Article (grammar)

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"Definite article" redirects here. For the Eddie Izzard comedy DVD, see Definite Article.

For other uses of "Article", see Article (disambiguation).

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Articles in European languages indefinite and definite articles only definite articles indefinite and postfixed definite articles only postfixed definite articles no articles

An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun, and may also specify the volume or numerical scope of that reference. The articles in the English language are the and a (the latter with variant form an). An article is sometimes called a noun marker, although this is generally considered to be an archaic term.[1]

Articles are traditionally considered to form a separate part of speech. Linguists place them in the class of determiners.

Articles can have various functions:[2]

* A definite article (English the) is used before singular and plural nouns that refer to a particular member of a group.

The cat is on the red mat.

* An indefinite article (English a, an) is used before singular nouns that refer to any member of a group.

A cat is a mammal.

* A partitive article indicates an indefinite quantity of a mass noun; there is no partitive article in English, though the quantifiers some or any often have that function.

French: Voudrez-vous du café ? ("Would you like some coffee?" or "Do you want coffee?")

* A zero article is the absence of an article (e.g. English indefinite plural), used in some languages in contrast with the presence of one.

Cats love fish.

Linguists interested in X-bar theory causally link zero articles to nouns lacking a determiner.[3]

Contents

* 1 Logic of definite articles

* 2 The

o 2.1 Etymology

o 2.2 Reduction and omission

o 2.3 Geographic uses

o 2.4 Pronunciation

* 3 See also

* 4 References

* 5 External links

Logic of definite articles

In English, a definite article is mostly used to refer to an object or person that has been previously introduced. For example:

At last they came to a piece of rising ground, from which they plainly distinguished, sleeping on a distant mountain, a mammoth bear.... Then they requested the eldest to try and slip the belt over the bear's head.

— Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, appendix D

In this example, a bear becomes the bear because a "mammoth bear" had been previously introduced into the narrative, and no other bear was involved in the story. Only previously introduced subjects, and unique subjects, where the speaker can assume that the audience is aware of the identity of the referent (The government has increased tax) typically take definite articles in English.

By contrast, the indefinite article is used in situations where a new subject is being introduced, and the speaker assumes that the hearer is not yet familiar with the subject:

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe.

— A traditional nursery rhyme

Reflecting its historical derivation from the number word one, the English indefinite article can only be used with singular count nouns. For mass nouns, or for plurals, adjectives or adjective phrases like some or a few substitute for it, or it is omitted. In English, pronouns, nouns already having another non-number determiner, and proper nouns usually do not use articles. Otherwise in English, unlike many other languages, singular count nouns take an article; either a, an, or the.[4] Also in English word order, articles precede any adjectives that modify the applicable noun.[5]

In French, the masculine definite article le (meaning the) is contracted with a following word if that word begins with a vowel sound. When the French words de and le are to be used sequentially (meaning of the), the word du is used instead, in addition to the above mentioned use of du as a partitive article.

In various languages other than English, the form of the article may vary according to the grammatical gender, number or case of the noun it combines with. (In some languages the article may be the only indicator of the case, eg., ::Der Hut des Napoleon, Napoleon's hat.) Many languages do not use articles at all, and may use other ways of indicating old vs. new information, such as topic-comment constructions.

The

"the" redirects here. For other uses, see the (disambiguation).

This section needs additional citations for verification.

Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (July 2008)

The word the is the only definite article in the English language, and the most frequently used word in English.[6]

The article "the" is used with singular and plural, countable and uncountable nouns when both the speaker and listener know the thing or idea already. The article the is often used as the very first part of a noun phrase in English. For example:

The end of time begins next Tuesday, at a quarter past four, just after tea and biscuits.

Here, "the end of time" is a noun phrase. The use of the signals that the reference is to a specific and unique instance of the concept (such as person, object, or idea) expressed in the noun phrase. Here, the implication is that there may be but are not multiple 'ends of time'; which 'end of time' it is that is being referred to is not ambiguous, because time can (supposedly) only end once.

There are many times, but the meaning here is the time now, of which (at the moment the sentence was produced) there is only one.

In normative spoken English, it takes two forms, the vowel being a schwa before a word starting with a consonant, and otherwise an [iː] sound.[7]

Etymology

Linguists believe that the common ancestor of the Indo-European languages (i.e., the Proto-Indo-European language) did not have a definite article. Most of the languages in this family do not have definite or indefinite articles; there is no article in Latin, Sanskrit, Persian, nor in some modern Indo-European languages, especially in Slavic languages — Russian, Polish and Czech, etc., nor in the Baltic languages — Latvian, Lithuanian and Latgalian. (The only Slavic languages that have articles are Bulgarian and Macedonian). Classical Greek has a definite article, but Homeric Greek did not. In the etymologies of these and many other languages, the definite article arose from a demonstrative pronoun or adjective changing its usage; compare the fate of the Latin demonstrative "ille" (meaning "that") in the Romance languages, becoming French le, la, l’, and les, Spanish el, la, lo, los, and las, Italian il, la, lo, l’, i, gli, and le, and Portuguese o, os, a, and as.

In some languages, such as Icelandic, Norwegian and Romanian, the definite article is not always a separate word but is sometimes attached to the end of the noun it governs:

Icelandic: hestur, horse; hesturinn, the horse

Norwegian: stol, chair; stolen, the chair

Romanian: drum, road; drumul, the road

The and that are common developments from the same Old English system. Old English had a definite article se, in the masculine gender, seo (feminine), and þæt (neuter). In Middle English these had all merged into þe, the ancestor of the Modern English word the.

In Middle English the (þe) was frequently abbreviated as a þ with a small e above it, similar to the abbreviation for that, which was a þ with a small t above it. During the latter Middle English and Early Modern English periods, the letter Thorn (þ) in its common script, or cursive, form came to resemble a y shape. As such the use of a y with an e above it as an abbreviation became common. This can still be seen in reprints of the 1611 edition of the King James Version of the Bible in places such as Romans 15:29, or in the Mayflower Compact. Note that the article was never pronounced with a y sound, even when so written.

Reduction and omission

In news headlines and informal writing, such as notes or diaries, the definite article and some other particles are often omitted, for example, "Must pick up prescription at pharmacy today."

In some Northern England dialects of English, the is pronounced [t̪ə] (with a dental t) or as a glottal stop, usually written in eye dialect as ; in some dialects it reduces to nothing. This is known as definite article reduction; see that article for further details.

In dialects that do not have /ð/ (voiced dental fricative), the is pronounced with a voiced dental plosive, as in /d̪ə/ or /d̪iː/).
 

Geographic uses

In English most cities and countries never take the definite article, but there are many that do. It is commonly used with many country names that derive from names of island groups (the Philippines), mountain ranges (the Lebanon), deserts (the Sudan), seas, rivers and geographic regions (the Middle East).[8] Such use is declining, but for some countries it remains common. Since the independence of Ukraine, most style guides have advised dropping the article[9], in part because the Ukrainian Government was concerned about a similar issue involving prepositions. Another example is Argentina, which is now more usual than 'the Argentine', which is old fashioned.

The definite article is always used for countries whose names are descriptions of the form of the state rather than being purely geographical; for example, the United States, the Soviet Union, the Czech Republic.

The U.S. Department of State [2] and CIA World Factbook [3] show the definite article with only two countries: The Bahamas and The Gambia.

Similarly, in other languages some geographic names take the article while others do not: die Schweiz, Switzerland; les Pays-Bas, the Netherlands.
 

Pronunciation

According to Merriam-Webster' online dictionary, "the" is pronounced with a schwa (as in "uh") before words beginning with consonants (e.g. b, c, d, f), and usually with a different vowel sound /i/ (as "y" in "easy") before words beginning with vowels and in cases of proper nouns or emphasis[10].

* A and an
* Al-
* Definite description
* Definiteness

1. ^ Articles, Determiners and Quantifiers
2. ^ The Use and Non-Use of Articles
3. ^ [1] Peter Master (1997), The English article system: Acquisition, function, and pedagogy, System, Volume 25, Issue 2, Pages 215–232
4. ^ Sidney Greenbaum, The Oxford English Grammar (Oxford University Press, 1996) ISBN 0-19-861250-8
5. ^ Dorothy Disterheft, "Advanced Grammar" (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2004) ISBN 0-13-048820-8
6. ^ World English. "The 500 Most Commonly Used Words in the English Language". http://www.world-english.org/english500.htm. Retrieved 2007-01-14.
7. ^ "the - definition". Merriam Webster Online Dictionary. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/the.
8. ^ How English works, p25, Michael Swan
9. ^ Ukraine or "the Ukraine"? by Andrew Gregorovich InfoUkes.com
10. ^ the — Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary


* Vietnamese learners mastering english articles
* "The Definite Article: Acknowledging 'The' in Index Entries," Glenda Browne, The Indexer, vol. 22, no. 3 April 2001, pp. 119–22.
* Low MH 2005: "The Phenomenon of the Word THE in English — discourse functions and distribution patterns" — a dissertation that surveys the use of the word 'the' in English text.
* When Do You Use Articles: A, An, The

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_(grammar)"
Categories: Parts of speech | English language

English Pronounciation Test

While most of you non-native speakers of English speak English quite well, there is always room for improvement (of course, the same could be said for every person for any subject, but that is another matter). To that end, I'd like to offer you a poem. Once you've learned to correctly pronounce every word in this poem, you will be speaking English better than 90% of the native English speakers in the world. 

If you find it tough going, do not despair, you are not alone: Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters near Paris found English to be an easy language ... until they tried to pronounce it. To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below were devised. After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at hard labor to reading six lines aloud. Try them yourself.

English is tough stuff

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

(Apparently excerpted from The Chaos by Gerard Nolst Trenité.)

Speaking Placement Test

Notes to the teacher on using the speaking placement test:

The following sets of questions and discussion points provide a guide to assessing a student’s speaking level and to choosing the most appropriate In Company course book for their studies. They are designed to be asked by the teacher during a conversation with the student and reflect the structures and vocabulary students will meet in each of the In Company books. As you work through the questions, the questions become increasingly more difficult for the student and require a higher level of English to give a fluent and accurate response.

It isn’t necessary to ask a student ALL the questions. Begin with some basic questions from the Elementary section such as How are you today? What do you do? If the student gives a confident response, move straight on to questions in the Pre-intermediate section. Eventually you will find questions or topics that a student finds too difficult to respond to. At this point, move back down to a level where the student is comfortable talking again. The point at which the student starts to struggle indicates the level of course book which will provide a challenge to the learner. If on the other hand you feel the student wants a period for revision before attempting a higher level, you might choose the level of book which matches the questions and topics where the student seems most relaxed.

Finally, remember that these questions only provide a guide. Feel free to add some of your own supplementary questions, let the student divert into a topic that interests him/her or encourage the student to ask you questions too. The test should resemble a conversation between equals – not an interrogation! You are strongly advised to use this speaking placement test alongside the other In Company Placement Tests in order to ensure an accurate assessment and to choose the right In Company book.

Speaking Placement Test
Elementary
Business and work
·    Do you work for…? (name of company)    What do you do?
·    What time do you start / finish work?
·    How often do you use English in your job? Can you write e-mails in English? Can you telephone in English?
·    Have you got a boss? What’s his/her name? What does he/she do?
·    When did you join this company?
·    What are you working on at the moment?
Social and travel
·    Hello. How are you today?
·    What’s your name?
·    Can you spell it for me?
·    Are you from…? (name of country)
·    What do you do in your free time? Do you like any sports?
·    What do you normally do at the weekend? What are you doing this weekend?

Pre-Intermediate
Business and work
·    How long have you worked for your company?    Where did you work before this?
·    What sort of company do you work for? What are its main activities?
·    Tell me about a colleague…
·    What does he/she do? Has he worked at the company longer than you?
·    What does your job involve?   If someone applied for your job, what qualities would they need?
·    Do you think your job will change in the future?

Social and travel
·    Are you married? Where did you meet your husband/wife?
·    How much holiday do you get a year?    Do you travel for your job?    Where have you visited?   What do you think of…? (name of country visited)   
·    Did you like the food there?
·    What kind of food did you eat?     What’s a typical dish in your country? What’s it made of/served with?

Intermediate
Business and work
·    If you started again, would you have done a different job?
·    What’s the hardest thing about your job? What do you like about it?
·    Who are your main competitors? What are the key differences between them and you?
·    What do you think makes a good boss?
·    What kind of decisions do you make at work?   Which are the hardest decisions?
·    What kind of meetings do you attend?      How do you prepare? What makes an effective meeting?
Social and travel
·    Do you eat out much? Do you take visitors? How important is entertaining visitors in your work? What kind of things do you talk about?
·    When you go on business trips which airline do you normally fly with?   Tell me about a recent trip…
·    Was it successful? Why? Why not?     What was the hotel/flight like?
·    Do you find travel stressful? How do cope with stress?  How do you relax at the end of a day?

Upper Intermediate
Business and work
·  Does your company have a logo? What does it say about your company? How do you think your customers describe your company?
Social and travel
·  How easy is it to combine your work with your family?
·  When you’re out with colleagues, are there any topics you avoid?
·  Have you seen any good films recently? What happened?
·  What recent news story made you angry recently? Why?

Linguistic Evolution

By Simone Gilson

Source    :

Languages are constantly changing. New words are added to the English language every year, either borrowed or coined, and there is often railing against the 'decline' of the language by public figures. Some languages, such as French and Finnish, have academies to protect them against foreign imports. Yet languages are species-like constructs, which evolve naturally over time. Migration, imperialism, and globalization have blurred
boundaries between many of them, producing new ones (such as creoles) and driving some to extinction.

This book examines the processes by which languages change, from the macroecological perspective of competition and natural selection. In a series of chapters, Salikoko Mufwene examines such themes as:

*natural selection in language the actuation question and the invisible hand that drives evolution multilingualism and language contact language birth and language death
the emergence of Creoles and Pidgins the varying impacts of colonization and globalization on language vitality This comprehensive examination of the organic evolution of language will be essential reading for graduate and senior undergraduate students, and for researchers on the social dynamics of language variation and change,
language vitality and death, and even the origins of linguistic diversity.

"Inspired by evolutionary biology, Salikoko Mufwene's spectacularly comprehensive and thought-provoking new book goes for the big picture and illuminates fundamental principles of language evolution and language contact. Showcasing the peculiar (or not so peculiar, after all) evolutionary conditions of creoles, Mufwene reaches novel and unorthodox insights which build upon concepts such as the importance of ecology,
competition and selection, imperfect replication, and family resemblance. He questions and retunes some fundamental notions in linguistics like "system", "transmission" or "acquisition", thus coming considerably closer to an understanding of how language has evolved than earlier linguistic theory. Ingenious imagery like the highway traffic analogy show how patterns have emerged through "invisible hand" evolution, the convergence of communal behavior, and how imperfection, far from being imperfect, generates real-life structures. Principles like the ubiquity of contact and hybridism, the understanding of languages as species and complex adaptive systems, the relationship between mutual accommodation between individuals and emergent communal behavior, or the link between globalization and indigenization invoke a new down-to-earth linguistics in which the interactions of real-life individuals are at the core of far-reaching
developments. A must-read for theorists of language change and language
contact, and for anybody interested in how language really works." - Professor Edgar W. Schneider, Chair of English Linguistics, University of Regensburg, Germany
Linguistic Field (s): Linguistic Theories Sociolinguistics Written In: English (eng ) See this book announcement on our website: http://linguistlist.org/getbook.html


My Comment:
I think every language has a change or has been evolution by periode, and we must  conciderly that our language can be replaced by other language if we can’t protect own language from language evolution, because a language can be gone if they not used for a long time, example hieroglyph language in egypt, it not used for thousand year’s and the result the hieroglyph language is absolutely not used in oral communication, but we can found it in ancient script or another ancient civilitation ruins or musem in egypt.

English Tense System

By. Quirk and Greenbaum

For a start, it is useful looking at what 'tense' does actually mean. A "classical" definition of the Eng-lish tense system is one that Quirk and Greenbaum give: "Tense is a grammatical category that is realized by verb inflection" (Greenbaum/Quirk 1997: 47). This view implicates that there are two states a verb can express: present tense and past tense, the first characterised by the absence of inflection (to which from now on will be referred as 'non-inflection'), the second by adding the suffix -ed (cf. Greenbaum 1997: 48). However, Bernd Kortmann distinguishes between a large range of tense models:

Starting from the two-tense model suggested by Quirk and Greenbaum, which refers only to synthetic language, he counts up to a number of sixteen tenses (cf. Kortmann 2004: 106-109) not only being marked by inflection, but including analytic elements such as the auxiliaries have and be, too. When examining the two-tense model we have to precise that the tenses referred to are on the hand the simple present tense, e.g. in 'He sleeps eight hours per night' and, on the other hand, the simple past tense, e.g. in 'He arrived in the morning'.

1 Simple Present Tense
For the usage of simple present tense there can be several intentions: it can be used either to ex-press present time or past or future. The basic function is the first case, namely to express a present time, for which Greenbaum and Quirk propose three components, starting with the state present which expresses general statements such as 'We trust in God', continuing with the habitual present which describes actions executed regularly such as 'On weekends I sleep until 11 am' and ending with the instantaneous present which is applied to events taking place simultaneously, e.g. 'I name this ship Queen Elizabeth'. In addition to that, the simple present tense can also assume other roles: the historic present is used to liven up narrations, such as 'suddenly the king stands up and announces that...' even if the action actually took place in the past; similar to this, Greenbaum and Quirk list expressions like 'The news say that the weather is still stormy'
which originally belong to the past but are still valid in the present. Finally present tense statements can refer to the future, e.g. when saying 'Tomorrow I go to school' (cf. Greenbaum/Quirk 1997: 48-50).

2 Simple Past Tense
In comparison to that, the simple past tense expresses solely past time events and states. Again, Greenbaum and Quirk differentiate between three sub-types: By analogy with its present time counterpart, the state past expresses general statements about past time, such as 'I loved to watch the Simpsons on TV', while the habitual past, again matching with its present time complement, describes events and actions that regularly took place in the past, such as 'I went to the football club when I was a child'; but finally there is a different
type of simple past tense: the event past which describes something that took place at a certain point of time in the past, e.g. 'She called me at 2 am.' There are three additional "special uses" that Greenbaum and Quirk list: the indirect speech which converts speech

from past into simple past, e.g. 'I told him that I wasn't interested'; the hypothetical past that denominates an unfulfilled condition, such as 'If I knew how cope with it, I wouldn't have these problems'; the attitudinal past which represents a more polite way of talking to another person, e.g. 'Did you like a cup of tea or coffee?' (cf. Greenbaum/Quirk 1997: 50-51). It is important to notice for the corpus analysis that past tense, except for the earlier mentioned historic present, which however has no influence on the mainly spoken corpus, represents the only way of talking about a past event, so that it is virtually impossible to confuse deviant use of present tenses in past tense positions with correct use. This means that normally it is quite obvious whether a statement belongs to expressions typical for a variety such as Hong Kong English or whether it conforms to Standard English grammar.

There a kind of english tense, and we know at least sixteen form of english system tense, we ussually found two form that mostly used in daily compersation, there are simple past tense and simple present tense, but we also used future tense in special compersation. The english system tense used to make english language have a structure and it make be learning to another person who want learning a second language, english system tense make more easier to learn english language.


http://groups.google.co.id/group/alt.usage.english/browse_thread/thread/2a4587ab12ff98f/d27fd9cb8583d781%23d27fd9cb8583d781

Source :http://groups.google.co.id/group/alt.usage.english

Regular Irregularity in English Verbs

Background & Objectives
English belongs to the Germanic group of languages descended from Proto-Indo-European. One of the characteristic features of Old Germanic was its utilization of root vowel inflections to indicate changes in verb tense. While modern English makes use of a simpler suffixing system (e.g. call-ed, phone-d, etc.), verbs with irregular vowel inflections still survive for many of the oldest and most basic activities known to man, such as eating, drinking, sleeping, sitting, standing or swimming. This means that even the most elementary of students soon have to get down to the nitty-gritty of committing them to memory and I would very much like to facilitate this process.
Unfortunately, since English orthography has undergone comparatively few reforms in the last 500 years, it fails to reflect the sometimes inconsistent developments in educated pronunciation that have taken place over the same period. Both mono- phthongal and diphthongal root vowel shifts have endowed modern English with a far greater variety of irregular verb inflections than one finds in other Germanic languages. The verb conjugational patterns of, for example, German or Swedish seem to be much more easily categorized and memorized than those of English. As a consequence, and much to the frustration of overseas learners, most English dictionaries and grammar books seem content merely to provide lengthy alphabetical listings of irregular verbs in an appendix at the back. Surprisingly few attempts appear to have been made to group together verbs of clearly common conjugation for faster and more effective memorization.
This is the gap I have set out to fill with this short survey, the results of which are a little surprising. In spite of the fact that we at the end of my analysis are left with 42 irregular verbs displaying seemingly unique pronunciation patterns, more than 150 others have actually been found to be in good company with other verbs. This means they can be remembered almost as effectively as a nursery rhyme.
Layout
From left to right in the tables the verbs are shown in their infinitive/present, simple past and past-participle forms. In those cases where more than one past tense form is presented, the one in brackets is generally less common, especially if it is shown in italics. Literary and archaic forms, included here to provide a historical perspective, are always indicated in thin italicised text.
Sometimes a variant has one specific application (e.g. the nautical hove instead of everyday heaved), and so caution is advised and the student should refer to a dictionary for further details. Here such variants are shown in bright red.
In cases where one irregular verb also forms the root in another (e.g. give in forgive), usually only the basic verb is included here, unless there happens to be an accepted past-tense variant for the derivative (e.g. cast and forecast/forecasted). The phonetic symbols used here represent the British English RP or received pronunciation standard which, for example, is spoken by BBC World Service newsreaders or members of the Royal Family.
This survey of regular irregularity in English verbs does not in any way claim to be complete. Rather it should be seen as an attempt to break with tradition in order to facilitate more rapid memorization of irregular verbs in English. This I hope will be to the benefit of students around the world.

General Overview of Identified Verb Inflections              
Conjugation 1    [aI] > [aP] > [aP]    find-found-found      
Conjugation 2    [aI] > [I] > [I]    bite-bit-bitten      
Conjugation 3    [aI] > [@P] > [I]    write-wrote-written      
Conjugation 4    [aI] > [O:] > [O:]    buy-bought-bought      
Conjugation 5    [e] > [e] > [e]    send-sent-sent      
Conjugation 6    [e] > [e] > [@U]    swell-swelled-swollen      
Conjugation 7    [e] > [Q] > [Q]    get-got-got      
Conjugation 8    [e] > [@P] > [@P]    tell-told-told      
Conjugation 9    [eI] > [eI] > [eI]    pay-paid-paid      
Conjugation 10    [eI] > [@U] > [@U]    break-broke-broken      
Conjugation 11    [eI] > [U] > [eI]    take-took-taken      
Conjugation 12    [e@] > [O:] > [O:]    wear-wore-worn      
Conjugation 13    [I] > [{] > [{]    sit-sat-sat      
Conjugation 14    [I] > [{] > [V]    sing-sang-sung      
Conjugation 15    [I] > [eI] > [I]    give-gave-given      
Conjugation 16    [I] > [I] > [I]    build-built-built      
Conjugation 17    [I] > [O:] > [O:]    think-thought-thought      
Conjugation 18    [I] > [V] > [V]    win-won-won      
Conjugation 19    [i:] > [e] > [e]    meet-met-met      
Conjugation 20    [i:] > [@U] > [@U]    speak-spoke-spoken      
Conjugation 21    [i:] > [O:] > [O:]    teach-taught-taught      
Conjugation 22    [@U] > [@U] > [@U]    show-showed-shown      
Conjugation 23    [@U] > [u:] > [@U]    blow-blew-blown      
Conjugation 24    [u:] > [Q] > [Q]    shoot-shot-shot      
Conjugation 25    [3:] > [3:] > [3:]    burn-burnt-burnt      
Conjugation 26    [-] > [-] > [-]    cut-cut-cut      
              
42 truly irregular verbs!           
I have identified the following 26 groups of irregular English verbs as having some form of shared root-vowel inflection. Although they are not officially recognized, I refer to them here as conjugations:

How Teach Reading 3

What reading skills should students aquire?

Student like the rest of us , need to be able to do a number of things with a reding text. They need to be  able to scan the text for particular bits of information they are searching for. This skill means they do not have to read every word and line, on the contrary, such an approach would stop them succesfully.

Student need to be able to skim a text – as if they were casting their eyes over its surface – to get a general idea of what it is about, just as with scanning, if they try to gather all the details at this stage, they will get bogged down and may not be able to get the general idea because they are concentrating too hard on specifics.

Wheter readers scan or skim depends on what kind of text they are reading and what they want to get out of it. They may scan a computer manual to find the one piece of information they need to use their machine, and they may skim a newspaper article to get a general idea of what’s been happening. But we would expect them to be less utilitarian with a literary work where reading for pleasure will be a slower, closer kind of activity

Reading for detailed comprehension, whether looking for detailed information or language, must be seen by students as something very different from reading skills mentioned above, when looking for details, we expect students to concetrate on the minutes of what they are reading.

One of the teacher’s main functions when training students to read is not only to persuade them of the advantages of skimming and scanning, but also to make them see that the way they read is vitally important.

How To teach reading 2

What kind of reading should student do?

There has been frequent discussion about what kinds of reading texts are suitable for English language students. The greatest controversy has centred on wheater the texts should be 'authentic' or not. That is because people have worried about more traditional language-teaching materials which tended to look artificial and to use over simplified language which any native speaker would find comical and untypical.

However, if you give low-level student a copy of  The Times or The Guardian (which are certainly authentic for native-speaker), they will probably not be able to understand them at all. There will be far too many words they have never been seen before, the grammar will be (for them) convoluted and the style will finish them off.

A balance has to be struck between real English on the one hand and the students' capabilities and interests on the other. There is some authentic written material which beginner students can understand to some degree: menus, timetables, signs and basic instruction, for example, and where appropriate, we can use these, But for longer prose, we may want to offer our students texts which, while being like English, are nevertheless written or adapted especially for their level. The Important thing is that such texts are as much like real English as possible.

The topics and types of reading text are worth considering too. Should our students always read factual encyclopedia-type texts or should we expose them to novels and shorts stories?Should they read timetables and menus or can we offer them business letters and newspaper articles?

A lot will depend on who the students are. If they are business people, the teacher may well want to concentrate on business texts. If they are science students, reading scientific texts may be a priority, But if, as is often the case, they are mixed group with differing interest and careers, a more varied diet is appropriate. Among the things the teacher might want them to read are magazine articles, letters, stories, menus, advertisment, reports, play extracts, recipes, instructions, poems, and reference material.