- Of course, you want to know why our students need access to the Internet.
The reason isthateveryone says that it’s important.
APPLYING KEY IDEASDirections: This activity has two parts, both intended to provide an opportunity
to apply information from the previous discussion to your own language.
First, listen carefully to the language around you—conversations, class lec-
tures, news reports, and so forth. Over a 2-day period, keep a tally of the number
of times you hear someone using one of the nonstandard or ungrammatical fea-
tures discussed previously, such asI feel badly, I did good,andThe reason is be-
cause.Discuss your tally with others in your class, perhaps examining the
situations in which you observed the nonstandard usage and considering
whether there are any connections.
For the second part of the activity, examine a paper you wrote recently, fo-
cusing on your use of subordinating conjunctions. Does the semantic content
of your subordinating conjunctions match the relation you intended to estab-
lish between the dependent and independent clauses? If not, change the subor-
dinating conjunction appropriately.
Prepositions
Aprepositiongenerally works with a noun phrase, and together they compose a
prepositional phrase.(When a noun phrase is connected to a preposition, it of-
ten is called theobjectof the preposition.) The preposition links its noun phrase
to either a verb phrase or another noun phrase, which means that the preposi-
tional phrase functions eitheradverbially or adjectivally.Sentences 71 through
73 illustrate both types. Note that in sentence 73 the prepositional phrase func-
tions as a sentence-level modifier:
- The womanwith the red hairdrove a Porsche.
- Fritz walkeddown the street.
73.In the morning,Fred always has wild hair.
The list of English prepositions is quite long, but some of the more common
are listed below:
TRADITIONAL GRAMMAR 89