Recently, scientists announced a new implant that could potentially give us superhuman vision! While many of us may have fantasised about having bionic implants in our brains to facilitate learning, philosophers raise some interesting questions for discussion:

· Would you consider a watch to be a bionic enhancement, or must the enhancement in question require invasive surgery? Why?

· Could we reach a point where a person has so many bionic implants that he can no longer be considered a human being?

· What is the difference between an Artificial Intelligence that looks like a human being, and a human whose interior is more like The Terminator?

· Finally, just for fun – if this ocular implant were available, would you want it? Why or why not?

Can you detect the mistakes in the following sentences?

· After Thomas went for a jog, he went for a swim.
· Rachelle insisted that she saw Sze Yee in school earlier.
· Before Sean went out, he completed three compositions.

In each case, the sentence should have made use of the past perfect tense. This is a very common mistake made by students in their writing, and not surprisingly, comes up fairly often in Paper 2, particularly for Synthesis & Transformation and Grammar MCQ.

The past perfect tense comprises “had” and the past participle. It is used to indicate that an action was completed before another event. Thus, when there are two actions that have happened within the sentence, the past perfect tense is a neat way to tell the reader which event happened first. 

The correct form of the sentences above should read:

· After Thomas had gone for a jog, he went for a swim.
· Rachelle insisted that she had seen Sze Yee in school earlier.
· Before Sean went out, he had completed three compositions.

These tips and more are covered in our comprehensive holiday programme for P5 and P6. There are still a few slots left for students who are keen to brush up on these fundamentals before tackling the national examinations.