For our followers on Instagram and Facebook, here’s an opportunity to compare your answers from our last grammar challenge to the correct answers down below. Make sure to read through the explanations and if you have any questions at all, simply ask us in the comments. Let the learning begin!
Here are the answers:
- I recommended the horror film to my friend.
- It takes about an hour and a half.
- Her laptop is twice the price of other laptops.
- There’s way too much pollution in Bangkok.
Let’s explore this further:
1. Some verbs in English need an object directly afterwards, other verbs do not need an object at all. Verbs that need an object are called Transitive Verbs. Verbs that do not require an object are called Intransitive Verbs. Recommend is often used as a transitive verb, in this form when you use this verb, make sure to have an object afterwards. Here are some examples:
- I recommended the sushi starter to my friend when we went out for dinner at a new Japanese restaurant.
- Samantha recommended three new comedy shows to me when the topic of comedians and British humour came up in our last conversation.
Alternatively, recommend can be used in a different structure where the verb is intransitive and followed by ‘that’ and a pronoun. For instance:
- My father recommended that I try spend less time on the computer, as it affects my eyesight.
- I always recommend that my students read loads of English material.
2. Don’t forget to include articles before nouns! Of course some nouns do not take an article before them, so it’s important to know the exceptions. With ‘hour’ in the singular, it always takes the article ‘an’ beforehand.
3. When using the expression ‘twice the price’, we must include a definite article in the middle. Expressions are fixed phrases that aren’t usually changed. There are a couple of synonyms for this expression such as ‘double the price’.
4. Pollution is an uncountable noun, as it’s a substance and is intangible. Uncountable nouns do not usually use indefinite articles before them, such as ‘a’ and ‘an’, though we can use ‘some’, ‘any’ or a partitive expression in some cases like a loaf of bread or a bottle of water. We treat uncountable nouns as singular, so we can’t add a plural ‘s’ to the end of them.
Stay tuned for the next grammar challenge on our Instagram and Facebook pages.
Happy learning!