Proofreading your work

It is bank holiday in the UK. That means two things: the weather is horrible and the DIY shops are full! Just as we headed into the long weekend, the temperature fell and it started raining! How does it know to do that??

Classes at my university have finished for the year which means that exams are coming up in a few weeks. Examinations are particularly hard for overseas students, especially if they have to write essays. I always tell my students to make sure they do two important things in an exam: spend time thinking and planning your writing before you start the real essay, and make sure you finish early so that you can check your work before the end of the exam. Students who just plunge straight into writing an essay often make so many corrections and additions as they go along that when they hand in their work it looks terrible and is difficult to read. Presentation is important! Think about the poor examiner who has to grade hundreds of essays. If your essay has a plan at the start of it, followed by the essay itself, it is likely that the marker will be impressed. One lecturer told me that if he saw notes in the plan that the student had not managed to get into the essay for some reason (like running out of time) then he would still be inclined to give marks for the ideas.
The other thing to do is to check your work carefully for grammar and content and after you’ve written it. This is a skill which you can practise and get better at. The Online Writing Lab at Purdue University has lots of good material on academic writing. Check out its ‘Finding Common Errors’ page here.

IELTS writing

I am always looking for different ways to make the same points to students. Regular readers will know that I quite like pointing out youtube clips and I’ve got another one today about how you can achieve COHESION and COHERENCE in a paragraph and an essay when you are writing for IELTS. Cohesion and coherence are important qualities in an essay and are difficult to define. I have talked about these qualities before (for example here) and I daresay I will again! But rather than me banging on about them let me turn you over to sangteamthan’s youtube channel:

Lastly, I am looking to start an online IELTS class for interested students. Read more about this here.

Describing trends in line graphs

I left work early today because I was worried that I might not be able to get home safely because of the snow. My Spanish students tell me that in Spain it has also been very cold with snow even in the south!
I am always looking for good resources practising language for talking about line graphs. This is a popular task in the IELTS exam and students are expected to come up with sentences such as:
The rate of unemployment fell dramatically after 1983..
and
The rate of inflation peaked in 1987 before declining gradually…
What you need to think about is not only the verb (fell, declined, rose, increased) but also the adverbs which go with the verbs (slowly, gradually, sharply).
Here’s a page doing just what we want from our old friend Hong Kong Polytechnic University here.

I thought it might be fun to experiment with an English for University. Com Facebook Group so come and have a look if you fancy it!

A paraphrase is usually shorter than the original!

A student asked me the other day about paraphrasing. Her question was “Should the paraphrase be longer or shorter than the original text?” I would say that it is usual for the paraphrase to be shorter because the paraphrase is also a summary of the text. Students often get into difficulties paraphrasing because they don’t do enough work! Here’s an example original source:

It is reasonable to expect the price of oil to increase steadily over the next few years as reserves continue to shrink but demand remains steady.
Smith, J. (2007) The future of oil, London, Penguin

Option 1: You could use the idea by using a direct quote:

Smith (2007) states that “it is reasonable to expect the price of oil to increase steadily over the next few years as reserves continue to shrink but demand remains steady” (p552).

The problem is that you can’t do many direct quotes! It’s too easy and it doesn’t show what you think about the idea.

Option 2: You could use a poor paraphrase:

Smith (2007) believes that it is sensible to believe the price of oil will rise steadily in the future as reserves continue to get smaller but demand stays the same.

The problem with this is that it is too close to the original and you are in danger of being accused of plagiarism.

Option 3: You use a paraphrase which uses the main idea in fewer words, in a different sentence structure, and makes some comment about the idea:

Smith (2007) offers the popular view that demand for oil and its declining reserves will ensure high prices in the long run.

The paraphrase shows a good understanding of the text and how it fits into the general literature on the subject.
The information from the University of Toronto on paraphrasing here definitely deserves a visit!