BAKER: "I got the idea for this segment because for the past six weeks Ive been working with a group of brand-new English teachers from Hong Kong. Their English is superb, but I noticed here and there that there were still little errors that persisted, and one of those errors was with the word let. One of the students got up to do a presentation and she made a sentence something like, and at this point I would let the students to talk among themselves. To my native ear, of course, that to shouldnt be there.

"And, you know, theres a very logical explanation for why a student would make a mistake like this. Lets take a sentence like letting the students to sit down and think about what it really means. Well, it means that the teacher allowed -- or will allow -- the students to sit down. With a verb like allow, its necessary for us to include the preposition to, but with let it isnt."AA: "So it would be like, Allow me to introduce myself. Let me sit down."BAKER: "Exactly. Or let me introduce myself. So what students do is they generalize from one form to another and therefore make the mistake. Theres a few other verbs that act like let. Think of this sentence: My mother made me clean my room. It wouldnt be correct to say my mother made me to clean my room. But its perfectly correct to say my mother forced me to clean my room, right?"AA: "Right, exactly."BAKER: "So with the verb make, it isnt correct to use the preposition to. Another example is a structure like this: I had the waiter bring me some water. We use this structure -- I-had-someone-do-something-for-me -- in the sense of somebody that we hire in some cases to do a service for us. So I had the plumber fix the leak in my sink or I had the dry cleaner remove the stain from my silk suit.

"I think the best way to approach this from the learners point of view is to think of verbs like let and make and have as exceptions, because the normal pattern would be to include the preposition to. So once the student is aware of the fact that these verbs dont act like others, then the student can start kind of paying attention and looking for them when they listen to the news, when they listen to the radio, when they watch television.

"Another really good way to learn these verbs is to look for them in song lyrics. Think of all the songs that have let in them: Let Me Go, You Made Me Love You." (laughter)MUSIC: "You Made Me Love You"/Judy GarlandBAKER: "So I would tell my students to go to the Internet, because on the Internet you can find song lyrics, there are thousands of song lyrics on the Internet, and look for your favorite songs and read the lyrics. Youre going to find lots of examples of sentences with let and make and have. And if you start humming those songs in your head, its really going to help the student to remember how to use these verbs correctly. Can you think of any others?"AA: "Uh ... "BAKER: "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing, You Make Me Want to Sing, You Make Me Want to Shout." (laughter)MUSIC: "You Make Me Want to Shout"/Otis Day & the KnightsAA: Lida Baker teaches in the American Language Center, part of the University of California at Los Angeles Extension program. She also writes textbooks for English learners, available through the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company.

And while Lida cannot answer questions personally, send them to us at VOA Wordmaster, Washington DC 20237 USA.