VOA日常语法2023--Reviewing Your Message about Guests, Part 2

Reviewing Your Message about Guests, Part 2

A few weeks ago, we asked our readers and listeners to write about having guests over. Many of you wrote us using the words you learned¹. One reader, Gerardo, wrote to us about his cousin Peter coming for a visit.

In this week's Everyday Grammar, we continue reviewing Gerado's message and give additional² suggestions about grammar.

Gerardo's message about his guest

On Saturday, we spent time catching³ up talking about those beautiful days we played games and eating in the countryside when we were very young. We had dinner together and then he left.

Review of Gerardo's message

Let's start by making these last sentences into their own paragraph. Line seven now becomes line one of the new paragraph.

On Saturday, we spent time catching up talking about those beautiful days we played games and eating in the countryside when we were very young.

Gerardo starts this sentence off strongly with a transition⁴. He uses the preposition⁵ "on" and the day of the week "Saturday" to tell us exactly when he met his cousin. Earlier, he said that he had invited his cousin over for the weekend.

Moving from general to specific information helps readers understand the order of events. Gerardo uses a comma after the transition! Great job, Gerardo!

We have a few suggestions for this sentence. There should be a conjunction⁶ between the gerunds "catching up" and "talking." We can use the conjunction "and."

The sentence is also very long. We can break it up into two sentences. Think about moving from general to specific information as you write. The phrase "when we were very young" is a more general phrase that describes the time Gerardo and his cousin were discussing. We can add that information to the end of the new first sentence.

On Saturday, we spent time catching up and talking about those beautiful days when we were very young.

That leaves this part of the sentence:

...we played games and eating in the countryside...

From this, we can create a new sentence:

We would play games and eat in the countryside.

We suggest changing the verbs here. In the new sentence, we added the modal verb "would." It is the past tense form of "will."

We use "would" to show repeated actions in the past. We often use it when telling stories. It is used more in writing than casual⁷ speaking.

After the modal verbs, we use the base form of the other verbs. So, "play" and "eating" change to their base forms. This shows attention to the details of writing in the form of something called parallelism. Parallelism is the method of using similar forms to organize and structure a sentence, so it is easy to understand.

Let's look at the final sentence.

We had dinner together and then he left.

We suggest just two more changes. We can add a transitional phrase to the first part of the sentence. This will separate the time Gerardo and his cousin were remembering and the rest of their evening together.

Since they were "catching up," we can use the past tense of this phrasal verb and the preposition "after" for the transitional phrase.

Lastly, we should add a comma between "together" the rest of the sentence.

After we caught up, we had dinner together, and then he left.

Closing thoughts

Today, we reviewed the rest of Gerardo's message about his cousin's visit. We broke apart a long sentence into two. We added a conjunction, a comma, and transitions⁸. We learned how to structure our writing better with parallelism in verbs. We even learned about "would."

Thank you, Gerardo, for sending your writing to us.

Words in This Story

cousin – n. a child of a person's uncle or aunt

grammar – n. the whole system and structure of a language

paragraph – n. a part of a piece of writing that usually that begins on a new line and often is made up of a few sentences

conjunction – n. (grammar) a word that joins together sentences, clauses⁹, phrases, or words

gerund – n. (grammar). the -ing form of a verb that acts like a noun¹⁰

phrase – n. a group of two or more words that express a single idea but do not usually form a complete sentence

modal verbs – n. (grammar) verbs that are used to express possibility, ability, or necessity¹¹.

tense – n. a form of a verb that is used to show when an action happened

phrasal verb – n. grammar: a group of words that functions as a verb and is made up of a verb and a preposition, an adverb, or both

1 learned   

adj.有学问的，博学的；learn的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• He went into a rage when he learned about it.他听到这事后勃然大怒。
• In this little village,he passed for a learned man.在这个小村子里，他被视为有学问的人。

2 additional   

adj.添加的，额外的，另外的

参考例句：

• It is necessary to set down these additional rules.有必要制定这些补充规则。
• I think we can fit in an additional room.我想我们可以再加建一间房子。

3 catching   

adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住

参考例句：

• There are those who think eczema is catching.有人就是认为湿疹会传染。
• Enthusiasm is very catching.热情非常富有感染力。

4 transition   

n.转变，变迁，过渡

参考例句：

• Adolescence is the period of transition between childhood and adulthood.青春期是童年与成年之间的过渡时期。
• They all support a peaceful transition.他们全部都支持和平过渡。

5 preposition   

n.介词

参考例句：

• You should cancel this preposition in the sentence.你应该删去句子中的这个介词。
• We use different preposition to talk about time,days,months and seasons.我们用不动的介词来谈论时间，日，月和季节等。

6 conjunction   

n.联合，连接，接合；连接词

参考例句：

• Two or more sentences may be joined together by a conjunction.两个或两个以上的句子可以用连词连接。
• The conjunction of heavy rains and high winds caused flooding.暴风雨的同时发生引起了洪水泛滥。

7 casual   

adj.漠不关心，冷漠的；随便的，非正式的；偶然的，碰巧的

参考例句：

• He earns a living by casual labour.他靠做临时工为生。
• The guests wore casual clothes.客人们穿着便服。

8 transitions   

过渡，转变，变迁( transition的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Before explaining a workflow, I'll explain a few simple pieces of terminology: states and transitions. 在解释什么是工作流之前，我先来解释几条简单的术语：状态(states)和过渡(transitions)。
• Both ionization and excitation lead to eletronic transitions that may be the emission of light. 电离和激发都将导致可能伴随有光发射的电子跃迁。

9 clauses   

从句( clause的名词复数 )； （法律文件等的）条款

参考例句：

• Relative pronouns and adverbs introduce attributive clauses. 关系代词和关系副词引导定语从句。
• Please underline the noun clauses in the passage. 请用线画出短文中的名词性从句。

10 noun   

n.名词

参考例句：

• What kind of noun is this?这是哪类名词？
• This word is a collective noun.这个词是个集体名词。

11 necessity   

n.必要性，需要；必需品

参考例句：

• I look upon this as an absolute necessity.我认为这是绝对必要的。
• You must understand the necessity of education.你必须懂得教育的必要性。