Thursday, February 16, 2017

Using a too old motorcycle

(Grammar Questions I Couldn't Answer)

In a speaking activity about activities that harm the environment, one of my students said that "Using a too old motorcycle is bad for the environment."

The phrase "too old motorcycle" sounded wrong to my native speaker ears, and I wanted to tell the student to say "a motorcycle that is too old".  But I didn't know what the grammar rule was.

UPDATE
I've looked this up in Practical English Usage by Michael Swan.
Swan confirms what my native speaker intuition suspected.
From page 588:
Too is not normally used before adjective + noun.

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