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.

Online Resources

As requested, here are links to the three websites we looked at in class on Thursday morning. The first is the slightly silly Google Fight, but you might find the Collins Concordance Sampler and Oxford Collocations Dictionary useful.

There are a growing number of Academic World List-related pages online, and I'm sure you're all capable of exploring them for yourselves. I particularly like the AWL highlighter, as I think it is always best to deal with vocabulary in context, so you can read a text first, and then focus on content that can be found in the AWL. The AWL gapmaker on the same site is a nice tool for testing and revising what you have learned.

For articles to use as starting points for self-study, I recommend The Guardian and Times websites. The Economist is also good (and not just for economists), while the more scientific among you might find The New Scientist useful. Happy reading...