When
building a house it becomes necessary to put the right blocks in the right
place otherwise, the house will not align with the layout or design in the
original plan. The foundation is the most important part of a building because
it carries the weight of the whole building. That is how it is when it comes to
our everyday use of grammar.
There
are words that look simple, yet they are problematic. If we don’t have a proper
understanding of these words, it might affect our writing and the information
we intend to pass across to our readers.
Standard
text on the use of English are in two-denominations: the first one is that most
books on English language present formal ideas of how the language should be
written, that’s not bad but it is the grammar of the language which
most times we find hard to conform to because of the various ‘shifting
lattices’ of the usage. Secondly and more importantly, because of their
continuous insistence on the grammar, some books usually fail to capture and
describe how people use the language. In this perspective, we have decided for
the next few weeks to point the way to linguistically correct and socially
acceptable form of the language. So, please stay with us:
(1) EFFECTIVE, EFFICIENT
If
somebody works without wasting time or energy, and in a well-organized way, we
say that he is efficient. For instance, a good secretary is efficient;
an inefficient secretary puts paper in the wrong place, forgets things
or takes too long to do small jobs. A machine or a system that works well is
also described as efficient. Let us consider these examples:
1. She has sorted out all my letters
and filed them alphabetically; I think this new secretary is efficient.
2. The Nigerian Telephone System is
becoming efficient.
When
we say that something is effective, we mean that it solves a particular problem
that we have, or gets the result we want:
3. My aunt only gets weaker by the
day; those drugs are not effective at all.
4. I think a black belt would look very effective with that
dress.
We hope we have shed some light on
the difference between “efficient” and “effective”. This is the first building
block that we want you to lay.
Please share this with friends so
they also can put it in use.
