If you have a very strong command of the English language, you could easily come up with strings of sentences and phrases that not only challenge the readers or listeners but also tickle their bones. More importantly, you’re able to send very strong messages in a very subtle manner. Of course you could do the same with any language, but we’re now talking about English

Here are some statements that someone has just sent me:

• Advertisement in a Long Island shop
  Guitar for sale. Cheap. No strings attached.

• An ad in a hospital waiting room
  Smoking helps you lose weight – one lung at a time.

• Graffiti on the wall
  - Success is relative. The more successful you are, the more relatives.
  - When I read about the evils of drinking, I give up reading.
  - My grandpa is 80 and still doesn’t need glasses; he drinks straight out  of the bottle.
  - You know your kids have grown up when your daughter puts on lipstick and your son wipes it off.
  - Behind every great man, there’s a surprised woman.
  - Laugh and the world laughs with you; snore and you sleep alone.

• Sign in a bar
  Those of you who are drinking to forget, please pay in advance.

• Sign in a driving school
  If your wife wants to learn to drive, don’t stand in her way.

• Sign at a barber’s shop
  We need your heads to run our business.

• A traffic reminder
  Don’t let your kids drive if they are not old enough or else they will never be.

Here comes another bummer.

How many times did you have to wonder if a word is spelt with an “-se” or a “-ce“? Many students and even adults are unsure if there is a difference between:

• “advice” and “advise“
• “practice” and “practise“

Yes, there is a difference but it has nothing to do with them being American English or British English.

• advice (n.) – an opinion that someone offers to you about what you should or should not do
• advise (v.) – the act of giving opinion to someone about what you should or should not do

Likewise,

• practice (n.) – regular action to improve your skill
• practise (v.) – the act of doing something regularly to improve your skill

Examples:

advice vs. advise

1. I gave him some advice ( = opinion ) before he left abroad.
2. Take my advice and get a doctor to look into your health problem.
3. Could you please advise ( = give opinion to ) your students on the importance of consultation hours?
4. Dad had advised me to stay away from bad hats, but I refused, so now I’m in deep trouble.

practice vs. practise

1. To do well in grammar, you need plenty of practice ( = regular action ).
2. The coach said there is a football practice this afternoon.
3. Practise ( = do regularly ) makes perfect, so keep practising until you can play the piano well.
4. You have to be serious when you practise, or else you’ll not improve.

So, good people, I’m advising you to practise using verbal and written English as much as you can because without practice, you’ll not be good at it. Take my advice

I was given this flyer not too long ago. There are some mistakes. Can you spot the mistakes? No prizes for guessing the right answers, sorry Using English incorrectly in advertisements may not be appealing to customers. It shows the lack of professionalism.

As I was looking for some teaching materials for my grammar class, I came across the following paragraph:

“Many English learners worry too much about tense. If you stopped 100 native English speakers in the street and asked them about tense, one of them might give you an intelligent answer – if you were lucky. The other 99 would know little about terms like “past perfect” or “present continuous”. And they would know nothing about aspect, voice or mood. But they can all speak fluent English and communicate effectively. Of course, for ESL it helps to know about tenses, but don’t become obsessed with them. Be like those native speakers! Speak naturally!”

(from: Englishclub.com)

The fact is, not only students worry about tenses. Teachers too find it difficult to sustain their students’ interest in learning grammar especially when English is taught as a foreign language and second language. Native English speakers obviously need not know grammar at all as these come rather naturally – but they still learn it.

The problem is, not every one is a native English speaker. It’s hard not to be “obsessed” with grammar when you want to express something in the future but end up using the wrong tense (especially), thus causing some confusion to the person whom you’re talking to. 

Languages like Mandarin, Arabic and Malay do not have tenses to show the differences in “time”. Having tenses merely makes learning English far more complex.  It would be great if we could say:

• I eat rice today.
• I eat rice yesterday.
• I eat rice tomorrow.

… and I’m talking only about tenses minus the sentence structures and exceptions to so many rules that linguists have created.

Wouldn’t Simplfied English be more fun and less taxing on the learner?