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Inglis pitinglis - Taller de inglés para Umbrianos

Feedback of Biweekly task 2- Short Story

Cargando editor
18/08/2016, 12:15
Leonid

Tingwe: Nihil Obstat (nothing to object). Except one small detail:

He sighed in relief, and then stretched his arm to find the cables at the back, and pulled the plug.

"and", when used in an enumeration or a sequence of actions should only mark the last of those. It is generally considered bad form to use "and" more than once per enumeration, although it can be a stylistic choice, for example to represent that someone is insecure, frightened or tripping over its own words. You should consider removing the first one, the comma will separate the actions nicely.

Kingslayer: A copule of things...

He took a deep breath and exhaled a smoke's smoke cloud. 

The Saxon Genitive (and the modern German genitive, which also adds an "s" to the ending of a word) denotes possession of something, which is not the case. It is not a cloud that is the posession of smoke, it is a cloud made of smoke. To do that, you simply use the material before the object, e.g: a smoke cloud, a wool sweater, a wooden door, a rubber boot, a triphenylphosphine oxide...

(Being a purist, you could use the saxon genitive if you were using "smoke" as a noun, as in "the cloud from a smoke". "A smoke" would be colloquial for cigarette. But then the entire wording of the sentence would be strange and wrong-sounding)

"Cloud" is also commonly referred only to the atmospheric phenomenon (or the protagonist of FFVII that speaks mostly using elipses). For the "clouds" that are formed when you breathe something out you commonly use "puff" (which is also how they represent the sound you make when you exhale)

His heart beat with the strong strength of a drum

"strong" is an adjective, so it needs to go imediately after or before with a noun, of which there are none to attach it to. This means you need to use a noun here. The noun of the quality that strong people or objects possess is "strength".

But he trid tried

Typo. 

but she moved the her head when the man entered the room

I´m willing to bet money you translated this directly from Spanish in your head :P. We all do, don´t worry, it´s a natural instinct. But in this case it´s not correct. In English, body parts are considered "posessions" of the body- which technically they are, at least as long as they remained attached to it- so they are preceded by the possesive "she moved her head", "he flailed her arms", "he lifted his hand".

Sometimes you can see "he lifted a hand" instead. Technically you can do this with body parts of which we have many (fingers, lungs, hands, arms), to mark that you don´t know, or aren't saying, which of the two he lifted. But since people only have one head (unless something in your genetics has gone horribly wrong), this does not apply here.

(The actual explanation involves a lot of talk about proto-sentence structure, alpha movement, original syntax order and vestigial use of accusative, but it´s not the place and I honestly don´t want to remember that stuff. Gives me headaches)

-Oh, you've come you came.- she said. -I'm so glad to see you.-

Two things, one grammar and one style:

You use "come" the continuous tense. This can be done, mostly to emphasise- the difficulty of coming or the process itself, like saying "Oh, you've come all this way to see me?" or "So you´ve come looking for my advice...". Here it sounds weird because the woman is merely stating a fact, or a process, which isn´t continuous- it ends when you arrive. So, the way people usually word this is "you came" (and are here now) or "you have arrived" (which is still kind of ongoing since you just did).

 

That´s just stylistics (the sentence is right), but you've kind of mixed the ways to indtroduce the dialog. Simplifying a lot (dialogue is a hugely complex thing):

a. If you use em dashes (Spanish, French and Italian among others do), then each dialog line goes separately:

 — Oh, you've come. I´m so glad to see you.

(Also, em dashes (—) are different from regular ones (-). The em dash unicode shortcut is alt+0151)

d. If you don't, then you just put each sentence between quotation marks. You don't use dashes to introduce things in the text:

"Oh, you came", she said. "I'm so glad to see you"  

(I keep consistently ignoring this myself and writing dialogue like me goes out of the dick... but that´s the "rules").

-Oh my God. She is...she is the most beautiful kid I've ever seen.

Same as before. Quotation marks, not dash.

He looked at the arm of his mother

Gramatically correct, but sounds reaaaaaally weird. "He looked at his mother's arm" feels much better.

Without that machine she would be  would have been dead long time ago.

You've used the wrong Conditional- 2nd (would be dead) instead of 3rd (would have been dead). The 2nd Conditional talks about the present: something that would have happened now if something else hadn't happened before ("I would be dead if I hadn't fastened my seatbelt). Since it´s present, you can't use it along with "a long time ago- that´s what the 3rd Conditional covers: a possibility that could have happened in the past.

But now she was condemned to a whole life in that bed.

False friend. "Condemn" isn't commonly used on the judicial sense, like Spanish does. It is used in the moral sense (to condemn inhumane or reprobable practices like genocide, terrorism or putting onion on a Spanish omelette), or, in the US, when the government acquires property of a building deemed unfit for human habitation, be it to biuld something else or to seal it off so it doesn't pose a danger to people in it. The game"Condemned: Criminal Origins" is named thus because it happens mostly on condemned buildings.

Merriam-Webster and Collins dictionaries still cite the meaning of sentencing someone to judicial punishment (and by analogy, for life to punish someone), but it´s quickly becoming old fashioned and other words like  "sentenced", "doomed", "forced" or "forced into" are more common.

The doctors said that his mother was very bad

Spanish has betrayed you again XD. What you are saying in this sentence is that his mother is inherently bad (it has that quality, or her behaviour leads to her being considered as such). You are referring to her nature, not her circumstances. For those you´d use paraphrasis such as "his mother was in a very bad shape", "his mother was in a very bad condition" o "her mother's condition was very bad". Stylistically, doctors wouldn´t told you either someone is on a "bad"  condition, they´d use more cultured adjectives: severe, worsening, declining, critical, delicate...

 The plug on his her arm

Turn my back for a second and your turn the mother into a transvestite! XDDD It´s an errata, obviosuly. But I´m more instrested on something else:

The doctors said that his mother was very bad. The plug on his arm only can give her one or two weeks more. But the end was inevitable and really close

You break the flow of time in the paragraph. You started with a past, so you set the time to past, framed in the memory of the conversation with the doctors. "can", however, is present. So the flow goes past-present-past. You should avoid that unless you do it for a reason (flashback, e.g.), and use "could" instead.

 

Cargando editor
18/08/2016, 17:56
Leonid

aAaaaand, since I have way too much time in my hands right now, let's do Round 2:

Muor:

The night had fallen...his knees were trembling

Grammatically correct, but I´m gonna pase a centuries-old adage from Language teachers: don´t abuse elipses. They are meant to either introduce an element of surprise or uncertainty, or to reflect that a thought or sentence trails off before ending. Here, it serves neither purpose. Full stop or semicolon work better.

After all, he had not taken a moment of rest since the day before yesterday, he was no machine. 

You usually don't take moments. Take implies active action, and moments are a time unit, which we don't have control about or can influence unless we´re The Doctor. So you have (passive action, given by circumstances) a moment. Sometimes it's used figuratively ("Take a moment now to consider my proposal..."), but you're not being figurative in the rest of the test.

As he sat, he contemplated the surrounding woods

Slightly odd wording, since he's just sat. "Contemplate" means to look at something (physically or mentally) at length and with continued attention. "watched" or "looked at" would fit better.

It was like a picture taken out of one of Alfred Hitchcock's stories

I get the effect you are trying to achieve, but as a general rule of thumb don't omit the sentence's main verb. English speakers tend to dislike that a lot, since it leaves them "waiting" for it.

The woods were dark... almost liveless lifeless,  

 Apparently the word does exist (I thought it didn´t), but it´s considered a very anticuated form of "lifeless". I certainly don´t remember ever having seen it written like this.

Suddenly, he had to plug himself out  unplug himself 

"Plug" is by definition the act of actually putting the plug in the socket, so it has no accompanying preposition (it´s implicit in the verb). You don´t plug in and out, or off and on (though you do switch on and off once the device attached to the plug is getting electricity). You either plug (an action) or unplug (the reverse action).

You also usually don´t "Plug" thoughts. A plug is a physical object tied to physical objects. For thougts, you normally pull out yourself or are pulled out of them by someone or something. ("Pull" is one of those wonderful words that can mean a million things and can be used almost anywhere. Except in sex without contraceptives. Well, you can, but seriously, don´t).

not far from him, a noise the sound of footsteps

"noise" is a generic, indefinite sound. Hence why you can say "a noise" with the indefinite article. But you have actually defined it in the text. It´s not any noise, it's exactly the specific noise of footsepts. You have to use the definite article then.

Footsteps are not usually considered "noise", either. "Noise" usually means a loud or unpleasant sound, and footsteps in general al neuter (another matter is the implications they can trigger). So, more often than not, it's the sound of footsteps, not the noise.

that was getting close to him, He was about

Typo, probably. You don't capitalise pronouns unless they are first word of a sentence or refer to God or some similar entity, like Chemo.

to dart into the deepness depths of the forest 

Deepness, while it exists, is fairly uncommon, and teaches don´t seem to like it a lot. Some consider it a grammar mistake. depth is much more common. Also, if you are referring specifically to the deep part of an area or space, that goes in plural (the depths of the forest, the depths of the sea). I don't really know why.

arm blocked his path: It was "her". Finally, Rogers hold her

You have consistently referred to this unknown entity as "her" between quotation marks, as though it´s her name or denomination. If that is the case, you should be consistent and use quotation marks. If "her" is not a name, remove the quotation marks. Pronouns only go in them to refer to something already mentioned or to something that is meant with a different sense:

"her"

Sekiito

It was a very strange sensation, but a new day had started and I was supposed to do something that I didn´t know

I don´t think you´re trying to say what you actually said. What that sentence means "I was supposed to to something which I didn´t know how to do". Which begs the question of how you were supposed to do it, then. The key here is "that". "That" is a relative, and the relative´s function is to link with what has said before, specifically in most cases with the main verb of the sentence it´s attached to.

If you meant to say you didn´t know what you were supposed to do, there are ways of saying it: ("I was supposed to do something- what, I didn´t know" or "I was supposed to do something, didn´t know what"). But don´t use the relative.

It was dark. I tried to turn on the lamp besides beside my bed 

"Besides" means "apart from or in addition to" whatever you said before. ("I didn´t want to go to the party. Besides, it was raining). "Beside" means at the side of.

I tried to turn on the lamp besides my bed which wasn´t working at all

The way you worded it, "which" is defining information, which means it´s specific information about whatever went before. In this case, "bed" or "lamp" (I´ll go out on a leg and assume it´s the lamp XD). So you´re saying it´s your lamp which isn´t working. The comma (actually, putting it behind commas, but the second comma is overruled by the full stop) marks it as non-defining, meaning it's a comment.

So: "The lamp which wasn´t working at all" -> The specific lamp amongst all lamps that wasn´t working

       "The lamp, which wasn´t working at all" -> The lamp, which was not operational.

It wasn´t my morning day anyway

It´s an idiom, so pretty much no explanation, at least none I know of.

 I sit on the bed trying to think, trying to plug on my brain

What I mentioned before with Muor: "plug" has a preposition already implicit, you don´t put another. Also, in this case, it sounds strange. "Plug" is used specifically with machines that have a plug, which the brain doesn´t, even figuratively (it feeds on its own energy, or absorbs that of the body). "switch my brain on" probably sounds better here.

No Not since last night that doctor turned all of my body off (or simply "turned off my body")

You forgot the preposition. Without prepositions, "turn" simply means to rotate.

"All of my body" is kind of redundant. The body is in itself an entirety.

I am not an a human being (or "I am not human")

This is different for pronounciation, but for writing the rule is set in stone: if the next word starts with consonant, it´s "a".

Also, in English, technically, and despite what Sci-Fi will tell you, "human" is not a name. It's an adjective (relative to, or posessing shape or characteristics from humans). It cannot work as a name and hence can´t be the subject of the sentence. You could use "man" or "woman" (which are names) or, generically, "human being" ("being" is a name).

Faris:

She arrived only half a second 

"Half" is a fraction. If you say a fraction, you usually have to say of what it is a fraction ("half (of) a second", "half (of) an hour", "half (of) a kilo"). SOmetimes you hear things like "a half-pint of Guiness", because in this case you´ve set a system and a "half-pint"is actually not a fraction, but a unit.

But if it is a fraction, then it goes with "a".

He helped his two minions put out the small fire in the refrigeration units,

Not an error, but in the rest of the text the pronoun you use to refer to the character is "she". Travestism, ho! ;P

and if something like the snafu last week happened again

SNAFU (or sometimes S.N.A.F.U) is an acronym, so according to grammar you technically should write it in capitals. Also, I think it doesn´t have the sense you think it has. You make it sound like it was a one time big bad incident, but SNAFU actually indicates a continued state of being bad all the time ("Situation Normal" means it´s actually the norm)

For one-off bad incident or general malpractice I guess I´d use fuck-up. Or my personal favourite since, where I work, it´s rare that there´s only one error: clusterfuck.

 

 

 

Notas de juego

* Situation Normal: All Fucked Up

Cargando editor
19/08/2016, 00:49
Tingwe

@Leonid

First, excellent corrections and explanations! Great contribution. Very clear and thorough, and fun to read also. Thank you also for pointing out the “and+and” thingy on mine, I should have proofread what I wrote.

Regarding your story, some things I wanted to check/ask…

* The second paragraph is one loong phrase, but it is grammatically correct. Cool. Maybe a full stop somewhere would make it a bit easier for the reader, but that´s a personal preference.

stops pointing idiotly => idiotically? I think that is the spelling.

black-and-white panorama of my guts : I´m not sure about the use of “panorama” here, but I guess it is some kind of a “panoramic shot”. It sounds a bit weird to me, as panorama is normally a very open view of a landscape and such.

drinkable and injectable persuasions => I´ve not seen “persuasion” in this context, so I looked it up quickly and still only found the definition of “trying to convince someone”. There are half a dozen google entries for "injectable persuasion" but these seem to come from non-native sources. And very few hits. I understand the meaning in this phrase, I would have used “type” or something to that effect. Does the word or expression have to do with specific slang for Chemistry?

Great story!

Cargando editor
19/08/2016, 11:04
Leonid

stops pointing idiotly => idiotically? I think that is the spelling.

Yup, you're totally correct.

black-and-white panorama of my guts : I´m not sure about the use of “panorama” here, but I guess it is some kind of a “panoramic shot”. It sounds a bit weird to me, as panorama is normally a very open view of a landscape and such.

Ah, yeah. I was just looking for a word which wasn´t "image", which I had already used shortly before, and this came to mind in the moment. You're right, it sounds odd for an x-ray snapshot. I guess "shot" could have worked, or I could have used "vista" or "landscape" if I wanted to be more "ellegant" with the prose.

drinkable and injectable persuasions => I´ve not seen “persuasion” in this context, so I looked it up quickly and still only found the definition of “trying to convince someone”. There are half a dozen google entries for "injectable persuasion" but these seem to come from non-native sources. And very few hits. I understand the meaning in this phrase, I would have used “type” or something to that effect. Does the word or expression have to do with specific slang for Chemistry?

Heh heh. That's me playing way too much Fallen London lately XD.

"persuasion" can actually be a synonim for "kind" or "sort" (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/persuasion) , but it´s very old-fashioned. It would be victorian English, and probably very few people, if anyone, use it out of that context. I just love how it sounds, but you're right, it doesn´t fit a modern setting, worn down dude.

As for the other usage, it seems that in the medical industry, they use it to define the way of administering medicines (injectable, oral, sudbermal...). I have seen that as well, but I´m not sure if it´s an officialy accepted term.

What I usually do, when in doubt, is to look in a dictionary's website directly. A lot of them feature not only dictionaries, but also Thesaurus and sentence examples, and most have a free version (which is ample enough) and a subscription-based one for fairly low amounts (if I remember correctly, the Merriam-Webster subscription used to be something like 4.99 euros/month). They also have more advanced stuff (like line breaks info for proofreaders, "words of the day" and notes on words that rhyme with the current one), but I don´t use them much.

My personal favourites are the Merriam-Webster (http://www.merriam-webster.com/) and the Collins (http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english). I also sometimes ose the Oxford (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/) for specific things, since both M-W and Collins are US publishing houses and Oxford Univeristy Press is specifically British, but I don´t like their page too much. It´s less efficient and I find it confusing.

 

Cargando editor
20/08/2016, 12:03
Leonid

Round 3. FIGHT!

(Guile´s theme plays in the background)

Melpo:

Every day of the last week I've been doing this, coming here when it's only 1 hour left to close the museum

It's not grammatically incorrect, but it doesn't sound particularly good. As you know, english is a Subject-Verb-Objects language. You can invert the order and put something at the beginning for emphasis (Boy, do I love Doritos), but unless you really want to emphasise something and it´s relevant to the text, you should avoid altering the sentence order.

I walk through the galleries and arrived at the end of the mechanical mechanics section.

Verbal time concordance. Once you set a verbal tense for the paragraph, you should stick to it, especially in this case in which the actions follow a progression (you walk towards somewhere, and then you arrive). If you could start walking in the present and arrive somewhere in the past, I´m guessing a lot of people in white coats will have a marked interesting in knowing you :P

"Mechanical" is an adjective, hence it applies to the name it is attached to. What you are saying is that the section is mechanical (as in, it is part of a mechanism of is made of mechanisms). If you wanted to say that it is the section that showcases mechanical stuff, you need to use a substantive. Mechanics is the science that studies machines, so it´s probably the best fit.

(Mechanics is actually the branch of physics that studies motion and applying force on bodies, as well as their applications on machinery, but since I´m no scientist, I'm lax with terminology :P)

Never have come here I had never come here until last week (or I never came here until last week)

Bad Melpo. 

Bad, bad Melpo. 

The other point is that you have put an "object" (a CC) before the subject and the verb, breaking the sentence order again. In Spanish this isn´t unusual, since our sentence order is somewhat fluid, but English is fairly rigid with this, and you should only break it sparingly.

That said, if you really wanted to emphasise the "never", you could say something like "Never, until last week, I had come here".

 It seems looks/feels hypnotic to me

"seem" means to appear to be something or give an impression of being something (or something else), which suggests doubts about said appearance.There are no doubts here, the feeling is quite real. So you should use "look" if you want to emphasise that it registers to the eyes. Personally, I don't like it because it seems too literal, and hypnosis is a process that does not involve the eyes alone, so I'd suggest the more generic "feel". Both are fine, however.

I always sit in the bench in the middle of the room and I watch it for one an hour

Scientifically accurate, but people don´t really say "one hour", unless counting up. They say "an hour". On to the n...

"But Leonid, you said that when the definite article precedes a word starting with consonant, it´s "a", not "an""

Drats, you were actually listening... yeah, that is true. However, "h" has certain special consideration. You see, in English the "h" can be mute (as in "hour") or it can actually have a sound (as in "ham" or "hand"). If it is completely mute, it doesn't count for this purpose. The letter right after the h is the de facto first letter of the next word, and will determine whether it's "a" or "an". Here, it is a vowel, so it´s "an".

Messy, I know. A useful exercise, try pronouncing the word with both articles. If you are finding it hard to pronounce it, you´re probably using the wrong one. Here, "a hour" would read something like "eauar", forcing your phonatory system to bend over backwards. Now "an hour" would read something like "enauar". That "n" right there makes it a lot more fluid and eases the pronounciation. Leanguages tend towards economy, picking up whatever is easiest (which gives rise to support vowels and consonants, but you only need to know that if you are interested in phonetics).

The machine that is painted in it, seems alive.

Gramatically correct, but the pause is strange. Read that sentence in Spanish, making the pause. Does it sound natural?

A column of vapor or smoke gets out from de the inside 

You can say "da inside" if you want to sound gangsta, but don't expect teachers to like it a lot :P

of the machine and it looks as if it was breathing.

Again, this sentence lacks a subject. You could argue that it is part of the same paragraph and you already mentioned the machine, but you said "and". "And" is a copulative* connector, which means that it introduces another entire sentence (which has a relation of "equal" with the previous one, unlike in other cases where it´s subordinated to it). Sentences need subjects. Machines generally have no genders (except in Ghost in the Shell), so we´d use "it".

If you don´t like having "it" and "it" so close by, you can substitute the second one by a paraphrasis or the actual thing it refers to ("it looks as if the machine was breathing" or "it looks as it the entire thing was breathing" or "it looks as if all of it was breathing"... lots of possibilities, but that´s pure stylistics).

The way it is painted...

The way you worded it, what it said is: "the path, or way, is represented here in painting", or "the way has been painted here". With only one substantive or pronoun to latch itself to, "painted" can only have "way" as subject. Throw in another thing can act as subject (a pronoun) and voila! Now you mean "the way in which the thing this pronoun stands for is painted".

What an incredible painter his author should must be... 

"should", "could" and "ought to" imply a degree of uncertainty. It is a state of things that would be so following reason or logic, but which does not neccesarily mean it is. Here, the wording expresses that the author indeed is an incredible painter. Certainties, or near certainties, are done with "must".

Too short?

That's what my girlfriend used to say

Nah, it´s fine. Word counts are usually orientative. They don´t expect you to have exactly 200 words, just don´t be more than a paragraph/page/5 pages long, depending on how many they say.

 

Notas de juego

* Not that kind of copulative. Jeez, what's wrong with you people?

Cargando editor
21/08/2016, 22:54
Melpo

Thank you Leonid. It  had been great if my teachers at school had corrected me in such a funny way.

I promise I'll try not to do some mistakes again, but I really have a problem with "verbal time concordance". 

Cargando editor
22/08/2016, 17:41
Leonid

Melpo:

Thank you Leonid. It  had been great if my teachers at school had corrected me in such a funny way.

I try to. This is actually the way I would have liked to correct my pupils back when I actually taught, but well. It takes time, and it´s always the same thing. Too much people, too litle time, you end up having to make do with what you have. Sucks, but sadly that´s how it goes.

I promise I'll try not to do some mistakes again, but I really have a problem with "verbal time concordance". 

Well, since we are in the English section we can try to solve it with some English Discipline. Fitting, isn't it? It´very easy, you only have to b...

*The Vulture Police drops a bucket of ice water on Leonid´s head*

...thanks. I needed that. Ahem. As I was saying, a good way of being more aware of it is marking the verbs as you write them (with marker, or in bold), and then compare them. In most cases, within the same paragraph, the things that happen will happen in the same time frame, so if you start noticing different tenses, look out, and see if the use is justified.

Captain Vari:

-My first night-

Heeeeee...

*The Vulture Police drops another ice water bucket on Leonid´s head. This time without breaking down the ice*

Fine, fine. Message duly noted. Jeeeeez...

I will always remember when I was to my first concert...

Grammatically correct, but you're not saying what you think you're saying. "I always..." means that it's something that you do regularly, that it is in habit or part of a routine ("I always drink orange juice for breakfast", "I always take the bus to work" or "I always think of Leonid´s broad chest, wide shoulders and virile face")

If what you wanted to say was that it is a moment that stuck with you and you remember vividly, you would say "I will always remember", since if you've remembered it up to this point, chances are you will in the future as well. 

the main gates have had a pictures with the names of the artist...musician...singers...dancers...and magicians.

You don´t use the indefinite article with plurals, except in some weird sentences where the plural is actually a substantive that only exists in plural ("I received a summons from the court"). But, rule of thumb, 90% of the time, non-defined plurals have no article.

Also, you have framed the text in the past (it´s a memory), but you use the present here. Be wary of that. Try to keep all the verb tenses in the paragraph, sentence or block of narration consistent. Otherwise it's very confusing to read, unless you're really good at using historical presents, narrative pasts or similar (which usually involves, you are very, very good at both writing and the language).

Notice as well that "artist" and "musician" are singular, while all the rest are plural. That can be if there is only one of each, but the text will later show there are more. Careful with that too.

My sister and me I have had a ticket tickets to the third line row...

Point one. As I said to someone else: don´t abuse ellipses. They actually have a very specific function, and it´s considered generally bad form to use them outside of it (mainly because tons of people do)

Second point. "my sister and me". Okay, the way this works is as follows. If the entity (yourself) to which the pronoun refers is the subject of the sentence (subjects can be more than one noun or pronoun), it is "I". ("My sister and I went fishing". "The King and I", famous musical). If it is the object or it goes after a preposition, then it´s "me" ("Come with me". "Susan was talking about me, wasn't she?".

As a general rule of thumb, try saying the sentence with only one subject, and see which makes more sense.

"My sister and I had a ticket" -> Sounds good

"My sister and Me had a ticket" -> Sounds not so good. Unless you're Sitting Bull or Geronimo. Or a not very educated Scotsman.

(Why? It´s a long and very complecated story about the vestigial use of Accusative way back when English was a pure Germanic language *)

Third point: your sister and you got in with only one ticket! CHEATERS! THIEVES! XDDDDD

Fourth Point: The lines of seats you find into cinemas, concert halls, planes or similar places, are actually called "rows"

we can could see the technicians connective connecting the smoke machine at with a plug ...

"Connective" is not a verb. It´s an adjective. And since English is a Subject-Verb-Object language and you just introduced the subject, then what you need is love a verb. The verb would be "connect".

Also, you can´t connect things at a plug. The plug is the actual thing you put into another thing. You know, the plastic thing with metal prongs. The place in a wall or similar where you put plugs is actually called "socket".

There's a simpler solution to the problem of using "plug" here, as your sentence is unnecessarily complicated. "Plug" is not only a noun. It is also a verb (the act of putting a plug into a socket). So you can say "we could see the technicians plugging the smoke machine".

but But it wasn´t important however the first number was 

First word of a paragraph, sentence, or after a full stop, always in capitals.

Read this aloud. To yourself. Pretend you are speaking with other person. Better yet, read it to another person just as it is. If it looks puzzled or says "slower" or "Say again"?, you´ll get the idea.

When you introduce a new sentence ("however", a subordinative), you should at least make a small pause (a comma). Otherwise you would just start piling lots of information into a paragraph and piling sentences into each other, and then English will become written German. And trust me, we really don´t want that.

my sister and me I remembered this day

As we said before. It´s a subject, so "My sister and I".

When you say "remember", that usually means you are remembering it today. Unless you mean to say that at some point in the later past you would remember this. But from the look fo the text, you are remembering this now. So, present.

because we bought a teddy hearts heart plushies/plush hearts/felt hearts to throw to at the stage...

As before, no definite article with plurals.

Ok, the second part is a bit complex. "Teddy" and "Teddy bear" have a very specific meaning. And even though the structure seems to imply it, "teddy" is not the material of which the bear is made, rather, it is the kind of bear it is- it´s called that way in relationship with a bear hunting incident US President Theodore ("Teddy") Roosevelt had. The material of which those toys are made is called "plush" or "felt" ("felpa" in Spanish).

By extension, any toy made of plush can be called a "name+plushie" or a "plush+name" (a unicorn plushie or a plush unicorn/felt unicorn). But only a bear, specifically made of plush, and in the specific shape of a bear, can be called a "Teddy bear" or "teddy". Any other shape would be a plushie or plush/felt toy (sometimes also called "soft toys").

"to" implies a clear, marked, specific destination (I´m going to the supermarket). Since (unless you have bionic eyes and arms with advance GPS positioning and lock-on systems) you usually don't throw at a specific place, but rather in the general direction of something, you throw things at the stage, not to the stage.

a few teddy plush hearts had fallen/fell between the first line and the previous zone in front of at the stage/the apron

"Fallen", like most participles (in Spanish as well), if it´s not accompanied by an auxiliary ver (like "have" or "be") is not a verb form, but an adjective. And since English is Subbject-Verb-Objects and you just introduced the subject, that means that now we need...

 THE VEEEEEEEEEEEEERBBB!!!

Thank you kindly, Dora. Sebastien, please, dispose of her. Make it look like an accident, as usual. Oh, and please do try to ensure she suffers horribly. Thanks.

So we either add a modal verb to get a compound tense, or replace the paticipe (fallen) with the infinitive (fall).

On to the next one. "Previous" marks a point in time, not in space. This is why, e.g. the I World War was previous to the II World War (and not "opposite" or "in front of" it), while the zone is in front of (or opposite, or close to) the stage, and not previous to it.

That zone is actually called "apron", but you probably wouldn't know that unless you had been in a theatre group or similar. (I know solely because I was in one, but I sucked majorly, so I only kept going because the lead actress had the cutest, most adorable butt on the planet **)

but Amaia leave left the scenary stage to pick up the teddy plush heart, and hold held it in to before the people and to thanked them for the gift (or "gave thanks for the gift")

It's generally good practice in writing to explain (in brackets or similar) what something or someone is, if it's the first time it appears in the text and it´s not common knowledge. I know that Amaia is La Oreja de Van Gogh´s singer, but other people (especially English people) might not.

"Scenary" is actually a very, very old form of "scenery" that´s been in disuse for around 2 centuries of so. "Scenery" is actually a landscape or vista, or the general physical location and surroundings of something, and doesn't have anything to do with concerts or theatre. "Scenario", the original Italian loan from where "scenary" came, means a hypothetical situation or problem that you propose to someone to think over and solve (e.g. role-playing adventures are often called "scenarios"). The place at a theatre or concert where the performers perform is called "stage".

I´m a bit confused by the next paragraph. I think you were trying to say "held on to" or "held onto". As fars as I know, "hold in to" or "hold into" do not exist. There´s "hold in", which means to keep someone restrained or something under control. Theres "hold unto" which means to keep something despite adversity or to derive solace from. Neither are really appropiate here.

If you meant to say she hugged it, or that she simply put it up so it wouldn't fall or other people could see it, you can just use "hold", without prepositions.

Also. Bad Vari.

Bad, bad Vari.

You have introduced new verb, and hence a new subordinate sentence, after the comma. Sentences need subjects. Plushies don´t really have a gender, so "it" will do fine.

As I said to Tingwe, also, it´s bad form to use "and" more than one per enumeration, be it of objects or actions. "and" is always put in front of the last of them. For the rest of items, being separated by commas does the job perfectly.

Also, I'm guessing that Amaia didn't thank the gift. She could, of course, but it'd kind of would have been a dick move, since the gift didn't gift itself but was actually thrown from the public, and being a plush toy, it wasn't in the most optimal position to actually understand anything she said XD

So, the structure in this cases is that the reciptiend thanks someone for something. Or thanks magical old men and jewish zombies that live in the sky for something, but that´s crazy aaaaaaand let´s definitely not go there. I don't want a flame war here.

When my sister and me I

Subject, so "my sister and I"

my mother cooked the dinner with overgine aubergine and chicken, a good option to a light meal.

You usually don´t cook THE dinner, with a definite article, because it´s not the only dinner you cook, or will even cook,  nor is it meant to be undesrtood as the quintessence of dinner. If you want to mark that dinner in particular, you can say "she cooked that day´s dinner", to mark that it was that one, amongst the hundreds or thousands she would have cooked. But in general terms you don´t cook the dinner, you just cook dinner (or lunch, or breakfast, though for some reason people do say "make breakfast" a lot more, even in countries where breakfast traditionally involves cooking).

The purple vegetable that is featured in, e.g. the mousakka is actually read "overgine" (or more acurrately, "ooveryin", since the last "e" drops and the first vowel sound is a long one), but sadly it's written "aubergine". Except if you are in the US, where it´s called "eggplant". Because fuck logic.

"to" is a preposition associated with place and location. So, you usually don´t have options to. You might have options leading to. Or options towards an end. But not options to. In constructions like "3 months, with an option to buy later", that "to" is not actually a prepoistion, it is there because it marks the inifinitive right after.

What you have here, however, are options (to pick) from. From what? From a bigger set of options she could have picked (e.g. the option to make sardine and chorizo pizza with Cola Cao. Not exaclty light, but if your stomach survived that, then nothing would feel "heavy" any longer)

 

Notas de juego

* Yes. I do know english is classified as a Germanic language. This is so because the first records, like the Beowulf and Caedmon´s account of the English Kings (incredibly boring read, btw) were written in what it´s called Old English, which is a purely Germanic language (mostly a mix of Kentish and West Saxon). As in, it had cases, the verb was built with adding "ge"+conjugated form, and all that. Modern english as we know it today evolved around the XIIIth Century from Chancery English, the language that the Court, Government and scribes (and Chaucer) used. Since William the Conqueror´s invasion in 1066, official english was actually derived not from Old English, but from Anglo-Norman, which is essentially French adapted to English. So actually, most of modern English is way more Romance (specifically, French)  than German.

For comparison, this is how Old English sounds (the beginning verses of the "Beowulf"):

Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum, 
theodcyninga, thrym gefrunon, 
hu da æthelingas ellen fremedom. 
Oft Scyld Scefing sceathena threatum,

5
monegum mægthum, meodosetla ofteah, 
egsode eorlas. Syddan ærest weard 
feasceaft funden, he thæs frofre gebad, 
weox under wolcnum, weordmyndum thah, 
odthæt him æghwylc thara ymbsittendra

10
ofer hronrade hyran scolde, 
gomban gyldan. Thæt wæs god cyning! 

The similitudes are evident XDDDDDD

** Ok, I´m joking. We were friends, so I hung out to help with stuff and prepare things, or practice lines. The lead actress did have an extremely cute butt, though. Ahem! On to work!

Cargando editor
28/08/2016, 23:28
Tingwe

@Akrono

Nice story, I really like the touch of adding a title. It gives these short stories more depth and meaning. Have to remember that myself :)

A few things caught my eye:

* a serie of "beeps" => it´s missing an "s", a series of beeps. Maybe a type
* at the same time * an old machine emerged => I think it´s missing "than" or "as". I mean, if you use "at the same" at the start of a phrase as a complement, then it works without the "than". But here you are saying A happened simultaneously with B.
sparks and smoke went out from it => "came" is better here since sparks and smoke come out from the inside

Just a few minor things, in general it´s very good. And a cool story, makes you want to know how it ends :)

 

Cargando editor
29/08/2016, 09:13
saecel

Maybe a type

"Maybe a typo"

A typo in the typo correction... funny :D

Cargando editor
29/08/2016, 12:18
Leonid

A typo in the typo correction... funny :D

Typoception!

Or ample charm... I mean, anacronic... I mean, apple corner.... I mean, autocorrect.

Cargando editor
Cargando editor
04/09/2016, 14:09
Akrono

Hi Tingwe!

Thank you very much for your feedback.

I'm glad you liked the story. When I saw the keywords, I started to think in Shadowrun and Deus Ex...