Tuesday, 1 December 2009

Dictation: NATIVE SPEAKERS

The mark of writers or speakers fluent in English is the way they effortlessly do away with words that, although mandated by formal grammar, only slow down the delivery of their ideas. Foreign users of English, on the other hand, often stick to grammar rules, leaving no grammatical gaps in their sentences that might betray their less than perfect proficiency in the language. As might be expected, of course, this desire to treat syntax and semantics with mathematical precision achieves the exact opposite. It results in stiff, unidiomatic English that clearly identifies the users as non-native ones trying very hard not to be perceived as such.

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