The great jaffa cake debate

The issue (or spectre?) of VAT was raised in class today, and we had a little discussion about which kinds of products should and shouldn't be exempt from sales tax. The magazine Which? has this neat little summary of the issue. If you are interested in following up the question of whether or not a jaffa cake is a luxury or a necessity, you can read this BBC blog post (or here for a more of a foodie angle). Before today I wasn't aware that the heart of the problem for McVities was that only chocolate-coated biscuits are considered a luxury...

Prescribed Reading...

...not just recommended this week. Please please please read ONE of the following texts for your reading diary entry:

A. Database created to stop academic plagiarism

B. Men At Work stole Down Under riff from Guides

C. Persaud suspended from practice for three months over plagiarism

Academic Keywords

Since one of my lovely graduate diploma students confessed to being a crossword addict, I thought I'd play with some software called Hot Potatoes to create a crossword made up of words and definitions from page 179 of The Study Skills Handbook : Third Edition by Stella Cottrell.

You can try the crossword out here or on Moodle under the heading "self-study materials". Let me know what you think...

Another week, another set of reading links

A hectic week means that it's Wednesday night and I've only just leafed through last weekend's papers. Here are some links to articles you might find interesting, courtesy of the Guardian, Observer, and New York Times.

Handcuffed, a midwife is led into court. Her crime? Championing home births.

Japan goes from Dynamic to Disheartened

Lara Stone and Georgia Jagger make gap teeth the new face of fashion

Mama Grizzlies lead the Republican hunt for America's angry voters

No country for poor people?

Polls show a nation split as French protest spreads

More suggested reading

I've picked a few stories from the Guardian and New Scientist which might be of interest. From The Guardian:

The big story in economics this week relates to the spending cuts currently being introduced by the Chancellor, George Osborne. You can read about his programme here, and some hostile reaction to it here. Across the Channel in France there are reports of Panic-buying at Petrol Pumps, and much further afield in Mexico, a 20-year-old student has been given a surprisingly high-status job.

Meanwhile, in the New Scientist, this story about company logos and neuroscience might be interesting. There are also stories about how technology can aid research, and how nature can hamper technology designed to save it.

Recording and Learning Vocabulary

Some important considerations when recording and learning new vocabulary:

1. Is it useful? Consider field and register - the Academic Word List Highlighter may help you here.

2. What does it mean? A good dictionary will help you. Try Cambridge's free online dictionaries. There's no problem with using translation to understand basic meaning, but you will still need to consider all the other points here.

3. How can you remember it? This article by Scott Thornbury may be useful.

4. What type of word is it? (adjective, verb, noun, adverb - context and a dictionary will help. If it's a noun, is it countable or uncountable, singular of plural?).

5. How can you use it? Look at the context in which you found it, think about collocation (search The Oxford Collocations Dictionary for help) , and the patterns that it may be used in. Cambridge's free online dictionaries list possible patterns of use under each definition.

6. Does it belong to a FAMILY of words? Finding the word "unilaterally", for example, can open your eyes to "lateral" and "unilateral".

7. Is there anything IRREGULAR about this word / phrase? What do you need to remember about it? Is it a noun with an irregular plural form (e.g. children, people), is it an intransitive verb (if you don't know what "intransitive" mean, check the glossary of the Internet Grammar of English).

8. Can you pronounce it? Again, a good dictionary will give you a phonemic transcription of a word's pronunciation, and online dictionary sites like Cambridge's have sound clips of how to pronounce each word (with British and American variations provided).

Graduate Diploma : Suggested Reading Resources

The Economist and Financial Times websites are good sources of texts for students to use for reading diaries. Articles you might find interesting from the Economist website right now are:

• The Dark Side of Light - on obesity
• A Growing Appetite - on the ambitions of a food company in China
• From Hoarding to Hiring - on how countries can generate employment
• Google's Robocars - on a plan to develop computer-driven vehicles

Reading lists from the university module directory are also a good indicator of the types of texts students need to deal with in their postgraduate studies.

Compared vs Comparing

In class today we discussed the possible differences between COMPARED and COMPARING, and we came up with the following distinction:

ACTIVE
- Comparing China with the UK, Cheng and YeHui drew up a long list of differences.
- Comparing the shoes in his huge collection, Alexandre spent two hours deciding what to wear.
- Tengiz walked through campus happily singing Kazakh folk songs.

PASSIVE
- Compared to London, Colchester is small.
- Compared to Mark, Sultan is intelligent, charming, and handsome.
- Compared to his childhood ambition of becoming a cosmonaut, Azer’s goal of being elected president of Azerbaijan seems quite reasonable.
- Compared to Hitler, my father was not strict.
- Tengiz walked through campus, followed by an angry crowd of students.

If you fancy trying Google Fight by yourself, you can follow this link. Alternatively, for more serious language exploration, have a look at this website devoted to the Academic Word List.

New Graduate Diploma Group

Today was the first EAP reading & writing session with Graduate Diploma Economics and History students (except without the History student). The following 9 sentences summarise what we found out about each other. Are they all logical?

1. According to Azer, Tengiz is the best at maths in this room because he spent more time as an undergraduate studying maths.

2. Azer claims that he speaks the most languages in this room: four.

3. Chen believes that the strongest ‘man’ in this room might be Mark, because he is the tallest and heaviest person present.

4. After reading each student’s writing from week one, Mark concluded that Azer is the most ambitious individual on the Graduate Diploma course. He came to this conclusion because Azer’s childhood dream was to become a cosmonaut.

5. After interviewing each member of the group, Juelma concluded that the most romantic is Chen, because he likes listening to romantic songs every day, and often watches romantic films.

6. Juelma also claims that the best cook in the room is Azer because he likes cooking every day.

7. Tengiz claims that the most adventurous person in the group is Chen, because he has visited more countries than his classmates / peers.

8. According to Tengiz, the most creative person in the group is Azer. Tengiz came to this conclusion because Azer likes to experiment when cooking.

9. Mark believes that Juelma is the fittest person in the group, because she has never smoked a cigarette.

We also discussed some pattern grammar and collocations issues, including the possible differences between a strong man and a strong woman. Opinions on this are welcome...

Sound familiar?

A little exercise in exploring ideas about intellectual property...is this stealing?

The Chiffons in 1963:



George Harrison in 1970:



Read about the subsequent legal battle here.

There's been no legal dispute, however, been T-Rex, seen here in 1971:

...and "derivative" Oasis, who released this in 1994:

Is there enough of a similarity between this song, written in 1932:

and this 1983 hit:

to justify this?

The Michigan Corpus of Upper-level Student Papers (MICUSP)

A very interesting project involving Upper-Level (A scoring) undergraduate student papers at the University of Michigan has produced this corpus of texts, which looks like to be a very nice teaching & learning resource indeed...

Pattern Grammar

I often find myself using the term PATTERN GRAMMAR when trying to diagnose problems with students' writing, but I wonder if they always understand what I mean by this...I certainly don't think that many other teachers are likely to use the term with them. As far as I can remember, I think that I first heard the term used during a talk by Dave Willis, who wrote a book called Rules, Patters and Words : Grammar and Lexis in English Language Teaching. There's actually a sequence of slides from one of Dave's talks available online here, but I'll try to give my own perspective on things...

My students tend to already know hundreds of patterns without ever having stopped to think about them. When someone learns English, they'll probably realise quite early on that when they use the verb LIKE, they're going to use a noun of some kind straight afterwards (e.g. I like sleeping, I don't like this blog). They'll find the same can apply when they use WOULD LIKE (I'd like a banana sandwich), but when they start talking about plans or aspirations, they need to employ a more complex pattern of words. After all, "I would like a train driver when I'm older" doesn't reflect the ambition "I would like to be a train driver when I'm older". So this is pattern grammar...when you use a particular word, you'll need to know what pattern of prepositions and word forms follows it. The verb GIVE, for instance, can be followed by"me all your money!" and "all your money to me!" but not "for me all your money".

Quite understandably, when a student writes in English, there are going to be some patterns that they need but have not yet learned, and there may be some patterns that they've seen before, but which get forgotten or confused because of the influence of the student's first language. It used to frustrate me that students would produce patterns that they had clearly never seen before in English (and give ME more work to do in correcting their work), but I eventually came to realise that incorrect patterns may be the result of guesswork (perhaps applying a pattern they know for a similar word) or translation. I recently learned, for instance, that in Arabic, the pattern used with CONSIDER is CONSIDER + SOMEONE + AS + SOMETHING, which explains why so many of my Arabic-speaking students insert an unnecessary "as" into expressions with CONSIDER.

So how can we avoid problems with pattern grammar? I would recommend three approaches:

1. Be patient and realistic. Nobody is going to learn the pattern for every English word overnight. Any learner of English will encounter new patterns throughout their life. I know people who are extremely proficient in speaking and writing in English but who still make occasional slips with patterns.

2. Learn patterns when you learn vocabulary items. Any time you learn a new word, check the pattern that follows it. If you write new vocabulary down, write it in the pattern in which you first encountered it. Likewise, if you notice an unfamiliar or surprising pattern while reading, make a note of it and learn it. Do you really know a word until you know how to use it?

3. Use a good dictionary. The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary online is free and with every definition gives examples of the pattern in which a word may be used. When writing an essay, give yourself sufficient time to check patterns that you are unsure of before submitting your work. If feedback from a teacher indicates problems within particular expressions, identify the key word, look it up in a dictionary, and check the patterns which the word may be used within. A student of mine recently produced the expression "they seek for better opportunities". A quick look at the verb SEEK in the dictionary throws up the examples "seeking jobs", "seeking asylum", and "legal advice should be sought". No "for" anywhere...the pattern is simply SEEK + OBJECT. Easy!

Essex Business School Southend Group

I've uploaded two files that I promised you in the last 24 hours. Clicking here will give you the powerpoint file from Monday's project class, while clicking here will give you the ppt from today's ESP class - complete with audio recordings (you just have to click on the sound icon). Let me know if you have any problems downloading or opening these.

Trustworthiness

According to the Daily Mail, this is the most trustworthy face in Britain. I think it looks like Frank Lampard, and I wouldn't trust him as far as I can throw him...I probably couldn't even lift him up though. The picture comes from this article, but please don't start reading this nasty little newspaper. I found a similar story in this Boston-based publication, and if you want to try an experiment to see how trustworthy your face is, you can have some fun on this TV station's page.

If you are interested in reading more about Nigel Harwood's research into use of "I" in academic texts, you can do so by following this link.

AWL Links

Some AWL links for you to explore:

The AWL Highlighter and Gap-maker

Averil Coxhead's page

Academic Vocabulary Exercises

Collocations Resources

I mentioned some collocations resources in class today and just wanted to copy and paste from previous posts to provide appropriate links...

The Corpus Concordance Sampler can be used to see examples of any word or phrase in native spoken or written English. Type in a word or phrase (you need to put a + sign between each word, eg most+of) to see a sample of uses taken from the Collins Cobuild Corpus (more detailed instructions and explanations can be found here). Look carefully at the results and look for patterns. What words come before and after your target phrase? Do you notice anything that the examples have in common? By analysing the examples you can draw up a list of patterns and learn how to use your target language accurately - like a native in fact! By analysing the differences between two similar words, you might be able to discover important differences in meaning (for example, the difference between ASSURE and ENSURE). What you find through this process can show you more than any dictionary entry, and the fact that you have to spend time observing language and thinking about it means that you should remember it for longer. That's the theory anyway.

Here are some more online resources for you to explore. Let me know if you have any questions about how to use / access any of the sites, and tell me also if you have any particular requests regarding online resources.

Dictionaries
cambridge dictionaries online
longman online dictionary
macmillan online dictionary
oxford dictionary (and the less legal oxford collocations dictionary)

Corpora and Concordancers
collins concordance and collocations sampler
mark davies' british national corpus search
a huge but fairly anonymous concordancing site

GVD Catch-up

With all sorts of testing, marking, and moderating going on, I neglected this blog for the final two weeks of Pre-sessional GVD classes. I'm therefore trying to stuff lots of materials and links into this one post.

So what did we do? Well, most recently, we reviewed complex sentences and vocabulary strategies using two Saudi-themed stories from The Economist - Clash of the Saudi Titans (handout here) and Mecca versus Las Vegas (handout here). Notes made in class, including student-written versions of the latter text are available here.

Following complex sentences, we had a one-lesson review of linkers. There is a handout available here, although most of the content was specific to the students in attendance...

Another overview lesson took place in the penultimate week of period 2 when we looked at the simple (honestly) combinations of tense and aspect occuring in English verb phrases. After considering tense and aspect through the examples featured in this grid, we looked at this article from the Asian EFL Journal and analysed how and why certain combinations were used within it. There's a powerpoint file here which reviews tense and aspect together with voice (passive or active), which is another factor we considered in our analysis of the Asian EFL Journal text.

In the middle of all this there was a test and a poorly-attended trip to the library, but I think that covers the gist of two weeks' worth of classes...let me know if you have any questions.

The Rosetta Stone

I'm not sure if my recent lack of posting to this blog has been because I'm too busy or too lazy, but apologies to anyone who suffered withdrawal symptoms (highly unlikely, I know).

Yesterday in my Listening & Speaking class we listening to this short BBC Radio 4 programme on The Rosetta Stone. A tapescript is available here alongside some further background information, and you can access all the recordings and related texts from the series A History of the World in 100 Objects so far by clicking here.

If you are interested in seeing these objects for yourself, you can do so at the British Museum in London.

Diamond Geezer

Here's a link to a video of Jared Diamond lecturing on why societies collapse from a lovely website called TED. There's a wide range of talks and lectures on this site, many of which are quite short (some are under 6 minutes) - useful either if you're busy or if you want to do some really intensive listening practice (one of my students recently told me that he memorised the tapescript on markets and morality; I think such an exercise is far easier with a shorter recording...not that I'm advocating this approach).

An impressive and useful feature of the TED website is the way that interactive tapescripts are linked to recordings. You can see the tapescript to the right of each video, and clicking on a word will take you to that point in the video...not only that, you can call the tapescript up as subtitles...in English or - if you're desperate for help - in a choice of alternative languages. With listening resources this good available for free, I don't think any students need English teachers any longer...

Who's the bad guy?

Some ethical questions to discuss today. Professor Michael Sandel referred the following issues in his lecture on markets and morality. What are your opinions on these matters:

- Is it wrong to drop litter if you are happy to pay the fine for doing so?

- Is it wrong to offer your children financial incentives for success at school?

- Is it wrong for the US government to introduce a $50,000 fee for people who wish to immigrate to the USA?

- Would it be wrong for the UK to pay Ireland to accept refugees that the UK did not want to take?

- Do you think health care, prisons, and schools should be run as businesses with the aim of making profits?

...and which of these people is the worst? Can you put them in order from worst to...err...least bad? (the best of a bad bunch?)

Alex sees an elderly neighbour drop a £20 note in the street. He knows that she does not have a lot of money. He picks up the £20 and keeps it for himself.

Beth was burgled, but she had home contents insurance and claimed for all the things that were stolen from her house. She also claimed for a digital camera and iPod, even though she never owned these.

Clive is the CEO of a car manufacturer. It is discovered that a very dangerous fault is affecting a very small number of the cars his company produce. The cost of paying compensation for deaths and injuries resulting from the fault is much lower than the cost of recalling all cars which might be faulty. Clive decides not to recall any vehicles.

Diane is a marketing executive for a major European producer of dairy products. She instigates an advertising campaign to tell young African mothers that breast-feeding is unhealthy, so that they become more likely to buy her company’s milk.

Edward is an accountant and realises that his wife, who works for the same company that he does, is claiming false expenses. He says nothing

When you're smiling...

The article we looked at from the New Scientist is available in full here (including a link to the research it reports on). If you would like to test your ability to distinhuish genuine from fake smiles, you can do so via this link to the BBC Science & Nature site.

And just in case anybody cares, I've posted the key to last Friday's grammar exercise here.

Thursday LisP materials

Some links for today's class:

• The Reith Lectures via the BBC gives you a wide variety of lectures to listen to, dating back to 1948.
• Professor Michael Sandel's lecture on Markets and Morals, which is what we started to listen to in class
• Transcript and further reading on Professor Sandel's lecture, including a relevant podcast if you find this subject interesting
• A Wordle cloud for the lecture's introduction, which shows you the most commonly used words in Sue Lawley's introductory speech
• The AWL highlighter, to help identify "useful" new vocabulary
• Cambridge Dictionaries Online is my preferred online dictionary for checking new vocabulary
• iTunes, for downloading and managing podcasts, as well as the new iTunes U section with university-produced audio and video

Even if and even though

Three sentences from this morning's class:

1) Abdullah smokes, even though he knows it’s bad for him.
2) Abdullah will not give up smoking, even if the price of cigarettes goes up.
3) Abdullah would not give up smoking, even if Mark paid him a million pounds.

So what's the difference? Sentence 1 deals with two facts - two things which are already true now. Abdullah knows that smoking is bad for him. Surprisingly, he smokes. It's surprising, but it's a fact.

Sentence 2 refers to the possibility that cigarette prices might rise, so it has a conditional function. It's about something that may happen in the future. Sentence 3, meanwhile, is also conditional, but this time there is no chance that it will ever happen. This is just hypothetical speculation and its puporse it to express how committed Abdullah is to smoking.

You may also be interested in the following ways that a modal or other auxiliary verb can be used in the conditional clause of a sentence:

If you start a sentence like this, it will be fine.
If you forgive me, I will be thankful.

If you will smoke, your health will be a problem.
(If you insist on smoking…)

If you will bite your nails, they will look ugly. (willingness / volition)

Do not forget to bring your books. If you do forget to bring your book, your classmates might not want to share theirs.

Monday Morning Modals

In our discussion of modal verbs this morning (handout available here) we produced this advice to anyone coming to Colchester:

- You should be patient.
- You should bring a lot of money.

- You must read about Colchester before coming, because your friend Adel isn't prepared to help you.

- You have to register with the police as soon as possible after arrival.
- You have to get a visa.
- You have to be careful.

- You will need to bring your chest x-ray.

We discussed the fact that if Mark wants you to like him, he's more likely to say "
You have to do a GVD test at the end of this period " than "You must do a GVD test at the end of this period". English people, with their strange sense of humour (see here for some bad jokes), may we say something like "You have to see An Education" to recommend a movie, but the semingly much milder "You really should stop smoking" in order to save someone's life.

...and we decided (I hope) that "have to" is not a modal verb, because it is grammatically very different to other modals. Compare the following two sentences:

a) You mustn’t talk to anyone on the underground. (it is necessary not to…)
b) You don’t have to bring a lot of clothes. (it is not necessary to)

...which brings us back to where we started...just after the revelation that in some parts of the world you can buy special gloves for driving, we discovered that:

- Fadia didn't need to bring her ID card to the UK.

- Maha didn't need to bring all her jewellery.

- None of the male students needed to bring a car. (note that none of these "needs" are modal verbs)

...and finally (with some modal needs) that:

- Adel needn't have brought his ID card.

- Mohammed meedn't have brought any books (which is worrying).

- Reham's family needn't have sent her a satellite receiver.

A Celebration of Essex?

The article we looked at in our GVD class today is here on the Independent website. Below is the paragraph that we collaborated on beforehand...I think it's pretty goood.

Indian scientists are checking the usefulness of traditional ways of forecasting the weather, such as the old saying which links the arrival of the monsoon rains to the flowering of Cassia fistula, a common tree. This has been used by farmers to select either peanuts or castor to sow in wet or dry conditions respectively. Dr Kanani of Gujarti Agricultural University has found that the tree successfully predicts “the appropximate date of the monsoon’s arrival”.

...or in just one sentence:

Indian scientists have proved the usefulness of traditional old saying to farmers, forecasting the monsoon’s arrival using the flowering of a local tree.

After our "fascinating" discussion of nuts and seeds, I thought I'd share this incredibly exciting explanation of why a nut IS a seed , and for those of you who might be getting hungry, a nutritional guide to nuts and seeds, a highly intellectual discussion on what a coconut is, and some Jamie Oliver recipes (which may contain nuts, seeds, and coconuts).

The Sounds of Spoken English

The powerpoint file from today's class is available to download here. You can also click here for the IOWA Phonetics Project - a fantastic website which helps you explore the sounds of English and shows you animations to help you to pronounce the sounds correctly. If you're put off by the site's American English content, a good dictionary like the online Cambridge Advanced Learner's dictionary will show you any key differences in the pronunciation of words with a British English accent.

Below you can see the phonemic chart with a list of consonants in context:

LisP

Some random vocabulary that arose in today's LisP class:

-I leant against the wall
-The tree has many branches
-I threw the stone into the sea and it created ripples
-there was an earthquake
-the earth shook

.

..and some corrections:

- a wooden (not wood) door
- make (not do) a mistake
- walk along (not through) a path
- he isn't (not doesn't or doesn't be) afraid of death
- she climbed / stepped / jumped over the tree (rather than just "she across the tree")
- escape from the bear (not "escape away")
- problems that she faces or problems that confront her (not "problems that face her")
- I'd like to analyse (not analysis)

Finally, do you know the difference between THROWING A STONE AT A BEAR and THROWING A STONE TO A BEAR?

Tiny summaries and definitions

I found out this morning that I have a class who can write well but who can't count to 15. I suppose you can't have everything. When given the instruction to write something in fewer than 15 words, they came up with:

- Sociolinguistics is the study of language from a social point of view.

- Titanic is still regarded as the best film because it earned the highest profit of any film in history.

- Titanic is a film combining romance with tragedy. It is based on the true story of a giant ship sinking.

We then became pseuso-academic, with statements like the following:

- Alenazy (2010) claims that “Colchester is a very nice town to the extent that [he] cannot find the exact words to describe it”.

- Alenazy (2010) claims that Colchester is such a “nice town” that he “cannot find the exact words to describe it”.

- Colchester is a tiny town (to the) East of London. It is well-known for Essex University, which has an international reputation.

- Al Hosan (2010) claims that Colchester, situated to the North-East of London, is worth visiting.
- Al Hosan (2010) defines Colchester as “a city located to the North-East of London” and describes it as “a good place to visit”.

- According to Al Hosan (2010), Colchester is “a city located to the North-East of London” and is worth visiting.

GVD Language Review

This morning we went through some error correction activities to review a few language issues which arose in last week's writing task. We also discovered that the only way to reduce the power of people from Jeddah is to mix them with "outsiders"! You can find corrections of your mistakes corrected in this Word file, while the powerpoint file is available to download here.

We also discussed and discovered the following:

Separating subjects and verbs with commas is only possible if there are two commas to separate out extra information. So, I, Abduoo, love you is OK, but I, love you is not.

SO and SUCH are used in a longer pattern that some of us had previously realised. Hopefully these examples show you how:

Colchester is so boring that I would rather watch paint dry than go to the town centre. (so + adjective)

Colchester is such a boring place that I regret ever coming here. (such + noun phrase)

Muhammed is so intelligent that he can answer any question without even thinking.

My girlfriend is so beautiful that when she walks in the garden the flowers feel jealous.

In reported speech, we don't have to shift every verb back one tense. If we want / need to show that what we are reporting is still true, we use a tense / aspect combination that reflects this. For example:

She told me she loved me. (she told me in the past, she loved me in the past...and probably not now)
She told me she loves me. (she told me in the past but, as far as I'm concerned, she still loves me now)
She tells me she loves me. (she tells me often - every day perhaps - and yes, she loves me now)

Apostrophes are found after the s in plural nouns. So, I stayed at my sister’s house refers to only one sister, while my sisters’ house would suggest that I have more than one sister and that they both live in one house. Likewise we'll see a difference between the respondent's answers and the respondents’ answers, and even between Maha's homework and Mahas' homework. Maybe my final example is just getting silly, but I hope you get the point...

Finally, we touched briefly on the difference between that and which, and I'd like to save time by directing you towards a previous blog post in which I tried to answer this question. Let me know what you think...

On foot and on average

Here is the report we wrote together in this morning's GVD class. I'm looking forward to a Bank Holiday weekend spent reading reports on your own mini-surveys:

A survey was conducted into pre-sessional student journeys to the university. Respondents were asked about the means and duration of travel. The results show that the majority of students commute by bus, while forty percent walk every day. Although methods of transport vary, the journey time of most students is very similar – between 10 and 25 minutes.

There is some debate about the two exceptions to this general rule. Contrary to the claim of one respondent, Al Hosan (2010) argues that it is impossible for anyone to reach room 3.413 within three minutes. Al Khudiry (2010) is similarly sceptical about the estimate of one participant that it takes him 30 minutes to walk from University Quays to the campus.

(If you're curious about the image of Lisa Simpson, it's the first image that comes up when you google "sceptical")l

Pre or Post?

Yesterday we looked at the question of whether some "prepositions" would be better referred to as "postposition". You can find the Powerpoint presentation here, and if you're interested in Louis Vuitton (I'm not even going to check my spelling of that) or elderly people playing Wii fit, you can read the relevant stories in full via the following links:

- Researchers look into how Nintendo Wii Fit can help elderly fallers

- the BBC's version of the Wii fit story

- Welcome to the House of Vuitton

We also found out that people from Jeddah are more intelligent than everyone else in the world put together (proof, if you need it, is inavailable in the form of this series of games of noughts and crosses) and that nobody knows why the Riyal is called the Riyal, or indeed why it briefly became very valuable in March (according to the Universal Currency Convertor wesbite)

Prepositions and pattern grammar

This morning, we looked at these conversations as exemplifications of the use of IN, ON, and AT:
1. A telephone conversation.
- Where are you?
- I'm AT the station. I've just arrived. I'll be home in half an hour.

2. Between friends.
- What does your sister do?
- She works for British Airways. She handles customer complaints.
- Right…so where is she based?
- She works IN the airport.

3. A confession.
- Julie, there's something I have to tell you about your father.
- What is it mother?
- Well you know I told you that he worked on an oil rig, and that was why you didn't see him very often…
- Yes…
- Well, I lied…
- No!
- Yes. The truth is…your father is IN prison. He's a murderer!

4. The next day…
- Hello
- Hello!
- Where's Julie?
- Oh, she's not in…she's AT the prison. Visiting her father.

5. Directions
- Where's the pub?
- It's ON the corner of Marylebone Road and Baker Street.

6. Arranging furniture
- Where do you want your TV?
- Over there - IN the corner.

7. Socialising
- Where shall we meet tonight?
- Well, let's meet AT Leicester Square and then move on to Covent Garden for something to eat.

8. Some more socialising
- Are you coming to the cinema tomorrow night.
- Yeah….which cinema?
- The Odeon, Leicester Square.
- OK. I'll be there.
- Cool. See you IN Leicester Square at 8.

For the full ppt file from today's class, click here. You can also download a key to our pattern grammar task here, although it IS included in the ppt.

Textbook and other reading materials

The texts we have used in this week's GVD class are all available in full at The Economist website via the following links:

- Maddison counting
- The Best Books about Language
- Business software: Office Politics


Meanwhile, can you look at this extract from the textbook Passages and give me your opinions on it. Would you like to use this kind of material in class?

Monday Morning Matters

In class this morning we tried to create complex sentences, and for some reason started with the topic of Khaled buying a farm. The following three variations were eventually arrived at:

• - Khaled bought 3 acres of land to build a new house.
• - Khaled bought an £800,000 farmhouse with 3 acres of land.
• - Khaled bought a house costing / which cost / £800,000 on 3 acres of farmland.

You can suggest answers for the rest of this exercise here on the GVD Group 2 Wiki

On the way to completing these sentences, we looked at following issues:

When used as a countable noun, "land" means "country". Apparently, Britain is the land of hope and glory (click here for the song that proves it and then read the comments underneath the video that reflect the sad reality), The USA is the land of opportunity, and Saudi Arabia is the land of many things that couldn't be specified in class.

We use the pattern QUANTITY + OF + NOUN, to create the following expressions:

- 2 packets of cigarettes 500g of flour
- 2 litres of milk
- 3 acres of land

BUY FOR and BUY WITH are both possible, but with different meanings:

- I bought a necklace for my mother.
- I bought a necklace for £10.

- I bought a computer with my sister.
- I bought a computer with my credit card. / I paid for it by credit card.
- I put it on my credit card / I bought it / paid for it on credit.
- I bought a computer with Windows 7

We then shared all sorts of personal information through complex sentences, and Mohammad became very romantic. After spending some time discussing and correcting the sentences that didn't quite express what we wanted them to, we had the following:

I came to England to study at one of the best English universities, but I ended up in Essex instead.

I will stay in England until the 5th of December 2011.
I will stay in England until I have completed my studies / until finishing my studies.
I’m never happy until I meet you. / until 4pm on Fridays.

If I can’t sleep at night I will watch TV.
When I can’t sleep at night, I (might) sometimes watch TV.
If I were you / I would watch TV.
If I can’t sleep at night, I read any book which makes me fall asleep.

I like Colchester more than George Bush does. (does = like Colchester)
I like Colchester more than Southend, but I hate Southend.
(inf. that isn’t saying much)
The only “thing” I like less than Colchester is George Bush.
I like Colchester more than I like George Bush.

I like Colchester more than I dislike it.

It’s a mystery why Nick Clegg agreed to co-operate with / join David Cameron in governing the UK. (an aside to this was the use of SHARE, and we found that you can "Share power with David Cameron", "Share the cost with a friend" and "Share your toys with your sister! ")

Being much younger than my sisters, I had a difficult childhood.
I lived in Leeds from 1993 to 1996 and, being a student, I did not make any friends with the locals.
Being British, I have to pay lots of tax.
Being Libyan, Fadia has to correct her teachers’ spelling and put up with questions like “what do you do in Saudi Arabia”.

Being a student, I have to study hard.
Being an international student, I will do my best.
I will do the best (that) I can.
I will do everything to the best of my abilities.

1.Being a student, I am fed up with having to live with lazy and noisy British undergraduates. (participle clause)
2.I am fed up with being a student. (noun phrase / object) - this is no different to saying, for example, I am fed up with Colchester / Mark / my house.

Being a student, I can take advantage of my student card.

Want to know more about these advantages? Click here...

Reading materials

This week we have looked at extracts three texts, each related in some way to at least one of the subjects GVD Group 2 students will be studying in October. If you would like to read these texts in full, they are available from the following links:

- A Good African tale

- Sustaining computer-mediated communication in university courses

- How English erased its roots to become the global tongue of the 21st century

Happy reading...

Compound Adjectives and Noun Phrases

I suspect that this might only be of interest to one person, but here's a pdf of the ppt slides we looked at today in relation to compound adjective formation. This is also a nice opportunity to copy and paste what we've produced at the beginning of our last two GVD classes.

On Wednesday, GVD group 2 students described themselves as:

• Hard-working students
• Genius students
• Pre-sessional students
• Excellent students
• Lazy students

and tnen:

• a mixture of lazy and hard-working students
• a group of students
• a student group

A sign (I think) of progess, is that this morning we were able to produce this borderline-ridiculous and potentially untrue statement:

This is a wonderful group of extremely beautiful, young, reasonably child-like, successful, intelligent, hard-working Arabic-speaking students who come to university late almost every morning.

We also learnt that Mohammed is a trainee Olympic weight-lifter, but that's another story.

Political Graphology or an Invasion of Privacy?

This morning I mentioned these photographs and notes from the Guardian's website. If like me you've ever felt ashamed at your own handwriting, you might feel better after seeing Nick Clegg's.

Lobby, A Lobby, or The Lobby?

Just a quick post to give you a link to the Economist article on Smoking in Indonesia. Let me know if you find anything surprising about the writer's use of articles. If you're interested, you can also read about the English teacher who got into trouble in Sudan for blasphemy.

GVD Group 2 Self-Study Project

I have set up this wiki so that you can continue to do self-study grammar and vocabulary development in your own subjects and at your own pace. The aim is that we can collaborate on this project and I can give you advice and corrections without taking up any extra time in class. We can of course still look at some of the issues that arise in class. Just let me know what your concerns are, and try to participate as actively as you can.

You'll need to register with pbworks in order to contribute to the wiki, but it's pretty easy to do. Please let me know if you have any questions about how to use the wiki.

If you're wondering what exactly a wiki is, this video from youtube puts it in plain English:



You can access my wiki here.

Collocations

In class this morning we did a little exercise to generate collocations, which we could then analyse and correct. In each case we started with nouns and then tried to add verbs and adjectives. Firstly we came up with the adjectives MAJOR, BASIC, IMPORTANT, CRUCIAL, VITAL, ESSENTIAL, and INFLUENTIAL to collocate with the noun FACTOR (MAJOR, CRUCIAL, and VITAL are all listed in the Oxford Collocations Dictionary). ADDRESS was suggested as verb, but more common collocations are CONSIDER and TAKE INTO ACCOUNT. We came up with some great verbs to collocate with PROBLEM - HAVE, SOLVE, ENCOUNTER, DEAL WITH, and even STUMBLE UPON, but our adjectives (striking, difficult, and sensitive) weren't so good...upon further consideration we decided that SERIOUS was more appropriate. Then Abdullah started talking about FORTY WINKS so we had to move on...

Some nice collocations we produced at speed were:

- CARRY OUT GROUND-BREAKING RESEARCH

- PROTECT AND ENDANGERED ENVIRONMENT

- AN EASY TARGET

- COMMISSION RESEARCH

...but we didn't like these:

- have a public experiment

- study a prolonged study

- invent precise assessment

Do you have any better suggestions?

Universal Grammar Exercise

On Friday morning we did some grammar exercises using this Guardian article on the University of Essex which we had also looked at on Thursday. First I distributed a "de-grammared" version of the text for everyone to amend:

Essex be 1960s university, but it remain small than many its contemporaries, with just over 9,000 students (6,840 undergraduates). They have plenty space roam around university's three campuses – Colchester, Loughton and Southend – with 200 acres of landscaped grounds oldest and largest campus outskirts Colchester. student union invest more than £3m campus past five years and recent open nightclub, follow £1.25m redevelop. £25m Southend campus open spring 2008. £250m capital invest plan involve 30 different projects be current under way. Highlights include £25m student centre Colchester campus and new student accommodate, and studio and perform facilities East 15 act school base Southend campus. Essex boast consistent strong academic perform and rank nine UK quality its research 2008 research assess exercise.

As a class, we then produced the following "re-grammared" version of the text. The two colourful sentences are illustrations of sentence structure, and the horrible greeny-brown coloured words are what we got wrong:

Essex is a 1960s university, but it has remained smaller than many of its contemporaries, with just over 9,000 students (6,840 undergraduates). They have plenty of space to roam around IN the university's three campuses – Colchester, Loughton and Southend – with 200 acres of landscaped grounds in the oldest and largest campus (situated) in the outskirts of Colchester. The student union has invested more than £3m on THE campus over the past five years and recently opened a nightclub, following a £1.25m redevelopment. The £25m Southend campus WAS opened in spring 2008. A £250m capital investment plan involving 30 different projects is currently under way. Highlights include A £25m student centre FOR THE Colchester campus and new student accommodation, and studio and performance facilities at (FOR THE) East 15 acting school based at THE Southend campus. Essex boasts (a) consistently strong academic performance and was ranked ninth in the UK for the quality of its research in THE 2008 research assessment exercise.

In our discussions, we also looked at some particular language points.

1. Patterns with "for"

Khaled was praised for his excellent knowledge of English grammar.

Mohammad received an award for bravery.

2. Followed by vs following

Maha came to class at 10.55, following a coffee break. (1st coffee break, 2nd Maha came to class)

Tjhey opened a nightclub following development.

Maha came to class at 10.55, followed by Muhammed. (1st Maha came to class, 2nd Muhammed did)

They opened a nightclub followed by development.

3. Lists, commas, and the use of and

We can buy many different flavours of crisps. Popular flavours include ready salted, beef,roast chicken,prawn cocktail, salt and vinegar, and cheese and onion

4. Different meanings of BASED

LOCATION

The British government is based in Westminster in London.

INSPIRATION

Baz Luhrman’s 1997 film Romeo and Juliet is based on Shakespeare’s play of the same name.