Korean Job Discussion Forums

[DeLaRed]

Now I know which parts are gramatically incorrect but as a relatively newbie teacher I am not sure how to explain gramatically why it is to students! Would appreciate any input on this! ...much appreciated.

This was the small-ish passage below if you could offer any input!

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'Many children dream of becoming an astronaut. The job is not perfect,however. Living in space can cause several problems for astronauts.First, astronauts travel in spacecrafts, and there is no gravity in space. Without gravity ,astronauts' muscles and bones don't work as hard as they usually do. As a result, their bones and muscles become weak. To keep their bones and muscles strong, astronauts must excercise everyday. But spacecrafts have very little room to move. Another problem is motion sickness, which causes many symptons, such as sweating, headaches and vomiting. Many astronauts get motion sickness because what they see in space confuses their brains. We are used to see everything the way it looks in Earth's gravity. But in space , things rest at unusual angles and move in odd directions. The brain thinks we must be sick because it is getting strange visual signals. Unfortunately, there isn't anything we can do about this proboem since it is impossible to recreate conditions on earth in space.

Q: Which of the underlined parts has a grammatical error?
-To keep
-To move
-To see
-To recreate

[edwardcatflap]

The question is dealing with the old infinitive v gerund or ...ing form , which you need to study to be able to explain a lot of rules in English.

Basically use the infinitive after certain verbs, nouns, adjectives etc... and the gerund after other verbs and prepositions. You should look it all up in a grammar book to really get to grips with it. In this passage, the first infinitive is an infinitive of purpose explaining the reason why someone does something, e.g. I'm learning Korean to speak to my girlfriend's family. The second line has an infinitive follwing a noun, e.g. I don't have much time to waste, the third one is a preposition so should be followed by a gerund. e.g. I'm very bad at swimming. The last one is an adjective which is followed by an infinitve such as 'it's difficult to know what to do.'

I'm sure someone will follow this post with a longer explanation with several exceptions and a lot more complicated terms but that's the gist of it

[GreenlightmeansGO]

'used to' + noun/gerund (-ing verb) for something that is commonplace, so 'used to seeing...' is correct.

[Tam Sadek]

[DeLaRed]

thank you very much for the explanations,....very much appreciated. Like many of you (well in the UK at least) I wasn't taught about grammar usage/reasons behind sentence structures. Plan to pick up a book though to learn more.

Thanks again.