SO/SO MUCH/SO MANY/SUCH/SUCH A

These are some notes only to remind you when to use the adverb SO. It means “very” and it is used to emphasize the adjective or the adverb we are using. For example. The day is cold.  We can emphasize it, for good or for bad,  by saying:  It´s so cold today! I wish I had a warmer sweater.  Here are other examples:

• I´m so nervous about the exam.I wish I had studied harder.
• You´re so sweet! I love you so much!
• Mom is so beautiful!
• Daniel is mad at his girlfriend. She was so rude to him the other day.

Read these other examples using ADVERBS.

• My brother works so hard!
• My sister plays the guitar so skillfully.
• My father speaks Portuguese so fluently.
• Mom I so incredibly beautiful!

Remember we can also use SO to express a consequence, in which case we have to use THAT.  For instance:

• I´m so tired that I could sleep 10 hours in a row. 
• My friend Ricky from Argentina  speaks so fast that  sometimes I can hardly understand him.
• New York is so beautiful that you can never get tired of spending vacation there.  

And then, also remember that we can use SO MUCH  or SO MANY to talk about an exaggerated quantity of something, which can be countable or uncountable. Here are some examples with  singular uncountable nouns:

• We had so much fun at  Jackie´s party yesterday!
• Edgar ate so much cake that he got sick to the stomach.
• Mike drank so much wine  that he felt terrible the next day.

And now, look at these examples with countable plural  nouns.

• Nelly´s sister  couldn´t come because she had so many things to do at the office.
• Not so many children enjoy playing with marbles these days.

On the other hand, the determiner SUCH A or SUCH AN can also help us to show emphasis and result.  We only need to use the expression with a noun. For example.

• Nelly is SUCH A good dancer that everybody wants to dance with her.
• Billy is SUCH  A gentleman. He always has a compliment for all of us.
• However, his brother is SUCH AN  arrogant guy that  people dislike him.
• It´s SUCH A cold day that I feel like  staying  in bed all day.
• That was SUCH A bad movie that I decided to leave the cinema.
• Flying in that airline was SUCH  A bad experience that I would never fly with them again.

Read the text below and fill in the blank spaces with the appropriate form (gerund or infinitive) of the verb in parenthesis.

Cultural Values Shape Media; Media Shape Cultural Values

In a 1995 Wired magazine article, Jon Katz suggested that the Revolutionary War patriot Thomas Paine should be held up as “the moral father of the Internet.” The Internet was a vast, diverse, passionate, global means of 1. _______________ (transmit) ideas and 2. _______________ (open) minds, just what Paine and his revolutionary colleagues hoped for, Katz wrote.  In fact, the emerging Internet era is closer in spirit to the 18th-century media world than the 20th-century’s so-called old media (radio, television, print), according to Katz.  “The ferociously spirited press of the late 1700s … was dominated by individuals who wanted 3. _______________ (express) their opinions. The idea that ordinary citizens with no special resources, expertise, or political power could sound off. reach wide audiences, even spark revolutions, was brand-new to the world. These people were able to reach wide audiences, and even 4. _______________ (spark) revolutions”[1].

Katz’s impassioned defense of Paine’s plucky independence reminds us of how cultural values shape media. In all eras, cultural values shape the way media are created, used, and controlled. But how do cultural values shape our media and mass communication? And how, in turn, do media and mass communication shape our values? We’ll start with a key cultural value: free speech.

Free Speech as Cultural Value

The value of free speech is central to mass communication, However, speech and the press are not always free—cultural values have placed limits and those limits, like values, have shifted over time. Obscenity, for example, has not often been tolerated. Indeed, the very definition of obscenity has shifted over time with a nation’s changing social attitudes.  For example, James Joyce’s Ulysses, ranked by the Modern Library as the best English-language novel of the 20th century, was illegal  5. _______________ (publish) in the United States between 1922 and 1934. The 1954, the Supreme Court in the United States tried 6.  _______________ (lessen) restrictions and defined obscenity rather narrowly. It allowed for differences 7.  _______________  (depend) on “community standards.” Obscenity turned out 8.  _______________ (be) even more of an issue during the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Cultural changes of that era made it even more difficult 9. _______________ (pin) down just what was obscene and what was meant by “community standards.” Today, obscenity continues 10. _______________ (have) a tug-of-war with cultural values.

Copyright law also puts limits on free speech. Here we see a conflict between cultural values of free speech and the right to protect your creative rights. Intellectual property law was originally intended 11. _______________ (protect) just that—the proprietary rights, both economic and intellectual, of the originator of a creative work. Works under copyright can’t be reproduced without the authorization of the creator, nor can anyone else use them 12. _______________ (make) a profit. The first copyright statute in the United States set 14 years as the maximum term for copyright protection. This number has risen exponentially in the 20th century; some works are now copyright protected for up to 120 years. In recent years, an Internet culture that enables users 13. _______________ (do) file sharing, mixing, mash-ups, and YouTube parodies has raised questions about copyright. Can you refer to a copyrighted work? What is fair use of a copyrighted work? The exact line between what expressions are protected or prohibited by law are still being set by courts; and as the changing values of the U.S. public evolve, copyright law will continue 14.  _______________  (change) as well.

Cambridge University Press. (2015). Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary. Fourth Edition.

Eastwood, J. (2019). Oxford Practice Grammar. Intermediate. Oxford University Press.

Hewings, M. (2013) Advanced Grammar in Use with Answers: A Self-Study Reference  and Practice Book for Advanced Learners of English. CUP

Murray, L. (2014) English Grammar.  Cambridge University Press.

Swan, M & Walter, C. (2016). Oxford English Grammar Course. Intermediate. Oxford University Press.

Images1,2_Compra propia de licencias de banco de imágenes de Pixton y Pngtree, exentas de derechos de autor. https://www-es.pixton.com/ & https://es.pngtree.com/free-backgrounds

Image3_ Free stock photos_ Adapted by Emma Navarrete from: https://www.istockphoto.com/es/foto/oncept-de-%C3%A9tica-palabras-de-honestidad-integridad-y-valores-gm1128201196-297630998

https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/social-media-concept-picture-id1205703732?k=20&m=1205703732&s=612x612&w=0&h=RjnvKZW_InJ73SoPzQVA8qj5bcg6_0yBgPx_JUtrn2k=

Story adapted by The Saylor Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License by Saylor.  https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Communication/Journalism_and_Mass_Communications/Book%3A_Mass_Communication_Media_and_Culture/01%3A_Media_and_Culture/1.06%3A_Cultural_Values_Shape_Media_Media_Shape_Cultural_Values

Practice exercise by Emma Navarrete Hernández_2022_ English Department at FES Acatlán, UNAM

Practice exercise written by Connie Reyes Cruz_2022_ENES- LEÓN-UNAM

Audio version performed by Kimberly and Matt_Compra propia de licencia de uso de voces en Voicemaker, exenta de derechos de autor. https://voicemaker.in/ _Connie Reyes Cruz_2022_

Practice exercises written by Connie Reyes Cruz_2022_ UNAM-ENES-LEÓN