Dr Fingers’ Error Correction Clinic

Hello everybody, and welcome to my “Error Correction” clinic. You know, just the other day I heard and recorded the following conversation in one of my classes. There are some errors. See if you can find them.

Dr Fingers: Good morning, class. Oh, no. I’ve got something sticky on my bottom. Did one of you little terrors put chewing gum on my seat? Yes, it’s gum. Now, who did this? It isn’t funny. I’ll have to go and change my trousers. This is most annoying. If I find the culprit… OK, class, now we’re going to do a little exercise. Class: Oh, no! Dr Fingers: Yes, now settle down. Right, Pedro, come to the front of the class. Now, here are some words. I want you to make some sentences with these words. Pedro: OK, that’s easy: 1. “Smell” - The foods smells to oranges. 2. “Smelly” - The perfume is smelly. 3. “Fall” - I fall my chair. 4. “Drop” - The plate dropped me. 5. “Work” - I have a work to do. 6. “Job” - I hate job. 7. “Career” - I studied a career at university. 8. “Degree” - Oh, I don’t know what “degree” means. Sorry. Dr Fingers: OK, Pedro. Very good, now go and sit down while we have a look at what you have been saying … (fades out)

Today’s class: Confusing words

Solutions

Later, I disciplined my student privately for a few hours, and now I think he understands the words. I really don’t like to do this, but it’s for his own good. Let’s listen to him again: 1. “Smell” - The foods smells of oranges. 2. “Smelly” - My feet are smelly. 3. “Fall” - I fell off my chair. 4. “Drop” - I dropped the plate. 5. “Work” - I have some work to do. 6. “Job” - I hate my job. 7. “Career” - She started a career in the civil service. 8. “Degree” - I have a history degree.

OK, that’s all for today. Bye for now and may you have an errorfree month.

Problems

Did you hear the mistakes? Poor Pedro got quite a few sentences wrong. Let’s see: 1. With the verb “smell” the preposition is often “of”, so this sentence should have been “the perfume smells of oranges.” 2. We use “smelly” in a negative sense and if you say something is “smelly”, you mean it smells bad. For example, “your feet are smelly”. So, Pedro should have said, “this perfume smells (nice)”. 3. This sentence needs a preposition and should read like this,

“I fell off my chair”. 4. We use the verb “drop” actively. So, the sentence should have been, “I dropped the plate”. 5. The noun “work” is uncountable so it should be, “I have some work to do”. 6. “Job” is a countable noun so this sentence should be, “I hate my job”; or, “this job”. 7. A “career” is the profession you choose to do. For example, “after working as an accountant, she started her career in fashion”. 8. And lastly, a “degree” is a course you study at university. So Pedro could have said, “I have a degree in computing science”.

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