The English Language

[Daisy]

Sometimes I get a mental block about English Language - mostly spelling but sometimes something silly, like do I want the word 'bear' or 'bare'!!

I've just had one of those senior moments and Googling brought up UsingEnglish.com

http://www.usingenglish.com/

It's really aimed at people speaking English as a foreign langugage, but I found it really useful and helpful.

[Oma]

I will have look at that Daisy I make no bones about how bad a speller I am or what one to use like there and their and so on so it will come in handy for me too 😀

[Bizzy Lizzy]

What a useful site Daisy. I am never sure about adjectives, adverbs, verbs, past participles etc. I don't think I paid enough attention during English lessons somehow.

[Gemini]

Very useful! Thank you Daisy

[Elisi]

Super Daisy! I've bookmarked it now X

[Daisy]

By the way - I wasn't suggesting anybody needed this site, it was just that I found it interesting. Sometimes I read items on grammar and am amazed that I did that stuff at school, because I have completely forgotten it all! But the explanations on here were very clear.

[Libra Gran]

Not on your own Oma I struggle with certain words or use the wrong word for what I'm trying to express.

[Sum1Ls]

That's a good one! Mind you, although I have no problems with homophones or homonyms my grasp of maths is dire. I don't suppose you have a good site for that.....

[Daisy]

Sum1 - I've done a bit of Googling, and discarded Mathematics for the Non-Mathmatician ( interesting from a philosophical point of view but not easily accessible as far as I could see!), but this old BBC site looked good for practical things like 'how do I calculate a taxi fair' or 'how much paint to I need for a room of a given size' which are the kind of maths I find I could do with. So when life is a bit quieter (!) I'm going to see if I can improve my maths. I actually enjoyed geometry and algebra at school but my basic primary school arithmetic let me down all the time!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/learning/subjects/maths.shtml

[Gemini]

My mind just sort of clouds over where maths is concerned. Rather like when my mum tried to teach me to knit as a child!

[Shemadee]

I used to really hate and dread maths. I even had the temerity to ask if I could drop it which brought a whole load of trouble down on my head. Maths teachers used to think if you didn't understand first time around taking you to the front of the class and shouting would help!

[Daisy]

I used to really hate and dread maths. I even had the temerity to ask if I could drop it which brought a whole load of trouble down on my head. Maths teachers used to think if you didn't understand first time around taking you to the front of the class and shouting would help!

.... Or getting sent out of the class (in tears) to learn tables sitting on the stairs. This wasn't multiplication tables, but things like how many acres make a firkin or something equally un-useful! We'd never done tables like this in primary school and my first form Maths teacher at the Grammar school didn't believe me when I told her - she called me a liar! Unfortunately there were no other girls from my old school to back me up, and I was just considered to be lazy and stupid as well as untruthful! So not only was I too upset to learn anything sitting on the stairs, I also missed what I could have been learning in the classroom, then couldn't do the homework, then got into trouble for not trying. Is it any wonder I grew to hate arithmetic lessons. It never occurred to the teacher that if I was ok at geometry and algebra (which I was) I might be telling the truth about not having done tables before!

Ironically, one year I had to teach Business Calculations to a group of YTS students at a college I worked in. I nearly fell over laughing when the head of department asked me to do it!

[Sum1Ls]

Not too dissimilar from my experience Daisy, except that I was supposed to learn tables at primary school but I could never understand why.

I'm convinced the problem was bad teaching. One example: I could never understand why, when a half was multiplied by a third, the answer was smaller than either of them. Then, when I was 37, a mathematician friend explained that 1/2 X 1/3 means half of a third. The X sign didn't means groups of, as I had been taught, but 'of'. Suddenly it made sense that the answer was 1/6. That is 'A half of a third is a sixth'. If I had been really clever I would have worked that out, but most of us need good clear teaching. I think it's a lot better these days though. Like Daisy I could do geometry because I could see it, but algebra was a very X book to me.

[Daisy]

Sum1 - that's interesting that the terminology is what confused you. As soon as it was explained in precise English you understood it.

I could never understand why the answer to 3 x 0 was 0. If you had 3 apples and multiplied them by 0, you didn't destroy the apples so, so surely the answer was 3, not 0. Nobody told me that numbers can be theoretical, not actual!!!

[Glammanana]

Daisy my thoughts exactly I thought I was the only person to think that way !! With regards to English Language I did do well but always had problems with words ending in "ely" or "ly" I could never remember if you added an "e" or left it out I still have that problem now lol.