YOYO English Club

I watched BBC on Monday and got shocked that there's a piece of news titled "Gaming for a short time each day has a positive impact."

If my memory services me right, I remember we looked up the dictionaries together last Saturday and Kat suggested us" impact "only can be used in the negative situation.

Kat and YOYOs, would you please give me your opinions? THANK YOU.

A little video gaming 'linked to well-adjusted children
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-28602887
Playing video games for a short period each day could have a small but positive impact on child development, a study by Oxford University suggests.

http://whatis.thedifferencebetween.com/ ... influence/

no idea... XDD
But after I googled "positive impact", it seems it's a common usage..... "have a positive impact on~"

How to Have a Positive Impact on Your Environment
How Companies Can Have A Positive Impact on Nature
Event That Have a Positive Impact in My Life
Does arts education really have a positive impact on academic skills?
A study by American scientists found that the classic computer puzzle Tetris may also have a positive impact on your brain power.

I guess it's just like the word "fate". Mostly it's about unhappy things, like the definition from Longman dictionary,
[the things that will happen to someone, especially unpleasant events]
If you look further, you'll see all the example sentences are also about negative things

However, we can also find very good fate on the internet,
Does Fate or Destiny have anything to do with finding true love?
http://www.examiner.com/article/does-fa ... -true-love

Their Chinese counterparts, 衝擊 and 命運, seem to follow the same logic. We also use them, in very rare cases, to describe good things. But generally they are negative.

Yes, "impact" is often used for "bad/negative effect on something". When it is used in "positive" situations, we can add adjectives like "positive" or "low" as you see in the sentence: "Gaming for a short time each day has a positive impact.".
Nowadays,"Text Corpus" is a good resource to check the usage of words or phrases, when I searched the "positive impact” and "low impact" on COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English, http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/x.asp?r1=&w=1280&h=720), and Netspeak (http://www.netspeak.org/#), you see the frequency of usage and you can verify the example sentences to make sure the sources are good English sentences. I am sure most people use Google search to achieve the same objective.

Hi all,

I'm so glad that the exploration of "impact" continues! It's great to keep digging and keep learning - I love saying that the greatest skills often come from the biggest obsessions!(it's Kat's little mantra and not a saying.)

"Impact" is from Latin, "impingere", meaning "driven in", so it basically means "collision" and carries an implication of possible damage. That's why more often than not it describes a negative force.



But yes, we can certainly use "impact" on positive forces and results - if the context is clear.

If we've learned anything about English as a language it's that it doesn't want to follow rules! Sometimes it seems so fluid you want to throw up your hands and say, "can someone please lay down the law already?" But it's also precisely its flexibility and evolving, living nature that has made it the most universal language to date. Guess we'll just have to keep up!

Kat

If we've learned anything about English as a language it's that it doesn't want to follow rules! Sometimes it seems so fluid you want to throw up your hsnfd and say, "can someone please lay down the law already?" But it's also precisely its flexibility and evolving, living nature that has made it the most universal language to date. Guess we'll just have to keep up!

I am so stupid.... I don't know what hsnfd means.... XDDD
Can anyone help me on this? Thanks.

English is so tricky.

Tina Sun 寫:

If we've learned anything about English as a language it's that it doesn't want to follow rules! Sometimes it seems so fluid you want to throw up your hsnfd and say, "can someone please lay down the law already?" But it's also precisely its flexibility and evolving, living nature that has made it the most universal language to date. Guess we'll just have to keep up!

I am so stupid.... I don't know what hsnfd means.... XDDD
Can anyone help me on this? Thanks.

English is so tricky.

I guess it is a typo of "hand" because in keyboard "s" sits right next to "a" and "f" is adjacent to "d."

My bad!!!! Indeed I was trying to say, "throw up your hands." Good job, Kooper!

Kat

Thank you for your replies, Tina, Rock, Iris, Kat and Kooper. I've learned a lot.

I remember several years ago Kooper and I discussed the usage of "Black Sheep", then, I used the idea and made a sentence with " White Sheep " in it. Kooper said he's never seen this usage before. Recently, I finally found that there is someone use it. In the novel "Anybody out there?", it said, "Maggie, the second eldest of the five of us, is the maverick of Walsh family, our dirty secret, our white sheep."

It's fun and tricky, whenever I learned a rule, I'll find an exception later.

Gloria Lo 寫:Thank you for your replies, Tina, Rock, Iris, Kat and Kooper. I've learned a lot.

I remember several years ago Kooper and I discussed the usage of "Black Sheep", then, I used the idea and made a sentence with " White Sheep " in it. Kooper said he's never seen this usage before. Recently, I finally found that there is someone use it. In the novel "Anybody out there?", it said, "Maggie, the second eldest of the five of us, is the maverick of Walsh family, our dirty secret, our white sheep."

It's fun and tricky, whenever I learned a rule, I'll find an exception later.

maverick: a person who does not behave or think like everyone else but who has independent, unusual opinions持意見不同者;獨行其是者;言行與眾不同者
black sheep: a person who is different from the rest of their family or another grop, who is considered bad or embarrassing 有辱家族的人;害群之馬

Therefore, blacksheep and maverick/white ship are not antonyms, not as black vs. white.

However, the wording of "dirty" in the appositive of the sentence, "our dirty secret", is confusing me. I thought "dirty" would be a negative word. If Maggie, a maverick, is just different from others, not necessarily bad or embrassing, why is it a "dirty" secret? I've later realized that "dirty" simply means "big" in British English. Interesting!

Cool! Got another lesson from you, Wayne.

Wayne 寫: I've later realized that "dirty" simply means "big" in British English. Interesting!

I think so. Here is another example from the same book.
"But thanks to her good humour, her dirty laugh and her incredible stamina when it comes to staying up late and partying, men are comfortable with her. "


Wayne, if you hadn't mentioned this usage, I wouldn't notice it.