Yusuf Wijaya
18210805
4ea05
I raise my arms and feel silence press into the hall behind me. The
concentration on the faces seated before me
is palpable, an energy I could touch if I dared move my hand. Eighty breaths
are held as one. Time stands still. I flick my baton, bring it down with a
sweep of anticipation to tap the wellspring that lies at the bottom of the arc.
Sound flows. I work the air with the baton and the
sound swells. It pours off the stage into the audience where it is soaked up by
those who are parched with worries, thirsty for comfort. I mold the sound with
my arms, my body sways. My toes push my heels off the platform. I weave the
sound, stroke it, cajole it. I yank it and jerk it until it ceases to be air
vibrating against string and shuddering brass. It is no longer frequency and
decibel. It no longer belongs to words like “harmony” and “counterpoint”. Once
it passes through my arms, it becomes more than any word can contain.
The
sound unfolds differently within each listener. Some become drenched in memory,
some swim as peacefully as in the womb. Some struggle and weep. Some find joy
in the sound’s creation and peer past the transformation of my weaving onto the
stage, hoping for a glimpse of genesis.
And then I begin to tell the stories.
My baton calls to the strings. Tears spring forth and
spill off the stage to join the deluge. Mothers cry and Angels weep.
The drums are summoned. War marches through the hall
and the cry of battle echoes from balcony to balcony.
The horns answer. A hero rises! Evil is defeated. Love
conquers.
Flutes and oboes rejoice. All of nature sings.
My
arms tire and the flow ebbs to a trickle. I look to the faces before me, and
together we reach into the depths of creation to wring out every last ounce of
sound. With a final, excruciating sweep, I bring the baton to rest. It hovers,
motionless, before the orchestra. Eighty breaths are held as one. Time stands
still.
I drop my arms.
The dry silence lingers for a moment. Then one drop of
sound plops onto the stage, splashed from a pair of hands near the front row.
Then another. Then a dozen, then thousands of hundreds of raindrops bathe us in
applause. The hall rumbles with the thunder of approval. I bow into the gale, then
wave the orchestra to its feet. My cheeks are wet. My eyes are damp. I bow
again.
“Mom!
When’s supper going to be ready?!”
I hastily wipe my eyes as my cozy kitchen reappears
around me. The spaghetti is bubbling on the stovetop and steam rises all the way
to the vent in a misty column.
“10 minutes. Go wash up!” I yell back. The bread is
almost ready and I need to set the table.
Still humming, I turn off the iPod.
1. VERB PHRASE
A phrase is a group of words that forms a unit simpler than a sentence. Unlike
a sentence, or clause, a phrase does not contain both a subject and a finite
(conjugated) verb. When building sentences, we use many types of phrases. This
article focuses on verb phrases.
What is a verb phrase?
In grammar, a verb phrase
is a verb of more than one word. It includes one or more helping (or auxiliary)
verbs and one main verb:
can see
[helping
verb can + main verb see]
would have sent
[helping
verbs would + have + main verb send]
may have been planning
[helping verbs may
+ have + be + main verb plan]
What does a main verb do?
The main verb expresses
the chief idea in the verb phrase. The other verbs are there only to help it.
The main verb is always
the last verb in the phrase. Often its form changes, as in the last two
examples, in
which send becomes sent and plan becomes planning.
(Tip: After the helping verbs have and be, the form of the main
verb almost always changes.)
What does a helping verb
do?
A helping (or auxiliary)
verb, which is placed in front of a main verb, helps it to express different
ideas. There are only a small number of helping verbs. They are divided into
two types: primary and modal.
Primary
There are three primary
helping verbs: be, do and have. Note that these verbs have
different forms:
be, am, is, are, was,
were, been, being
do, does, did
have, has, had
In addition to acting as
helping verbs, be, do and have can occur alone as main
verbs:
I was at the
arcade.
[was is a main verb]
I was working at the
arcade.
[was is a helping
verb; working is the main verb]
Lars
often did the cooking.
[did is a main
verb]
Lars did not mind cooking
. [did is a helping
verb; mind is the main verb]
Alex and
Cara have the keys. [have is
a main verb]
Alex and Cara have gone.
[have is a helping
verb; gone is the main verb]
Modal
There are
10 principal modal verbs:
can, could
shall, should
will, would
may, might
must
ought [+ to + main verb]
Unlike the primary helping
verbs, modal verbs do not change their form to agree with different subjects.
For example, can does not change no matter what subject it follows:
I can go
you can go
he can go
we can go
they can go
After most of the modal
verbs, the main verb is in its base form (the form in which it is listed in the
dictionary):
can
go [can + base form go]
The one exception
is ought, which is followed by to and the base form of the main
verb:
ought to
go
[ought + to + base form go]
The modal verbs must be
used together with a main verb. They occur alone only when the main verb is
left understood, usually to avoid repetition:
"Who can
tell me the answer?"
"I can!" [= I can tell you the answer]
Why do we need helping
verbs?
We use helping verbs
to change the tense of a
verb:
am hoping [present
progressive]
have finished [present perfect]
will go [simple future]
will have been working [future perfect progressive]
to ask a question:
Do I have the wrong
number?
Does Sven know Marta's password?
Did you forget to walk the dog?
to create emphasis:
Rivka does plan
to attend, after all.
We do need a new couch, no matter what you think!
I did walk the dog.
to form a negative verb:
The
children did not (or didn't) see the end of the hockey game.
We have not (or haven't) finished yet.
Please do not (or don't) open this window.
The mail will not (or won't) go out until tomorrow.
Note: Adverbs (such
as the adverb not or its contraction n't) often appear in the
middle of a verb phrase—but they are not verbs. They modify the verb phrase but
are not part of it.
to form the passive voice
(with be as the only, or the last, helping verb):
were introduced
have been elected
is being organized
will be held
would have been hired
to add an idea:
must read [necessity]
can read [ability]
can read, may read [permission]
could read, may read, might read [possibility]
ought to read, should read [advisability]
Example :
1.
He was smoking.-
After she had learned to drive, Alice felt more independent.
2.
We will meet at the
library at 3:30 p.m.
3.
Henry made my coach
very proud.
4.
Yankee
batters hit the ball to win their first World Series since 2000.
5.
Mary saw the man
through the window.`
2.
TENSES
It's all about time. Things can happen now, in the future or in the past. The
tenses simply show the time of an action or state of being as shown by a verb.
The verb ending is changed (conjugated) to show what time it is referring to.
Time can be split into three periods The Present (what you are doing), The Past (what you did) and The Future (what you are going to do, or hope / plan to do ). The
tenses we use to show what time we are talking about are split into the Simple, Continuous andPerfect tenses. In English
we use two tenses to talk about the present and six tenses to talk about the
past. There are several ways to talk about the future some of which use the
present tenses, these are:
Simple
Tenses
The simple tenses are used to show permanent characteristics of people and
events or what happens regularly, habitually or in a single completed action.
The continuous tenses are used when talking about a particular point in time.
Sometimes you need to give just a little bit more information about an action
or state...and that is where the perfect tenses come in.
The perfect tenses are
used when an action or situation in the present is linked to a moment in the
past. It is often used to show things that have happened up to now but aren't
finished yet or to emphasize that something happened but is not true anymore.
When they end determines which of them you use.
Perfect tenses are never
used when we say when something happened i.e. yesterday, last year etc. but can
be used when discussing the duration of something i.e. often, for, always,
since etc..
1. Present
Tenses
-
Simple present tense
Example : I study for two hours every day
-
Present continuous tense
Example : Budi is driving his new red car
-
Present perfect tense
Example : I have read the book
-
Present perfect continuous tense
Example : I have been writing with y computer all
night long
2. Past
Tenses
-
Simple past tense
Example : Budi went to the library three days ago
-
Past continuous tense
Example : I was riding bicycle
-
Past perfect tense
Example : Riri had been singing
-
Past perfect continuous tense
Example : my brother had slept before father came home
3. Future
Tenses
-
Simple future tense
Example : I will go to Jakarta
-
Future continuous tense
Example : I will be shopping in Tanah abang
-
Future perfect continuous tense
Example : The bos will habe been playing golf for 2
hours
4. Past
Future Tenses
-
Past future tense
Example : If I found his wallet, I would give it back
to him
-
Past future continuous tense
Example : If I could go home, I am staying with my
wife
-
Past future perfect tense
Example : If I could fly, I had crossed the sea
-
Past future perfect continuous tense
Example : If you studied hard, you had been
controlling the world
3.
Singular and Plural
Different languages have different ways of expressing the difference between
singular and plural nouns. Understanding the difference between plural and
singular nouns is an important part of learning and using the English language.
If used incorrectly, you can easily miscommunicate even the most obvious of
details. The difference between the two types is equally important whether the
language is being spoken or written.
The primary
difference between plural and singular nouns is that the latter indicates a single
unit of the noun while the former represents multiple units. It's important to
make the distinction between the two tenses because shared characteristics in
nouns will otherwise go unnoticed. The plural form of nouns can commonly be
confused with the possessive version of a noun, which indicates ownership.
Possessive nouns often contain an apostrophe while plural nouns do not.
The majority of nouns in the English language can be transformed from singular
to plural simply by adding an "s" to the word's end; for example,
there is one car, but if another arrives, there are two cars. Words that end in
the letters "s", "-ch", "x", or
"s"-like sounds become plural by adding "es" to the end.
For example, oxygen is not one gas, but a combination of gases. Not all words
adhere to these principles, though, as some nouns take on different forms when
they become plura.
When we are talking about
two or more people, animals, places or things, we have to make the countable
nouns plural.
Plural nouns usually end in s.
Singular
|
Plural
|
lamp
|
lamps
|
worker
|
workers
|
hawk
|
hawks
|
place
|
places
|
rope
|
ropes
|
hen the last letters of singular nouns
are ch, sh, s or x, you usually
add es to form the plural. Some exceptions are stomach and monarch
where you add sinstead of es. This is
because the ch in these words sounds like k.
Singular
|
Plural
|
arch
|
arches
|
branch
|
branches
|
brush
|
brushes
|
flash
|
flashes
|
bus
|
buses
|
address
|
addresses
|
box
|
boxes
|
fox
|
foxeis
|
stomach
|
stomachs
|
monarch
|
monarchs
|
Example :
1. I have three children (plural)
2. My dog likes to eat meat
