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...

mySkills

Economist Editorial on AV

I read this editorial on the Economist Website and then copied and pasted the text into the Academic Wordlist Highlighter.   The Highlighter identified the following items from my article as belonging to the Academic Word List:

alternative, clarity, concentrated, constitutional, constitutional, contributed, disproportionately, economist, eliminated, estimates, fundamental, ideological, indicated, issue, items, labour, majority, minority, norm, plus, previous, proportion, proportional, redistributed, redistribution, regional, secure, secures, seek, selected, series, topics, undertaken, unique, version

How many of these words do you know? I was surprised to find so many, although I can see that some words may not really BELONG in this list.  For example, in the context of the Economist article, LABOUR refers to a political party, not to work.  I've added some dictionary definitions as links to words that I think might be useful to learn.

When I felt that I understood the article, I wrote this:

MY SUMMARY

This Thursday, the 5^th of May, the UK is holding a referendum in which the public will be asked to vote on whether or not to change the voting system.  In an editorial published on the 28^th of April 2011, The Economist argues that the alternative voting system on offer (AV) is unsuitable and undesirable.

According to The Economist, the current voting system, known as “First Past The Post” (FPTP) is  simple and clear but not particularly fair.  The Economist supports this claim by pointing to the fact that the Liberal Democrats received almost 25% of all votes in the 2010 General Election, but under FPTP, won less than 10% of the seats in parliament.

Despite seeing flaws in FPTP, however, The Economist believes that AV will not deliver the changes that are needed.  Although the success of the AV in Australia is outlined, The Economist claims that benefits of the system are exaggerated and that it is not nearly as fair as a third system, proportional representation.  

168 words!  Any comments???

Sufficient evidence?

Last week I asked my class the following question about this chart (taken from The Economist's Daily Chart online feature) :

Do you think these statements are TRUE or FALSE? Do you have enough evidence to verify each statement?

1. DVDs are cheap in China because they are all illegally copied.

2. The average Polish employee has to work longer than the average Indian employee in order to be able to afford a DVD.

3. DVDs are cheaper in Germany than in India.

4. The best films are made in France.

5. The currency used in Australia is dollars.

6. People in Japan like to watch DVDs.

7. The average US worker can earn enough money in 200 minutes to buy 4 DVDs.

Together we agreed that 2 and 7 are true, 3 is false, and we do not have sufficient evidence to comment on the other 4 statements. The students then wrote statements about other charts. Please comment on whether their statements are true, false, or impossible to comment on without further information.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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?

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...

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.

Bigots, Brown, and Books

A few follow-ups to this afternoon's Graduate Diploma session. You may be interested to read more about Gordon Brown's gaffe, which Chimuco reported at the start of class. For those of you interested in ELT textbooks, you can find more details via OUP and Cambridge websites, as well as these specific pages for Cutting Edge (which is supposed to be a task-based learning textbook) and Inside Out, both of which are popular coursebooks for adults.

To plagiarise or not to plagiarise

I know I've used this Shakespearian construction far too many times this week, but it's hard to make this topic any more interesting than it is. The online quiz on plagiarism created by the University of East Anglia is just a click away here, while you may be interested in reading more / all of the articles I distributed in class:

Ian Jack writing on his experiences at the third International Plagiarism Conference.
A recent story about the Australian group Men At Work
A very short Guardian piece about anti-plagiarism software
A news story about Raj Persaud - next to it you'll find links to other articles about his case

Later I'll upload links to today's ppt and handout, as well as anything else that comes up...