Warm-Up 4 and the In-Tray Exam

Warm-Up 4 doesn't give you any marks (!), but it is, perhaps, a way for you to see the collective wisdom of the group about two key areas in the In-Tray exam: complaining and apologising. Since you don't get any marks for it, you don't have to do it either - but I'm sure that your contributions will be gratefully received by everyone else, if you do!

You publish your Warm-Up 4s as comments to this blog post.

The In-Tray Exam is based on the idea that you work for a temporary agency (like Manpower) and have been sent in to cover the work of one of the people employed by one of the companies on this course. An in-tray is the plastic or metal tray on your desk into which all the paperwork you have to deal with is placed. When you've dealt with it, it's transferred to your 'out-tray' to be sent off or filed.

The exam itself will be posted on the course web site on Friday, 26th November (via the Module 4 section of the site). It's a .pdf document which you can either download or read directly from the screen. When you read it, you'll notice that there are four writing tasks to complete, but you're given three complete sets of tasks to choose between, one for each of the companies in the course materials.

You don't have to stick to the same company for all four tasks - you can switch from one company to another, or you can stay with the same company all the way through.

You submit your In-Tray Exam to David Richardson as a Word document by e-mail. (If you're using Microsoft Works, rather than Word or an equivalent, remember to save the document as an .rtf - Rich Text Format - document, or David won't be able to open it).

When the exam's been received, David will print it on paper, mark it manually, write a mark and commentary for each task, and, finally, add your In-Tray Exam marks to the marks you've received for your Warm-Ups and Send-Ins. When the total exceeds 60 marks, you've passed, and when the total exceeds 80 marks, you've got a 'VG'. Your marks are reported on LADOK, the Swedish national university computer, more or less the same day the exam's marked.

When everything's finished, David puts your exam, the commentary and a statement of your total marks into an envelope and posts it to whatever address we have for you (if you've recently moved, or haven't given us your address, please let us know your current address as soon as possible). He'll also send you a mail straightaway with your final result.

At the end of the final mail is a link to the on-line course evaluation. This is totally anonymous - and, besides, you've already got your mark, so you can say what you like! Feedback from you is very valuable to us (even if you don't get any direct benefit from it!) and all of us on the course team greatly appreciate hearing what you've thought of the course.

Good luck with the exam! The due date is 20th December … but, as usual, we'll be understanding if you're a little late.

General Comment on Warm-Up 3

The task this time was to turn spoken English into formal, written English. I used the word 'colloquial' a lot when I was commenting on your generally excellent answers. A colloquial word or phrase is one which is used in speech, but not often in formal writing. The words 'buck' and 'quid' for 'dollar' and 'pound' are examples of colloquialisms: everyone knows what they mean (so they aren't slang), but your contract of employment won't express your salary in 'quid'. In the inspector's comments, there were several colloquialism, such as 'diggers' and 'hardhats'. It's difficult to know which word is colloquial and which isn't … but that's why you're studying a course with feedback from teachers and tutors!

Good formal language also ought to be precise (which is why there are so many different words in formal English to express all the nuances). A couple of common problems were the differences between rules and regulations, and between safety and security.

Rules are followed on a voluntary basis (if, for example, you want to be a member of a club … or if you want to stay on as an employee of a company!). Regulations, on the other hand, have the force of law. You can thus be disqualified from a sporting event for a breach of the rules, but you could be sent to prison for a breach of the regulations.

Newspeak

In 1984, his novel about a totalitarian future, George Orwell introduced Newspeak - a new language which would make independent thought impossible. Management gurus have invented a newspeak too (take a look at this Dilbert cartoon):

As you can see, 'problem' is one of those words managers like to avoid, in favour of 'issues' - or even 'opportunities'. The problem is that 'issues' can't be 'corrected' or 'fixed' (the way 'problems' can) - they have to be 'addressed'!

Official Names

It's always a good idea to visit an organisation's web site to see what their official translations of various Swedish terms are. The 'arbetsmiljölag' is officially called the 'Work Environment Act'.

Big and Get

These are two colloquial words which ought to be avoided in formal documents (wherever possible).

Get could be obtain, become or receive.

Big becomes 'large', if you're talking about physical size, or 'great' or 'major', if you're talking about importance.

Finally, a bit of grammar …

Both Swedish and English have 'count' and 'uncount' nouns. The distinction is between nouns which refer to things which can be split up into separate items or chunks, such as chairs or boyfriends (!) and nouns which refer to general phenomena, such as attention, machinery or love.

In English uncount nouns only have singular forms and don't have to have words like 'a' and 'the' in front of them (though they can if you want them to). That's why you can't write *the equipment are …* And 'machines' are separate items, but 'machinery' is a general phenomenon, so you write 'the machines are …' but 'the machinery is …'

Warm-Up 3

Warm-Up 3 is all about turning informal, spoken language into formal, written language. The prompt is the kind of thing a health-and-safety officer might say when he's on a site visit, but the written version of his recommendations will use different grammatical structures and different words.

Remember that you've only got FIVE sentences to produce - you don't need to write the entire report.

General Feedback on Warm-Up 2

This Warm-Up Task was also very well done! Nearly everyone worked out that the best strategy is to describe what happened clearly and dispassionately, and then to let the company know how much they needed to pay you and where to send it. In this case, the administrator at Head Office who receives your letter just wants to turn you back into a satisfied customer - there may very well be a rocket sent to the airport office … but they'd never tell you about it! One ever-present problem for a US company is that if they admit any form of liability whatever, they might very find themselves with a multi-million-dollar lawsuit, so they're more interested in just getting the customer to be happy - and shut up about the problem! The amounts of money in this case are also small - it's no problem to just pay up. On the other hand, the amounts are far too small to make it worth your while to sue them - the postage would cost more!

You managed to present me with some interesting language points too! Here are a few language points some of you need to work on:

First some straight grammar points …

1. Count/uncount nouns

Some nouns in English are the labels we put on physical, tangible objects, such as 'chair', 'table' and 'cow'. These ones we call "count nouns". Others are the labels for concepts or general quantities, such as 'rice', 'compensation' and 'honesty'. These ones are called "uncount nouns". These two categories of noun behave differently from each other. Count nouns, for example, must have a determiner in the singular ('determiners' are words like 'my', 'the' and 'a', which determine which particular chair, table or cow you're talking about). Uncount nouns can have determiners or not … but you can't use the particular determiner, 'a', with uncount nouns (there's a technical explanation for this I'll be happy to give you if you ask!). Uncount nouns don't have plural forms either. There's more I could say … but I'm not writing a grammar book today!

2. Conditional sentences

These are sentences which usually begin with 'if'. They typically contain two clauses: a conditional clause ("You toucha my car …") and a result clause ("I smasha your face"!). The conditional clause is the one which starts with 'if' - and you almost never use a word like 'will', 'would', 'could' or 'should' in that clause. Thus the conditional sentence I just wrote in 'Mafia-speak' would read like this in everyday English: "If you touched my car, I would smash your face."!

3. Defining/non-defining relative clauses - and commas

These are clauses which add information to a sentence. They usually begin with 'who', 'which' or 'that'. Take a look at these two:

a. The woman who came to see me last night is responsible for the catering.

b. My sister, who came to see me last night, lives in England.

(a) is a defining relative clause because you don't know which 'woman' I'm talking about without the information in the relative clause.

(b) is a non-defining relative clause because "My sister lives in England" gives you the essential information - the relative clause just gives you a bit of extra information.

What you need to know is that defining relative clauses aren't separated off with commas, whilst non-defining relative clauses are!

… and now some points about style …

4. Colons and semi-colons

Colons (:) are used to show that the bit of the sentence to the right of the colon is some kind of consequence or result of the bit of the sentence to the left of the colon.

Semi-colons (;) divide a sentence (or part of a sentence) up into equal parts.

Both colons and semi-colons are 'strong' punctuation marks - they're about as strong as you get before you write a full-stop and start a new sentence, so don't use them if you really mean to use a comma or a dash.

5. Using too many 'ands'

Remember that 'and' joins up bits of a sentence that are seem to be more or less equivalent to each other. If you find yourself joining up more than, say, three chunks with an 'and', you ought to think about breaking the sentence up and starting new ones.

… and, finally, some bits and pieces!

6. 'Inconveniences' isn't a word, unfortunately!

This is one of those uncount nouns - inconvenience is a concept, so it can't have a plural form. I wish it did … but it doesn't!

7. Some verbs nearly always have to have something after them

'Appreciate' is one of them. The only time you can write 'it appreciates' is if you're using the word in a very specialised sense: to increase in value (e.g. "my stamp collection appreciates in value all the time, since it contains rare stamps everyone wants"). If you want to show your appreciation, you have to write "I would appreciate it if …"

8. Poetic Swenglish!

Coleridge's poem Kublai Khan starts like this:

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree …

This works in poetry, but in business English you'd write:

Kublai Khan decreed a stately pleasure-dome.

In Swedish you often change the order of the words when you start a sentence with a phrase, but not in English!

Warm-Up 2

Warm-Up 2 is all about complaining. 'The Hire Car from Hell' is all about really bad treatment when renting a car in the USA. The idea for this Warm-Up came from the wonderful film,"Trains and Planes and Automobiles", with Steve Martin and John Candy. The task is set up so that you don't have any other option than to write a well-composed letter to the company in the USA - and hope for the best. The sum of money involved is too small to make it worth your while starting a legal action (at least from this side of the Atlantic - it'd be different if you were living in the USA, where they have Small Claims Courts). There's also a lot of scope for 'he said-she said' situations (which is how they describe situations where one person says one thing, and the other person says something different in American English).

The task itself is quite limited: you only have to write FIVE sentences from the letter you'd write (i.e. NOT the entire letter). The point is to see whether you can calibrate your language, so that you express yourself firmly, but refrain from insults and gratuitous comments that will just result in your letter being filed in the trash can! Once again, there's a link to the Send-In Task which comes next.

You submit your Warm-Up Task 2 by copying your text into a comment. Remember to include FIVE sentences only - and to include your name in the submission.

By the way, if you don't know what the 'redeye' is, take a look at the first comment on this post.

General Comment on Warm-Up 1

This Warm-Up was all about presenting yourself snappily and pithily on the company web site. The purpose is only superficially to give information about you - the real point is to make the company look good for hiring you! You all did well with this, with the best presentations including a lot of information about how the personal and professional qualities of the person involved would turn into positive assets for the company in the future.

This was the first time you've submitted formal English to us, so it's not surprising that there are one or two points which generally weren't exactly right first time round! One point to bear in mind, though, is that I've marked every single error. Not all of these errors, however, are important (choosing the wrong preposition is very easy to do and is rarely crucial to meaning). Here are seven of the commonest 'frequently-made mistakes', which you are encouraged not to make again!

1. I've often referred to 'colloquial language' (such as the use of words like 'get' and 'big'). This is language which is normally spoken, rather than written. It isn't slang, because every user of the language understands it (i.e. not just some closed group), but it isn't usually written down. Everyone knows, for example, that 'buck' is the word for a US dollar, but your contract of employment will specify your salary in 'dollars', not 'bucks'.

If you're unsure about what's colloquial and what's not, ask your Internet Tutor.

2. Capital letters cause problems - even for native speakers. Consider this sentence: "She used her studies of Psychology to use psychology to change her boss' mind". Why is there a capital letter on the first 'Psychology', but a small one on the second one? (The answer is that the first one is an academic subject, whilst the second is the general phenomenon of manipulating people mentally!). All the 'information words' in job titles need capital letters (Manager of Port Services - 'of' is there for grammatical purposes, not for the purpose of adding to the information in the title), as do all the ones in names.

There's an exercise about capital letters in Module 1.

3. 'Verbs in phase' is the technical name for using two verb forms together. Take a look at these two:

a. She stopped to speak to him.
b. She stopped speaking to him.

There's clearly a major difference in meaning between them … but many languages lack an '-ing' form which English uses all the time, so the distinction between something she did (stopped) in order to do something else (speak to him) and something she did over a period of time (stopped speaking to him) is difficult to make so succinctly.

Then you've got another problem: 'to' is sometimes part of a verb (to speak) and sometimes it's a preposition which indicates something like movement towards. An '-ing' form can sometimes have the function of a noun too (Swimming keeps you healthy). Take a look at these two:

c. I'm looking forward to your party.
d. I'm looking forward to seeing you at the party.

In (d) 'seeing' is actually a noun-form - it's what you're looking forward to.

4. Short forms (I'm, don't, etc) shouldn't be used in formal writing either.

Then there are three very specific frequently-made mistakes:

5. In/on/at are often mixed up, particularly when you're referring to time and space. You use 'in' for the big unit, 'on' for a smaller one, and 'at' for a point in time or space, like this:

6. Don't call yourself a 'boy' or a 'girl' in a business context, unless you want to stress your immaturity and extreme youth (say, 9 years old!). Women have struggled hard against sexism for decades, so feel proud to call yourself a 'woman' (if you are one!).

7. The names of Swedish administrative units are sometimes difficult to translate (since each country has its own system. A 'kommun' is usually a 'Council' in English, whilst a 'län' is a 'County'. A 'commune' is a hippy collective of the sort that died out in the 1970s!

Good luck with Send-In 1!

Warm-Up 1

This is the post to which you add your Warm-Up 1 task as a Comment (i.e. click on the Comment button below). When you do that, don't forget to write your name on the post! You'd be amazed how much detective work I sometimes have to do!

Warm-Up 1 asks you to write a personal presentation for a web site. This is a general message that goes out to everyone who visits the web site of the new company you've just got a job with. I.e. it needs to be informative, but a bit general - and a good piece of advertising for your new employer. In other words, you need to show how smart your new employer is for hiring you!

You'll find a couple of useful links on the Warm-Up 1 page: one from the 'How to Do Things' site with some general advice, and an example of personal presentations from the Ericsson company.

When the Warm-Ups have all been marked and sent back (by me, David), I'll post a general comment in a post on this blog, with advice for everyone about Send-In Task 1.