Sunday, August 30, 2009


how many errors in english?
roger, my fellow blogger, posted this and he challenged you to find a deliberate error in his posting.

i came across this 'advertisement' pasted on a pillar near my block of flats. there are - apart from missing punctuation marks - at least five grammatical errors. can you pick them out? would you let your child receive tuition in the english language from this tuition group?

15 comments:

Roger said...

Riddled with errors both in agreement and word usage. Very common in fliers these days.

Roger said...

Should be "subjects,experienced,past years, provide". I don't know how fantastic its tuition can be but its flyer IS fantastic in more ways than one.

Victor said...

It should be "money-back guarantee" instead of "money back guarantee".

"Money back" can be correctly used in the following example:

"If I were the tuition centre's student, I would want my money back."

fr said...

Somehow money back guarantee, whichever way, doesn't sound quite right. Maybe can express it another way.

Icemoon said...

The title sounds funny right? Fantastic tuition, maybe it was meant as satire, lol.

yg said...

actually, there was one more mistake but i left out that line because it would indirectly identify the person. the sentence was: call me at 12345678 (fictitious number).

Anonymous said...

This is the meaning of 'money back guarantee' from Wikipedia ~ A money back guarantee is essentially a simple guarantee that, if a buyer is not satisfied with a product or service, a refund will be made.

Lam Chun See said...

The problem with this flyer is not just the bad English. This can easily be put right with bit of help from friends. But the failure to do so reflects negligence or at least inattentiveness on the part of the owner and it doesn't auger well for his business.

Anonymous said...

Fantastic can also mean unreal or existing only in imagination.

nah said...

This flier is an advertisement of bad English and coupled with the low rates charged, it fuels my suspicion that ‘if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys’.

Yu-Kym said...

I would you let my child receive tuition in the english language from this tuition group - at the rate of $15 per hour paid to my child :P

Anonymous said...

A 'fantastic' proposition if a child would be paid by the tutor.

However, in this particular case, it would be reasonable if the child gives tuition to the tutor and be paid. 'Fair exchange is no robbery'. Hahaha!

Nevertheless, this would be detrimental and counterproductive, if the child's sole aim is to improve his/her English skills.

nah said...

Yg, ‘call me at 123…’ is perfectly alright if the person to be contacted is a ‘call girl’, who unlike a street walker, is not visible to the general public. The client must make an appointment , by calling her telephone number. Is there another profession in question?

yg said...

nah, nowadays, it is so common to hear people say: call me at 98765432 but the correct preposition is on.

nah said...

YG, like Roger said, prepositions like in, on, at can befuddle many. But, don’t you agree that it is more business-like if the tutor were to use:
‘Contact me at 1234…’ or ‘Enquiries to 1234…’ instead of ‘call me at 1234…’