Posted by pakguru on April 20th, 2018 | 0 comments | IELTS, manusia, redundancy, speaking, writing
Technology is very useful for people’s life.
This common error made by Indonesian students is easy to avoid if we appreciate that the last three words are actually redundant. Let me explain…
We assume you’re making statements about people, and not animals or aliens, unless otherwise stated.
OK, so you might argue that urbanisation also causes problems for wildlife, but if you don’t mention wildlife then we assume you’re talking about people.
(In our opening example there is a grammatical error – people’s life. ‘People‘ is plural and ‘life‘ is singular – so it doesn’t make sense to put those words together!)
Again, it is assumed you are talking about people and the things that they do while they are alive and that these things affect their lives in some way.
Students experience a similar problem with the word human (dealt with in a this post and this post). Again, you only need to mention people and humans if you’re contrasting them with other species or with aliens!
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