English Passive

          There are some aspects of English grammar that can be presented as a kind of formula. Active and Passive sentences are an example of this. The most common type of sentence in English is an Active sentence, which has an Actor + Verb + Receiver, such as John robbed the bank, or an Actor + Verb, such as John slept, which has no Receiver. We can change an Active sentence into a Passive one by changing the positions of the Actor and Receiver, moving the Actor to the end of the sentence and moving the Receiver to the beginning of the sentence: Actor + Verb + Receiver ==> Receiver + Be + Past Participle + by + Actor. For example, John robbed the bank. ==> The bank was robbed by John.  Passive sentences always have some form of Be: be, for future tense and modals, am, is, are for Simple Present Tense, was, were for Simple Past Tense, being for Present Progressive, and been for Present Perfect. That's how to form a Passive sentence, but when do we use Passive sentences instead of Active ones?

We use Passive sentences in these four situations:

1. No one knows who the Actor is.  The bank was robbed (by someone).
2. We don't want to say who the Actor is.  The window was broken (by someone).  I know who broke the window (the Actor), but I'm not going to say.
3. Everyone knows who the Actor is. Rice is grown in China.  Everyone knows that Chinese people grow rice in China.
4. We want to put the emphasis, or focus, on the Receiver. In the Passive sentence, The man was bitten by the dog,  I'm more concerned about the man than the dog.

I want to leave you with a question. Can you make a Passive sentence out of an Active sentence that has no Receiver, like John died? If not, why not?

Bad News Addiction

Watching the news can be bad for you. And let's face it, most news on the TV is bad news. I found this out the hard way. You see, last November my wife went to Mexico to be with her mother, who was dying. I was lonely and thought I didn't have anything else to do at home in the evening, so I started watching TV. I liked MSNBC news. So every weeknight, usually from around 6pm to 11pm or midnight I would watch MSNBC. Its news coverage is mostly about Trump. I don't like Trump and think he will go down in US history as the worst president we have ever had. Anyway, I liked watching these news programs because they reinforced my negative opinion of Trump. I started to become addicted to the news. After a while, the evening programs weren't enough, so I would wake up early most weekday mornings and watch Morning Joe, another MSNBC news program mostly about Trump, for a couple of hours. On Sunday mornings, I would watch one or two of the Sunday morning news talk shows, like Meet the Press and Face the Nation. More bad news about Trump! But that wasn't enough. I started listening to NPR radio in my car to keep up with the latest news about Trump.  I had become completely addicted to the news, and was spending more than eight hours a day watching and listening to it. I had become a news junkie. An addict. In the middle of December, I started feeling depressed.

          So I went to see a psychologist. He talked to me about how news can be negative, addicting and bad for our mental health, just like drugs.  He told me that we should practice good mental hygiene to have healthy brains,  just like we ought to have good dental hygiene (brushing and flossing our teeth every day) to have healthy teeth. We have to be careful about what we put in our brains. News can be like "mental garbage." I took his advice and completely stopped watching the news and  listening to NPR radio.  I started listening to a Classic Rock station in my car. At first it was difficult, and I was tempted to turn on MSNBC and listen to NPR radio,  but I resisted the temptations. I spent the evening reading a book, watching sports and movies on TV, and spending more time with my grown daughters and grandchildren, all things that I love to do.  I started to feel better. I was recovering from my addiction and my mental health was improving. I'm not addicted anymore, and I feel better.

          This is my advice to you. If you find yourself doing anything too many hours a day, you might have an addiction that isn't good for you. I'll leave you with this thought. I read an article recently about a research study that showed that young people (15-30 years old) spend an average of 10 hours a day on their cell phones. That is more than half of the time they are awake. I will be writing more about this subject in a later post. Could cell phones become an addiction?  Could they be bad for our mental health?  What do you think?

Modals

          One of the hardest things to learn in English is modals, their meanings and when to use them.  Modals are sometimes called modal verbs, or helping verbs. In my opinion, it's better not to refer to them as verbs, because they are really not verbs. Verbs express actions (like eat, talk,  go),  phenomena (like rain, believe, live), and states (like be, have, sit).  Modals are those words that we put before verbs to express our attitudes, beliefs, and feelings about the verbs, such as degrees of certainty, politeness, expectation, necessity and advisability. Most modals are one word (like must, might, can, should, and would), but there are also phrasal modals that consist of more than one word (like have to, have got to, be able to, ought to, and would rather). One tricky thing about modals is that one modal can have several different meanings and uses, such as would. For example, would like is a polite way to say want, would rather expresses a preference,  would can be used for a  polite request, such as Would you mind helping me?, and talking about something that you did repeatedly in the past, such as I would ride my bike every day when I was a kid. 

          Many ESL students think that the only modal we use to express necessity is must. Actually, we don't use must very much at all when we speak, and only when we are referring to rules that you must follow or in legal written documents, such as You must pay your rent on the first day of  each month (in your rental agreement). Otherwise, when we refer to necessities, we use have to, or in more informal speech, have got to.

          Some ESL students are surprised to learn that we give advice with both should and ought to. It probably doesn't help that in normal, fast speech we say otta instead of ought to, just like we say wanna instead of want to. So should and ought to (otta) mean the same thing and they are equally common.  Learning how to use modals is more like learning words than learning grammar. You learn how to use them best by listening to how native speakers use them and in what situations.

Friends

          How many friends do you have? I have never had very many friends. And I consider myself a friendly person. I can usually count the number of friends I have on one hand. What is a friend, anyway?  We have different words for friends--buddies, buds, pals, mates, homies. Friend is a word that people define in many different ways. For me, a friend is someone who shares similar likes and dislikes as me. It is someone who I  like to hang out with, can go to if I need help, talk with or ask for advice, or even borrow a little money from if I am in a bind. I like spending time with a friend and can talk about pretty much anything. There was a popular program on TV a few years ago called Friends,  about a group a friends who share an apartment in New York City. I saw it a few times.

I saw something on the Internet recently that the average American has between five and ten friends. I have a best friend from high school that I still keep in touch with more than 40 years later. I still consider him a good friend. I have a couple of very good friends in Mexico. Even if I don't see them for years at a time, when I do see them again, I have the same feelings of friendship towards them.

 How many "friends" do you have on Facebook?  Most Americans have about 500 Facebook "friends."  Really?  How many of those "friends" do they even know?  Sometimes the word friend is confused with acquaintance and colleague, someone who we know or work with, but are they really friends?  Sometimes we might worry that we don't have enough friends. If you are living in the US and want to learn American English, it would be a good idea to have some American friends. Speaking with Americans is probably the best way to learn American English. Maybe we should focus on the the quality of our friendships and not the quantity. So, how would you define friend?  How many friends do you have? If you are an international student, do you have American Friends?

Fish Fridays

Why do Catholics eat fish on Fridays before Easter?  I'm a Catholic. No one really knows the answer to this question.  There is a long tradition that goes back hundreds of years that Catholics are not supposed to eat "red meat" on Fridays during Lent, the 40 days before Easter. Easter is this Sunday. Today is called Good Friday, the day that we believe that Jesus was killed on the cross, crucified.  I usually eat meat on Fridays during Lent because I forget it's Friday. But today is Good Friday, so I remembered. I'm going to Wendy's with my wife to have a fish sandwich for lunch. They have good, fresh fish sandwiches, and cheap, two for five dollars. If you notice, all of the fast food places have specials on fish sandwiches on Fridays before Easter. It's all about business. But it's also part of the Catholic tradition.

Rock 'n Roll Music

My favorite music is Rock 'n Roll from the 60s, when I was a teenager. I have listed my Top Ten Rock groups below.  It's interesting that my Top Five are all from England. These groups were called the British Invasion. The rest of my Top Ten favorite bands (6-10) are from the US. Here they are, in order.

1. The Beatles
2. The Who
3. Led Zeppelin
4. The Kinks
5. Pink Floyd

6. The Jimi Hendrix Experience
7. The Police
8. Neil Young (with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young)
9. Tom Petty and the Heart Breakers
10. The Beach Boys/Brian Wilson

You may have never heard of some of these bands because you're too young. If you haven't,  I'd encourage you to go to Google and sample some of their music on YouTube. They may be old, but they still sound good. It's interesting that so many of these Rock bands, especially the British ones, have "The" in their name, beginning with The Beatles. The Beatles were (and still are, in my opinion) definitely the best. Notice that The Rolling Stones are not on my list. I never liked them that much--they are still touring and their music still sounds the same as it did in the 60s. It hasn't evolved. The Beatles music evolved a lot in the less than ten years that they were together.

Don't get me wrong; I like a lot of the recent Rock and pop music, like Linkin Park, Justin Timberlake, Eminen, Bruno Mars and The Travelling Wilburys.

What kind of music and bands do you like?

Paragraph to Essay

                                     Paragraph to Essay

          After you write a paragraph about some topic, it is easy to change that paragraph into an essay. Paragraphs are made up of sentences. Every paragraph has three main parts; an introduction, body and conclusion. Every essay also has three parts; an introduction paragraph, three or more body paragraphs, and a conclusion paragraph. So if you have already written a paragraph, all you need to do is expand the sentences into paragraphs and you will have an essay. The essay will have more information and details than the paragraph, but remember that the essay will have the same three main parts that a paragraph has--introduction, body and conclusion. When we start learning to write, we start with paragraphs because they are the basic "building blocks" that writers use. After you know how to write a good, well organized paragraph, it is easy to write essays with five or more paragraphs. It is kind of like learning to crawl before you walk, or learning to walk before you run. In conclusion, writing essays is easy after you know what you want to write about and after you know how to write good paragraphs.