Common Problems in

English Usage
Sayed Mohamed
 accident vs. incident

Accident is used to describe things that happen

unintentionally, in other words, accidentally. A typical
example is a traffic accident--the driver does not intend
to cause an accident. Crimes cannot be described as
accidents because they are intended by the criminal; in
the case of a robbery, for example, the robber intends to
steal something; he or she does not accidentally steal it.

Incident has a wider meaning and can be used both for

accidents and for intentional actions such as crimes.
 after all 　 in contrast to 　 in the end

When after all is followed by a noun phrase, in phrases such as

after all my hard work or after all the hours of waiting"), its
meaning is quite similar to in the end.
Both phrases can be used to tell about the last event in a series of
events, as shown in the two example paragraphs below.

My printer ran out of ink while I was printing out my paper for
class. I went to the discount store near my house, but they didn't
have ink for my printer. Then I tried the computer store, but I got
there too late; it was already closed. I tried calling my friend to see
if I could print the paper at her house, but she was not home.
In the end, I brought the paper to the school on floppy disk and
printed it out in the Media Network Center. My printer ran out of
ink while I was printing out my paper for class.
 I went to the discount store near my house, but they didn't have
ink for my printer. Then I tried the computer store, but I got there
too late; it was already closed. I tried calling my friend to see if I
could print the paper at her house, but she was not home. After
all that running around, I brought the paper to the school on
floppy disk and printed it out in the Media Network Center.
Although the phrase after all that running around sounds fine,
the phrase after all by itself would sound very strange in the
paragraph above. That it because after all has its own special
meaning. The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
gives these definitions of after all:
1.Used to say that something is true or is a fact, in spite of
another fact or situation: "He wrote to say that he wouldn't
give me that job after all."
3.Used to say that something else should be remembered or
considered, because it helps to explain why something else is
true or a fact: "I don't know why you're so concerned, it isn't your
problem after all."
In the end does not have these special meanings.
Here are a few more examples of this special use of
after all.
•I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the plane ticket
to Europe will be expensive. After all, I do want to go
right in the middle of the peak season.
•The sky was dark this morning and the weather
report predicted rain, so I took my umbrella with me,
but it didn't rain after all.
 and 　 in contrast to 　 or
A common mistake by Japanese students learning English is to
use or in sentences where native speakers would use and. Here
are some examples from student papers:
1.The sound of the waves or the soft breeze from the sea made
me feel good.
3.I plan to go to Kyoto to see some of the old temples or shrines.
5.In Japan, there are many holidays or festivals throughout the
year.
In all of these sentences, the use of or sounds kind of strange.
That is because or is usually used in the following ways:
To indicate either-or choices:
For my vacation, I'll probably go somewhere warm like Spain
or Hawaii.
When we don't need to be precise because either
alternative would be acceptable:
Let's have fruit for dessert tonight. Could you pick up
some apples or oranges when you go to the store?
To define a term:
Rock decay or weathering is the result of reactions
between elements in the atmosphere and the rock's
constituents.
In negative sentences:
I don't like skiing or snowmobiling.
Sentence (1) above sounds strange because it sounds as
&quotthe waves" and &quotthe soft breezes" represent an
either-or choice; that is, it sounds as if the writer does not
know exactly what made him feel good.
 care for , take care of , and be
careful
“Take care” is an English phrase that is similar
to 気をつけて , but in general, the meaning of
“take care of” is quite different from 気をつけて .
The meaning of 　気をつけて　 could be translated
as "be careful (to/about)" or "watch out for" or
even "pay attention to." "Take care" is an
abbreviation of "take care of yourself." "Take care
of has almost the same meaning as care for. They
both mean "to do necessary things for someone or
something; to be responsible for someone or
something." (care for can also mean "to love
someone.")
An example:
I'm sorry I can't come to your party, but I have
to stay home and take care of my grandmother;
 could 　 in contrast to 　 was able to

These two phrases are almost the same in meaning, but there are
some cases in which one sounds more natural than the other. In
particular, when you are emphasizing something that you actually
did, was able to sounds better.
O.K.:
Even though the train was crowded, I could get a seat.
Better:
Even though the train was crowded, I was able to get a seat.
Could is not incorrect in the example above, but was able to
sounds more natural and emphasizes the fact that you actually did
get a seat. This is probably because could is more often used to
describe events that did not actually happen, but that might have
happened if the situation had been different.
In other words, could is often used to describe counter-
factual events.

The next sentence is an example of this.

•I could get a seat but I'd rather stand.
Here, the writer's is emphasizing that there are empty seats
available if he wants to sit; however, he is choosing to
stand instead .

•I knew that if I got to the station early I could get a seat,

but I didn't want to get up so early.
In this example, the implication is that the writer actually did
not get up early, did not get to the station early, and so did
not get a seat.
 Know and related verbs

Know is a little different from the Japanese verb shiru. Know

describes a state of knowing about something, a state that
continues for a period of time, so it sounds strange to use the
verb know when you are describing the moment a person first
comes to know something. Instead, find out, discover, and
realized 　 are usually better, as in the examples below.

Strange:
When I first knew my sister's secret, I was shocked.
Better:
When I first found out about my sister's secret...
When I first discovered my sister's secret...
When I first realized my sister's secret...

Find out and discover are used if you learn about something
from an outside source, for example, if your find out your sister's
secret by reading her diary
Realize is better if you have come to know something as a
process of your own thinking, (for example, if you realize
what your sister's secret is after thinking about a recent
conversation with her). Learn can also be used to describe
coming to know something. Here are some more examples.

Strange:
I was shocked to know that Japan is nearly last in the
world in TOEFL scores.
Better:
I was shocked to find out that...
I was shocked to learn that...
Strange:
I felt sad to know how J.R. [the train company] does
business.
Better:
I felt sad to discover how J.R. does business.
 Learn 　 in contrast to 　 study

The verb study describes an activity, the activity that you

undertake when you want to learn about something. In contrast,
the verb learn focuses on the moment when something has
become part of your knowledge. The verb learn also contains a
sense of completion and permanency; usually, when you have
learned something, you know everything about it and you don't
easily forget it.
The sentence below sounds because of the sense of completion
implied by learn. If you have truly learned something, that is, if it
has become part of your knowledge, you are normally able to use
that knowledge.
Strange:
I learned German last year, but I can't speak it.
It's possible to study something without learning it, however,
so the sentences below sound fine.
Natural:
I studied German for three years, but I can't speak it.
Natural:
I studied very hard, but I didn't learn much.
Studying is an activity that we do over a period of time, but
learning is a change in our consciousness rather than an
activity. Consider the examples below:
Strange:
I learned German for three years.
Natural:
I studied German for three years until I finally learned to speak
it.
Because learnimplies a sense of completion, it is not usually
when we are talking about subjects that are vast and that no one
can learn everything about. Instead, we use it with more limited
fields of study.
Strange:
I learned science.
I learned philosophy.
I learned music.
Natural:
I learned how to play the piano.
It's hard to imagine that someone could learn everything about
science. However, you can study science or learn about
Japanese history.
I want to learn about Western phscience.
Learn about is similar to learn in that what you learn about
becomes part of your memory, but learn about does not have the
sense of completion that learn does, so it sounds more natural in
the sentences below.
Natural:
I'm studying history.
I'm learning about ilosophy someday.
listen and hear
Many students use listen and hear interchangably. However, there
is an important difference between them. Listening describes an
intentional activity. When you are listening, you are actively trying
to hear something.
In contrast, hearing is something that happens without any
intentional effort. You can hear something even when you don't
want to hear it and don't try to hear it.
The sentences below contain both listen and hear and show the
contrast:
•I listened outside the door, but I couldn't hear what they were
saying inside. [Note that even if you listen, you don't always hear
what you are trying to hear.]
•His story was so long and boring that I stopped listening, until
suddenly I heard my name. [Note that even if you are not
listening, you might hear something.]
Finally listen is often used with to.
In the examples below,taken from the Cambridge Advanced
Learner's Dictionary, listen or listen to cannot be replaced by hear:
•What kind of music do you listen to?
•She does all the talking - I just sit and listen.
•You haven't listened to a word I've said!
•We listened in silence as the names of the dead were read out.
•Listen, we really need to sort out our insurance claim this
weekend.
•Listen to this! You can win a holiday for two in the south of
France just by answering three simple questions.
Likewise, in the examples below, hear cannot be replaced by
•listen, because hear is describing something that a person
cannot control/
•She heard a noise outside.
•My grandfather is getting old and can't hear very well.
•You'll have to speak up, I can't hear you.
HOWEVER, there are a few cases in which hear is used to
mean something very close to listen to. In the examples below,
listen to could replace hear.
•I heard a really interesting programme on the radio this
morning.
•I heard the orchestra play at Carnegie Hall last summer.
•An audience gathered to hear him speak.
Why is hear used instead of listen to in these cases? Maybe
because the emphasis in each case is on the contents of what
is hear rather than on the activity of listening.
 male and female vs. men and women
Male and female are basically adjectives, not nouns. They can be
used as nouns, but in general, it is better not to do so when you
are referring to people. I think it is because we often use male and
female as nouns when we are talking about animals. Sentence (a)
below sounds like a sentence about animals. If you are talking
about people, it is better to use man and woman (or men and
women) so sentence (b) sounds better than (a) in this case.
However, if you need an adjective, it is better to use male and
female because men and women are nouns; sentence (d) sounds
better than sentence (c).
a.Males are thought to be physically stronger t than females.
c.Men are thought to be physically stronger than women.
e.This company treats the women employees the same as the
men employees.
g.This company treats the female employees the same as the
male employees.
 realize 　 and 　　 notice

Many students of English have trouble with these two verbs, using
one where the other would be more appropriate. While they are
similar in meaning, they are not identical, as we can see in the
definitions and examples below, adapted from the Longman
Dictionary of Contemporary English, 3rd edition.
notice: to see, hear, or feel something
•He spilled the tea, but Mrs. Whitley did not notice.
•You may notice a numb feeling in your fingers.
•He was too tired even to notice how tired and hungry he
was.
•Did you notice him leaving the party early?
realize 1: to know and understand the importance of
something

•Do you realize that you are an hour late?

•I realize how much she means to you.
•None of us realized the danger we were in.
•
realize 2: to start to know something that you had not
noticed before

•I suddenly realized that he was crying.

•Later, we realized that we had met before in
Paris.
•I realized then how hungry I was.
•Tim didn't realize his mistake until the next day.
The definitions of realize include the word "know", while the
definition of notice includes "see,hear or feel". In other words,
realizing is a cognitive event, something which involves thinking
about a situation. Noticing is more of a physical event in which
something comes to our attention through our senses. It is
possible to notice something without realizing that it is important.

Pay attention to the contrast in these two sentences:

•Did you notice what time it was when you came in?
　 (That is, did you happen to see the clock?)
•
•Did you realize what time it was when you came in?
　　 (That is, did you understand that you were late?)
Here are a few examplesThese examples taken from the
Bank of English corpus created by COBUILD at Birmingham
University.
•...Chinese prestige had plummeted so low in Lhasa that
imperial edicts were openly disobeyed and Chinese
sovereignty was barely given lip service. If a small number of
officials did indeed realize that Kawaguchi was Japanese,
they also recognized that it would not be in Tibet's interest to
provoke a potentially friendly ally....
•...conflicts and your natural weight limitations you can
reduce the importance of fat as a measure of self-worth.
You'll see how looksism causes weight preoccupation. And I
hope you'll begin to realize that getting thin isn't really the
antidote to feeling fat. After all, many thin women still fear fat.
A central theme of Bodylove is that you shouldn't have to
suffer or torment yourself...
•...does not make much of in this particular report. But leaving
aside blame for a moment, this list of things done wrong in the
Sahel suggests that only now are people beginning to realize
how the climate, in human terms, actually operates. The
climate is defined by a relationship between the weather, rain
or no rain, and what use people have tried to make of the
natural world.
•
•... his arrival describing him as a famous physician, he was
obliged to treat several patients. With the festivities in Lhasa
lasting another ten days, there was reason to hope that no one
would notice his absence, or have the means to do anything
about it, for some time. All the same, Kawaguchi was taking no
chances. At Palti he began what became a routine, setting out
just after midnight...
•..."By the way, you know the other day when you went out
rowing," he said, stalling for time, "did you happen to
notice a painting in the boat?" "Yes, as a matter of fact."
"Oh good, I've been looking for it." "One of Dr. Jonsen's,
right? What was it doing there, Frank?"
•
•... Although I knew he was unusual, I didn't realize that
his difference made him disgraceful, an embarrassment
my family always tried to hide from outsiders. However, I
soon started to notice that he was always sent out of the
room to some quiet, distant part of the house when we had
visitors. If we were outdoors and another person
approached, family members whispered ...
Here are some more examples from the Cobuild Corpus
with realizeand notice taken out. Can you guess which
ones originally had realize and which ones originally had
notice?
1.....seems as though the ads in just about every magazine
published for women are telling us that we should worry about
the kind of little fine lines that form on dry skin. You pick up a
magazine and an ad for a skin care product. The copy is
talking about little fine lines that are beginning to form. The
model, who is worried about these lines, looks as though she
is twenty...
2.
4....since she was going to report you, too. And I remembered
you told me once you didn't have one. Well, Mrs. Howard
fussed and said how she wasn't going to go to jail on account
of you. I didn't how scared of the law she is. Anyway, I calmed
her down and told her I'd clean all the tanks in the humidifiers
for her. She hates to do that, see." Mrs. Dambar thanked her
for her intervention...
3....because it was very important to her that she produce
a happy family. Her motivation was a good one - to give
her children a better home than she had had. But what
she failed to is that you can't control people's experiences.
You can't make people "be happy" because you tell them
to....
4.
6....and found that the same problems had been noticed
there. By the fall of 1986, Ted's obsession with eating and
drinking had become a full-scale behavior problem. We
didn't it during weekend visits as much as the house
parents who had to deal with Ted on a regular basis.
Finally we got another phone call. "Mr. Hart, we're worried
about Ted..." there."
4.
6....crossed the Tsang Po on July 23, and reached the pilgrims' road on August 2 -- a
total of eleven days. The reader is offered no explanation for this discrepancy. Though
he did not immediately it, when he reached this tent his troubles -- at least his
physical troubles -- were temporarily at an end. He was at first, however, more than a
little apprehensive...
8....learn to live in a changing body. And we can learn to love it, even when it wrinkles.
I know that loving an aging body isn't always easy. It's hard to watch youth slip away
in the mirror and that you're no longer growing up but growing old. Eventually the
aging process forces you to give up an idealized forever-young image of yourself.
How you feel about your aging image certainly...
10....they spent more time working out than praying and were also employed as
bodyguards and policemen during festivals. Few travelers to Lhasa failed to the
presence of these unique men of the cloth, but none got to know them as well as
Kawaguchi did, nor has anyone left us quite so full a description of them. For as
always, much as he might...
12....Gretchen propped her feet up on the railing and sighed. "Not now, please."
"But it's worried me so much. I don't think it's fair that you should take so much blame.
You've got to that it's no one's fault really. Things just happen."
"What blame?" Puzzled, Gretchen turned to look at the girl. "It's not your fault the
ambulance took so long getting
Using there is and there are
The phrases there is and there are are often used when we talk about the fact that something exists, but
Japanese students of English often don't use these phrases often enough. The examples below are all
grammatical English, but they sound very unnatural; sentences with there is or there are would be better.
1.Strange: Look! A big cockroach is there!
Natural: Look! There's a big cockroach (there)!
3.Strange:I was disappointed to find out that a limit on the number of units a student can take existed.
Natural: I was disappointed to find out that there was a limit on the number of units a student can take.
5.Strange: Since I became a sophomore, things that I want to do and have to do occurred a lot.
Natural: Since I became a sophomore, there are many things that I want to do and have to do.
7.Strange: A takoyaki shop was in front of the cram school.
Natural: There was a takoyaki shop in front of the cram school.
The reason why the first sentences of each pair sound unnatural is that in English, we tend to put new
information toward the end of the sentence, after the main verb, in order to emphasize it. We usually put the old
information (the information that the listener already knows about or expects to hear about) in the first part of the
sentence.
For example, in the sentences in below (a) and (b), the old information is italics and the new information is in bold
type.
In a self-introduction:
a.Hello, my name is Vicky.
c.I'm from the U.S., and I've been living in Japan for three years.
The italicized words are old information in the sense that these are the usual topics
found in a self-introduction. The information in bold type is new information that the
listener doesn't yet know and can't predict.
The sentences in (i) and (ii) below describe the same basic facts as those in above, but
the information appears in a different order. These sentences are grammatical but they
would sound very unnatural in a self-introduction.
i.Vicky is my name.
iii.The U.S. is where I come from and Japan is where I have been living.
Here, my name, where I am from and where I live are emphasized as new information,
while Vicky, the U.S. and Japan are old information. It's hard to imagine a context in
which someone would use these sentence. Probably, we would only use them to correct
someone's mistakes: 'Vicky is my name, not my hometown, and the U.S. is where I am
from, not where I plan to study.'
(Notice that in Japanese, the old information is often optional and can be ommitted. ｪ i ﾚ
ｳｭ煜ｹﾎ O ｭ・ j ｰ莢 B ｰ L ｭ・皙 B)
Many times, Japanese students write English sentences which are
grammatical but which sound strange because the old information and new
information are not where we expect them to be. In the sentence in (1)
above, for example, the focus is on a big cockroach, so it is better to put
this phrase after the main verb. Likewise, in (4), the writer ouuting the focus
on the fact that a takoyaki shop exists, so a takoyaki shop should come
after the main verb. Using there is is a good way to do this.
There is also used in negative sentences when we want to talk about the
fact that something does not exist, as in the following examples.
A.Strange: In Japan, the debate over this issue has not been held much
Natural: In Japan, there has not been much debate over this issue.
C.Strange: Without solving this problem, no debate can be done.
Natural: Until we solve this problem, there can be no debate.
There's a useful reference book for helping you to understand the
differences between the English and the Japanese ways of expressing ideas
in sentences: Situation vs. Person Focus; 纜ﾔ政痕ｵｭﾒｭｮﾅ p ﾔ政痕ｵｭﾒ by
John Hinds, published by ｭﾐｭ俗ｵｭｬｶ o 艨 .