Mastering English Tenses and Modals

English Tenses and Modals: A Comprehensive Guide

Present Simple

Uses:

  1. Habits, customs, and routine activities (e.g., I know, you know, we know, they know; he knows, she knows, it knows).
  2. General and universal truths.
  3. States.
  4. To refer to a future action that is already known.

Present Continuous

Structure: I am, she/he/it is, you/we/they are + verb + ing

Uses:

  1. Actions happening now.
  2. Temporary situations.
  3. Future plans already decided.

Past Simple

Structure: I/he/she/it/we/you/they + past simple (negative: didn’t

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Language Test Validity: A Comprehensive Assessment

Language Test Validity

What is Validity in Language Testing?

Validity refers to whether a test accurately measures the intended abilities. This involves selecting appropriate content and techniques. It also encompasses the generalizability of findings to other subjects and situations.

Types of Validity

Content Validity

A test has content validity if its content represents a sample of the language skills and structures it aims to assess. A valid test includes a proper sample of the relevant structures.

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Environmental Challenges: Climate Change, Pollution, and Biodiversity Loss

Environmental Policy and Global Challenges

Priority Areas:

  • Climate change
  • Nature and biodiversity
  • Natural resources and waste
  • Environmental health and quality of life

Global Megatrends:

  • Increasing global divergence in population trends: aging, growing, and migrating populations
  • Urbanization: spreading cities and spiraling consumption
  • Changing patterns of global disease burdens and the risk of new pandemics
  • Continued economic growth
  • Global power shifts: from a uni-polar to a multi-polar world
  • Intensified global
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Water Treatment: Processes and Technologies

Water treatment transforms raw surface and groundwater into safe drinking water. Water treatment involves two types of processes: physical removal of solids (mainly mineral and organic particulate matter) and chemical disinfection (killing/inactivating microorganisms). Treatment practices vary from system to system, but there are four generally accepted basic techniques:

  • Coagulation and Flocculation
  • Sedimentation
  • Filtration
  • Disinfection

Groundwater requires less treatment than surface water.

Seawater

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Understanding Sign Language: Semiotics and Semantic Change

The Sign Language

Verbal language consists of a special type of symbol: the sign language. According to Saussure, it is an inseparable unit with two levels: the signifier or expression and the signified or content. Besides being so composed, it is characterized by the following features:

  • Arbitrariness: The relationship between signifier and signified is unmotivated, i.e., a product of human will.
  • Conventionality: Users of the same language must accept the signs it contains, whose values have been agreed
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Structuralism, Language Norms, and Usage: A Linguistic Analysis

Structuralism and Language: A System of Relations

According to structuralism, language is defined as a system where language units (phonemes, words, semes) exist in relation to other units through a complex network of relations such as opposition or neutralization. As regards paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations, Saussure refers to them as dichotomies as well as the opposition between signifier/signified, langue/parole, or synchrony/diachrony.

Paradigmatic vs. Syntagmatic Relations

On the one hand,

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