Dids,

Looooool @ your 20-sth confusion.

Lapka,

In first case I just left out the preposition
*in the first case

and in the second just used wrong idiom.
*the wrong idiom

You have no idea how much action and which kind resulted from that.

*and of which kind



I don't want to cause such reaction in people around me.
*cause such a reaction
or better
*cause a reaction like that


But I can do better than now with just a little of effort.
*just a little bit of effort



I love this life help threads.
*the life help threads

It is like having many brains for your disposition.

*at your

El D,

So someone working on improving their written English should slip in texting usage every now and then?

Did,

Yes. In English, we use different levels of formality in our writing based on the audience and context. The appropriate level of formality in business correspondence, for example, will generally be different than the level used in a personal email. Therefore, yes. When addressing people in a casual manner on an Internet forum, some totally standard shorthand is not just ok, but ideal.

Should be more like 'rep himself is, to a fair degree of probability, in the "middle-aged" group.' At any rate you can't have 'is with high probability' -- not in that exact context, anyway -- and you can't have 'a group "middle aged" ', which is putting it the French way round, 'un bateau bleu.'

Should be 'sink in', with no hyphen.

When you've said something that you think is a clever argument-winner, you might add, 'Let that sink in.' But be aware that you only do that to be annoying, and people will duly be annoyed.

"But I can do better than now with just a little of effort."

Like Diablo says, this can be fixed by putting in "bit" but the actual mistake is that unlike "a bit", "a little" is not followed by "of" so you could also fix it by removing the "of".

I wanted to indicate that Rep himself is likely middle-aged

Isn't it "will be duly annoyed"?

This one is depressing. I googled "in the first case" and "in first case". Both exist.
"Mumbai duo held in first case of osmium smuggling in the country"
"Medical marijuana prescribed to 11-year-old boy on the NHS in first case of its kind"
But there are also clearly even more cases with "the"
"3 members are involved in the first case of its type regarding abuse and the jurisdiction of the Pensions Ombudsman"

I suspect if I understand this one, I will also understand why "the wrong idiom"

subject is "action" and not "kind"

Meeeehhhhh hate articles. Instinctively see that "cause a reaction like that" sounds the best.

Understand, especially with add-on from Lektor. "With a little effort" sounds good.

It is because I am not pointing to a certain threads. So which exactly are "this"?

I have just to learn prepositions. There no rules for that.

Is it possible to say "group of middle-aged"?

Tx. That one is pretty interesting. It is very practical for me to know, which reaction certain words can cause.

totally see that "little effort" sounds the best
Clearly more simple and elegant construction than mine..... Hope that it will color-off on me.

rep will be totally annoyed to be considered middle-aged.

Now, a little story on importance of idioms. Some of you already have read it, for some it might provide a little entertainment. I have used something along the lines " I said XYZ just because I wanted to let you save the face". I meant "let you save face". The dude interpreted my mistake as a threat of physical violence. He decided that I am threatening to destroy his face in a physical fight and reported the post. The whole thing escalated and he refused to believe that it wasn't a threat to whoop his butt even after my explanation. After this story, I have a lot more respect for mods, who have to regulate all that crap and can refrain from just banning everybody in sight.

'This' doesn't work with 'threads'.

You could say "I love these life help threads".

️

There's a good USA#1 saying.

One thing I've always noticed is that in USA#1 we say someone is "in the hospital" while Brits say "in hospital".

Can't even speak their own damn language.

Not sure if I missed somebody else mentioning it, but in the title English should be capitalized.

I've found this thread surprisingly interesting. While I can write and speak well enough to get my point across (a lot of the time), I've never been interested in the minutiae. Thank you for starting it.

Now, where's the "lapka teaches Russian to OOT" thread?

BTW, in the example of life help threads, I think you'd use "these" (like in chillrob's example) if you were enumerating specific threads. If you were just making a general statement, you'd write, "I love life help threads." For a single, you'd put in the "this", but then, of course, use the singular "thread".

Among the many topics about which nobody should listen to me is English grammar, though.

Of course it's "in hospital". What is this craziness?

If someone is having dinner out is he "in restaurant?" Generally in English an article is required unless the noun is a proper name. Therefore he could be "in St. Joseph's hospital," but not "in hospital."

In British English, hospital is an exception for some reason. It sounds really strange to Americans. On the other hand, if someone refers to something they did while "in college," it sounds completely normal to us, because that is an exception in American English.

Note that with both of these, it seems to work no matter what the preposition is. Brits might say "he's going to hospital," or "she went to college," and one of those sounds really weird to Americans and the other completely normal.

I had this discussion with an American who works for me just last week.

They're only exceptions to the rule if they describe a "situation", not just a "location" - in other words, the place is being used for its normal/main purpose.

Here's some of the page about this in my teaching materials:

1) I work for a pizza delivery company and today I went to the hospital, the school and the church.
2) I was ill last week so I went to hospital and I didn’t go to school. I also didn’t go to church on Sunday.

The explanation (in Slovak) runs something like:
In 2) „I went to hospital“ means "I went to be a patient in the hospital.", whereas in 1) "I went to the hospital" just means "I went into/to the hospital building" (this time to deliver a pizza).

More examples:
I am at / I go to school, university (študovať, učiť sa)
I am at / I go to work (pracovať)
I am at / I go home (vo svojom domove)
I am in / I go to bed (spať alebo pred/po spánku)
I am in / I go to prison (sedieť vo väznici)
I am at / I go to church (modliť sa)

(There are a few more like "on stage", "at university" and "at sea" which are not in the book)

Later the practice question is "What do people do (at school / at work / in prison / in bed)?"

We came to the conclusion that quite a bit of the above is the same for Americans.

Cheers. It's good for me to try to explain things to people who actually know more than about 2000 words of English and see if the explanations still hold up (in the sense of whether or not they still generate good sentences).

It's also a welcome distraction from what I'm doing. I'm making a placement test for new students which is multiple choice. It's really hard to think of English sentences that are wrong but credible.

News headlines have different rules and even vocabulary sometimes.

If you provide a few examples of what you're looking for, we can certainly help. Are you looking for sentences that are technically incorrect, but only just barely? Or sentences that are obviously incorrect to educated native speakers, but not so obviously to either less educated and/or non native speakers? Something else?

Not exactly sure what you're looking for, so here is an assortment:

We all thought Didace knows what he was doing but he doesn't.
El Diablo weared a hat yesterday.
Howard Treesong took shoes off at his dentist last week.
lapka call someone a butt each and every day before breakfast.
Does 57 On Red write his posts tomorrow?
Did the DoctorZangief show up for work yesterday?
gregorio make the sushis for us last night.
When Rei asked to leave?
I would prefer for ChipWrecked ate a steak sandwich.
de captain lives in a pink house on the end of the road.
Where did Very Josie come from out of nowhere?
Did you saw Steve350 make a nice observation regarding the thread?
LektorAJ is teach everyone in this thread of proper English usage.
Alobar be mad.

Grrrrr. " maybe he should....." not " may be he should" * kick myself* why the heck do I see that immediately an hour later, but not when I write it?

The most frustrating thing, is when I know and understand it and am still doing it wrong. Clearly "this" is used only with singular.
Yeahhhh..... I learned already in this thread: English is capitalized..... Tx for the explanation with general statement. To use on autopilot "this, that, those, these and articles" to convey the finer points is my weak point.
And like I said, if anyone needs help in Russian/German, Math/Physics just start a thread. I will try to do Lektor in this areas.

That is good and I understand it.

We all thought Didace knows what he was doing but he doesn't.
*what he is doing

El Diablo weared a hat yesterday.
*wore a hat

Howard Treesong took shoes off at his dentist last week.
I am not sure with this. Instinctively I would say: HT took off his shoes at dentist last week.

lapka call someone a butt each and every day before breakfast.
*calls

Does 57 On Red write his posts tomorrow?
*Will 57 On Red write his posts tomorrow?

Did the DoctorZangief show up for work yesterday?
* without "the". HA! I will get it one day.

gregorio make the sushis for us last night.
*gregorio made sushi for us last night. It sounds for me right to use sushi without any articles. Probably because sushi is uncountable.

When Rei asked to leave?
*When did Rei ask to leave?

I would prefer for ChipWrecked ate a steak sandwich.
*I would prefer ChipWrecked ate a steak sandwich.

de captain lives in a pink house on the end of the road.
* at the end of the road. *Imagining now Captain - a solid, serious, grown-up dude in a pink house.

Where did Very Josie come from out of nowhere?
* When did VJ come out from nowhere?

Did you saw Steve350 make a nice observation regarding the thread?
* Did you see Steve350 making .....

LektorAJ is teach everyone in this thread of proper English usage.
*Lektor is teaching everyone in this thread proper English usage.

Alobar be mad.
*Alobar is mad.

More the bolded though it depends on the level of the question:

e.g. grammar

Who painted the Mona Lisa?
A The Mona Lisa was painting by Leonardo da Vinci.
B The Mona Lisa painting Leonardo da Vinci.
C The Mona Lisa was painted by Leonardo da Vinci.
D The Mona Lisa painted Leonardo da Vinci.

vocabulary
Visitors to a country want to ...
A ... kite it.
B ... poster it.
C ... explore it.
D ... operate it.

Vocabulary is easier as you just need to mix in other words of roughly the right level (if they were much easier words they could get the answer by elimination) and if they know them they can answer it and if they don't they take a wild guess.

You can't really help because the thing is that there is a question for each page in my materials, and the potential students should take the test going from the easiest questions to the hardest and at the point at which they can no longer get most of questions right it stops them, moves them back a bit and says "you should join a group that's about here".

It gives them a score that makes no sense to them but makes sense to me to avoid the problem of people making up scores. They can also just click and register into a group.

I don't really want questions that would catch out educated native speakers as people who can get to the end of the test go into "discussion" or "literature reading" groups.

When the test is ready (probably today) I'll post a link. If people are willing to help then they can have a go and post links back to any of the questions they think have multiple correct answers or no correct answer and we can discuss them here. Also if any native speakers get less than 250 then they can post a link to their score page and I'll try to reconstruct what their bustout question was and probably change it - because if its confusing to native speakers it's confusing for the strongest students too.
(you don't bustout just from one misclick though - the "score" is just the point you should start studying from, so someone who gets 90% with the mistakes spread evenly through the test will get the same mark as someone who gets 100% - but someone who gets 90% with it entirely front-loaded and can't get any marks on the final 10% of the test will get a "score" corresponding to someone who should start there).

Anyone who wants to have ago at the test mentioned in the post above can click:

http://www.jazykova.sk/test.asp

or if you want to skip the first two levels you can jump in at:

http://www.jazykova.sk/test.asp?pq=48&ar=ZZZZZZZZ&an=2

E Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa.

E) is the best choice.

Get that passive voice outta here.

Is 250 100%? I got 250.