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.