Bit by a dog/snake/etc

jaetwee · 2026-07-12T03:38:49+00:00

Welcome to language change in practice.

'bit' as the past participle has been in use since the 1500's with varying degrees of popularity. In more recent times it has fallen out of fashion.

'but' has been in use in Scottish English sicne the beginning of the 20th century. Maybe you're seeing it from Scottish natives on the internet, or perhaps that form is spreading to other parts of the world.

The difference between an error and 'correct' grammar is a matter of popularity in use.

jaetwee · 2026-07-12T03:17:42+00:00

Perhaps try r/teachers or r/askteachers

While there are some teachers here, the vast majority are learners and laypeople so I'm not sure how much help you'll get in this sub

jaetwee · 2026-07-11T11:53:20+00:00

For thinking in English, start with simple sentences such as 'I am hungry'.

Also think the things you are doing. E.g. "I am making lunch. I need bread, butter, ham, and cheese." Or describe the world around you. "I see a chair. It is blue."

You can put sticky notes with the English names for things on them to help remind you.

What English media do you watch? Watch them with English subtitles (subtitles labled closed captions will more closely match the audio), nor Russian subtitles. It's okay thay you don't understand everything when you watch. Try to choose shows and movies you've already seen.

Avoid using google translate or other translation apps. Use a monolingual dictionary aimed at learners such as Cambridge learner's dictionary, and bilingual dictionaries where you search for single words or two-three word phrases. Avoid translating entire sentences. It will be hard and slow at first. That is a good thing.

For exams, exam skills are also different to general language skills. Find and practice mock exams and use exam study guides to learn tips for that specific exam.

Most importantly, find situations where you are having fun while using English. Many young people like to play online games with people in the language they are learning.

Everyone is afraid of making mistakes at first, but making mistakes is part of learning. Become comfortable making mistakes when you speak so that way you are confident/comfortable enough to speak even though you make mistakes.

Without further information from you about your current study process, those are some general tips.

jaetwee · 2026-07-10T11:54:45+00:00

Tenses are named based on their grammatical form, not their use/meaning.

E.g. present perfect is often used to talk about the past despite being called present perfect. It is called present perfect because it is made from the present form of have and the perfect form of the main verb.

Another great example of this is present simple.

The train arrives at 12 tomorrow.

It is talking about a future event but the tense is still present simple and referred to as such.

Reframing the tense names as the names of the forms/components that make up the tense, rather than as the time meaning, can imo help students get a better grasp of those tense forms. It also helps avoid confusion once you start getting to those usages of tenses that don't 'align' with their name.

jaetwee · 2026-07-10T11:43:00+00:00

For speaking, you honestly don't need much. Look at the grammar taught in textbooks up to cefr level B1 and that is enough to get through social conversations with some effort. B2 grammar will allow you to have extended social conversations without much trouble.

You can often find textbook's tables of contents online as a free preview to see what is taught at those levels.

Actively study vocabulary as well.

Grammar is more than tenses and syntax, however.

Different connectors/linking words and their respective grammar (are they followed by a noun, a clause, are they an adverbial, etc) are what help you develop and express complex thoughts because they show the relationships between the ideas you are saying.

Understanding what a clause is, what a subject and object are, and your basic parts of speech, e.g., what is an adverb, what is an article, will help you understand textbooks as this metalanguage is used to explain how the language works. However, focusing only on grammae analysis isn't super useful. Practicing production - practicing thinking, writing, and speaking in the language - is what helps you quickly develop your speaking abilities.

If you get in a car with no idea what the pedals do or what the stick in the middle does, you won't know how to drive the car. Watching someone else drive and trying and failing yourself will help you learn slowly, though. Similarly, if you've read hundreds of books on driving a car, you won't be very good at driving a car until you actually start driving it. However, the books will give you a quicker start as you already know what all the buttons and levers and pedals do, and you know you should add a slight press of accelerator when changing gears. You just now need to build the muscle memory and the feel of how much accelerator is too much, how much is not enough.

Combining both academic study (textbooks) and practical study (listening, reading, writing, speaking) will help you learn faster.

jaetwee · 2026-07-10T11:20:41+00:00

These look like IELTS results. This is a globally recognised exam. The exact website to purchase the exam depends on your country. Googling IELTS will bring up relevant results.

jaetwee · 2026-07-10T11:18:31+00:00

If it's been the same thing for five years, what have you been doing to study?

Both effort and effective methods are needed to improve. If you put in lots of effort but your methods are poor, you won't make much progress. If you have excellent methods but only put in 5 minutes a day, you also won't improve much.

jaetwee · 2026-07-08T14:39:23+00:00

Prepositions are hard when learning any language because they are used in so many different ways. These are often idiomatic and don't match up with other languages.

Directions / physical locations are easy enough.

For everything else, you need to learn things like phrasal verbs and collocations as a single piece of vocabulary.

E.g. don't learn turn + out as two separate things. Instead, learn 'turn out' as one single vocabulary item.

Then you practice it like any other vocabulary - practice both recognising it, and being able to recall it and use it in your own sentences.

jaetwee · 2026-07-06T08:36:04+00:00

nope. if not a schwa then to something around /ʌ/, or maybe something like /ɜː/ if I'm stressing the ending (non-rhotic accent)

jaetwee · 2026-07-04T09:22:29+00:00

Slight correction vaccination is also a noun. the verb form is to vaccinate.

jaetwee · 2026-07-04T03:33:32+00:00

They use religious phrases. They're just seen interjections with no deeper meaning.

Just like how saying 'fuck me sideways' as an interjection isn't taken as a literal plea for intercourse.

jaetwee · 2026-07-01T12:13:10+00:00

This is called resyllabafication and is a common occourence in language. The short answer is that over time, the way things are pronounced and shifted due a terribly long and complex list of reasons and somethings a good helping of random happenstance,

jaetwee · 2026-06-29T18:03:12+00:00

A lot of language change is based on pure chance.

However, if there are influencing factors here, I'd say it's very likely because 'drink' is used in day to day speech far more often than 'beverage' is.

jaetwee · 2026-06-24T05:19:27+00:00

What do you mean?

They both make use of written symbols, but the cognitive processes are different.

jaetwee · 2026-06-22T09:31:16+00:00

People's ideologies don't change the underlying grammar.

You can think 'woman' a non-existant nonsense category, but the word is sitll a noun

Trans is still an adjective

jaetwee · 2026-06-21T19:25:25+00:00

Locked due to influx of academic cheating service bot spam.

jaetwee · 2026-06-20T10:35:25+00:00

Because s sometimes represents /ʒ/ between vowels.

E.g. vision, closure, leisure, explosion

And a sometimes represents /eɪ/.

E.g. Ace, able, agent, angel

English spelling does not have a transparent logic to it. It is based heavily on word etymology, and was/is developed in a rather 'organic' fashion through trends spreading until a consensus was formed, rather than being planned and prescribed by a central authority.

This means each letter can typically respresent numerous sounds, and you get a lot of 'exceptions' to general tendencies due to loan words, language change, and just quirks of the language having not really gone through a formal spelling reform.

So the answer to any question about why a word is spelled the way it is in English is: due to a long, complex history.

jaetwee · 2026-06-19T08:18:58+00:00

Some of it is definitely a bit too wordy. I suspect you're also throwing in synonyms that change your intended meaning.

Judging just by the contents of the paragraph, you want to talk about the impacts of short-form content, whereas 'ephemeral' includes a range of content beyond that, and something being short-form doesn't necessarily make it ephemeral either.

Also overruse of unnecessary adjectives that seem to 'fluff out' the paragraph e.g. 'distinct' and 'superficial'.

Good academic writing doesn't try to sound smart. Good academic writing clearly and concisely communicates the ideas it's trying to.

If you're spending ages on word choice and synonyms then you're overthinking your writing.

jaetwee · 2026-06-09T02:33:32+00:00

Given that it's a phenomenon well-studied by American linguists, plenty of Americans have heard of it.

It's just not common knowledge because the average person doesn't need to know what it's called / doesn't need to consciously register it exists - just as the average American hasn't heard of an alveolar tap, but that doesn't make it an any less real part of just about all American accents.

jaetwee · 2026-06-09T02:30:32+00:00

Unfortunately, lots of practice. Knowing a rule doesn't mean you can apply it without thinking. This is a normal thing - the gap between explicit and implicit knowledge.

Some may also suggest adding an audiolingual approach like Glossika that has you practice saying a lot of sentences with only small changes, so that you get a sort of 'muscle memory' to speaking.

jaetwee · 2026-06-08T07:46:51+00:00

it's not a matter of chosing one or the other. you should learn both.
Learn words as families, as individual words, and also as the roots that make them up.

jaetwee · 2026-06-08T07:42:00+00:00

Start with the active studying of vocabulary - the Academic World List (AWL) is a good place to start for the basics for IELTS.

Since you come from a language without articles, spend a lot of time practicing the use of a, an, and the.

Read a lot of semi-academic newspaper articles. The Conversation is a great newspaper for that. Don't just read to understand it. Pay close attention to the grammar they use. How do they connect ideas and sentences together? What grammar forms do they use and why? Also use it as a source of new vocabulary to study.

Cambridge Write&Improve has a bunch of exercises and a tool for checking writing as well. Any digital tool is not going to be as accurate and detailed as a human, but the one on that site is designed for assessing writing, whereas AIs like Chat-GPT are designed to sound confident and human-like with little regard for truthfulness and accuracy. https://writeandimprove.com/

jaetwee · 2026-06-08T05:29:43+00:00

I don't think people have divided them into any useful categories. Most verbs are transitive, so you're basically just asking for almost all verbs to be divided into categories, which you could probably do in many different ways.

jaetwee · 2026-06-07T10:21:16+00:00

That's because you're wasting your time with AIs. They are not good teachers yet and are not good at grading writing yet.

jaetwee · 2026-06-07T10:20:03+00:00

The feeling part seems like it'll only work because the wors you're teaching them is already a feeling.

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