Mark my words!

[sister_luck]

I'm in marking hell again and as always there are a couple of language issues you might be able to help me with. (And no, I'm perfectly fine with ending sentences with prepositions, that's a non-issue for me, most of the time. Call me a sloppy teacher if you will, but I just don't care about this silly rule.)



Again, this is mostly stuff that is not quite idiomatic and I'm not sure how to fix it.

One of my students is very fond of this construction:

...it wasn't that funny evening
...it wasn't that good idea

Now I know that this does not work - it's probably easiest to tell him to switch the sentence around: the evening/idea wasn't that funny/good, but what about that good of an idea - is that possible, too?

Could you say that one hears muffled music?

Reflexive pronoun issues

I'm not sure whether the reflexive pronoun is just plain wrong here or whether it's just an added extra:

he doesn't know how he should behave himself
he steals himself out of the window

Looking up words in the dictionary:

One girl was looking for a way of saying Draufgänger in English. She got go-getter. What she actually means is a word for a guy who is fond of the ladies and likes taking risks. Any ideas what might be better?

Someone who keeps drinking lemonade the whole evening while everyone around him gets drunk, could be said to stick to lemonade, right?

Getting close to one another

(Mostly for your amusement, but a better way of saying it would be appreciated though one of them might not need fixing:)

They have each other in arms and dance wild and hot
...she tries to kiss him with her tongue
the girls kiss him left and right of his face

Also, what adjective would you use for a person who is making advances to someone? I know that she becomes obstrustive - which I guess is a misspelling of obtrusive is wrong.

And, how would you fix he is in forbidden love with an English girl?



Thanks in advance - I value and enjoy your input very much!

Comments

[gillo]

...it wasn't that funny evening
...it wasn't that good idea

Now I know that this does not work - it's probably easiest to tell him to switch the sentence around: the evening/idea wasn't that funny/good, but what about that good of an idea - is that possible, too?

In British English none of these work. And I'm very wary about "funny evening" in any context, because it is often used to mean "enjoyable", rather than "hilarious". It is not a synonym for "amusing" used to describe an evening.

I'd use:

It wasn't that good an idea.
It wasn't such an amusing evening.

Could you say that one hears muffled music?

Yes.

he doesn't know how he should behave himself
he steals himself out of the window

"He doesn't know how

to

behave himself" is fine. "How he should behave himself" is long-winded and clunky. The second one sounds like larceny - definitely to be avoided!

One girl was looking for a way of saying Draufgänger in English. She got go-getter. What she actually means is a word for a guy who is fond of the ladies and likes taking risks. Any ideas what might be better?

I'd suggest "a Lothario" or possibly a "ladies' man", though that lacks the risk-taking element.

They have each other in arms and dance wild and hot
...she tries to kiss him with her tongue
the girls kiss him left and right of his face

First one - using adjectives instead of adverbs is the main problem. They would "hold each other in their arms and dance wildly and hotly". But stylistically that feels like too much. "Holding each other close, they danced passionately." is simpler and clearer.

Second - she tries to "French kiss him". (Yes, the traditional English use of "French" to define anything naughty!)

The third one isn't clear. Are they both kissing him at once or air-kissing each cheek in turn? "each side of his face" would be better than "left and right", too.

"His love for the English girl is forbidden." Or, more romantically (if a little cheesy)"He felt all the power of his forbidden love for the English girl."

Hope these help.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your comment - I messed up with "that good an idea" and somehow ended up with an extra 'of', probably because this is something I know from spoken language and couldn't quite put it into writing.

Thanks, for the 'behave' variation - I knew that it didn't quite work the way it was put, but couldn't figure out what was odd about it.

I know about French kissing and French letters and all that - this kind of vocabulary tends to be very memorable, but I wasn't sure whether the student's sentence might work, too.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Oh and I think the student used the word 'funny' exactly in the sense of 'enjoyable', because the person he's writing about definitely didn't enjoy the evening.

[gillo]

It's a very common mistake in non-native speakers. In very colloquial language (teen-speak, for instance) you might use the noun as an adjective - "it wasn't a fun evening", though that would be really wrong in any formal or semi-formal context. (I mark it as "wrong" in my students' writing, and don't say it myself, but they nearly all use it between themselves. The language changes and the young speak a different version!)

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

My, you're strict! My poor students are supposed to switch between registers - writing a formal essay and then as a third task they often have to do some creative task, like composing a diary entry for one of the characters and in that they often have to use informal language.

That said, I usually don't mark anything wrong that is idiomatic English, except for slang or taboo expressions in the formal part of the writing, like the 'go ape-shit' example in my reply below.

[gillo]

Yes, but I'm teaching English to intelligent native speakers, who are trying to get high grades in GCSE exams. They need to recognise that the use of a noun as an adjective is fine in colloquial speech, but risky in any examination or formal context.

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

With style issues I usually just use a squiggly line to underline the offending word or phrase and then tell them not to do it again - except for real clunkers like the use of 'gonna'.