Bilingual bidirectional learning sentence patterns

Author: Wen Wen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-09-01
Features: This book will address our common difficulties, meet our shared needs, and fulfill our collective dreams. It correctly understands English and truly reveals the inherent laws of the English language, making the complex simple and the difficult easy. Starting from simple English knowledge, it progresses step by step. It encourages truly thinking in English to comprehend, perceive, express, and learn English, achieving a natural transition from "Chinese" to "English." It breaks the conventional way of learning English by filtering out "known" and "unknown" through "dual molding" and "bidirectional learning," making knowledge integrated and adaptable, saving time and effort while being highly efficient.
To learn English well, one should pay attention to three points:
1. Pay attention to the special functions of English vocabulary.
2. Master a large number of English idioms and improve their application skills.
3. Continuously accumulate various English sentence patterns.
English sentence patterns are relatively complex. If their usage is not understood or mastered, it often leads to misunderstandings of sentences and severely affects English learning. For example, in the sentence:
"But that I saw it, I could not have believed it."
If one is not familiar with the pattern [But that + clause (affirmative verb) — main clause (containing could for subjunctive mood)], translating it word by word would result in:
"However, I did see it, and I could not believe it."
This translation is incorrect. Understanding it according to the pattern yields the correct translation:
"If I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it."
From this example of understanding and translation, it can be seen how important it is to master English sentence patterns. Therefore, when learning English, we must pay attention to continuously accumulating common English sentence patterns and deliberately imitate them to familiarize ourselves with their usage.
The purpose of writing this book is to help readers understand and master various flexible and diverse English sentence patterns, thereby improving the precision of their comprehension and application of English.
Key Features of the Book:
(1) Using the method of association and contrast, it links one sentence pattern to its opposite. For example:
"The country is badly short of wheat." (This country is extremely short of wheat.)
The pattern here is [Subject + be + short of...]. We can think of its opposite in meaning: [Subject + be + long on...], such as:
"He is long on good ideas." (He has a lot of good ideas.)
(See Book P. 84)
(2) Paying attention to sentence patterns where the negative meaning shifts, such as:
"You should not give up hope because you have met with some difficulties."
This sentence follows the pattern [not... because...]. If translated word by word, it would be:
"Because you have encountered some difficulties, you should not give up hope."
This is clearly incorrect. The correct translation is:
"You should not give up hope because you have encountered some difficulties."
The negative word "not" in the verb negates the clause that follows, not the negation itself. This is the characteristic of the negative meaning shifting in sentence patterns. It is important to understand this through logical reasoning to avoid errors.
(See Book P. 32)
(3) Using the comparative method, it groups sentence patterns with different structures but the same meaning for easy comparison and memorization. For example:
"He is as brave as any man alive." / "He is as brave as a man ever lived." / "He is the bravest man who ever lived."
These three sentences have different structures but the same meaning, all meaning:
"He is the bravest man in the world."
(See Book P. 331)
(4) Using the comparative method, it combines sentence patterns with similar structures but different meanings for deeper contrast. For example:
"All but one of the thieves were caught." (All but one of the thieves were caught.) / "It was all but impossible to climb back into the boat." (It was almost impossible to climb back into the boat.)
Both sentences contain "all but," but their meanings are completely different.
(See Book P. 189)
(5) The book is rich in examples. Most sentence patterns in the book are grouped, totaling 230 groups (over 600 patterns). Each group provides typical sentences with Chinese and English translations for better understanding and mastery. At the same time, it analyzes and explains the sentence patterns, striving for accuracy, detail, and annotations when necessary.