Can you provide me some useful lectures/advices on how to improve my grammar?

Shakespeare

Shakespeare will not help OP become proficient at the transcription and translation of contemporary English. This is particularly true if OP does not read a translation of Shakespeare into contemporary English, the language he or she will be working with. Between outdated spellings and conjugations, adverbs and pronouns that in our times would seem archaic affectations, grammatical inversion for the sake of meter or rhyme, and other marks of his time and particular style, Shakespeare's plays and sonnets are likely to muddle any ESL writer who has a clear, short-term goal in mind that requires the study of English as it is used. How will the following help OP:

Scene IV

Alarum, excursions. Enter Catesby.

Cat. Rescue my Lord of Norfolke,
Rescue, Rescue :
The King enacts more wonders then a man,
Daring an opposite to euery danger :
His horse is slaine, and all on foot he fights,
Seeking for Richmond in the throat of death
Rescue faire Lord, or else the day is lost.

Alarums.
Enter Richard.

Rich. A Horse, a Horse, my Kingdome for a Horse.

Cates. Withdraw my Lord, Ile helpe you to a Horse

Rich. Slaue, I haue set my life vpon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the Dye :
I thinke there be sixe Richmonds in the field,
Fiue haue I slaine to day, in the stead of him :
A Horse, a Horse, my Kingdome for a Horse.

This is one of the most famous scenes from Shakespeare's plays, yet it would be detrimental to OP if read for OP's purpose.

First we have the archaic alarum, followed by an obsoleted use of the word excursions, to mean "sallies" or "charges in battle."

Following closely on those two is the outmoded then, a spelling which OP would likely be dinged for if chosen in preference to the standard than.

Then we have an obsolete use of opposite to mean opponent or enemy.

And an obsolete use of throat—“in the throat of death”—for which the OED doesn't have a citation beyond the year 1730!

It would be a lousy thing for OP if he or she assimilated even one use of u where today we would use v, or vice versa—as in euery, vpon, etc. If OP is giving careful study to today's English, why face the additional burden of learning the English of 500 years ago, only to dismiss it?

It is even harder with the old silent es, because we still have many of those, and there is little rhyme or reason to which ones stuck around.

And Ile for I'll? In the stead instead of instead?

Even a native speaker might initially be confused by I haue set my life vpon a cast, And I will stand the hazard of the Dye.—It is not immediately apparent to everyone that dye is not our dye, but die, and that this die is what was cast—that is, thrown. Stand as used here is little used today—to stand the hazards or stand all fortunes, as in to face them resolutely.

OP might find stand a particular nuisance in Shakespeare. Already the word is overburdened with meanings, yet many obsoleted ones live on in the folios: stand meaning to disobey, stand meaning to act as a friend to another, stand meaning to confront as an opponent (or shall we say, opposite), stand meaning to be exposed to the elements, stand off meaning to be different, stand to meaning to dig in to some food, stand in meaning to insist on having, stand on meaning to practice, stand on meaning to value, and so on.

The English of today is a massive language, with plenty to learn and even more to forget. If OP learns Elizabethan English as well, the language will swell even further—yet only with words and construct that are utterly unfit for use at OP's job.

/r/grammar Thread Parent