SHAH ALAM, Selangor, Dec 12

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,

See the title? SHAH ALAM, Selangor, Dec 12.

That is what you call a dateline.

It is a line of text, usually at the beginning of an article or a news report, which shows the date and origin of an article.

So if you tell me that you have a dateline to adhere to, I would assume that whatever you are doing now must have taken place from the dateline that you are mentioning.

Allah knows best.

It's and its.

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,

It's a good day for the cat today. It has managed to get out of its cage.

It's is used when the phrase 'it is' is shortened to one word.

Its is used to show possession for the pronoun it. Like 'his' for a he and 'her' for a she, 'its' is for it.

This is grammar and I'm sorry if this entry slowed your learning process.

Allah knows best.

I need to learn grammar

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful,

Recently, Wan Asmuri posted this comment on my blog:

"we should learn english without concentrating a lot on grammar.Grammar make us learn very slow."

I respect his opinion, but I do not share his view on this.

For me, grammar is fundamental in the process of learning a language. If I may quote Karen Armstrong from her autobiography of the bible:

Language is a complex code, ruled by deep laws that combine to form a coherent system that is imperceptible to the speaker, unless he or she is a trained linguist.

The rules of grammar are the laws of the language. An impressive vocabulary would mean nothing if the rules of grammar are not applied to it.

Take this collection of words as an example:

pretentious relucent be? indie artists must why

Is this English? The words look English. Spellchecker doesn't complain. So it should be English, right?

For someone who knows nothing about grammar, they might think that its perfect English(except 'relucent' though, I don't think anyone would use that word).

But even for someone like me, a struggling English learner with minimal knowledge of the English grammar, I would say that this is not English.

These words do not make sense at all. The words might seem pretty but without grammar, it lacks meaning.

The purpose of this blog is to share my experience of learning the English language and I intend to do it by learning grammar. It might be slow, but hey, I'm a slow learner.

Allah knows best.