How Do We Learn To Speak Correctly?
You know more about good grammar than you may think.
To illustrate, choose the right word in the following statement:
Yesterday I (go, went) to the store.
The correct choice is “went.” Almost everybody who grew
Up speaking English will get that right. But why did you get it
right? If you are a native English speaker, you didn’t need the
official grammar rule: To express the indicative past tense in the
first person, use the indicative first person past tense of the verb
with the first-person pronoun. “Went” just “sounded” correct.
But that didn’t happen by magic. You learned this grammatical
principle a long time ago, and you learned it the natural
way: by repetition. The adults around you spoke like that (if
they spoke English). You imitated them, and they corrected you
when you got it wrong. You didn’t have to lug around a grammar
book when you were 3 years old, but you still learned
when to say “went.” It became a habit.
Unfortunately, not all the language habits we learn are good
ones. You probably hear language errors all the time: on TV, in schools, in the workplace, or from family and friends. So like
everyone, you’ve probably formed some bad habits, habits that
can be disastrous when it’s important to speak correctly. People
judge you by the way you speak, and they can dismiss what
you have to say if you say it carelessly. They might conclude
that you lack the professional polish to do a certain kind of job,
or miss your point altogether because of mistakes or verbal
clutter in your manner of speaking.
This book will help you unlearn those bad language habits
and learn good ones. Grammar and usage principles are explained
along the way—you need to know the rules in order to
understand why a sentence is right or wrong—but knowing the
rules isn’t enough. Here’s one rule, for example, that many find
confusing:
Use the subjective case of the relative pronoun “who/
whom” as the subject of a verb or after a finite form of
the verb “to be”; use the objective case of the relative
pronoun “who/whom” as the object of a verb, the
indirect object of a verb, the subject of an infinitive,
the object of an infinitive, or the object of a preposition.
Now that you’ve seen the rule, try answering the following
question:
Unfortunately, the person (who, whom) Frank believed
was his new secretary proved to be the efficiency
expert hired to evaluate his grammar.
The correct answer is “who”: it’s the subject of the verb
“was” (not, incidentally, the object of the verb “believed”). If
you had trouble figuring it out, don’t worry. Knowing the rule
is helpful, but you need practice, too, along with some useful
tips for making the complicated rules memorable. That is just
what this program will give you. The rules of grammar and
usage have been incorporated into a user-friendly package
that will help you to learn the “official” rules, and reinforce your understanding through short-cut tips in many cases, and
then you can test yourself on numerous examples.
How Do We Learn To Speak Correctly?
