MSI Press Blog

First, some comforting news: Even native speakers make grammar mistakes. Sometimes they start a sentence one way and finish it another. Sometimes they repeat forms they hear around them. Sometimes they overgeneralize patterns. In English, for example, you'll hear many speakers say "let him alone" rather than the traditionally preferred "leave him alone." Depending on region, social group, and dialect, certain forms become common even when they differ from what grammar books prescribe. Children do this constantly while acquiring their first language. Russian-speaking children, for example, often apply genitive endings more broadly than adult grammar permits. As their language develops, those overgeneralizations gradually disappear. (This raises fascinating questions for language learners. Should a 17-year-old learner speak textbook grammar or include some of the features common among native-speaking 17-year-olds? Should learners adopt regional dialect features ...

  One of the most delightful (and sometimes debilitating) shocks for English speakers learning another language is discovering that word order isn’t always king . In English, syntax rules are rigid: Pavel killed Ivan means something very different from Ivan killed Pavel . Switch the nouns, and you’ve reversed the story. But in languages like Russian , meaning is carried primarily through morphology —the endings that mark grammatical roles—rather than through word order. Consider these examples: Ивана убил Павел Павел убил Ивана Убил Павел Ивана Ивана Павел убил Each means roughly the same thing: Pavel killed Ivan. The difference lies in nuance—what part of the sentence is emphasized, what question is being answered, or what rhythm feels natural in context. For a beginner, any of these will communicate the essential idea. For a native speaker, each carries a subtle shade of focus or tone. This flexibility is typical of inflected languages , where endings do the heavy lifting. Othe...

  Today's tip for parents from two talented teachers comes from  365 Teacher Secrets for Parents  by Cindy McKinley Alder and Patti Trombly. #55 This is Only a Test (Study Tips) . If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.  ~Thomas A. Edison   Do you remember taking tests when you were in school? How did you prepare? Very often children are taught the subject matter but no one has ever taken time to show them how to take the information and use it to study for a test. Of course, the purpose of a test is to gauge how well a child knows the information being presented. Unfortunately, a child’s lack of test-taking skills may be the cause of not-so-good grades. Here are some suggestions for your child that may help her prepare for a test. Some of these will have to be taught to her. Others she may just have to be shown once and then she will understand. No matter what strategies your child uses, studying in a quiet place ...