THE ART OF SPEAKING AMERICAN ENGLISH (10 page)

Sandra
:
“Mike, Gill finally did it!” Sandra excitedly tells her husband on the phone
.

Mike
:
Did what?

Sandra
:
Cleaned up all his toys
on his own
.

Mike
:
Fantastic! I’ll pick up something for him on the way home
.

Sandra
:
He’s been wanting a toy train
.

Mike
:
I’ll look around
.

Note:
by myself
is sometime colloquially substituted for
on my own
.

Gill cleaned up all his toys
by himself
.

V.
myself
and
on my own
connote doing something on one’s own
without the benefit of help from another individual
. However,
myself
primarily places emphasis not on the person who completes the task, but on someone else who instead was expected or promised before hand to complete that task.

(Bill is still in his pajamas in the late morning.)

Jan
:
Honey, can you take out the trash?

Bill
: Yeah
sure, as soon as I get dressed
.

(An hour has passed, and Jan sees Bill walk through the living room on his way to the garage wearing a shirt and jeans.)

Jan:
Honey, the trash, can you take it out?”
(Jan is frustrated.)

Bill
:
I will, just after I’m through in the garage
.

Jan:
What’s new?”
(Jan says this under her breath)

(Thirty-five minutes later, her husband emerges from the garage, but Jan has already taken out the trash.)

Bill
:
Where’s the trash?

Jan
:
I took out
myself
.

while
And
during

Foreign students learn the grammatical differences between our topic words in junior high school, and review them in subsequent grades and in the first two years of college. Unfortunately, this does little to help students use them correctly in conversational English.

I.
while
is best described as a word that coordinates two simultaneous actions, whether one person is doing two actions, or two or more people are engaged in separate actions. Think of this as the simple pattern
action
+
action
.

A. My uncle smoked(action) three cigars
while
he was telling(action) me about his younger years as a sailor
.

B.
Me and my brothers talked(action) on the couch and watched TV
while
our parents made(action) this year’s Christmas dinner
.

II.
during
is best described as a word that coordinates one or more actions with
one or more events, situations, conditions, etc
. Think of this as the pattern
action
+
event
.

I. The
businessman texted (action) his wife
during
the conference(event)
.

2. One of the professors fell asleep (action) and snored very loudly
during
the conference (event).”

3.
During
the International Conference On Orthopedic Surgery (event), three of the guest speakers had to suddenly leave (action) to perform emergency surgery on a eighty five year old man who had been seriously injured in a car accident
.

III
. Using
while
and
during
to describe the same situation

The boy texted (action) his girlfriend at the dinner table
while
his father and mother were arguing (action)← →The boy texted (action) his girlfriend at the dinner table
during
an argument(event) between his mother and father
.

Note:
while
is often incorrectly substituted for the word
but
, but is nevertheless acceptable in conversational English.

One of the professors fell asleep (action) and snored very loudly,
but
the conference continued on (action). ←
→
One of the professors fell asleep (action) and snored very loudly,
while
the conference continued on (action)
.

because
And
in that

It is safe to say that all students of English, from beginning to advance, are familiar with the word
because
, one of many
coordinating conjunctions
. Consequently, it shows up in conversation and writing even when the far lesser known idiomatic alternative
in that
is preferable or required. That said, both
because
and
in that
are often dropped in conversational English, replaced by a brief pause (A & B) before the thought or sentence is completed; this is what likely accounts for the confusion.

I.
because
is used when there is a
cause and effect
relationship between two clauses.

A.
The boy was not allowed to go on the school field trip,
because
his parents had forgotten to sign his permission slip
.

B.
The government of that big country is going to collapse,
because
among other things, it will not or cannot bring unnecessary spending under control
.

C.
Because
my girlfriend doesn’t want to go to the party, I don’t either
.

II.
in that
is used when a cause and effect relationship has not been established, and when qualifying a statement about the condition of sonnething, situation, attitude, etc. The idiom
in as much as
may be substituted for
in that

A. The offer the company has put on the table isn’t exactly what we had expected, in
that/
in as much as
there is no mention of the fair stock swap we were hoping for
rapport
is silent)

B.
He isn’t exactly cut out for the position of school dean,
in that/in
as much as
he has little rapport with the professors
.

(
t
in
rapport
is silent)

C.
Carefully considering his fianc
é
’s opinions is an admirable trait,
in that/in
as much as
it shows he will probably be an attentive father
.

recently
And
lately

I.
recently
is generally used when speaking about a
completed
action, situation or event that has occurred at some point in the not too distant past.

A.
My dog died
recently
.

B.
The company
recently
moved its warehouse to Los Angeles CA, significantly improving its financial outlook
.

C.
It was just
recently
, that the university raised the cost of tuition
.

II.
lately
is generally used when speaking about an action, situation or event that began some time in the not too distant past and
continues to the present
.

Examples:

A. My aging father said
lately
he’s been feeling a bit under the weather
.

B.
It seems like there’s been a lot of
fender benders
(minor car accidents) on the highway
lately
.

C.
Lately
, restaurants have been closing early to conserve electricity
.

go
home
, go
back home
, go
uptown
, go
downtown
, come
here
, go
there
, go
over there

I. The topic words here (in color) have something in common which sets them apart from all other nouns and pronouns that express place or location. With few exceptions, the preposition
(to)
is not used in conjun-tion with any of the them as a rule when they function as
adverbs of place
.

A. I’m going
home
now
.

B.
Most people go
back home
for the holidays
. (go back home = to return to one’s home town)

C. Celebrities who live in New York, go
uptown
to shop for expensive gifts
. (uptown = the fashion district)

D.
If you go
downtown
, check out the spaghetti factory; the food’s great there
.

E.
Everybody says they come
here
for the nightlife, but it’s really the delicious sushi that attracts them
.

F.
He goes
there
twice a week for his knee rehabilitation
.

G.
“Go
over there
and sit down, please,”
the businessman told his son.
I’ll be off in five minutes, and then we’ll go to McDonalds for dinner.”

Additional List Of
Adverbs Of Place

everywhere, away, up, around, home, back home, nearby, abroad,
back, backwards/backward, down, downstairs, upstairs, east, west, north, south, elsewhere, far, near, nearby, in, indoors, inside, off, on, out, outside, towards, under, up