14th December, 2009

by Marie
(Haarlem, Netherlands)

Hi Diana,

I am an expatriate Australian now living in The Netherlands. Your newsletters are a very useful resource in my voluntary work teaching English to Dutch people with a background of psychiatric and/or psychological problems.

I certainly don't want you to think that I scour your newsletters specifically to find errors! Nothing could be further from the truth and I would hate you to think I don't appreciate your hard work. I hope you understand that I am writing only in an attempt to be helpful, not critical.

In the newsletter there is a section on the correct use of 'should' and 'must'. I have suggested some corrections to the first exercise in this section.

Fill in the blanks with either "should" or "must".

> 1) I am desperate to get to Seville but the clerk just told me there wasn't (should be weren't instead of wasn't as 'trains' is plural) anymore (should be written as two words - ?any more') trains that day. (Alternative sentence constructions could be 'there wasn't another train that day' or 'there were no more trains that day'.) I think she is lying because I know that there is a train at 5 pm. (space after 5).

Thank you again for your hard work and very interesting newsletters.

Regards,

Marie

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Thanks for keeping me on my toes Marie. I'm far from perfect, so if you notice a mistake or something that could be written differently, let us know!