Word forms

Merry Christmas to those of you who have been celebrating it and Happy New Year to everyone! My family and I have just got home after a tour of relatives during the Christmas period – of course we are exhausted and need a holiday!!

Congratulations to Ifar from Malaysia studying at the University of Auckland for winning the December draw. Ifar will be able to access the Macmillan online course materials for a year. If you have registered for the draw you will automatically be entered again for the January draw – so you don’t need to e mail me again. If you are a new reader read about this here.

Some of you are still working hard over the holiday period so here’s a link to an exercise on word forms from English Corner. Take a look at the useful WORD FAMILIES exercises 1 – 6 in which you have to type in the different form of the word and check it online. It’s here.

Thinking about your literature review

If you haven’t entered for the December draw to win a free online course in Academic English and IELTS today’s your last chance!

There are lots of students who are starting to think more seriously about their dissertations which will be due in at the end of the academic year. I have had a number of students asking me about literature reviews – what they are and how you write one. The most important thing ahead of your literature review is identifying a good topic for your dissertation, and a good topic is one which there is literature for. If you can’t find books and journals for a topic then it is likely that you need to change your topic! You probably have to do a proposal for your dissertation and this proposal may well be an assessed piece of work. You should take this very seriously – if you find that there is not enough literature on your topic don’t pretend that there is. You might get through the proposal but you will not be able to write a literature review without some good sources to refer to.

So what is a literature review? A literature review shows the reader that you have read what others have said about the chosen topic. It is a summary of the current thinking about your topic. You will group together authors who have said the same thing and contrast them with authors who said different things. You will need to show that you understand what these people say, and draw out the main principles, beliefs and arguments. This is the foundation for your dissertation. If you are writing a dissertation about ‘Theories of Management’ at the end of your literature review you should have shown the reader that you understand what the main theories of management are. Your research will then test these theories and see if they can be to applied to real life situations. Your literature review will use a lot of reporting verbs such as:

Smith 2006) believes that …… however Brown (2007) considers that the main theories are ……

(You can see more support in Paraphrasing and Referencing links at the right of the page for doing this sort of thing.)

You cannot do a good literature review without reading a few examples. If you are in a university with subscriptions to online journals here’s one article that overseas students from all subject areas will find readable because it is on the subject of overseas students themselves. Read the abstract, then read the literature review carefully. You should see how the writer presents what other authors have said about the topic – and the topic is the problems of overseas students! Here are the details for the article:

Li, Rose Yanhong and Kaye, Mike (1998) ‘Understanding Overseas Students’ Concerns and Problems’, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 20:1,41-50

URL:  URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1360080980200105

When you read articles like this (in fact when you read anything) you should be mentally and physically underlining words and phrases that you can take out and use in your own writing. Useful ‘literature review’ phrases from this article are things like:

A review of literature suggests that…

..many studies reported…

Elketeron (1985) highlighted…

Barker et al (1991) reported…

Kinnell (1990) points out…

The literature has provided us with some valuable insights into …

Here is some good advice to help you think about your literature review from Birmingham City University. Good luck!

Linking words

It has suddenly gone very quiet! I think lots of people have already started their Christmas holidays but at my university we are still going strong. You still have time to enter the December draw to win a place on a Macmillan Online Advanced English and EAP course. You just have to e mail me to tell me to put your name in the hat. Read more about this opportunity here.

One of the most important features to get right in your academic writing is using linking words correctly. These words make your text cohesive. If you use linking words correctly you will undoubtedly get a better mark for your writing. If you are writing for your English teacher they will appreciate the fact that you are making an effort with your linking words and if the marker is not a language teacher they will just notice that your ideas are being conveyed more effectively because you are guiding the reader around your text.

Here’s an example of a short text with linking words used well:

“An essay comparing and contrasting University education in the USA and Australia

The Western style of education has gained popularity over the last decade. Many foreign students come to countries like Australia and the USA to study at university and improve their employment prospects. In this essay I will briefly compare and contrast these two countries in terms of their appeal to foreign students.
There are many similarities between the two countries. Firstly, they both have a very multicultural population so it is possible to enjoy food from your own country when homesickness arises. Also, as they are both large countries it is possible to find an institution in an area with a climate that suits you. Another similarity is that their tertiary institutions have a reputation of quality and excellence in academia.
On the other hand, there are some appreciable differences. The main one is that education in the USA is much more expensive than in Australia. However, many students think that it is worth paying the extra money as some American universities have a world-wide reputation. Furthermore, as the USA has a much larger population there are a wider range of institutions to choose from and naturally, a wider range of courses.
To sum up, America offers more choice and a more acknowledged reputation, but at a higher cost. Australia offers similar quality but is cheaper if you can find the course that you want.”

From:  http://www.parapal-online.co.uk/resources/essays.html

Good, isn’t it? One of the reasons it is good is the linking words it uses:   Firstly,  Also, Another similarity is that, On the other hand, Furthermore…

You can improve your mastery of linking words consciously and subconsciously. You should do some exercises which focus on these words and you should read as much as you can in English to see how these words behave in their ‘natural habitat’! Today’s link is to pages on linking words with exercises from RMIT University in Australia  here.

Word forms

It is the time of year in the UK when on some days it never really gets very light at all. I learnt a new word the other day – ‘dimpsy’ – to describe the time of day when it starts to get dark (an old local word used in Devon, UK) but it seems to be dimpsy all the time these days.

To read about Macmillan’s offer of a free place on an online Advanced Academic English and IELTS course and how you can enter my draw to win this place click here.

I see the same old mistakes all the time in my students’ writing and I tell them that with a little more awareness they can dramatically improve their accuracy. Here are some examples of  mistakes which I have come across recently:

1. The UK is a high population country.

2.  France is a develop country.

3. European countries students generally have fewer problems in UK universities than students from other parts of the world.

The students have generally used the correct words but they have not put them into the correct form. The correct sentences are:

1. The UK is a highly (densely) populated country.

2.  France is a developed country.

3. European students / Students from Europe / Students from European countries generally have fewer problems in UK universities than students from other parts of the world.

Let’s take a look at a couple of simple sentences:

The word which comes before the final noun, describing that noun, must be an adjective. If we go back to sentence 1 and look up the word ‘population’ in an advanced learner’s dictionary it says ‘population: noun’. So we can’t use it! The next word is ‘populated: adj’. Ah ha! That’s the one we want. The word before ‘populated’, to say if that adjective is strong or weak should be an adverb. If we look up ‘high’ in our dictionary we can see it is an adjective. So look further to see ‘highly: adv’ – great we can use that. So now we have:

The UK is a highly (densely) populated country.

and in this example we can use ‘densely’ which is an even better adverb to describe population.

This system of checking will prevent uncomfortable phrases like: European countries students. The noun is ’students’ so we need an adjective before it to describe what sort of students we are talking about. ‘Countries’ is a noun so it isn’t going to work. Find a suitable adjective instead.

Here’s a useful page from Birmingham City University with information about word types and an accompanying exercise complete with answers to check your work.