Saturday, December 14, 2013

Common mistakes learners make - discuss about

Foreign learners quite often want to say something like - "we discussed about last night's match". This is perhaps not surprising, for two reasons:
  • "discuss" is really just another (more formal) way of saying "talk about"
    We discussed (talked about) the new system.
  • the noun "discussion" is often (and correctly) followed by the preposition "about"
    We had a discussion about the new system.
But in Standard English, we don't use discuss about like this.

Sunday, December 8, 2013

Whom watch #3 - Silly infographic

Continuing an occasional series where I look at silly or downright bad articles etc about whom on the Internet.
The other day I was looking through a teacher’s blog which had kindly linked to mine, when I came across an ‘infographic’ with the title “Who vs whom”. I rather feared the worst.