Not every academic is a grammar geek. Yet most of us have pet peeves that tend to irk us when we spot them in our students’ work. And we’re spotting them more than ever, thanks to the hit that ...

The new question-of-the-week is: How should we teach grammar to students? Our students need to learn grammar, but the real question is how to teach it in ways that don’t bore them out of their minds.

If the TE-form of a verb and MO II DESU are said together, it means that a permission is granted. That is, the action expressed by the verb is permitted. So, for example, if you want to say to someone ...

We call the verbs that end with MASU "the MASU-form of verbs." We use the MASU-form, when we speak politely. To make it a negative, we change MASU to MASEN. So, YOMIMASU (to read) becomes YOMIMASEN.