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 3
ReplyDeleteOmmer Tariq
1. For avoiding any mishaps, our workers need proper work boots with reinforced soles and toecaps, as they have to lift heavy building material on daily basis.
2. According to Swedish laws, our workers must wear approved safety helmets
3. it is recommended that helmets should have built-in ear muffs and a mesh to cover the face
4. for precautionary measures, there must be safety barriers and fences at proper heights where our workers will start building above ground level
5. we must need to seek an emergency appointment for three diggers and a dumper truck as their test certificates have run out and till they are not cleared we would stop working them.