Subject-verb agreement

Every - always singular
E.g.
1) Everyone in my class has his own notebook.
2) Every member of the committee attends the meeting every week.

All - depends on whether the noun is countable or not
Countable - singular
Uncountable - plural
E.g.
1) All the salt has been used up. (Salt is not countable, so the singular verb is used.)
2) All the pupils in my class are present today. (Pupils are countable, so the plural verb is used.)

Conditional Tense

The following summarises the rules for conditional tenses:

CASE I
Clause 1: present
Clause 2: will (not) + infinitive
Example: If you try hard, you will succeed.

CASE II:
Clause 1: past
Clause 2: would (not) + infinitive
Example: If you misbehaved, you would be caned.

CASE III:
Clause 1: past perfect
Clause 2: would (not) have + past participle
Example: If you had been there, you would have seen the President.

You try:
1) If Ryan had come earlier, I ______________ (not need) to set up the projector on my own.

2) If it __________ (rain) tonight, we will not go to the Night Safari.

April's Fool

Happy April's Fool! I must admit that the "freeze" was quite well-coordinated. I should have taken a picture. From where I stood, the view was classic.

What we did today:

1) Went through elements of formal letter writing

2) You heard various sounds (thunderstorm; waves; gunshot; space shuttle launch; baby screaming) and wrote descriptive sentences based on the sounds.

3) Mad Libs

Homework:

1) Situational Writing (Practice 4). Remember to number your points.

Happy Easter! God loves you. :)

Today's Homework

1) Composition corrections
2) English Practice Paper 5 (if you haven't done it already)

What we did today (30 Mar)

We went to crimelibrary.com.sg to find out the penalty meted out to offenders of various crimes. Will go through some of your work tomorrow. Some of you produced very good work.

Homework for today:
1) English Practice Paper 5 (Due on Thu)

Hand in your ring files tomorrow if you haven't done so.

Yi Lin, I can't find the link for the 3rd video. Will try again when I am more free.

Nick, need to ask you about admin for the blog. Don't really understand that.

God bless you.

Appositives

(I am writing this in a separate entry so it is more convenient for you when you use the blog for revision. It used to be embedded in another entry.)

An appositive is a noun / noun phrase that refers to another noun right beside it. It provides more details about the noun.

Jiaqi's e.g. (adapted)
"I know the answer!" exclaimed Matthew, the smartest boy in class, from his seat.

"The smartest boy in class" is the appositive in this sentence. Note that it is flanked by two commas.

Eldon's e.g. (adapted)
The lady standing there is my sister, Jane.

"Jane" is the appositive in this sentence. The appositive is preceded by a comma. In this case, we end with a fullstop as we have come to the end of the sentence.

More examples:
Bryan, the monitor of the class, is very neat in appearance.
My best friends, Jocelyn and Samantha, like chocolate ice-cream a lot.
Catherine Lim is the writer of the best-selling book, "The Bondmaid".

Whose

"Whose" shows possession.

E.g. 1) Ryan met the actor whose father sold Char Kway Teow at East Coast.

In the example above, the father "belongs to" the actor. The actor's father sold Char Kway Teow.

E.g. 2) Rachel was the pupil whose mobile phone was confiscated by Mrs H.

In e.g. (2), the mobile phone belongs to the pupil, Rachel. It was Rachel's mobile phone that was confiscated.

We cannot write "James is the most famous badminton player in Singapore whose mother sells chicken rice" because the mother does not "belong to" Singapore. We are not referring to Singapore's mother.

The above sentence should be written as "James, whose mother sells chicken rice, is the most famous badminton player in Singapore."

The mother "belongs to" James. In other words, James' mother sells chicken rice.

Try this:

Joel used to be the fastest runner in school.

His son has been selected to represent Singapore in the Youth Olympic Games.

________________whose _______________.

(Write down the answer in your English notebook. If your answer is correct, you can get a sticker on your book.) :)

Happy weekend.