Hi everyone!
I've done the shool English test today. And now I need you help in some questions.
1) What is the different between "when" and "while"? ('caused I want to use it absolutely right)
For examples:
_ Tom was doing his homework while Jerry was sleeping.
_ It happened while we were asleep last night.
2)"The man lives opposite us sometimes come over for a cup of coffee."
What does the word "come over" mean in this sentence?
3)"The teachers at the shool went down with flu one after the other."
What do the word "went down" (go down) and "one after the other" mean in this sentence?
4) What is the different between "most" and "almost"?
5) How to pronounce '-ed' in some words. I don't know the rule.
THANK YOU VERY MUCH !
GOOD LUCK!
1) It's a little difficult to explain, exactly. In your first example sentence, the idea is that Tom was doing his homework at the same time that Jerry was sleeping. The word "when" doesn't automatically carry the meaning "at the same time". It would be possible to change "while" to "when" in this sentence, but the meaning wouldn't be exactly the same. With "when", we might think that the two were somehow connected, that maybe Tom was doing his homework BECAUSE Jerry was sleeping, rather than that Jerry happened to be sleeping at the time.
I tried writing a couple more paragraphs with more examples, but I find that I'm beginning to confuse myself. If I can't explain the difference to myself, I probably couldn't explain it very well to you, either. In short, there's a lot of subtlety here and I'm probably not the best person to ask. ;) The only way to be sure to get it exactly right is to look at a lot of examples!
2) This sentence isn't grammatical, and should be "The man *who* lives opposite us sometimes *comes* over for a cup of coffee." To answer the question, "come over" means "visit" (in this case, it's implied that he visits the speaker).
3) This doesn't seem to be a typical sentence, although it's not so unusual that it sounds foreign. I would usually say "come down with the flu" rather than "go down". It just means they got the flu. "One after the other" means "consecutively": one teacher gets the flu, then the next one, then the next one...
4) The two are usually very different words. "Most" refers to the majority of a quantity. "Most people agree with me" means "Over 50% of people agree with me" (although the implication is usually much more than 50%). It can only be used with quantities. "Almost" means "nearly" or "not quite": "That was almost a disaster" means that it wasn't a disaster, but it was very close to one. It can also be used with quantities: "That truck weighs almost a ton" means that it doesn't weigh a ton, but it's close.
There is a rare exception: "Most everybody agrees with me" means "Almost everybody agrees with me"; in this case I think "most" is just a shortened version. I don't encounter this very often; the only examples that come to mind are from songs or poetry, where the word is shortened to fit the meter. I think this only occurs before "every" or "any" (or a compound word starting with either of these).
5) With "-ed", the pronunciation varies between "-d", "-t", and "-ed" (with the "e" pronounced). "-d" is used when the sound before the "e" is voiced, for example: judged, thrilled, tabbed, razzed, purred, buried, banned. When it's unvoiced, it's pronounced "-t": tucked, hissed, looped, faxed. The "e" is pronounced (rhyming with "bed") when the preceding sound is a "d" or a "t": padded, skated, matted, hated.
In adjectives, though, the "e" might be pronounced more often: "alleged" is pronounced al-LEDJ'D (two syllables) as a verb, but "al-LED-jed" (three syllables) as an adjective. This is a fairly uncommon exception, though.
By the way, regarding your post, "school" should have a 'c' in it. Unlike most words that begin with "sch", the 'c' is pronounced. I don't know why. Also, "What is the different between..." should be "What is the difference between..."
- Kef