Friday, February 17, 2012

Macro-English (3)

There is vast room in English for us to develop our memory. Under the nickname "Globlish", English has over one million words now. This is after an increase of 0.4 million in a short span of 60 years. Words from foreign languages, from new technologies and new trades have flooded into the language. At school the average student learns about 3000-4000 words a year. This figure came from the studies and experiments conducted by various educational institutions. In fact, after leaving school we still have, for personal need, to pick up new words, but the number dramatically comes down to about 50 words a year.
It is well known to people that a good stock of words will give them self-confidence and great power to build their thoughts on, so that their clear and convincing sentences will strike home.
To achieve the end we can develop our memory and word power through the channels of well written songs, attractive wordings of advertisements, movies, videos and radios. The Bible, books, magazines and even talks to all sorts of people will also serve our needs to build up the vocabulary stock.
However, knowing a word's meaning doesn't mean everything. We need grammar to clarify the writer's intention.
                         A pretty red tie.
If "pretty" is an adjective, it means a beautiful tie.
If "pretty" is an adverb, it means the tie is very red.

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