Quick Grammar Tip: 'Who' or 'Whom'

Quick answer

If the answer to the question is:

• I
• he
• she
• we
• they

the word should be 'who'.

Example:

Who kicked Benjamin?
I kicked Benjamin.

However, if the answer to the question is:

• me
• him
• her
• us
• them

the word used should be 'whom'.

Example:

Whom did Benjamin kick?
Benjamin kicked him.

Long answer

'Who' is actually a subject (the noun that does the action) and that is why it corresponds to pronouns that are subjects (I, he, she, we, they).

'Whom' is an object (the noun that the action is done to). Hence its correspondence to pronouns that are subjects (me, him, her, us, them).

'You' and 'it' are used as both subjects and objects. Thus, it is of no help to cue you in whether to use 'who' or 'whom'. Tough luck there.

However, the usage of 'whom' is slowly losing ground. It is not uncommon these days to see even published writers (especially younger writers) using 'who' when they should be using 'whom'. As the English language further evolves, it may not be surprising if one day we do away with 'whom' completely but until that day happens, it is good to know the difference between 'who' and 'whom' so that you know what the correct answer is should you encounter it in an English test.

CALLING OUT TO GRAMMAR NERDS!

I was born in the '70s.


When I attended school (both primary and secondary) in the '80s, the focus on grammar then, I believe (I was a rather 'blur' pupil), was more of incidental learning.


Sure, the teachers taught grammar (if they knew grammar) but they spent more time drilling us on the basic things like subject-noun agreement, present tense and past tense. Nothing too fancy. Anything more advanced than subject-noun agreement or tenses were only mentioned in passing. Those who understood, good and well for them. Those who didn't -- well, it was no big deal as we were supposed to learn grammar incidentally.


I was one of those who didn't get grammar. But I was fortunate in that I was really into reading, and that helped me a lot during my examinations.


Then I became a teacher and I realised that some knowledge of grammar is necessary if I want to be able to explain to my pupils clearly and simply why certain sentence structures are acceptable and others aren't. And thus began my interest in English grammar.


After some time, I realise I'm not alone. That there are a sizeable number of people out there who are interested in this topic too. Call them grammar nazis, grammar nerds, whatever; it's good to know that I'm not alone. (It's always good to know that having a particular interest, even if it's grammar, does not make one weird.)


To my fellow grammar nerds, I came across this article on Huffington Post about a trick to analyse one's sentence structure. It gets a little complex, especially towards the end, but the overarching principle is general enough to apply to primary school English.


Click this link to read the article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/01/diagram-sentence-grammar_n_5908462.html.


I hope you find it as illuminating and interesting as I do.  :)

Synthesis & Transformation: Changing Direct Speech to Reported Speech

I visited the English PSLE forum on KiasuParents recently and discovered a lively argument about the conversion of direct speech to reported speech. There seems to be some misconceptions lying around so I thought it would be timely to do a post on it just before the PSLE.

Tenses

Firstly, let’s tackle the tenses. The column on the left shows the tense used in the direct speech and the column on the right shows the tense it should be converted to when we change direct speech to reported speech.

Direct Speech	Indirect Speech
Simple Present Tense	Simple Past Tense
Simple Past Tense	Past Perfect Tense
Present Perfect Tense	Past Perfect Tense
Present Continuous Tense	Past Continuous Tense

Note:

Because of the first rule (simple present tense to past perfect tense), that means all the modals in the direct speech would need to be changed to the past form if they are in the present form. Modals include:

Present Form	Past Form
can	could
will	would
may	might

There are other modals but these are the more common ones that tend to appear in Synthesis & Transformation.

Other words that need to be changed

The first thing to look out for after the tenses would be the pronouns. What a particular pronoun is changed to depends on the context.

Example:

Mother asked Peter, ‘Why did you not wash the dishes?’

In this case, the pronoun in the direct speech ‘you’ needs to be changed to ‘he’.

Other words that need to be changed:

tomorrow	the following day
yesterday	the previous day
next week/month, etc	the following week/month, etc
last week/month, etc	the previous week/month, etc
here	there
this / these	that / those

Beware when the direct speech is a question

You need to be careful when the direct speech holds a question because then the order of the words usually has to be changed during conversion. This change is to change the structure of the sentence from a question to a statement.

Example:

Mother asked Peter, ‘Why are the dishes not washed?’

Many pupils would answer:

Mother asked Peter why were the dishes not washed.

This part ‘…why were the dishes not washed’ is wrong, because it is still in the question form. To change it to the statement form, the verb (‘were’) has to be put after the subject (‘the dishes’). And that is the general rule for changing a question to a statement:

The verb has to be placed after the subject (noun doing the action).

So the correct answer to the question above should be:

Mother asked Peter why the dishes were not washed.

Common questions regarding conversion of direct speech to reported speech

1. When do we use ‘if’, ‘whether’, ‘why’, ‘when’, ‘who’, ‘where’, ‘what’ and ‘how’?

‘If’ and ‘whether’ are interchangeable. It really does not matter which of the two you use. But if you are not sure about the spelling of ‘whether’, keep to ‘if’.

You use them when the answer to the question being asked is a ‘yes/no’ one.

Example:

Mother asked Peter, ‘Did you wash the dishes?’

Ans: Mother asked Peter if/whether he had washed the dishes.

[Peter’s answer would have been a ‘Yes, I did.’ Or ‘No, I didn’t.’.]

But when the question begins with one of the 5Ws or 1H, you use back the same W or H.

Examples:

Mother asked Peter, ‘Why are the dishes not washed?’

Ans: Mother asked Peter why the dishes were not washed.

Mother asked Peter, ‘When were the dishes washed?’

Ans: Mother asked Peter when the dishes had been washed.

And so on…

2. Do I have to use ‘that’ in reported speech?

No. ‘That’ is optional.

Example:

Peter told Mother, ‘I forgot about them.’

Ans:

Peter told Mother he had forgotten about them.

Peter told Mother that he had forgotten about them.

Both answers are perfectly fine.

And note that ‘that’ is only used when the direct speech is in the form of a statement, not a question.

That’s all I can think off the top of my head at the moment. If I’ve missed out anything or you have any points to add, feel free to drop me an email at learningpartnersyishun@gmail.com.

2013 PSLE Situational Writing

In about 2 weeks' time, the PSLE will be upon us. Hence I think it's timely now to go through the Situational Writing task for last year's English PSLE. I suppose most of you have already gone through it in school, but there's no harm in some revision.

Question

Note: The question is extracted from 2009-2013 PSLE Examination Questions - English Language.

Study the pictures below carefully. 

Your Task

Imagine you are Mary, the president of the club.

Write an email to Mrs Choo to request her help.

You are to refer to the given information for your letter.

In your letter, include the following information:

·        which club you belong to

·        the purpose of the club

·        when and where the camp will be held

·        what specific need you need from Mrs Choo

·        when Mrs Choo needs to reply you

You may reorder the points. Write in complete sentences.

[Note 1:  This email is to be sent to Mrs Choo, the school bookshop owner, so it is a formal email. Please use formal language in your email.]

Model Answer

6 content points:

1.       which club you belong to

·        Sunny Club

2.       the purpose of the camp

·        inculcate a love for the outdoors

[Note 2:  Each year, there is a tricky question amongst the 6 content points and this is the one in 2013. The purpose of the camp is not mentioned in the given information but a hint is given: ‘It has to do with our motto,’ Mary said.

And what is the motto? You can find it on the poster: Love the outdoors.

So a possible reason for the camp is to instil a love for the outdoors in the club members.

Any appropriate (must make sense) and relevant (must be related to the motto) purpose would be acceptable.]

3.       when

·        15^th to 16^th November

4.       and where the camp will be held

·        Lagoon Park

5.       what specific help you need from Mrs Choo

·        supply the caps and writing materials needed for the camp at a good price

6.       when Mrs Choo needs to reply to you

·        7^th October

Dear Mrs Choo,

I am Mary Tan, the president of the Sunny Club.

Sunny Club will be holding a camp to inculcate a love of the outdoors in our club members. The camp will be held after the year-end examinations on 15^th and 16^th November at Lagoon Park.

I would like to ask for your help to supply us with the caps and writing material we need for the camp at a good price. I would appreciate it if you could let us know your response by 7^th October so that I could make the necessary arrangements.

Thank you for your kind attention and I look forward to your favourable reply.

Yours sincerely,

Mary Tan

Note 3:  Please use the full name, ‘Mary Tan’ in this case, as it’s a formal letter. Mary’s surname is not given so just make one up. This is not the time to be overly creative so any common surname would suffice. As it is a formal email, it is also good to include Mary’s title: President of the Sunny Club.

Note 4:  This is a grammatical note. When writing the dates of the camp, you have two choices:

1.   from 15^th to 16^th November; or

2.  on 15^th and 16^th November

These small details matter! They will affect your language score.

Note 5: As you know the person you are writing to, use ‘Yours sincerely’ rather than ‘Yours faithfully’. The latter is usually reserved for instances when you do not know the person you are writing to.

Round vs Around

A conversation between my sister and me some time back.

Me:  I turned around and saw…

Sister:  Shouldn’t it be ‘turned round’?

(I looked at her blankly.)

Sister:  I mean, if you turn around, you would have turned a complete circle, 360˚,      and you would be facing where you were originally facing, wouldn’t you?

Me: I think they mean the same thing.

Sister:  Are you sure?

I wasn’t, and as an English teacher, I should know better, shouldn’t I? So I took it upon myself to check.

Short answer for those who couldn’t care less: There is not much difference between the two words and generally, they can be used interchangeably.

For the grammar Nazis amongst us:

According to the 11^th edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, ‘around’ is both a preposition (3 definitions) and an adverb (6 definitions). In the exchange above between my sister and me, it is used as an adverb and it means ‘to face in the opposite direction’.

The same tome explains that ‘round’ can be an adjective (6 definitions), a noun (7 definitions), an adverb (5 definitions), a preposition (4 definitions) and a verb (also 4 definitions).

So ‘round’ can also be used correctly in the exchange above. Used in the context above, it would be an adverb and it means ‘to rotate and face in the opposite direction’.

The good dictionary goes so far as to explain that in British English, the words ‘round’ and ‘around’ are interchangeable in many contexts. There is, however, a general preference for ‘round’ to be used for definite, specific movement (I turned round; the red car came round the corner), while ‘around’ tends to be used in contexts which are less definite (I wandered around for ages; a rumour circulating around the cocktail bars).

In US English, the normal form is ‘around’. ‘Round’ is generally used in certain fixed expressions such as all year round and they went round and round in circles.

So now you know. And if someone questions you on your usage of ‘round’ or ‘around’ in the future, you can confidently say that they are interchangeable.   ;)

Grammar Tip: ''Shining Trinket' or 'Shiny Trinket'?

Recently, we wrote a story about a robbery. In the story, the robber had snatched the victim's necklace and was running away with it.


Some of the pupils became a little confused between 'shining' and 'shiny' and wrote:

He was holding a shining trinket in his hand.


'Shining' actually means 'emitting or reflecting light' (The Concise Oxford Dictionary) . Some will argue that the sentence is not wrong because the necklace does reflect light. Put that way, every visible thing reflects light. Your desk reflects light. Your uniform reflects light. Your worksheet reflects light. Does that make them 'shining'?

TRICKY GRAMMAR!

Many pupils in Singapore will be taking their mid-year examinations the following week.


Although we have gone through the revision with pupils in class already, I know that some would not remember all the various questions that we have covered. Thus I would like to use this post to serve as a reminder to the pupils some of the grammatical items we have gone through in class.

1. What is the difference between 'a number' and 'the number'?