on "don't lose focus of / on your goal"
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on "don't lose focus of / on your goal"
i think in this sentence we should say "don't lose focus of your goal" is more logical.
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fluffyhamster
- Posts: 3031
- Joined: Tue Oct 26, 2004 6:57 pm
- Location: UK > China > Japan > UK again
You must've hit the New topic rather than the Post reply button LOL (i.e. you should've replied on Hereinchina's original thread: http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=11259 ).
Actually, we've sort of been here before:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=10409
I get the feeling that your Chinese quizmasters are making up a bit too much of their English without doing enough of the donkey work (research etc) themselves. They should stick to first trying to understand what's in umpteen dictionaries before trying to uncover, fill or invent so many tricky little "gaps" apparently between the languages (or so they seem to feel). If they aren't careful they'll one day go too far over the line between "understandable" (though often still ultimately unnecessary) improvisation and plain lazy wishful thinking.
And might I suggest that they get a native speaker's intuition working more for them than against them (by which I mean, if a native rather than non-native were permitted to be the one actually producing the example sentences, and a lot more spontaneously, then chances are a lot less of them would seem as awry or need so much reworking). They could do with more relaxed, ad-hoc "will-do-for-now" fix-its than with trying to pin things down so "exactingly" all the time - give a competent speaker a vague idea of what's needed then let them run with it, rather than having somewhat incompetent or certainly less competent speakers exhaust themselves trying to always produce the "impossible" quite so much!
Let me be perfectly straight with you: it's frustrating to see you having to deal with so many patently invented, cranked-out sentences all the time, and the people giving them to you are only ever getting them half right at most and seem insensitive or indeed wilfully oblivious to what authentic examples and data ought to be telling them. I certainly don't see it as a native speaker's job to be continually correcting deliberate bending and misshaping of the language and all the error-strewn neurotic rubbish that that produces. At the very least your taskmasters could try consulting some (more) of the masses of usage out there and even settling for a few items that roughly match whatever "intended" meaning.
If on the other hand it is in fact you, presumably a native speaker, who's producing and juggling all these variant sentences, and still always in a quandary about quite which one is best, frankly you should have the research skills by now to be able to find and identify suitable examples yourself - examples which, if reasonably authentic, will do a lot of this work for you.
I'd say that 'Don't lose focus of your goal' would need a 'the' before 'focus', whereas 'Don't lose focus on your goal' sort of works (albeit clunkily) and without a determiner, but may bring somewhat into mind a "missing" sense of 'on/upon, that is, after achieving, your goal'. Neither is much of a substitute IMHO for 'Don't lose sight of your goal', though.Hello,
I'm not sure if I should say "don't lose focus of your goal" or "don't lose focus on your goal", or if both ways are grammatically correct? In other words, are both of the following sentences grammatically correct?
1. Don't lose focus of your goal, for if you do, you'll never achieve it.
2. Don't lose focus on your goal, for if you do, you'll never achieve it.
Actually, we've sort of been here before:
http://forums.eslcafe.com/teacher/viewtopic.php?t=10409
I get the feeling that your Chinese quizmasters are making up a bit too much of their English without doing enough of the donkey work (research etc) themselves. They should stick to first trying to understand what's in umpteen dictionaries before trying to uncover, fill or invent so many tricky little "gaps" apparently between the languages (or so they seem to feel). If they aren't careful they'll one day go too far over the line between "understandable" (though often still ultimately unnecessary) improvisation and plain lazy wishful thinking.
And might I suggest that they get a native speaker's intuition working more for them than against them (by which I mean, if a native rather than non-native were permitted to be the one actually producing the example sentences, and a lot more spontaneously, then chances are a lot less of them would seem as awry or need so much reworking). They could do with more relaxed, ad-hoc "will-do-for-now" fix-its than with trying to pin things down so "exactingly" all the time - give a competent speaker a vague idea of what's needed then let them run with it, rather than having somewhat incompetent or certainly less competent speakers exhaust themselves trying to always produce the "impossible" quite so much!
Let me be perfectly straight with you: it's frustrating to see you having to deal with so many patently invented, cranked-out sentences all the time, and the people giving them to you are only ever getting them half right at most and seem insensitive or indeed wilfully oblivious to what authentic examples and data ought to be telling them. I certainly don't see it as a native speaker's job to be continually correcting deliberate bending and misshaping of the language and all the error-strewn neurotic rubbish that that produces. At the very least your taskmasters could try consulting some (more) of the masses of usage out there and even settling for a few items that roughly match whatever "intended" meaning.
If on the other hand it is in fact you, presumably a native speaker, who's producing and juggling all these variant sentences, and still always in a quandary about quite which one is best, frankly you should have the research skills by now to be able to find and identify suitable examples yourself - examples which, if reasonably authentic, will do a lot of this work for you.