Sentence Structure and Punctuation

I was asked last week about the following three sentences, taken from this article in the Guardian:

It could have been "coddies", "chengguan", "slumdog" or even "fundoo". "Jai Ho!" would have been fun. Even "noob" wouldn't have been that bad.

The question was why this needs to be three sentences it's all about the same thing. Why isn't it just one sentence like so.

It could have been "coddies", "chengguan", "slumdog" or even "fundoo", "Jai Ho!" would have been fun, even "noob" wouldn't have been that bad.

My answer, which probably wasn't clear enough, was that we need to start new sentences because we have new subjects and new verbs. By "subject" I'm referring to grammar, not content. So in these three sentences, the subjects are IT (the one millionth word in English), "JAI HO!" and "NOOB". The verb phrases for each subject are "COULD HAVE BEEN", "WOULD HAVE BEEN", and "WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN". Notice that each subject is different and each verb phrase is different (even though one is simply negative).

This, to me, is an important point when thinking about sentences and punctuation. If you have a new subject and / or a new verb, you need to either do something clever with grammar (to form a sentence that is no longer simple) or start a new sentence. This handout encourages you to think about this with regards to three paragraphs taken from an article written by a sociologist. I will talk you through the steps...

First, read the three paragraphs, and circle every verb you find. Then go back and find a subject for each of your verbs. Underline or draw a box around your subject. You can compare your ideas with the handout, on which I have marked verbs and subjects with circles and rectangles respectively. Now look at the relationship between all your subjects and verbs and punctuation. You should find that before each new subject and verb there is either a full-stop, or a grammatical construction used for creating complex sentences. If you find any exceptions to this, let me know...

By the way, it would of course be a good idea to look at your own writing like this sometimes. What do you find before each new subject / verb that you use? What SHOULD be there?

You can compare your ideas with mine...in the following text I have

Thursday's Graduate Diploma Class

Most of Thursday's class was taken up by a writing workshop so there's not a great deal in this powerpoint presentation. However, the last two slides do contain an exercise on graphs which everyone should complete before next Monday. In class I circulated this handout with which you can devote some time and thought to forming complex sentences. There are four tasks. Each gives you a main sentence alongside some extra details which you have to somehow combine to form a complex sentence. When you have formed your own complex constructions, you can check the original text to see how the author did it.

Colchester is almost as exciting as London...and other lies

The notes we made in today's class are available here, and you can fill the gaps in our language study handout by referring back to Monday's model compare & contrast essay. Easy.

Student Writing

It's frustrating being a teacher sometimes. It seems as if every day a student approaches me and asks me how they can improve their writing, how they can increase their vocabulary, or how they can read more effectively. I always give more or less the same advice. I tell them that there's no substitute for practice and that if they devote time and effort to improving, they'll be fine. I always offer to have a look at any extra writing they do in their free time. How much of this writing do I ever see? None. Ever. Seriously. If you could learn a language by telling your teaching that you're worried and have problems, I'd know at least five hundred students who speak and write English perfectly. Sadly I can only think of about five students who can now write as well as they want to be able to...

Last Monday I had an idea for a task which would ease my students back into their studies and review some vital skills that they have looked at before and which they will need to do well this term. There was a simple homework task - not too time-consuming but, in my opinion, very useful practice all the same. Only two students submitted their homework. These two:

Q&A with Konstantinos

Konstantinos was asked what his greatest fear is. He said that he had nothing to fear. Konstantinos was then asked what makes him unhappy, and answered that he doesn't feel good when he hasn't had enough sleep. Finally, Konstantinos was asked whether it is better to give or to receive, and he gave an immediate answer: 'both'.

Q&A with Maggie

I asked Magi some questions, the first of which was "what is your greatest fear?". She answered that her greatest fear is that her parents might divorce. The second question was which living person Maggie most admires, and why? She said that she admire hers colleague, because he is a noble person. The third question I asked was whether it is better to give or receive, to which Maggie responded that she prefers to give than to receive, because this makes her look like a generous person.

Monday Materials

A short and sweet entry today...my response to the grammar question asked by Vas, the model essay we looked at in class, today's ppt file, and a link to some more Japanese proverbs. Enjoy.

Thawb Thursday

The powerpoint file from Thursday afternoon's Graduate Diploma class is here for you to download, along with this word file, featuring class notes and the boards from our game of AWL Collocations Noughts and Crosses (which sounds much more glamorous than it is...)

If you're interested in loanwords like "thawb", you can find lots of them here on (sorry) Wikipedia...but don't be too quick to trust everything you read there!

Collocations

If you're still not quite sure what a collocation is, try this very short and sweet quiz on the BBC Learning English website.

Neologisms and Collocations

We looked at punctuation, sentence structure, and lexical sets in this article from the Guardian, and you can download today's ppt here. Notes that we made at the start of the class about JUST and GET are available on a word file here. As promised, the collocations we looked at from the Guardian article are listed below:

• a group of US wordsmiths in Texas
• a collective sigh of disappointment
• declared the idea preposterous.
• the next generation of
• internet applications,
• be formally crowned
• a universal means of communication.
• be able to communicate so easily

Q and A : My answers and how we reported them

I get embarrassed all the time, but perhaps one time when I was on the underground and gave up my seat to a woman who I thought was pregnant. She looked confused, and then I realised that she wasn’t pregnant – just a little overweight.

1. Mark was asked “what was your most embarrassing moment?”

2. Mark was asked about his most embarrasing moment.

3. Mark was asked what his most embarrassing moment was. He said he tried to be polite to a woman on the London underground by giving her his seat, thinking she was pregnant when in fact she was not.

I would prefer not to bring back anything that is extinct. I don’t want any dinosaurs in my street.

In answer to a question about something extinct that he would like to bring back to life, Mark said “ I don’t want any dinosaurs in my street”.

This is quite a boring answer, but I don’t want to meet any great or famous people. I would much prefer to invite my closest friends to a dinner party. I don’t see them as often as I would like to, so it would be great to have everyone around the same table with some good food, good conversation, and a lot of laughter.

When asked who he would invite to his dream dinner party, Mark chose his friends rather than anyone famous.

Monday's EAP class - from the board

These are the things that you identified as being important to know when you learn new vocabulary:

- meaning (plus synonyms & antonyms)

- part of speech (adjective, verb, noun etc)

- collocations

- pattern grammar

- register (e.g. formal or informal)

- spelling

- pronunciation

- usefulness

Especially for verbs, you might want to check:

- is it regular or irregular?

- is it transitive or intransitive?

If you can't find the information you need in your dictionary, it may be time to get a new dictionary...

Q&A: Steve Coogan

This week we'll be using some questions from the Q&A page of the Guardian Weekend Magazine. This week's edition features a question and answer session with a British comedian called Steve Coogan. You can read it here, or just watch the video below of Steve in action:

H is for Oss - The Black Country Alphabet

Useful newspaper article of the day...

...I'm not saying I'll do this every day, of course...that would be far too predictable (not to mention time-consuming) but today's Guardian has some useful advice on buying cheap train tickets in the UK:

Click here for Miles Brignall's article

Mind Your Language : Juice

I should apologise in advance for any borderline (or blatant) racism in this old British sitcom, but it may at least raise a few smiles...I'm not sure why this teacher doesn't correct the Italian student's pronunciation of "lemon juice".

The neglected writing blog...

Graduate Diploma students: there are still six days for one of you to do SOMETHING (anything) with the writing blog we set up. So far only two of you have responded to the invitation and nobody has written anything.

Don't be shy, go the the blog here and make a contribution...