hoang_luong

according to Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, 10th Edition I just bought, "mail" is an uncountable noun and thus we cannot say "a mail", but " a piece of mail" or "a mail message" and the like. rgs

Actually, did you see "drunken water" somewhere? I myself have never seen it and it looks so weird.

Seems there's no separate rule for that. We have to gradually build up our knowledge of it everytime we come across a new collocation/verb-noun combination. Below are a few transitive verbs that have past participles which can be used as adjectives with ACTIVE meanings, especially before nouns: - a fallen leaf = a leaf that has fallen - advanced students = students who have advanced to a high level - developed countries - increased activity - a grown-up daughter - an escaped prisoner -vanished civilizations - faded color - a retired general - faded colors - swollen anksles These look like collocations and if it really is the case, you really have to learn it by heart and make use of your sense to decide if a combination looks OK. As you said, people don't say sth like "added value" and "adding value". These are things native speakers use very often and there is no general rule on which verb goes with which noun. We simply have to learn it by heart just as we learn collocations. For exmaple, they say " as black as night" (den nhu muc!), NOT "as black as INK" as we Vietnamese often say. And that's what is called "collocation/special expression/etc...'', which we have no other way to learn but by heart.

Falling leaves and Fallen leaves!

thanks mua xuan, you're absolutely correct!

1) A. Either.... or....... structure 2) D. Parallel structure 3) D. Both.... and....... and Parallel structures 4) C. More.... than.... structure

Thanks Erin! With your examples, everything is crystal-clear now. Thanks.

The answer is B. As far as I know, "to resist" is never used in present continuos form. What's more, it's a transitive verb and so it is followed directly by a noun, without a prep in between. What do you think?

1) D looks OK. What about "at the very least" ------> "at least"? 2) A. "Used by"-----> "Used IN/FOR" 3) D. "Safety = Noun"---------->"Safe = Adjective". Pls note the structure "To seem + adjective, NOT noun!" But you SEEM LIKE STH is OK. 4) At first glance, D seems like a correct choice but after some careful thought, A should be picked as the one and only choice. "No matter how" = "However" + adj/adv, but if "chromosom" is taken as separate from "development", it will lose its value, since we're inclined then to ask "What is "development" standing apart from "chromosom", despite the latter is a real adjective. 5) B. Explanation: A is wrong since "foot" is used incorrectly and should be "feet" in plural. C shares the same conclusion because there's no such structure. People only say "you're 1.69 m tall or the tree is 1m high, NOT 1.69 tall m or 1 high m!. D is obviously wrong, for without any explanation you still see that such a structure as "you're 1.69 tall in m or this tree is 1 high in m never comes into being in standard English----------THEREFORE, the correct choice is B. LOOK AT THIS: "The building is 200 m in height". This sentence and its relatives are an extremely common usuage in any of the newspapers of standard English, or on CNN or BBC News. Just type this sort of thing in the Google and you'll see what shall come out! Pls note you have roughly 30 seconds only to finalize all that analysis, so you really need to act quickly on the real test. For our purposes here, the xplanation is spelled out in such detail.

1) B. Pls note the structure Adj + As + Sub. + to be = "Although" structure. For example: Great as Newton is = Although he is great. Hey, have a look at this: "To challenge" is a transitive verb, and "challenging" is an adjective. If you chose D - challenging, the sentence wouldn't sound logical although grammartically it is still correct! Since the sentence is constructed with "Adj + As + Sub + To be = Although" standing at the beginning of the sentence, B is the most logical and hence the correct choice. ACTUALLY, I KNOW WHY B IS CORRECT BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT EACH PART OF A SENTENCE, PHRASE OR STRUCTURE IS CALLED 'CAUSE I NEVER READ A GRAMMAR BOOK! I know what a verb/noun/adjective/adv is called. Beyond that, they're all a closed book to me. 2) B---> I suppose this answer is more than obvious.

1) D 2) D 3) B----> as + adj + as 4) D----->more + adj/adj+ER + THAN

If that is the case, then the answer is D ----> "produce"--> "produceS" since "A thunderhead" is a singular.

a little ----> a few/some/several, etc..... 'cause "explorer" is a COUNTABLE NOUN.

1) B 2) B 3) D 4) B 5) B 6) C

If you really want to pass the test that is required by that university, you'd better take TOEFL since it is easier than IELTS. I don't know how it happens in other countries but in Vietnam some students are known to have managed to get 600-630 in the TOEFL but very, very few succeeded in getting 7.5 in the IELTS, which is equivalent to 627 TOEFL scores. If you don't believe me, just buy two good prep books, one for TOEFL and the other for IELTS, and compare them. IELTS reading is OBVIOUSLY harder than TOEFL reading. What's more, Speaking is COMPULSORY in IELTS and is taken as integraral part of the IELTS test, whereas there's no such a thing on TOEFL, at least until 2004 when the new TOEFL format is used. So you have to spend more of your time preparing for the Speaking in the IELTS. Finallly, IELTS Writing again is OBVIOUSLY harder and takes a lot more time to prepare for than TOEFL Writing. In TOEFL, you're required to do nothing more than JUST ONE ESSAY (whatever topic it is) but in IELTS, aside from the essay similar to TOEFL essay-writing, you have to do another writing test called Task 1 (desribing charts, graphs, procedures, trends, etc...), which is typical of tasks you'll have to do in an ACADEMIC environment. Again, you'll have to spend more time on it if you plan to sit IELTS simply because you have MORE THINGS to do on IELTS than on TOEFL. Put simply, YOU SHOULD TAKE TOEFL IF THE COLLEGE YOU'RE APPLYING TO ACCEPTS TOEFL. YOU'LL SAVE MUCH MORE TIME PREPARING FOR TOEFL THAN FOR IELTS! I'm DEAD sure about that!