词汇大师(Wordmaster)--Lida Baker: Exceptional Verbs

Broadcast on "Coast to Coast": August 15, 2002
Rebroadcast on VOA News Now: August 18, 2002

AA: I'm Avi Arditti, Rosanne Skirble is away. With me this week on Wordmaster is our English teacher friend Lida Baker¹ in Los Angeles, to talk about a few verbs that can cause trouble for even the best-trained non-native speakers.

BAKER: "I got the idea for this segment² because for the past six weeks I've been working with a group of brand-new English teachers from Hong Kong. Their English is superb³, but I noticed here and there that there were still little errors that persisted⁴, and one of those errors was with the word 'let.' One of the students got up to do a presentation and she made a sentence something like, 'and at this point I would let the students to talk among themselves.' To my native ear, of course, that 'to' shouldn't be there.

"And, you know, there's a very logical explanation for why a student would make a mistake like this. Let's take a sentence like 'letting the students to sit down' and think about what it really means. Well, it means that the teacher allowed -- or will allow -- the students to sit down. With a verb like 'allow,' it's necessary for us to include the preposition 'to,' but with 'let' it isn't."

AA: "So it would be like, 'Allow me to introduce myself. Let me sit down.'"

BAKER: "Exactly. Or 'let me introduce myself.' So what students do is they generalize⁵ from one form to another and therefore make the mistake. There's a few other verbs that act like 'let.' Think of this sentence: 'My mother made me clean my room.' It wouldn't be correct to say 'my mother made me to clean my room.' But it's perfectly⁶ correct to say 'my mother forced me to clean my room,' right?"

AA: "Right, exactly."

BAKER: "So with the verb 'make,' it isn't correct to use the preposition 'to.' Another example is a structure like this: 'I had the waiter bring me some water.' We use this structure -- I-had-someone-do-something-for-me -- in the sense of somebody that we hire in some cases to do a service for us. So 'I had the plumber⁷ fix the leak in my sink' or 'I had the dry cleaner remove the stain from my silk suit.'

"I think the best way to approach this from the learner's point of view is to think of verbs like 'let' and 'make' and 'have' as exceptions, because the normal pattern would be to include the preposition 'to.' So once the student is aware of the fact that these verbs don't act like others, then the student can start kind of paying attention and looking for them when they listen to the news, when they listen to the radio, when they watch television.

"Another really good way to learn these verbs is to look for them in song lyrics⁸. Think of all the songs that have 'let' in them: 'Let Me Go,' 'You Made Me Love You.'" (laughter)

MUSIC: "You Made Me Love You"/Judy Garland

BAKER: "So I would tell my students to go to the Internet, because on the Internet you can find song lyrics, there are thousands of song lyrics on the Internet, and look for your favorite songs and read the lyrics. You're going to find lots of examples of sentences with 'let' and 'make' and 'have.' And if you start humming those songs in your head, it's really going to help the student to remember how to use these verbs correctly. Can you think of any others?"

AA: "Uh ... "

BAKER: "'You Make Me Feel Like Dancing,' 'You Make Me Want to Sing,' 'You Make Me Want to Shout.'" (laughter)

MUSIC: "You Make Me Want to Shout"/Otis Day & the Knights⁹

AA: Lida Baker teaches in the American Language Center, part of the University of California at Los Angeles Extension program. She also writes textbooks for English learners, available through the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company.

And while Lida cannot answer questions personally, send them to us at VOA Wordmaster, Washington DC 20237 USA. Our e-mail address is。。。。。。。。。and our Web site is voanews.com/wordmaster.

I'm Avi Arditti.

MUSIC: "Shout"

 

1 baker   

n.面包师

参考例句：

• The baker bakes his bread in the bakery.面包师在面包房内烤面包。
• The baker frosted the cake with a mixture of sugar and whites of eggs.面包师在蛋糕上撒了一层白糖和蛋清的混合料。

2 segment   

n.切片，部分，段，节

参考例句：

• The company dominates this segment of the market.这家公司控制着这一部分市场。
• Give me a segment of a tangerine to taste.给我一瓣柑橘尝一尝。

3 superb   

adj.高贵的，壮丽的，极好的

参考例句：

• The large bay has a superb backdrop of mountains.大海湾背靠着庄严的山脉。
• The hotel has a large dining room serving superb local cuisine.饭店有一个大餐厅供应上好的当地菜肴。

4 persisted   

坚持( persist的过去式和过去分词 )； 维持； 保持； 持续存在

参考例句：

• They persisted in going there in spite of the bad weather. 尽管天气很坏，他们还是坚持去那里。
• She persisted that she was strong enough to go back to work. 她反复地说她身体已经好了，可以去上班了。

5 generalize   

vt.概括出；vi.形成概念

参考例句：

• When we use "he",we generalize for both sex.当我们用he时，我们泛指男女。
• Since I do not know the details,I can only generalize about the matter.由于不了解详情，我对此事只能泛泛而谈。

6 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

7 plumber   

n.(装修水管的)管子工

参考例句：

• Have you asked the plumber to come and look at the leaking pipe?你叫管道工来检查漏水的管子了吗？
• The plumber screwed up the tap by means of a spanner.管子工用板手把龙头旋紧。

8 lyrics   

n.歌词

参考例句：

• music and lyrics by Rodgers and Hart 由罗杰斯和哈特作词作曲
• The book contains lyrics and guitar tablatures for over 100 songs. 这本书有100多首歌的歌词和吉他奏法谱。

9 knights   

骑士； （中古时代的）武士( knight的名词复数 )； 骑士； 爵士； （国际象棋中）马

参考例句：

• stories of knights and fair maidens 关于骑士和美女的故事
• He wove a fascinating tale of knights in shining armour. 他编了一个穿着明亮盔甲的骑士的迷人故事。