English for Nursing, English for Catering and Hospitality …

Congratulations to Jervy in the Philippines for winning this month’s online English course from Macmillan. Also welcome to all the new subscribers coming on board! I have been looking at the statistics for subscribers and hits to this site and the first thing I noticed is that people don’t study much on Saturdays! The second thing I noticed is that lots of people sign up using their work e mail and this shows readers working in a variety of professions, including nursing and catering and hospitality. How is your specialist vocabulary in these areas? Have you looked at the BBC Skillswise Words Vocabulary sheets designed for specific professional fields? Take a look at them here.

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!

Once in a thousand years …

A few years ago I lived in the tropics where it rained very heavily quite often. However, the rain we have had in the UK over the past couple of weeks rivals the rain in the rainforests! This is certainly the wettest November ever. We are told that the rainfall that the north of England has seen over the past few days is a ‘once in a thousand years event’. Once in a thousand years?! Does that mean it won’t happen again for another thousand years? How can they say that when they say the climate is changing? The phrase ‘once in a thousand years’ reminds me of the idiom we have in English ‘once in a blue moon’ to describe something that hardly ever happens. That reminds me of those very entertaining youtube videos about idioms from The Teacher here.

Lots of people are arriving at this site by searching for ‘How to write an introduction to my academic essay’. High time for another study guide from English for University. Com on writing an introduction!

Can a computer test your writing and speaking skills?

The new Pearson Test of English Academic is out! In fact it has been out for a while and I have been meaning to mention it for a few months. Of course Pearson, the publishing company who have designed the test, hope that this test will become very popular and students will do it instead of doing IELTS and TOEFL. Pearson claims that there is already a big list of institutions which have agreed to accept the test. Pearson has spent a lot of money developing the test and the interesting thing is that you do the whole test on a computer. That means that the computer marks the test, including your essay and your speaking! Can a computer really give a fair mark to someone’s speech or to a text? Apparently it can. I went to a presentation a few months ago put on by a Pearson representative and she was adamant that the computer marks the test as accurately as a human does. It will be interesting to see if the test proves popular. According to their website, the PTE Academic costs $170 in the UK, which comes out at £101. IELTS costs £105 which is virtually the same price. Considering that Pearson want to break into the IELTS market I am surprised the PTE isn’t cheaper. There’s an interesting article about the PTE Academic on the Guardian Weekly website here. If you are a teacher of English I hope you aware of the Guardian Weekly’s materials for English teachers. It’s well worth signing up for free so you can access the pdf lesson plans here.)

OK, now to a link for students who are still making mistakes with their articles, and that means virtually everybody! As I’ve said before the rules are almost impossible to follow because explaining when to use THE or A or NO ARTICLE is so complex. One of the easy rules I give is that if you have a single countable noun then use an article! Take a look at the very handy exercises on article usage from Monash University here. (Yes, again!)