Error correction : choosing the active or passive voice

The problems in the following examples relate to your choice of either the passive or active voice for your verb phrases.  Can you identify the problems and suggest corrections as comments below?

1. The Olympic Games with its long history has always been attracted by people as an entertaining and social event

2. 44,000 women diagnosed with breast cancer annually in the UK

3. Protein foods are advised to be included in your breakfast since it provides sustained energy and takes longer to digest

4. Skipping breakfast become an issue to be widely discussed

5. missions are always taken place in the most difficult situations.  

6. it is not justified for the government to provide more funding for dementia

From the sewers of Paris to polished complex sentences

 

TASK ONE:

Nineteen rings and three sets of earrings were dug up from a drain.

The drain was at a house.

The house is in a suburb.

The suburb is called Seine-Saint-Denis.

The suburb is a working-class area.

One of the pairs of earrings has a value of £14m.

All of this information comes from the police.

CREATE A COMPLEX SENTENCE (aim for 31 words)

TASK TWO:

Nine people were charged over the robbery.

The house belonged to a person.

The person was one of the robbers.

CREATE A COMPLEX SENTENCE (aim for 13 words)

TASK THREE:

The Harry Winston boutique is on a street

The street is off the Champs-Elysées Avenue

The Champs-Elysees Avenue is dotted with fashion houses.

The Champs-Elysees Avenue is dotted with cafes.

CREATE A COMPLEX SENTENCE (aim for 20 words)

Post your answers as comments below and I will get back to you...

Complex sentence exploration : relative clauses

All of the following sentences were given to me as examples of relative clauses.  Leave a comment if you think any of them DO NOT contain a relative clause:

1. The importance of information technology (IT), especially of the World Wide Web, in tourism has increased tremendously over the past years.
2. The former wanted the convention amended to oblige states to submit nomination lists containing candidates from both sexes.
3. Each Convention Party nominates three candidates, whom it considers satisfy the criteria for office laid down by Article 21 of the Convention.
4. What is new is the accelerating speed with which it occurs and the growing outreach of its implications.
5. The information from the contracting parties disclosed that only three had legislation requiring egalitarian representation of both sexes in their highest courts.
6. Each Convention Party nominates three candidates, whom it considers satisfy the criteria for office laid down by Article 21 of the Convention.
7. They are only true about the teachers I have interviewed and the high school classes I have observed.

Complex sentence exploration : miscellaneous

Students found some interesting complex sentences in their reading.  Some were difficult to categorise, and some were just plain difficult.  Read the 5 examples below, and leave a comment telling me a) what types of complex structure you find in each sentence, and b) if you think any of these sentences are particularly difficult to understand.

1. Nowhere in the convention is it stipulated that one candidate belonging to the sex which is under-represented in the court must feature in the list.
2. Several protestors, former Conservative voters, declared themselves as having been “pushed to the left” by their experiences.
3. Others mentioned the issue of live exports as only one of the reasons why they felt they had to be there.
4. Foreign language educationalists and cultural linguists believe that foreign language learning cannot occur properly unless the socio-cultural aspect of the foreign language is learnt simultaneously because the mere acquisition of linguistic competence is not enough.
5. This study also hypothesizes that raising high school EFL teachers’ awareness of the autonomous and ideological concepts of communicative competence is likely to help them see their teaching activities lean towards the autonomous model of communicative competence.

Complex sentence exploration : wh- noun clauses

I'm finding it hard to forget Hakan's "it's a mystery; why?", but in class we produced some good examples of wh- noun clauses like "It's a mystery why nobody likes English food" and "Everybody knows who won the women's world cup this year".  Look at the following examples students found in their reading texts, and leave a comment if you think any are NOT good examples of wh- noun clauses:

1. Most of the problems organizations face today when designing and implementing online strategies stem from trying to fit everything into existing structures and models.
2. The assembly decides to investigate at national and European level what obstacles currently exist to the nomination of women candidates, what measures could be taken to encourage female applicants, and to consider setting targets for achieving greater gender equality in the composition of the court.
3. Empirical data on how these camps affect…
4. The primary issue for the Grand Chamber was whether the questions posed were within its Advisory Opinion jurisdiction
5. The participants were male and non-native speakers of English, two of whom had a BA degree and one had an MA degree in TEFL.

Complex sentence exploration : To

In class, we looked at sentences like "I came here to study" and "Shatha came to the UK to perfect her English" as examples of infinitive clauses.  "To study" and "to perfect her English" explain the purpose of the main clause of the sentence.  My students found lots of examples in their reading, but not all of them are quite the same.  Have a look at the following examples I was sent:

1. Organizations continue to broadcast information instead of letting the consumer interact with the Web site content.
2. Online advertising offers the opportunity to precisely target an audience to deliver advertisements that are customized to the user’s particular interest and taste.
3. Nominees to the full-time court are asked to submit standardized CVs and be interviewed by members of a sub-committee of the parliamentary assembly.
4. A key element of the resolution was the Parliamentary Assembly’s desire to increase the proportion of female judges on the court.
5. The protestors should join us in attempting to persuade other European publics and governments to abandon these cruel practices.

I think that sentence 2 is a very different example to all the others.  Can you see why?  Please post your suggestions below as comments.

Complex sentence exploration : a challenge

Canan found this sentence in the article she read for her presessional project:


In 2004, the Grand Chamber held that a request for an Advisory Opinion concerning the status of the complaints system set up by members of the Commonwealth of Independent States, following the collapse of the former USSR, to which some parties to the ECHR belong, fell outside the Court's jurisdiction.

I count 50 words in there.  Can you find a longer, more complex sentence than this?  Please copy and paste it as a comment...

CALL Session 5

BLOG FEEDBACK : WORDS, PATTERNS AND COLLOCATIONS

A good dictionary, a collocations dictionary, and perhaps even a thesaurus may help you to find better alternatives to these 9 expressions:

1. ATM Skimming has made me lost thousands of pounds

2. It was borrowed by somebody to studied it

3. share these students their academic achievement.

4. I lost the the hope to find the book

5. my mentors Mark and Sandra

6. my colleagues in Lab class

7. a lunch party in my tower's flat

8. face with a serious problem

9. press your password

BLOG FEEDBACK SENTENCE CORRECTION

Check our comments on your blogs for suggestions on how to correct these sentences.  You can also refer to an online resource like The Internet Grammar of English, produced by University College London.

1. Finally, after might be 15 minute I was ready to live with my book, and thinking how simple it was.

2.ATM skimming is a kind of credit card fraud by using hi-technology.

3. To sum up, These steps are what we should aware of it when we use the ATM machine, and It seems like that we might not be able to avoid this problem, and it has been a serious problem in our society because some people are still using advanced technology illegally.

4. When I went there I saw strange lift at there.After which I went to third floor and I searched but Idid not fund it.

5. Being specialist in phonlogy and i need to do researches in this regard i chose book about acoustic sounds to have look about it .

6. It was not the first time that I go to the library where I went to the Library with my friend who study at university 

7. So I asked Mark about it where went us again to the shelf and looked for it 

8.Because of our different nationality, so it was the first international party

9. Most of all food were prepared by Arisa (thank you Arisa!). 

10. I prepared some Thai Food to share and the rest dished were cooked in the kitchen by a Super Chef from Japan (Naoko) and a Head Chef from Thailand (Great).

Further error correction tasks:  You can complete an MS Word-based correction task (download the task and the instructions), or find and correct the mistakes below.  There will be a huge reward for the first person to post (as a comment or on their own blogs) or email perfect versions of everything you find:

When you've had enough of error correction, we can move on to email etiquette!

Try this online quiz with a partner.

Speaking Class Task Text

As a mini group project, PS Class 1 were set the task of adding grammar to the following text:


I sympathize most with boy, because I can imagine do same things he do if I be his situation.  other words, if I have girlfriend who sleep with another man  £500, I find it impossible forgive her.  I feel sorry her, though.  She do what she do for right reasons, but I think if she truly love her boyfriend, she know how much her action upset him.  I no can make up my mind about friend.  If my friends know something important my relationships then I want them tell me.  However, if friend keep quiet, boy and girl no split up and they still be happy now.  Also, if I be friend, I no think I be able to tell boy what really happen.  I consider boatman and rich man be quite similar because they both take advantage girl’s situation.  I no can sympathize rich man because I never ask woman sleep me in exchange money.  boatman no seem so bad because “he only do his job” and if he take girl other island for free, then everyone else expect same treatment and his business collapse.  However, he no show any compassion and only see her situation in financial terms, so I no can respect him.

CALL Session 4

Since I wrote my last blog post (read it here now if you haven't already done so), several students have produced last-minute homework, and now most of the presessional blogs are looking good.  Not everyone has written about their library experiences yet, but Sultan and Turki have both done so in an interesting narrative style, and Great has hidden a sentence about the library within a very informative (and worrying) post about fraud at cash machines. 


In today's CALL session, the plan is as follows:


1. Complete the online quiz to test your knowledge of how to use the Albert Sloman library.


2. Explore the university's myskills pages and write a blog post about your experience.  You should answer the following four questions:


- Which skill did you choose to focus on and why?  
- What tasks did you complete?  
- What did you learn from the tasks?  
- Would you recommend the task to your classmates?


3. Read each other's blogs about myskills and ask questions or make comments about anything you find particularly interesting.


4. Error correction tasks.  You can complete an MS Word-based correction task (download the task and the instructions), or find and correct the mistakes below.  There will be a huge reward for the first person to post (as a comment or on their own blogs) or email perfect versions of everything you find:

BLOG FEEDBACK : WORDS, PATTERNS AND COLLOCATIONS

A good dictionary, a collocations dictionary, and perhaps even a thesaurus may help you to find better alternatives to these 9 expressions:

1. ATM Skimming has made me lost thousands of pounds

2. It was borrowed by somebody to studied it

3. share these students their academic achievement.

4. I lost the the hope to find the book

5. my mentors Mark and Sandra

6. my colleagues in Lab class

7. a lunch party in my tower's flat

8. face with a serious problem

9. press your password

BLOG FEEDBACK SENTENCE CORRECTION

Check our comments on your blogs for suggestions on how to correct these sentences.  You can also refer to an online resource like The Internet Grammar of English, produced by University College London.

1. Finally, after might be 15 minute I was ready to live with my book, and thinking how simple it was.

2.ATM skimming is a kind of credit card fraud by using hi-technology.

3. To sum up, These steps are what we should aware of it when we use the ATM machine, and It seems like that we might not be able to avoid this problem, and it has been a serious problem in our society because some people are still using advanced technology illegally.

4. When I went there I saw strange lift at there.After which I went to third floor and I searched but Idid not fund it.

5. Being specialist in phonlogy and i need to do researches in this regard i chose book about acoustic sounds to have look about it .

6. It was not the first time that I go to the library where I went to the Library with my friend who study at university 

7. So I asked Mark about it where went us again to the shelf and looked for it 

8.Because of our different nationality, so it was the first international party

9. Most of all food were prepared by Arisa (thank you Arisa!). 

10. I prepared some Thai Food to share and the rest dished were cooked in the kitchen by a Super Chef from Japan (Naoko) and a Head Chef from Thailand (Great).

Blog Feedback Quiz

While reading your blogs, I've been collecting examples of language that could be improved (through attention to grammar and vocabulary or just punctuation and spelling), and I've used these examples (from YOUR writing) to create a quiz.  Click on the image to go to the quiz...it's multiple-choice and I hope that the instructions are clear.  Make sure that you read the feedback given after you answer each question.  I've provided links to online resources to explore various language issues further. If you have any problems, just ask.

Noun phrase construction

Another email exchange to share:

STUDENT QUESTION

this sentence:

Due to the increasingly (adj) globalised (v) business (n) environment (n)....

Why? do you understand my question?

If I want to express the same meaning, I will write like this:

Due to the increasingly global business-environment...

MY RESPONSE

Actually your version is OK. The hyphen between business and environment isn't necessary, but the difference between GLOBAL and GLOBALISED is just that the latter (GLOBALISED) suggests that forces have MADE the world global.

Your analysis of the phrase from the text isn't quite right though:

Due to the increasingly (adv) globalised (adj) business (adj) environment (n)....

We could argue about whether business is an adjective or noun here and it doesn't really matter either way, but GLOBALISED is definitely not a verb. A lot of adjectives in English are formed from the active or passive form of a verb. To me, this is quite useful because it helps you understand their meaning (i.e. whether they are active or passive). Examples include bored, boring, interested, interesting, satisfied, satisfying, and I'm sure you could add hundreds more to my list!

A question about commas

I just thought I'd share this recent email exchange:

Student question

I have a question about "if" and commas.

What is the differet between this two sentences.

1 I would get married, if I were you.

2 I would get married if I were you.

My response:

The comma does make a slight difference. A comma tells a reader to pause, and it separates out parts of a sentence.

Sentence number 1 encourages the reader to stress IF. Stressing IF makes what follows seem less likely, or in this case, emphasises the fact that "I am not you".

There are other occasions when commas will make a much bigger difference to meaning. Can you see a difference between these two sentences:

1. I like student who email me questions about grammar.

2. I like students, who email me questions about grammar.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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).