Essentials Of English For Latin Americans

ESSENTIALS o ENGLISH FOR LATIN AMERICANS BY Dominic P. Rotunda, Willard M. Smith, Evaline Uhl Wright OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE INSTITUTE AND ORIENTATION CENTER MILLS COLLEGE THE GILLICK PRESS BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA First printing, 1945 Second printing Revised, 1948 Copyright, 1945, by Dominic Rotunda, Willard Smith, and Evaline Uhl Wright Printed and made in the United States of America DEDICATED TO OUR STUDENTS . 3 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION ............... vii SECTION I GRAMMAR LESSON I Word-order in English, fundamental sentence elements in statements and questions ........... 1 LESSON II Personal pronouns as objects negatives and con tractions verb inflections ............ 7 LESSON III Possessive personal pronouns, indefinite pronouns, demonstrative adjectives and pronouns ........ 14 LESSON IV Verbals ending in ING, preterite tenses, progressive tenses ................. 22 LESSON V Future tenses, question words ....... 31 LESSON VI Past participles, perfect tenses, obligatory and ha bitual action ............... 37 LESSON VII The compound sentence, coordinating conjunctions, imperative mood command, request, suggestion ..... 41 LESSON VIII Objects and complements order of modifiers use of TELL, SAY, SPEAK, TALK .......... 46 LESSON IX Prepositions and prepositional phrases ..... 51 LESSON X The complex sentence, subordinate clauses, relative pronouns, subordinating conjunctions ........ 58 LESSON XI Adjective clauses, noun clauses, direct and indirect discourse ................. 63 LESSON XII Transitive and intransitive uses of verbs, subjec tive complements, the passive voice ......... 68 LESSON XIII Adverbs, kinds and uses comparison of adjectives and adverbs ................ 73LESSON XIV English equivalents for the Spanish indefinite re flexive, additional uses of helping verbs ........ 80 LESSON XV Infinitives with and without TO, uses of the infini tive, two-word verbs ............. 87 LESSON XVI Order of sentence elements in English .... 96 LESSON XVII The subjunctive mood, adverbial clauses of con dition, concession, comparison and degree 102 LESSON XVIII Adverbial clauses of purpose, result, cause or reason, manner, time, place 109 APPENDIX I Mechanics of written English 112 APPENDIX II Deceptive cognates 116 SECTION II PHONETICS OF AMERICAN SPEECH INTRODUCTORY DISCUSSION 1 ANALYSIS AND DRILL MATERIAL ON INDIVIDUAL SPEECH SOUNDS CONSONANTS 20 VOWELS 85 DIPHTHONGS 113 Introduction A. ESSENTIALS OF ENGLISH GRAMMAR The eighteen lessons which follow constitute a highly intensive, stream lined course. They are intended to be used under the guidance of an instruc tor. They are not meant for self-instruction. The authors assume that students using this text have done some preliminary study of English. Since detail and notes are reduced to a minimum, the instructor is expected to furnish much of the explanatory and sustaining material required by the student who has had some exposure to the English language it is not a book for beginners. The division into eighteen lessons does not imply that the material can be handled in eighteen assignments. The instructor should use his judgment in determining the amount of time to be devoted to any one lesson. The rate of progress should depend on the linguistic proficiency of the student. It is to be noted that rules are never explained in Spanish. However help ful an explanation in Spanish may prove in an individual case, we are of the opinion that the students dependence on his own language, generally has a retarding psychological effect on his learning process. For this reason we have consciously omitted all drill on cognates and have stressed only deceptive cognates. Since the emphasis is on the spoken rather than the written language much attention is given to colloquial speech and oral contractions. Some of these locutions contradict formulations of grammatical theory based upon earlier good usage, particularly literary usage...