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Welcome to Rainschool (Mar 2009 update)
Hello, may I take this opportunity to update you about developments on the Rainschool web site?
Setting up the site
The site was set up, technically-speaking, by Ben Leonard, working in collaboration with myself, Peter Ryley. It is based on the Wordpress template, customised in various ways by Ben and designed to meet (as far as possible!) the specifications required by me, as author of the texts found on the site.
Since 25th October we have been able to sell Rainring cards and accessories. I have also been uploading my exercises to help students improve their English writing skills. I have also begun to upload some exercises in the grammar section, from Elementary/Intermediate through to Advanced/Proficiency
The contents of the site
Rainschool.com is divided into two main areas, known as the School of English and the School of Rainring.
A. The School of English
How it began
This project first happened through discussions between myself and Alan Cooper. His site www.enjoyingenglish2008.org provides a library of material to help students to access via the web a wide range of materials in English to support and develop their English studies.
The main idea
Rainschool’s School of English aims principally to provide a bank of practice exercises to enable students to develop their ability to use correct, well-structured English. This site is linked to the enjoying English one, with the idea that students using that site will have immediate and free access to exercises and explanations. For the answers, a small charge is made. One single payment allows lifetime access to all the exercise answers in that section.
Live online English classes
I have not given up on my desire to offer online English classes. However, work on the exercises is not proceeding as quickly as I hoped, and I would like to get this further advanced before I feel ready to tackle live online tuition.
B. The School of Rainring
Teaching and learning the cards
The Rainring psychological divination cards are unlike anything else in existence. After spending a year trying to promote them on the web, it has become clear to Peter that the great majority of people approaching Rainring need a network of support and back-up in order to help them master the Rainring system.
One of the two principal aims of this site is to create possibilities for online tuition in Rainring, with the idea of training a first generation of readers. We hope that these will include both people who will use the cards privately, and others who will eventually read them professionally. Ultimately, we (my partner Hacina Guezoul and myself) want to train people to become trainers.
Update: (March 09) None of the above has changed, except that we are both, for the moment, too busy with other priorities.
New words & new products
The second main aim of Rainschool is to popularise the cards themselves. Our site at www.rainringcards.com, with its brilliant interactive play facility, has the unfortunate drawback that we do not manage its content. This means that every change which is needed has to be paid for. The Rainschool site is designed to enable us to constantly revise, update and develop the content without cost to ourselves.
This means that any new Rainring items for sale – such as the directory of meanings summary now on sale for the first time – will be made available through this site, not via the rainringcards site. And it of course means that, as Peter has been doing at http://94stranger.wordpress.com, new articles on Rainring topics can be published, or old ones revised, whenever needed.
Peter Ryley
March 2009
Writing English: using active and passive
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Whose point of view shall we take?
A Active verbs only
Why is it important in a language to have both an active and a passive voice? Consider the following:
‘There was a large anti-war demonstration this afternoon in London. Demonstrators assembled in Trafalgar Square, where several of their leaders addressed the crowd. They then marched towards the Ruritanian embassy.’
Here is a news story about a demonstration. Part of this story is the claim by demonstrators that the police beat them, causing severe head injuries to one student.
If we continue using only verbs in the active, we get this:
‘Some of the demonstrators attempted to force their way into the embassy. The police resisted them, later chased them away and, so the demonstrators claim, beat some of them savagely.’
The problem here is that we are obliged to switch the focus of our attention from the demonstrators – whose story we are telling – to the police.
B. Adding the passive
BUT, by using the passive, we can keep our attention fixed on the demonstrators, even though the story changes from what they did to what was done to them:
‘Some of the demonstrators attempted to force their way into the embassy. This attempt was resisted by the police. The demonstrators were chased away and then, so they claim, some of them were savagely beaten.’
Putting the two pieces of text together, we have a continuous narrative, told from the demonstrator’s point of view (note ‘addressed’ also becomes passive):
‘There was a large anti-war demonstration this afternoon in London. Demonstrators assembled in Trafalgar Square, where the crowd was addressed by several of their leaders. They then marched towards the Ruritanian embassy. Some of the demonstrators attempted to force their way into the embassy. This attempt was resisted by the police. The demonstrators were chased away and then, so they claim, some of them were savagely beaten.’
C.The carrot’s tale
This problem of point of view becomes even clearer if we talk about carrots.
‘Carrots require a deep, well-worked soil containing well-rotted compost. They should be sown out of doors in April, once the soil has warmed up a little. The soil must be kept moist during germination, and once the carrots are 3-4 centimetres high, they should be thinned, in order to prevent them being too crowded. The rows should be 30cms apart and should be kept hoed. Carrots must be weeded carefully, also, or they will become choked with weeds and will not be able to grow.’
What do carrots actively do? They grow. Everything else is done to – either to the carrots, the soil, or the other unwanted plants that also grow (weeds). It is done by gardeners, of course, but we (writer and reader) know that. Our focus is not on the gardener but on the carrots – and what to do to make sure that they grow.
D. Summary: Three ‘points of view’
Consider these elements: the students / homework / the teacher:
The passive gives us a second and even a third point of view. Given the three elements above, and the passive voice, I can talk about what happened either to the teacher, the student, or the homework:
The teacher, who was in a bad mood, gave a lot of homework to the students.
The students, who were already angry about not having enough free time, were given extra homework by the new teacher.
The homework, which was about the properties of superconductors, was successfully completed by only two students.
In every case, the action is carried out by the teacher. But the point of view does NOT have to stay with the teacher.
Here is another example of the third point of view: that of things, such as the carrots or homework above. Consider this:
First, the onions are browned in a little olive oil. The mushrooms, carrots, broccoli and peppers, finely chopped, are then added. All the vegetables are left to cook slowly on a low heat, after being seasoned with bay leaves, thyme and a little basil. The beans, which will be added next, should have been pre-cooked for one hour…
In a recipe such as this, the star performers – those who hold the centre of attention – are the ingredients used in the recipe. The person explaining the recipe and the people for whom it is intended are not the main focus of attention. The instructions focus on how the ingredients are to be dealt with.
Every type of instruction – such as those for assembling furniture, getting gadgets ready for use, electrical wiring etc etc – focuses on things, as does description of every kind of process: industrial ones for example. Furthermore, this is the language used to describe scientific and medical research, archaeology, art – wherever, in fact, we need to talk about inanimate objects and what happens, is done or should ( instructions) be done to them.
Language needs the passive, and as language students, so do we!
Now see exercises in file P5-01G
Explaining sentence structure in English
Other English Grammar Lessons
To find what you need: type the subject you are looking for into the ’search’ box u then click
Further files on related subjects should be accessed from here
In order to complete successfully the exercise on clause, phrase and sentence, we need to understand how a typical sentence is structured in English. This is often explained as being based on subject, verb and object, in that order.
The verb can be one word or more, depending on whether or not there is an auxiliary or supporting verb. The verb says what the action is:
Ate walks is sleeping will not open has taken
Before this verb, a subject must be placed. This is the person or thing which is the author of the action – the one doing whatever it is:
Lion father girl Prince She
The subject is a noun, but is often accompanied by other words - ‘determiners’ such as this, my, the, some and so on, and / or adjectives like tall, happy etc.
The lion my father the little girl The Prince of Wales
The subject can also be a pronoun, which is a word used instead of a noun: She, it, they etc
Combining the two, we get
The lion ate My father walks The little girl is sleeping The Prince of Wales will not open She has taken
Notice that one of these combinations - The little girl is sleeping. – is already finished. It does not need an object. The verb sleep is one of those which we call ‘intransitive’ – it is not followed by an object.
Three of the other verbs are transitive: The lion ate… who? Or what?….
The lion ate the tourist. The Prince of Wales will not open the new swimming pool. She has taken a holiday.
Tourist, swimming pool and holiday are the answers to the question: who or what was the answer done to? Who or what was the recipient of the action. These words are objects of the verbs ‘ate’, ‘will not open’ and ‘has taken’ respectively.
My father walks by the sea every day.
In this case, walk is also intransitive – there is normally no object of the verb walk. In fact, in one case there can be: My father walks the dog twice a day. In this special case, question: walks who or what? – answer: walks the dog.
So, a sentence with an intransitive verb can be complete when it has a subject and a verb:
Paul fell over. The ghost appeared. I became very frightened.
(In the last case, very frightened refers back to the subject – I – and is what we call a complement.)
On the other hand, a sentence with a transitive verb must have subject, verb AND object to be complete:
Maria writes books. The boy bought a bicycle. Tom doesn’t like fruit.
A phrase has no verb, so one or more phrases cannot make a sentence:
Behind the door in our kitchen…
This is unfinished, and a sentence is a finished idea:
Behind the door in our kitchen there is a dishwasher.
Again, a sentence with a conjunction added is turned into a clause:
It was four o’clock in the morning. – sentence
Although it was four o’clock in the morning – clause, beginning with the conjunction ‘although’.[this piece of language is now incomplete.]
I couldn’t sleep, although it was four o’clock in the morning. – sentence with two clauses: I couldn’t sleep; it was four o’clock in the morning, now complete again.
Note that: ‘I couldn’t sleep’ can be a sentence on its own – its meaning is complete – see also the ‘main and subordinate clauses’ explanation file.
Conclusion
In order to create a sentence, you must have one complete idea. With an intransitive verb, this requires only subject and verb, with a transitive one, an object is also needed.
The normal word order for positive or negative statements (but not questions) in English is: subject, verb, object.
In questions, an auxiliary verb is needed and the subject is placed between the auxiliary and the main verb:
Did the lion eat the tourist? Is the little girl sleeping? Has she taken a holiday?
See also the question formation file.
English grammar: phrase, clause, sentence and conjunction
Other English Grammar Lessons
To find what you need: type the subject you are looking for into the ’search’ box u then click
Explanation E3-01W
Further files on similar subjects should be accessed from here
Understanding the structure of written English will not make you into William Shakespeare. But it will give you a strong technical basis for producing written English work of a good standard, and also help in your reading: i.e. in understanding what other people have written. For this reason, this writing course begins by analysing the basic units from which English is built up. We often think of the sentence as this basic unit:
1. The cat caught a mouse. 2. Albert ate three ice-creams.
A simple sentence of this kind is certainly a very basic form. But a typical English sentence would be more complicated than this:
1a. Just before dark, the cat caught a mouse at the bottom of the garden.
In this case, the two groups of words in italics are phrases – the first of time, the second of place. Our other sentence could also very likely be longer:
2a. (2+3▼) Albert ate three ice creams when he arrived home from school.
In this case, we are adding two new elements to the sentence: a clause and a conjunction. A clause is a group of words with a subject, verb and possibly object, but it is not the only such group in the sentence.
2. Albert ate three ice creams. 3. He arrived home from school.
Both of these could be sentences, but in the example above, they are put together and joined by the word when, which is a conjunction, so in this sentence they are clauses.
2c. Albert ate three ice-creams on the way home from school.
Here, the meaning is the same, but ‘on the way home from school’ has no verb, so it is a phrase, not a clause. Note that many conjunctions can come before, rather than between, the two clauses:
When he arrived home from school, Albert ate three ice-creams