using the word ‘mainstream’
Wednesday, August 29th, 2007It would seem from the quiz results I’ve edited so far that the word mainstream was not well understood. To solve this problem we can go to a good dictionary like the LONGMAN DICTIONARY OF CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH [English-Chinese] and look the word up. I know you love the online dictionaries that allow you to translate from English to Chinese but……. they don’t really help you learn English…… do they.
So, let’s have a look at the work mainstream [the+S] meaning: the main or most widely accepted way of thinking or acting in relation to a subject [my emphasis for your benefit]. Here is an example of the word in the context of a sentence. ‘Their view lies outside the mainstream of current medical thinking.’ Notice that something [ Their views] are compared to the mainstream [views] by using the words ‘outside of ‘ . And then we have a subject which is current medical views in our example. The word can also be used as an adjective [ remember, adjectives describe or modify nouns] . An example of this usage is ‘ Xyz is part of mainstream phiosophical thinking.’ [Xyz is just used for the example and has no meaning]
I hope this post will help all of you better understand the word mainstream and ; as a result, be able to use it properly. John