Writing Like a Native: Quick Tips for ESL Writers

Do you wish you could write like a native-speaker but feel like something always gets in the way? It may be just a missing article or the wrong preposition, but somehow your writing doesn't quite read like English. You may have had the frustrating experience of some instructor or reader muttering, "Well, you can't really say it THAT way." Unless you have the time and the money to go through an intensive immersion program, you may find it difficult to know exactly how to phrase it in English without some extra help. So here are a few quick tips that will help you check your how to say it in English.

1) Google + Quotation Marks
A quick Google search is the best way to check for the most appropriate ways to use prepositions and articles. For example, if you are not sure whether you should say "at Purdue," "in Purdue," or "on Purdue's campus," type each of these phrases, surrounded by quotation marks, into Google. The results will provide you with examples in context. You will not only get a sense of how people use the phrase, but you will also be able to judge how often people use the phrase. If your Google search turns up only 3 hits, you can be pretty sure that the phrase, "in Purdue's campus," is not a phrase that native English speakers often use.

Try these two phrases and see which one pops up the most and in which contexts. You may find that sites using more colloquial (spoken) language will favor one expression.

"at the house of my mother" vs. "at my mother's house"

Remember that for an accurate representation of which phrases people use and how, you need to enclose the phrase in quotation marks. That way, the search will only look for the phrase.

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2) Use a Thesaurus
Once you have established a working English vocabulary, a thesaurus (dictionary of synonyms) is one of the best tools for expanding it. You don't even need to have a printed version anymore. Most word processing programs, such as Microsoft Word, are already equipped with a thesaurus function. All you need to do is:

highlight the word and then hit "shift + f7."

The program will automatically bring up a list of synonyms and a few antonyms. Other resources include www.thesaurus.com. This strategy does not just apply to ESL writers. Even native writers can forget about words from time to time. Especially if you find yourself using the same verb, particularly a generic verb, over and over again, using a thesaurus can bring some great variety to your writing. You may also find that a more specific and expressive verb exists than the one currently stuck in your mind.

Here is a list of generic verbs that should be "thesaurus-ized."

make, do, say, talk (about), work, think, have, like
and any form of "to be" (is, are, was, were)

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3) Read it Aloud (Slowly)
Because many writers focus so intensely on creating the perfect sentence, they often overlook more general grammar principles, such as plurals, subject-verb agreement, and verb tense. I have found that writers can often recognize their own mistakes if they read their papers aloud and pay careful attention so that the words they say match the words on the page. Writers will often say the phrase correctly even though it is incorrect on the page. Here is an example:

"Yesterday, she walk to the store with three empty bag."

Attentive readers may notice that the word "yesterday" requires that the verb should be in the past tense (i.e. "walked). They may also notice that the number three means that "bag" should be in the plural.

If you find it difficult to read and edit or if you do not notice your mistakes, find a friend to read along with you. The friend should mark down any differences between what you say and what is on the page.

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Hope these tips help, and, as always, if anyone out there has any other tips, please share them.

Brady Spangenberg

A rose by any other name

Well, here in Australia, it's almost the start of the new academic year. I thought it would be a good time to review some of the topics on our Grammar Gang blog and because it's just 2 days until St Valentine's Day, I want to take a look at my favourite Shakespearean sonnet.

Sonnet 18

Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And oft' is his gold complexion dimm'd:
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd:
But thy eternal Summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
So long as men can breath, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee

Can you believe the length of this sentence? Does anyone want to 'have a go at' counting independent clauses? (Have a go at = attempt to, in Australian English usage.)

Of course, Shakespeare's use of punctuation is known as 'poetic licence' but I wonder if you all approve of his use of colons and semi-colons and if you would find it easier to read if he'd used more sentences with full-stops? (I know I would find it easier to read if he had.)

I asked my daughter to 'have a go at' writing the first 2 lines of the sonnet in her own words and this is what she came up with:

If I compared you with a day in summer, I'd have to say that you are even more beautiful and gentle'

She adds that this would be saying quite a lot, as she was born on December 1st, the first day of Summer which is also her favourite season!

I then asked a young guy who lives in our street for his interpretation of the first two lines which were:

You're dead gorgeous and really hot but not that extreme sort of hot that you get on a day in a heatwave'.

We'll, we'd love to hear your version of the first 2 lines or better still, of the whole poem so post away!

Virginia

The Two Minute Semicolon Lesson

Unlike the comma, which can take five minutes to explain, the semicolon is quite an easy punctuation mark. So that is why this post should only take two minutes to read. The semicolon has two main uses. They are used to join two independent clauses (minus the coordinating conjunction). They are also used to divide long or comma-laden elements in a series. Aside from its small role in bibliographic references, the semicolon has no other traditional function in English grammar.

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When you use a semicolon to combine independent clauses, make sure that both of the clauses share a direct and logical connection. The second clause should either restate or emphasize the first clause in some way.

Example
Professor Johnson believes that people should obey traffic laws at all times; the roadways, he says, are already dangerous enough.

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Semicolons can also be used to set off items in a complex series. A series is considered complex if it includes items with their own commas or lists with a conjunction in each item.

Simple example with conjunctions
He walks and talks; chews and thinks; and runs and stumbles.

Simple example with commas
For the European Cup, football matches were played in Vienna, Austria; Basel, Switzerland; and Salzburg, Austria.

Winning ways with academic writing

Welcome back to the Purdue students. You are about six weeks ahead of the students at UniSA (in Adelaide, South Australia) who will return to Uni in early March.

We thought it might be useful to give you some 'gold passport' tips towards winning academic writing. Here is a triangle we use here at UniSA which is based on the work of Kaldor, Herriman and Rochecouste (1998). It lists the hierarchy of things you need to get right in writing at Uni. It's not that any of these are any less important than the others, but they generally occur in this order when writing. In other words, you need to get the big picture right first.

Understand the question, task or form

Is it an essay you are writing? Is it a report? Each of these genres will have particular attributes. Essays, for example, are continuous prose which more often than not explore a particular argument. Reports are exemplified by their headings and subheadings - they are highly structured and objective.

Introductions, conclusions, sections - structure

Your work should have a clear introduction (aim or statement of position, purpose, academic definitions of key terms); conclusion (summary, point to the future) and logical 'sections' (topic sentences in the case of an essay; logical headings and subheadings in the case of a report).

Quality sources and citation

You should aim to use for up-to-date sources - ideally from academic journal databases. Wikepedia is generally out (although probably OK for gaining an understanding of a topic). Make sure you know about paraphrasing and reporting the ideas of others.

Your reference list may well be the first place a lecturer (professor) goes before reading your paper and they will be looking at the breadth of sources used as well as their quality.

In text referencing and reference list

The mechanics of referencing are important. If you are using, say, the Harvard system, then find a guide which gives you information about the conventions and layout (where all the punctuation goes).

Clarity, grammar, punctuation

These are also important, as they give your work the professional touch. Without attention to these things your work is demeaned and the meaning of what you're communicating can be compromised.

Be sure to post a comment about your best academic writing tip. What have YOU been rewarded for?

Andrea and Susanna

Up With Which I Will Not Put

One of the grammar rules that many of us remember from our elementary school days is the one that says, "A sentence cannot end in a preposition." Attempts to follow this mythic rule (Grammar Girl calls it "grammar myth number one") often lead to some pretty twisted relative clauses, including those relative clauses involving whom. Here are two examples, one attributed to Winston Churchill (though some dispute that he ever wrote or said this), and one I heard just yesterday.

This is something up with which I will not put.

This is something I'm not gonna put up with.

If the first sentence doesn't send your head spinning, then I am sure the second sentence is surely setting off slang alarm bells. Let's back up for just a moment and refresh last week's post; what are relative clauses anyway, and why should you care about them? Relative clauses are dependent clauses (they cannot stand alone as sentences), and they provide additional information about a noun. Relative clauses feature both a subject and a verb that are grammatically INDEPENDENT from the main clause. Take this sentence for example:

I went over to my friend's house, which is located on Mason Street.

The relative clause provides additional information about the friend's house, but the friend's house is not the subject of the main clause, which is "I." In other words, relative clauses can have nothing to do with the main subject of a sentence.

Secondly, and this is where many "whomists" start sounding the alarm bells, the relative clause is introduced by a relative pronoun. As I noted in last week's post, the relative pronouns in English are

who, whom, that, which, whose, where, when, and why

Once you select a relative pronoun, all you need to do is finish out the clause. This is where the No Preposition at the End of a Sentence Brigade chimes in. Just like regular sentences, relative clauses cannot end with a preposition, they say. The best solution is to take the preposition and place at the beginning of the clause. So we have constructions like:

To whom it may concern
With whom I was speaking
Upon which I was standing
Up with which I will not put

These types of constructions are quite common in German. But as I said in the last post, they sound quite formal to my non-Churchillian, American ears. Guessing from the readership commentary, the "whoms" and "with whoms" sound too highbrow for most of our sensibilities.

Reader question of the week: What is the weirdest preposition + relative clause combination you have ever heard? Send it in and let us all have a laugh. For my part, here is a YouTube video of a Ben Affleck Saturday Night Live skit that satirized Keith Olbermann, one of America's more excitable news commentators.





Regards,
Brady

Does "Whom" Still Exist?

After a winter holiday, the Grammar Gang is back! We want to poll our readers and ask whether the word "whom" still has a place in their everyday vocabulary. Do you still use, or perhaps hear others using, the relative/interrogative pronoun "whom?" Or do the people who use "whom" all sound like nineteenth-century Victorians who just stepped out of a time machine?

What is the word "whom" anyway, and how should you use it?

"Whom" is a pronoun that always refers to a person. You would never use "whom" to refer to your pet rock or your most recent video game purchase. Secondly, "whom" provides a signal that the person in question is the direct object of the verb. In other words, whomever (see!) the "whom" refers to is receiving the action of the verb (not performing the action). As my German 102 instructor once said, the direct object is the thing that is being verbed.

"Whom" can function as a relative pronoun or an interrogative pronoun. Though the names of these words may sound scary, they stand for a group of words that you probably use everyday. The relative pronoun introduces additional information about someone or something. There are specific relative pronouns:

who, whom, that, which, whose, where, when, and why

The name, relative pronoun, comes from the type of clause that it introduces, namely the relative clause. These clauses are subordinate clauses (i.e. cannot stand alone as complete sentences), and they provide additional information about someone or something. Here are two examples:

The man, who is standing in the corner, is my father.
The boy, whom the teacher told to go outside, is crying.

There are many questions surrounding relative clauses at the moment. Some of them have to do with punctuation (to comma or not to comma), and some of them have to do with the pronouns themselves, such as whether you can use "that" to refer to a person. For more on relative clauses, you can visit the materials published by the OWL here: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/645/01/

So, who will answer this post? And to whom shall I reply?
Brady

Andrea [subject] is embedding [verb] a YouTube clip [object]

A cute one about verbs (back to primary school, but I couldn't resist):

EVERYONE has an Achilles heel....

...Even teachers of grammar. This morning I spoke to Tracey Bretag - author and senior lecturer in business communication and communication ethics at the University of South Australia.

Tracey Bretag has a list of teaching credentials and awards as long as your arm.

She has been convener of the Asia Pacific Conference on Educational Integrity, editor of a journal on the same topic and has taught English as an additional language in both Australia and throughout Asia. Her credentials as grammar and academic writing teacher are beyond dispute. However this blogger had to ask, 'do you have your own Achilles* heel when it comes to grammar?'

'Of course!', Tracey said. 'Sometimes I get stuck on subject verb agreement and sometimes it's with the spelling of words. For example, I always put two 'ls' in necessarily [necessarilly...]'

Tracey points to the fact that even though English as an additional language learners might think native English speakers don't have as many problems, they do!

Tracey said 'it's often better to think in terms of comprehensibility than grammar. Making things easy to understand is essential in business writing because miscommunication can cause a breakdown in relationships or loss of business deals and loss of money.

'Where correct grammar enhances a sentence, being able to say things simply - sometimes with strong, direct headings - is especially important in cross cultural communication'.

However, Tracey stresses difficulties with grammar is not just the province of the international student. 'In fact', said Tracey, 'students with English as an additional language can often talk about the rules of grammar with much more authority than native speakers - the problem is often putting it all into action'.

Tracey points to her most favourite tools as being a hefty large thesaurus, dictionary and style guide. When I asked Tracey about the value of electronic checking devices (such as the language tools in Microsoft word) she felt they were inadequate for additional language learners because they don't give enough context to the word.

(Biggravee [photobucket] 2007)

Tracey insists that grammar can only be learned in the context of communication (ie with examples). However, she points to traditional rote learning as being one of the foundation blocks of learning to use correct grammar. She likens this to learning times tables, as a foundation skill for more complex mathematical tasks. Although education purists might not agree with this approach to learning, Tracey advocates that being drilled in the fundamentals builds bridges to the ability to use language competently later.

Like learning any new form of language or skill - such as music or even driving a car - the essentials can be painstaking at first but well worth the effort in the long run.

What's your grammar Achilles heel? Click on 'comments' and post away!

* Achilles was a Greek mythological character noted for his strength, but for a weakness in his heel. This one 'small' weakness in his otherwise powerful body was pierced by an arrow and caused his death.

*Borrowed from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Verb.jpg


Principal Parts of a Verb

Verbs are usually identified by their four principal parts: the infinitive, the present participle, the past tense form, and the past participle. The infinitive is considered the "base form" of the verb because it serves as the stem for other forms of the verb. In English, the infinitive is constructed with the preposition "to" followed by the base form of the verb (a verb without the "to" is sometimes called the "bare infinitive"). If a verb is a phrasal verb, which means it takes a preposition afterwards, the preposition is also included in the infinitive.

infinitives: to make, to be, to speak out

The present participle is created by adding "-ing" to the stem or base form. The present participle is also sometimes called the "active" or "progressive" participle. Because the present participle is almost always formed in the same way, by adding "-ing" to the base form, some manuals will omit the present participle as a principal part.

present participles: making, being, speaking out

The past tense form is the form the verb takes in the third person singular. Some verbs follow a pattern in the past tense by adding "-ed" to the base form; these are called weak verbs. Other verbs do not follow a pattern and actually change by modifying the spelling of the base form; these are called strong verbs.

past tense forms: made, was, spoke out

The past participle is usually the same as the past tense form, except with some strong verbs. In contrast to the present participle, which only has active uses, the past participle has both active and passive uses. It has a variety of functions in English, but the most familiar uses are in forming the passive voice and in modifying a noun.

past participles: made, been, spoken

Passive voice: The document was signed yesterday.

Modifier: The signed document appeared on my desk yesterday.

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So why should you learn the four principal parts? The principal parts can help you with particularly tricky verbs like "lay" and "lie." They can also aid in the reivising process. If, for example, your instructor remarks that you overuse the passive voice in your writing, a little knowledge about past participles and their functions may help you to recognize problem areas in your paper.


Open Questions

• What are some noteworthy exceptions to the four principal parts schema?



• Are there verbs that do not quite fit this pattern? Why? (of course there are, but that is for another post!)

Paired Conjunctions and Transitional Phrases

Dear Purdue or UniSA Grammar staff or students,

Can you explain what 'paired conjunctions' and 'transitional phrases' are for a teaching colleague in Singapore, please?

We are looking for an explanation, examples and resources.

Many thanks
Andrea

**UPDATE**

Transitional devices connect bits of information (large or small) in different ways. To borrow from Purdue's OWL, transitional devices work like bridges, linking together various objects, ideas, paragraphs, or even whole parts of a paper. I use the phrase "linking together" quite loosely, because some transitional devices, such as "whereas" or "in contrast," highlight the fact that the items are completely different from or even opposed to each other. The OWL has an excellent list of transitional devices, which are categorized according to function.

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/574/02/

There is one note of caution: it is possible to overuse transitional devices. If every sentence of a paragraph begins with a transitional device, it will become a distraction for the reader. Reading a paper with too many transitional devices is sort of like trying to fall asleep while a buzzer goes off intermittently. Eventually you stop focusing on sleeping and instead just wait for the next sound. As with many grammar principles, moderation is key. Use transitional devices to strengthen your argument or increase the paper's flow rather than to show off or take up space.

It is also worth noting that sometimes the lack of a transitional device can actually strengthen the link between the items. Here is an example.

With transitional device
Global warming is a worldwide problem, but although this may be true,
few communities seek to address it collectively.

Without transitional device
Global warming is a worldwide problem; few communities seek to address it collectively.


Paired conjunctions show equality between two items, which again is not necessarily positive (a=b). Like the name implies, paired conjunctions are specific groupings of words that generally frame an entire sentence. Our anonymous poster gave an excellent list in the comments section, so I will reproduce his/her list on the main blog (many thanks!).

both ..... and
not only.... but also
either ... or
neither ... nor
just as ... so (do)

When using a paired conjunction, the main grammatical principle to keep in mind is parallel structure. Parallel structure basically means that all items in a series (2 items make a series!) must be grammatically similar. This is especially true with paired conjunctions. For example, if a subject and a verb follow "not only," they should also follow "but also."

Not only does he write his papers at 3:00 am, but he also studies for exams at that time.

The OWL has a more in-depth discussion of parallel structure at the following link:

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/623/01/