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Language tip of the week: attend
Posted by Liz Potter on August 28, 2014In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. These tips are usually based on areas of English which learners find difficult, e.g. spelling, grammar, collocation, synonyms, etc.
This week’s language tip helps with using the patterns that follow the verb attend. When attend means ‘to be present at an event or activity’, it is not used with the prepositions to or at. It is simply followed by a direct object:
✗ You go to university,
attend to classes, but learn nothing about the real world.
✓ You go to university, attend classes, but learn nothing about the real world.
✗ They are able toattend atimportant meetings.
✓ They are able to attend important meetings.In the same way, when attend means ‘to go regularly to school, church etc’, use a direct object (not attend to or attend at):
✗ In some parts of our country, people still don’t let girls
attend toschool.
✓ In some parts of our country, people still don’t let girls attend school.
✗ …a peak in the number of studentsattending atuniversities in Sweden.
✓ …a peak in the number of students attending universities in Sweden.Don’t confuse these meanings with the phrasal verb attend to something, which means ‘to deal with something’:
My assistant will attend to all your travel arrangements.
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Posted by Liz to Language and words in the news – 22nd August, 2014 on August 25, 2014 Hi Gill: I agree that he does address a lot of the usual old chestnuts, but I suppose these questions are the ones that a lot of people immediately look for guidance on (see what I did there?). As such it's a useful and sadly necessary corrective to the ill-informed bletherings of Heffer, Gwynne et al. I find Pinker an engaging writer and I thought the piece was both sensible and well written (as...
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Posted by Gill to Language and words in the news – 22nd August, 2014 on August 23, 2014 Liz: Wonder what you thought of the Pinker article. Predictably it made me cross. I admit he says sensible things about these uses, although headings like 'predicative nominative' are unhelpful, as is discussion of the accusative. But I sigh at the same old chestnuts being brought up and discussed for the n-to-the-nth time, as if this is all 'grammar' is about. Surely there are other topics of interest in the other 99.99999 percent of the English...
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Posted by Stan to Linguistic botany on August 19, 2014 Another one I read recently: "Nobody would attack a botanist merely because that botanist was interested in finding out what plants are like, instead of creating beautiful gardens." It's by Larry Trask in Introducing Linguistics; full passage here.
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Posted by Justine to The influence of English on the Russian language on August 14, 2014 I came across this article hoping to find some discussion on why the Russian lexicon seems to have very many familiar English words just spelled in the Cyrillic. Thank you for enlightening me :D But with this insight, I have a question: are present-day Russians typically polyglots? (like Germans and Scandanavians who speak their mother tongue but are also conversational in English, French, etc.) Thank you! The article is quite helpful :)
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Posted by Silvia Jaitin to Life skills tip of the week: ways of suggesting something on August 09, 2014 I really find your examples for every day situations used in oral English very useful! I take notes of the most difficult ones to teach my students for their Speaking Skills and have them use these examples in Role play situations. Thanks a lot!
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Life skills tip of the week: ways of saying goodbye
Learning about pragmatics and how to express yourself successfully is a useful life skill, said Michael Rundell in January when he introduced the new pragmatics series on Macmillan Dictionary. The series is part of the Macmillan Life Skills campaign, offering free resources for English language students and teachers each month. As part of the series, we’ll bring more useful content and […]
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Word roots and routes: village, town, city
Next in a series of posts exploring some of the ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ of English vocabulary. The word village is related to villa, which was originally a country dwelling with a farm and/or other surrounding houses, although it later became applied to an individual large, elegant residence with extensive grounds. Another word related to village […]
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Language and words in the news – 22nd August, 2014
This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular. Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit a link […]
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Language tip of the week: decrease
In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. These tips are usually based on areas of English which learners find difficult, e.g. spelling, grammar, collocation, synonyms, etc. This week’s language tip helps with using the patterns that follow the noun decrease. Don’t use decrease of when […]
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New pragmatics lesson plan: saying hello and goodbye
Have you seen our latest lesson plan by author Jonathan Marks? This new resource is part of the ‘expressing yourself’ series and helps learners review and consolidate ways of saying hello and goodbye. What’s included? Worksheets for students, tips for teachers, as well as an answer key and suggested follow-up activities. All pragmatics lesson plans […]
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Broadcast(ed) and forecast(ed)
Children learning language for the first time tend to regularise irregular verbs, saying things like ‘I goed’ instead of ‘I went’ and ‘we runned’ instead of ‘we ran’. If English inflection were more consistent, these utterances would be normal practice, not errors – though it’s worth noting that children may be more aware of words’ […]
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Language and words in the news – 15th August, 2014
This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular. Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit a link […]
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Language tip of the week: till
In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. These tips are usually based on areas of English which learners find difficult, e.g. spelling, grammar, collocation, synonyms, etc. This week’s language tip helps with using the preposition and conjunction till. Till and until mean the same, but […]
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Life skills tip of the week: ways of saying hello
Learning about pragmatics and how to express yourself successfully is a useful life skill, said Michael Rundell in January when he introduced the new pragmatics series on Macmillan Dictionary. The series is part of the Macmillan Life Skills campaign, offering free resources for English language students and teachers each month. As part of the series, we’ll bring more useful content and […]
Read the full article -
Word roots and routes: bear
Next in a series of posts exploring some of the ‘roots’ and ‘routes’ of English vocabulary. The verb bear has very deep, tenacious roots. It was beran in Old English, and this in turn was a development from an Indo-European root which already had the dual meanings of ‘carry’ and ‘give birth‘. One word related […]
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Language and words in the news – 8th August, 2014
This post contains a selection of links related to language and words in the news. These can be items from the latest news, blog posts or interesting websites related to global English, language change, education in general, and language learning and teaching in particular. Feel free to contact us if you would like to submit a link […]
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Language tip of the week: hot
In this weekly post, we bring more useful content from the Macmillan Dictionary to English language learners. These tips are usually based on areas of English which learners find difficult, e.g. spelling, grammar, collocation, synonyms, etc. This week’s language tip helps with some other ways of saying hot: tepid almost cold: used especially of liquids: […]
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