Sudhir

Thanks

Cerberus

stern teacher's look

Sudhir

@Cerberus: Please give that book.

introductory grammar book

Cerberus

I don't have it.

Go to your local library and see what they have? Ask the librarian.

Sudhir

18:07

OK

I'm not in the school.

I'm preparing for job.

Cerberus

You don't have a library in your town or nearby?

Sudhir

No

Cerberus

Hmm.

Then buy one second-hand off Ebay or Amazon?

Sudhir

How much it costs?

Cerberus

Or some local second-hand book-store website?

I don't know, you could probably find something for € 10 or so?

It's OK if the book is old.

Actually, you can also learn basic grammar online.

For free. There are tons of websites.

Sudhir

18:10

it'll cost me less if I buy old hand.

Cerberus

Second hand, yes.

learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/ar/english-grammar

You could try going through the grammar lessons and exercises here.

Sudhir

Thanks a ton.

Cerberus

Of course it will be a lot of work, but don't be discouraged: there are many things you will already know.

Like "you can't leave out the subject pronoun in an English sentence". That's is in the first lessons about pronouns.

Sudhir

Why I would get discouraged?

Cerberus

I don't know? Because it is a lot of work to go through everything?

Sudhir

18:15

Oh! I'm a workaholic.

I think its one of the prominent site for English learners.

Cerberus

The British Council is the network of cultural "embassies" of the British government around the world.

So their lessons can't be too bad, although it is possible that there are other, better sites around the web. I don't know.

Sudhir

Ok

I talk to you guys to improve my English.

Being a non-speaker of English, I faced many difficulties in learning it.

Cerberus

Learning a new language is never easy!

Sudhir

So you're native speaker of English?

Cerberus

A combination of immersion (talking and listening to people, and writing + reading good English) and grammar lessons is the best way to advance, I think.

Nope.

Sudhir

18:28

But you articulation is nice.

I suspect you'd have a great knowledge in it.

Cerberus

Thanks.

Sudhir

I'm native speaker of Hindi.

Cerberus

I know. And your English is 1000 x better than my Hindi.

Sudhir

Ha ha

funny

I'm working hard to improve my English.

I won't get good and respected job.

ok, Bye

Its too late in India.

Going to sleep.

Was a nice conversation with you.

Cerberus

18:50

Bye!

WendiKidd

21:26

@Cerberus You around?

:)

WendiKidd

22:01

Come on, guys! I'm going to be out of the country for a week starting Tuesday, I want to talk to you guys before I go but no one's in chat ;) And I think I'll be busy with packing and stuff tomorrow so.... casts magic spell so that people come talk to me ;)

It seems like chat is either overflowing with people or completely dead at any given time. I have yet to work out this mystery in my mind.

WendiKidd

22:46

@snailplane Hi! : D

Anonymous

Hello! :-)

Anonymous

I just put a star on this chat room so I can automatically rejoin it.

WendiKidd

What are you up to? Copy/pasting onions? ;)

Ooh, I didn't even know you could do that

looks for star

Neat! I just did that too :)

Anonymous

The star favorites it. I'm not sure exactly what that does, but...

Anonymous

I was just in the Japanese room, and I saw a thing over at the right

Anonymous

22:47

saying "click here to automatically rejoin your favorite rooms"!

WendiKidd

But it becomes shiny and gold, which makes everything better ;)

Anonymous

Or something like that.

Anonymous

So I clicked it, but I didn't end up here!!!

Anonymous

I had to fix that.

Anonymous

Woo hoo!

WendiKidd

22:48

Haha, yes of course! This is the best chat room of all, of course ;)

I'm going out of town for a week starting Tuesday, and I am going to miss this site like crazy

Anonymous

Stack Exchange is really addictive.

WendiKidd

I might have some time to pop in and check on it periodically, though

Yes, it is!

Plus we have a really great community here :)

@snailplane So the other day something was tagged as "grammer". I had far too much fun deleting that tag and fixing it with "grammar" ;)

I was like, okay, only 1 question tagged wrong, good

Anonymous

Hehe! I saw that one.

Anonymous

I don't remember why I didn't change it.

Anonymous

Probably I wasn't sure what else to tag it with, so I figured someone else would be retagging it.

Anonymous

22:51

That is, unless you're talking about an old question that you retagged, in which case, I probably saw a different one.

Anonymous

I haven't been going through old questions like you!

Anonymous

I bet people have entered grammer a few times, and it just gets corrected each time right away.

WendiKidd

Haha, yes, I want all the old questions to be tagged properly before there are so many questions it becomes unmanageable! I don't remember if it was an old question or not where I saw the tag, but now I'm going to go make sure the tag hasn't cropped up again.

(Maybe we should recommend it for burnination ;))

Anonymous

What is burnination?

WendiKidd

It's what they call it on meta.SO when you make a post saying "I think this tag should never be used ever ever again because it's really bad" and the dev team says "Okay, we'll add some code so that no one can EVER use this tag again."

So that it's impossible to ever be used

Anonymous

22:53

Wow!

WendiKidd

Yes, the great powers of THE BURNINATE!

:D

Anonymous

I don't know if this is a proper use of synonyms or not, but you could make grammer a synonym of grammar, so if someone enters "grammer" it automatically fixes it.

Anonymous

And if someone searches for "grammer" it points them to the correct tag.

Anonymous

If it's a really common error, it might be helpful, but I don't know if that's how synonyms are supposed to be used.

WendiKidd

Hmmm. That's a good idea. Pro: If someone searches for the wrong spelling, they get what they wanted anyway. Con: Encourages misspelling and isn't technically a synonym. That would be a good meta discussion, you should start it!

Regarding burnination, there's a burninate-request tag on MSO. Example question:

5

Q: Burninate [open]?

The open tag is hopelessly vague; based on the tagged questions I currently see, it can refer to: Accessing files in any number of languages. In some languages, there are better terms for this (e.g, stdio). In others, it's a basic task that shouldn't need its own tag. Opening windows, applicati...

:D

(@snailplane. I am hopeless at remembering to use @ mentions in chat!)

Hi @Theta30

!

Anonymous

22:58

The thing I like about the @ is that you can click the arrow to the right of someone's message and respond to it, and it links the message and the reply. That helps a lot with figuring out what someone's talking about when they respond way later than the original message.

Anonymous

@WendiKidd Like this sort of message, where it shows up with a colon and some numbers while I'm typing it, but after I hit enter, it's displayed as @WendiKidd!

Anonymous

That's the thing I like best about the SE chat.

Anonymous

Other than that, I don't use them way too much.

WendiKidd

@snailplane That. Is. So. Cool.

@.@

Anonymous

:-D

WendiKidd

23:00

I'd pretty much never used chat before ELL, so I'm still getting used to it. But that is such a neat trick!

Anonymous

Uh oh! Grammer alert.

Anonymous

-1

A: "by far" vs. "much"

The first example has incorrect grammer. Maybe you mean Kristina is the most imaginative of them all. or Kristina is pretty much the most imaginative of them all. The second example is correct. According to these examples alone, you cannot know if Kristina or Monica is actually mor...

WendiKidd

@snailplane Noooooooooooo! puts on superhero cape and goes to fix

@snailplane I see your "grammer" alert and raise you a closevote alert:

0

Q: Please help me define the purpose of the unspecified pronouns in the list

fellows, I made a list for to help myself to see which most common pronouns exist and what their purposes are. The list is made up in a Google Docs spreadsheet, which you can edit and comment instantly along with other users. For personal pronouns I think I have fill all their purposes in th...

pronouns

Hopefully the comment I left is helpful enough? Do you think it explains it properly?

(I still have 9 minutes to edit if not ;))

Anonymous

I put a little triangle next to your comment!

WendiKidd

@snailplane :D Thanks!!

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English Language Learners