When something is done out of force of habit, it has become automatic through frequent repetition. For example: "Why do I always park here? It's force of habit I suppose." This is only an English idiom, however, learners shouldn't do grammar exercises out of force of habit, or in other words, they ought to stop and think about the reasons why you should write certain grammar structures this or that way, i.e. is the relative pronoun necessary or not?
Well, in this section we'll learn how automatic or mechanical grammar practice won't be of much help for your language fluency, context and production.
First of all, you'll find the repetitive exercises about the relative pronouns at pages (195-205) and some more theory about the relative pronouns, here. For further grammar theory and practice, please click on here.
Secondly, after talking nineteen to dozen, I mean, after doing so many grammar exercises automatically, mechanically and without being aware of what is going on about their usage, let's stop to consider the following:
- What are the relative pronouns used for?
- News (to add extra interest to their content)
- Informal speech (as a kind of parentheses)
- Formal speech and formality (whom)
- To express a possessive relationship (whose)
- Who or whom?
- What about the reduced relative clauses?
Finally, this grammar post is just for you all to reflect upon the importance of language context and everyday usage, which should build your English up from strengh to strengh.
Source: Making Sense of Grammar, by David Crystal
No comments:
Post a Comment