— VOA Learning English — Everyday Grammar Source: Voice of America Learning English (https://learningenglish.voanews.com/) Licence: Public domain (work of the U.S. federal government, 17 U.S.C. §105) Audio is served by the publisher; Budi does not host or modify it.
0:00Recently, our readers and listeners wrote many lovely messages about their birthdays. We have been reading all of them. Most messages are happy. You wrote about gifts you received, the people who celebrated with you, or where and how you celebrated. Some messages seemed sad. Some of you do not get to celebrate your birthdays. Other messages were a mix of sad and happy. In this week's Everyday Grammar, we are looking at Farhana's message about her birthday. She wrote, My birthday was on last 23 March. This was my 27th birthday. In my birthday no one wished me except my younger sister. And actually there was no devise for this day. I spent my whole day as like it is a normal day. Sometimes I felt sad and sometimes I wasn't.
1:16Let us start at the beginning. Farhana writes, My birthday was on last 23 March. We suggest changing this sentence to the present tense to say when your birthday is. My birthday is March 23rd. In American English, the usual order for dates is month, day, year. So instead of 23 March, Americans usually say March 23rd. You used the past tense in this sentence. This was my 27th birthday. Another way we can say how old we are is to use the past I turned 27 this year. Here, turn means to reach or pass into a new age. Next, Farhana wrote this. In my birthday, no one wished me except my younger sister. We can change the word order of this sentence to make it clearer. No one wished Instead of a prepositional phrase, in my birthday, we can just start the sentence with no one.
2:50is an indefinite pronoun, meaning no person. You could also use the pronoun nobody. On to the next sentence. And actually, there was no devise for this day. devise is a verb meaning to plan or think up something you were close but in this sentence we need a noun and we find it in the definition of devise plan actually there was no plan for the day if you wanted to use the word devise however you could it would come right after plan in the sentence actually There was no plan devised for the day. Farhana's next sentence is, I spent my whole day as like it is a normal day. We should make a few changes to this sentence. AS and LIKE are both used to make comparisons between nouns. AS is an adverb and LIKE is a preposition.
4:09We only need one of these to make the comparison. We can say, I spent my whole day like it was a normal day. Let us look now at Farhana's last sentence. Sometimes I felt sad and sometimes I wasn't. We suggest changing this sentence to Sometimes I feel sad but other times I didn't. Now the two parts of the sentence agree in verb use. Also, we always capitalize the pronoun I in sentences. We used the conjunction BUT with other times only to create more contrast. It is also correct to write, Sometimes I felt sad and sometimes I didn't. Now let's hear the revised message about Farhana's birthday. My birthday is March 23rd. I turned 27 this year. No one wished me happy birthday, except my younger sister. Actually there was no plan for the day. I spent my whole day like it
5:38was a normal day. Sometimes I felt sad but other times I didn't. Thank you Farhana for We would like to wish you a Happy Birthday for next year. I'm Katie Weaver.
This transcript was generated automatically from the recording, so it will contain mistakes — especially around names and places.