Use of the nuetral possessive 'their'

What to do with possessives when group is both genders or unknown and subject is third person: we can use the neutral possessive. Students in our Skype English lessons have great problems with this. Read on:

The neutral possessive used in third person for people is 'their'. So if we have a group of people composed of both sexes we should use 'their'. Consider: 'each student/everyone should hand in their homework on time'. Unless we know that the people involved is one gender, we should assume that there are 2 genders and thus utilise 'their'. If we know that the group has one sex only then we could employ 'his' or 'her' depending on the gender of the group. An alternative to 'their' often employed is 'his or her'. E.g. each student should hand in his or her homework. Have a good day/night. www.clasesinglesonline.com

Issues with 'since'

Good afternoon! Another problem area that Spanish speaking students have in our Skype English lessons is using 'since' . For instance, you cannot say 'I have been here since 1 year ago'. 'Since' used with the present perfect, present perfect continuous or the past perfect continuous tenses has to have an indication of the starting time of when the action began. So we would say 'I have been in Venice since Monday' or 'she has been studying Norwegian since March 2013' not 'since 1 year ago'. With the 3 afore mentioned tenses make sure you indicate the actual start time. If you translate structures like 'desde hace 1 año' literally you are gonna have trouble. With regard to other tenses not indicated above 'desde' when it indicates when an action starts should not be translated by 'since' but by 'from' for instance. Thus, 'she has class from Monday to Thursday' or 'they will be on holiday from January to March' or 'the trip occurred from June to August'. Hope that helps. Have a great day/night.

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Good evening, another common error committed by out clients in our Skype English classes concerns the use of the structure 'one of the'. When this is followed by a noun students have the tendency to put the noun in a singular form. Eg 'one of the pick up is a Toyota'. 'One of the' must be followed by a noun in the plural form. Thus, 'one of the pick ups is a Toyota'. A 'pick up' is a 'camioneta' in Spanish (most of our students are Spanish) in case you were wondering. http://www.clasesinglesonline.com/

'Familiar' shouldn't be used as an adjective of 'Family'

Another common error from our Skype English classes concerns 'familiar'. remember 'familiar' isn't an adjective of 'family' usually. So we wouldn't say 'I had a familiar reunion yesterday' but we'd say 'I had a family reunion yesterday'. 'Familiar' is used to indicate that you have knowledge about something. For example, 'I am familiar with Paris' or 'I am familiar with chemical engineering processes'. Remember, the preposition with 'familiar' is 'with'.

‘Asignatura’ is a false friend

When we are talking about studying Spanish speaking students, in our skype English classes, often translate ‘asignatura’ with ‘signature’. Unfortunately, we have a false friend here. A ‘signature’ is normally a ‘firma’ for example on contracts, cheques and other documents. ‘Asignatura’ would be ‘subject’ such as history, maths or linguistics.

Common error from our Spanish speakers when learning English: ‘En los ultimos meses/semanas’ etc should not be translated literally.

Students wrongly translate in our skype English classes ‘en los ultimos meses/años/semanas etc’ literally. So we would not say ‘in the last months’ or ‘in the last days’... what we can say is ‘in recent months/days etc’ or ‘in the last few years/minutes/weeks etc’, or even ‘in the last couple of years/months etc’. Pick out the phrase which you think is easier for you to remember.

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Desayunar/comer/cenar: you need to add the verb ‘to have’ or ‘to eat

Many students say a sentence like this in our Skype English classes: ‘I will lunch at the hotel restaurant’. This is actually not correct. The verbs ‘desayunar’, ‘comer’ and ‘cenar’ can not be translated literally with one work. You need to put the verb ‘to have’ or ‘to eat’ before the literal translation. So the sentence above should be translated by: ‘I will have/eat lunch at the hotel restaurant’ or ‘I had/ate dinner at my Mum’s yesterday’. Granted, you may occasionally find sentences like ‘I dinnered at Harrod’s last night’, especially in poetic circles, but it’s very, very rare and may not be actually grammatically correct according to the dictionary.
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