We Are TESLian

Wednesday, May 1, 2013

NON-FINITE CLAUSE

Assalamualaikum and hello everyone...

Today, we'll continue our topic with NON-FINITE CLAUSE :)

Non-finite verb

1. Bare infinitive    ( play)
2. 'To' infinitive      ( to play )
3. '-ing' infinitive     ( playing )    
4. 'ed' infinitive       ( played )

* do not carry any tense

Non-finite clause

- Dependent / subordinate clause / cannot stand alone / need to depend on main clause
- Example :
                 All I did was hit him on the head ( bare infinitive )

- categories of non-finite :
  1. present participle
  2. past participle
  3. full infinitive
  4. bare infinitive

- non-finite with subject
  > subject placed before the participle or infinitive
  > example :
                                           NF
                     The house sold at last, we were able to start planning to move out
                      (subject)    PP

- Functions of non-finite clause

  } As subject
     : running a small business is difficult

} As subject complement
   : her first job was selling computers 

Thats all for the non finite clause.

But, hey, wait a minute! i got something to show..lets check it out...



                                      This video is about finite and non finite verbs..



I try to find a video about our topic, NON-FINITE CLAUSE.. actually I found it but the picture do not seem very clear. Sorry :)



                                 

Saturday, April 27, 2013

SATURDAY NIGHT SPECIAL

Title : Wreck-It Ralph




Synopsis :

Arcade-game character Wreck-It Ralph is tired of always being the "bad guy" and losing to his "good guy" opponent, Fix-It Felix. Finally, after decades of seeing all the glory go to Felix, Ralph decides to take matters into his own hands. He sets off on a game-hopping trip to prove that he has what it takes to be a hero. However, while on his quest, Ralph accidentally unleashes a deadly enemy that threatens the entire arcade.

FINITE CLAUSE

IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, THE MOST BENEFICENT, THE MOST MERCIFUL

Assalamualaikum readers =)

Today, I'm going to discuss about Finite Clause

Finite Clause
-A clause that contain a finite verb.
-Can stand on its own ; independent clause
- But also can be dependent clause

Definition of Finite Verb
- A form of a verb that shows agreement with a subject and is marked for tense.
- This verb is usually the main verb of a clause or sentence and can change according to the noun ( person and the number of subject )
- A verb that does not need object (intransitive verb )


See how the verb play changes with the person and the number of its subject. When the subject is in the third person singular, that is he, she, it, the verb changes to plays. When the subject is in the first or singular person, that is I or you and in the plural that is we, you, they, it does not change the verb play. Every sentence must have a finite verb, we cannot write a sentence without using a finite verb.

More examples for finite verb :

  • They come here every day ( come = finite verb )
  • They came here yesterday ( 3rd person plural and past tense )
  • She comes here every day. ( 3rd person singular and present tense )











Saturday, April 20, 2013

SATURDAY NIGHT SPECIAL

Title : Paranorman



Paranorman - The best home videos are here

Synopsis :

Eleven-year-old Norman Babcock is a young misfit with a remarkable gift: He sees dead people. Although Norman's clairvoyance allows him the unique opportunity to enjoy the company of his beloved grandmother long after she has ceased to be, it also drives his frustrated father Perry and popularity-obsessed sister Courtney up the wall at home and makes him the target of dim-witted bully Alvin at school. His only friend is portly Neil, who isn't exactly a beacon of coolness. When Norman's deceased uncle Prenderghast, a local pariah, warns the young boy that he must save their small town of Blithe Hollow from a witch's curse that has plagued the area for centuries, the young creature-feature addict isn't entirely sure how to respond -- that is, until the sky turns red, the clouds start to swirl, and the dead rise up from their graves. Now, as a terrified mob takes to the streets with torches in hand, it's up to Norman, Courtney, Alvin, Neil, and Neil's older brother Mitch to put things right, even if it means confronting the 300-year-old curse that has haunted Blithe Hollow ever since the notorious witch hunts of the 18th century.

Tuesday, April 9, 2013

OBJECT COMPLEMENT

  IN THE NAME OF ALLAH, THE MOST BENEFICENT, THE MOST MERCIFUL

Assalamualaikum everyone (^_^)

Today, I will share with all of you about "Object Complement".

Definition of object ---> A word or group of words, functioning as a noun or a pronoun, that is influenced by a verb (direct object), a verbal (indirect object), or a preposition (object of a preposition).

Definition of complement ---> In grammar, a word that completes the predicate in a sentence.Two kinds of complement are subject complement (which follow the verb be and other linking verbs ) and object complements (which follow a direct object).

Object Complement
-An object complement always follows the direct object and either renames or describes the direct object. Consider this sentence :
    
      She named her daughter Apple

As you can see,the verb above is named. To find the subject, ask, 'Who or what named?'The answer is she, so she is the subject. Now ask, 'Whom or what did she name?' She named the baby,so the baby is the direct object. Any word that following the direct object that renames or describes the direct object is object complement. She named the baby Apple, so Apple is the object complement.

Below, I give more examples of object complement in the sentence.


Examples :



Bad TV habits can make a person lazy
                                                            DO     OC

The judges declared Kristi the winner of the skating competition 
                               DO            OC

          

My  little sister gleefully painted the wall pink
                                                DO      OC


          Now, we continue to Direct and Indirect Object.
  1. Direct object---> noun,pronoun or noun clause in a sentence that receives the action of a transitive verb (a verb that takes an object). If you can identify the subject and verb in a sentence, then finding the direct object-if one exist-is easy.Just remember this simple formula :
      
       Subject + Verb + what? or who? = Direct object

    Here are some examples of the formula in action

       Alia and Mariana played netball.


       Alia and Mariana = subjects ; played = verb. Alia and Mariana played what?
       Netball = direct object

       Alia pushed Mariana in purpose.

       Alia = subject; pushed = verb. Alia pushed who? Mariana = direct object


    Indirect Object---> An indirect object precedes the direct object and tells to whom or for whom the action of the verb is done and who is receiving the direct object. For an indirect object to appear, a sentence must first have a direct object.
    When someone [or something] gets the direct object , that word is the indirect object.Look at this examples


    Max built his granddaughter a sandcastle on the beach.

    Max = subject;built = verb. Max built what? Sandcastle = direct object. Who got the sandcastle? Granddaughter = indirect object.

    To explain the broken lamp, we told Mom a lie.

    We = subject;told = verb. We told what? Lie = direct object.Who got the lie? Mom = direct object


    Sometimes, the indirect object will occur in a prepostional phrase beginning with to or for. Read these two sentences:

    Ali gave Linda the books.

    Ali gave the books to Linda


    In both sentences, Linda (the indirect object) gets the books (direct object)


    So, that's all from me. I hope this entry will help all of you a little bit about Object Complement  (^_~)

Saturday, March 23, 2013

VERB PHRASE


Purpose :

To be able to identify verb phrases in sentences.

The Idea :

As we have learn any languages, do you realize that in the sentences there are several forms of words connected to each other in order to form a complete sentence that you have been using through out your beautiful life. No? Yeah we are in the same boat my friend. The thing is that in a sentence, they should be at least a subject (Noun Phrase) and a predicate (mostly Verb Phrase). In this post we are going to take a dip on Verb Phrase.

Explanation :

Verb Phrase is the combination of the words Verb and Phrase. As we have done earlier, Verbs are doing words that demonstrate action such as sing, jump, and crawl. It can also serve as a link between the subject of the verb and information about that subject. Usually for this function the sentence is rather descriptive. To cut it short, if you wanted to show activities that can be done, active verbs are used, while linking verbs are used to describe conditions. Here are one quick example :


Haha, confused? No? Good. In the above examples the verbs that we are going to use are smells & appears. Under the Active column, both verbs act as doing words to support what are the action the Nouns. Whereas, the verbs changes it roles under the Linking column as they both are are used to give description of The wet dog & Tony. Got it now? Splendid. Now our work shall be lighten a bit.

We move on to Verb Phrase then. Verb Phrase takes the Verbs into some sort of another level. Hmm if I'm not mistaken the formulae that usually being used for it would be :


Tutorial :

The question is 'How to identify a Verb Phrase in a sentence?'. Well it is quite simple actually. Let's follow these steps that we are going to show you.

  1. Have your self a complete sentence. (Remember a complete sentence consists of a Subject & Predicate)
  2. Identify the main verb for the sentence.

  3. Wallah, you have found yourself a Verb Phrase.

Following are some verb phrase examples where the verb phrase is the predicate of a sentence. In this case, the verb phrase consists of the main verb plus any auxiliary, or helping, verbs.
  1. She was walking quickly to the mall.
  2. He should wait before going swimming.
  3. Those girls are not trying very hard.
  4. Ted might eat the cake.
  5. You must go right now.
  6. You can’t eat that!
  7. My mother is fixing us some dinner.
  8. Words were spoken.
  9. These cards may be worth hundreds of dollars!
  10. You have woken up everyone in the neighborhood.

The above is just a simple way to search for a simple Verb Phrase. However there are others that are used to scan for a more complex sentences. Don't worry about it though, we need not rushing around to learn everything in one day. It won't give you any / little benefit to you.

Relaxed Mode :

Woo Hoo we have done with today lesson. It's time to listen to some music!!!



Let's practice our oral yeah! Practice makes perfect.

NOUN PHRASE

Today, we will learn about noun phrase. Before I explain in detail about noun phrase, lets hear my favorite song. 

Ok, maybe it not a new song and I still remenber that the first time I heard this song is when I was 12 years old. It doesn't matter because I want you to do some exercise with that video.

Ok, back to our main discussion, NOUN PHRASE. What is noun phrase actually? How can we identify noun phrase? Here are some note for you.

- A noun phrase is a group of words that does the work of a noun. A noun phrase is either a pronoun or any group of words that can be replaced by pronoun.
Example : 

kitten

The picture above is a picture of a kitten. So a kitten will be the head of a noun phrase. Why??
Because we are talking about the kitten. It will be the main topic in our sentence. 

Now, how can we described that kitten?
- cute, white, blue eyes, wearing hat on it head, lying at a pink carpet.. right??

So, we can make many sentence from that. Let make an easy sentence.
> The kitten is wearing hat on it head. 
                                    Kitten- the head
                                    wearing hat on it head-post modifier

> The cute,white, blue eyes kitten is wearing hat on it head.
Now the sentence become longer but remember, we still talking about the kitten. So the kitten still became the head.
                                    Kitten - the head
                                    Cute, white, blue eyes - pre-modifier
                                    wearing hat on it head - post modifier

For your information, any word that describe the kitten and it come before the head noun, it is call pre modifier and if it come after the head noun, it is call post modifier.


Now can you find any noun phrase in the video above ;)







Saturday, March 16, 2013

Saturday, March 9, 2013

PHRASE & CLAUSE

Phrase and clause are group of related verbs that serve of building block of sentence of a larger scale than parts of speech.

So, what are the differences between phrase and clause? Let's take a look at their definition and examples.

- A phrase is a group of words that acts as a particular part of speech or part of a sentence but doesn't have a verb and its subject. There are many types of phrase :

1. Noun phrase : name of person, thing or idea
    example - my old English (teacher) was American.

2. Verb phrase : express action or state of being
    example - He is eating Domino pizza.

3. Prepositional phrase : adjective or adverb in a sentence
    example - he is lying in the bed

4. Adjective phrase : modify a noun or pronoun
   example -  the girl with red hair is my sister.

5. Adverb phrase : function as adverb in a sentence
    example - he returned in a short while.


- Clause is used as a particular part of speech or part of a sentence ; however, unlike phrase, a clause has a verb and its subject.


  • Clause can be divided into ------> independent clause
                                                   ------> subordinate clause ( dependent clause )

Independent clause
# a group of work that has a verb and its subject.
# can stand alone as a sentence.
#example : the white index card ( subject ) fell ( verb ) to the floor.

Subordinate clause (dependent clause )
~ has a verb and subject but can't stand alone as a sentence.
~ example : He had just alphabetized the cards when they fell on the floor and scattered everything.
               






Sunday, March 3, 2013

FIRST FLIGHT

Purpose :

Initial review of the writers.

The Idea :

Greetings everybody. Nice to see you guys again in this semester. Indeed it has been quite a long time since our last post in Foundation English Class huh. Well not to worry we shall be glued again this time around in this our new episodes of StRuCtuReS iN CoNtExT Class!!! Haha. For your information the posts that are going to be written in this blog shall be from three different individuals, working as a team to give you guys the readers our own reflection (haha you need to see it from our point of view this time) regarding our StRuCtuReS iN CoNtExT Class :). Without further ado let's meet with the writers...

Explanation :

Below are the three trainee writers to be for this blog :



Name : Nurul Fatihah Kamsan (aka Ana Lulu)
Origin : Terengganu

Are you eager to know who's feet are that? Well you'll have to wait for it to be revealed.





Name : Azilah Mukhtar (aka Azilah)
Origin : Sabah

I guess she's really love anime. But what's with that sad face?





Name : Ahmad Zaki Osman (aka Zaki)
Origin : Kedah

First impression, don't fall with that calm face!








Hmm, I think that they should describe more about themselves don't you agree. Not to worry we shall get know them more through out their journey in this blog.

Relax Mode :

I need something to be refreshed. Aha why don't we just watch the music video below.



Be part of it won't hurt :)