2018-07-23 Grammar: intensifiers, too/very

Greg Malivuk
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http://www.pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk - notes from all classes
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Homework (optional): exercise 13
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How good is your grammar?
- My grammar is not very good.
- My grammar is too good to be in this class. / My grammar is too bad to be in this class.
- My grammar is so bad that I don’t understand anything.
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Intensifiers: change the intensity or strength of adjectives and adverbs
Degree Complements: give a consequence of how much (or little) an adjective is true
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p. 126-7 exercise 1 - Underline all of the intensifiers in this paragraph.
(Some intensifiers, like “somewhat” and “slightly”, make words less intense than without them.)
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p. 129 exercise 3 - Ask your partner about these things and write sentences with intensifiers. (You can look at the descriptions on p. 128 to know which intensifier(s) to use.)
1 He’s a pretty good singer. OR He’s pretty good at singing.
  She’s a pretty good pianist. OR She’s pretty good at piano. (or “at playing piano”)
2 He’s quite fond of burgers. He really likes burgers.
3 Doing dishes is quite dull for him.
4 He wants to be fluent enough in English. He doesn’t play guitar well enough.
5 He sleeps too much. Giving up smoking is too hard for him.
6 He’s really good at learning. He’s a really good student.
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Doing homework for Greg is very boring. + It’s boring when Greg makes me do homework.
For Greg, doing homework is very boring. = Greg thinks homework is boring.
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“too” versus “very”
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very: something is true to a great degree in the speaker’s opinion (we don’t know if this is a problem or a good thing)
too: something is true to an excessive degree (something is bad or impossible because of it)
(“so” can also have consquences, but unlike “too”, they can be positive consequences)
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p. 131 exercise 5 - Complete these sentences with “too” or “very”.
(Start in class. If you don’t finish by 2:50, complete the rest as homework.)