Correction colours

I like to use colour-coding in my feedback on students' writing.  In a long assignment of 1500 - 4000, it's likely that if I find an example of one type of error in the first couple of pages, I'll find further examples throughout the student's work.  By highlighting text in different colours (or just underlining text), I can indicate the type of problem to my students, and they can correct it by themselves. For more details about error types and how to correct them, click on the relevant labels in the right-hand column of this blog.

Underlined text : Articles and Referents (including a/an, the, this, that, and issues related to singular / plural nouns and countability)
Text highlighted in yellow: Vocabulary (including spelling, capitalization, word form, and collocation)
Text highlighted in green: Sentence structure (including relative clauses, parallel structure, word class, and missing subjects and verbs)

Text highlighted in cyan : Pattern grammar. This is where vocabulary meets grammar, so it’s about the pattern that a particular word should be used in (e.g. I look forward to seeing you, not *I look forward of I will see you)

Text highlighted in grey : Verb phrase (including tense, aspect, modal verbs, and use of the passive)
Text highlighted in dark grey : Punctuation

Text highlighted in red : Mistakes that should be easy to correct (subject-verb agreement, typos)

Text highlight in pink : Register (not appropriate for academic writing).  Note that this includes use of sources (including referencing problems, possible plagiarism, and quoted text that could be paraphrased more effectively)

Text highlighted in brown : inappropriate use of linkers 

Colour-coded advice

I'm not expert enough in HTML and blogging to be sure that this will work, but what I've tried to do in this post is create some colour-coded advice on how to correct errors that have been highlighted in your writing. If I've highlighted an error in yellow, for example, the yellow boxes below will contain advice on how to fix the problem. Click on an error type for advice

articles and countability	collocation	inappropriate linkers
modal verbs	noun phrase construction	parallel structure
pattern grammar	punctuation	referents
sentence structure	spelling / typos	style and register
subject-verb agreement	verb phrase	vocabulary choice
word class	word form	word order

 

Look at the noun that is expressing your meaning. Is it countable? Should it be singular or plural? Does your reader know exactly which one(s) you are referring to?

What’s the key word you are trying to use? Are you sure that it means what you want to express? Check collocations resources for appropriate collocates.

What’s the key word you are trying to use? Check a dictionary to see what patterns it should be used with.

Is your linking expression English? Is it logical? Will it help your reader to see a connection between sentences or sections? Do you really need it?

Have you used an appropriate combination of TENSE and ASPECT? Think about when your verb “happened”? Is it a completed action? Is it a repeated action? Think about the precise meaning of your verb. Is it an action that was “done” by someone or something? Does your sentence structure reflect this? If you are using a modal verb, are you sure that it expresses your intended meaning? Will your reader understand exactly what you want them to?

Check the structure of your sentence. How many verbs are there? How many subjects are there? Do you need to use any clever grammatical devices to include more than one subject and verb in your sentence? Do your nouns look like nouns? Do your verbs look like verbs? Are adjectives used to modify nouns? Are adverbs used to modify verbs? Does your sentence include any addition adverbial references to time, place, or attitude?

Does every sentence begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop? Are there any strange capital letters in the middle of sentences? Read your text aloud and pause wherever you have used a comma. Do commas help express your meaning clearly?

Have you turned on the spelling and grammar check on Microsoft Word? Are there any red or green lines for you to fix? Have you asked a friend to read your text for sloppy mistakes?

Is your choice of vocabulary suitable for a piece of academic writing? Have you avoided contractions and colloquialisms? Is it possible to express the same meaning with fewer words?

 

When an error is difficult to categorise

It might help you to understand some of the terms I use in my feedback if you consider one or two examples which I find difficult to categorise:

1: Is the problem here related to SENTENCE STRUCTURE or PUNCTUATION?

The first two authors teach at Essex Business school, University of Essex, UK, while the third works for Pantheon Ventures–Russell Private Equity, They have written several articles about the analysis of UK IPO underpricing and venture capitalists.

We could certainly classify this as a SENTENCE STRUCTURE problem.  Some teachers and writers will call this a RUN-ON SENTENCE.  To fix it, though, we just need to pay attention to PUNCTUATION:

The first two authors teach at Essex Business school, University of Essex, UK, while the third works for Pantheon Ventures–Russell Private Equity; they have written several articles about the analysis of UK IPO underpricing and venture capitalists.

Where possible, I like to use the term that will enable the easiest correction of the problem, so in this case I’d probably bring the student’s attention to PUNCTUATION.

2: Is the problem here WORD CLASS or PATTERN GRAMMAR?

They have written several articles about analysis  UK IPO underpricing and venture capitalists.

Again, it could be either of these issues.  With attention to WORD CLASS, our correction becomes:

They have written several articles about analysing UK IPO underpricing and venture capitalists.

PATTERN GRAMMAR might lead us to:

They have written several articles about the analysis of UK IPO underpricing and venture capitalists.

3: Is this an example of a WORD CLASS or COLLOCATION problem?

an abundant of knowledge

What’s more important?  The fact that “abundant” is an adjective and so should be corrected to the noun “abundance” or the fact that “an abundance of knowledge” is a strange combination of nouns that a reader might not understand.  In this case, I think we can arrive at a better correction via attention to COLLOCATION (I would suggest “considerable knowledge”, an option listed in the Oxford Collocations Dictionary).

4: Are these examples of COLLOCATION or PATTERN GRAMMAR problems?

The results describe that…

The results present that…

Perhaps it's easiest just to say "both".  Results don't "describe" or "present" anything, so the writer should find another combination.  At the same time, DESCRIBE and PRESENT should be followed by a NOUN PHRASE, not THAT and then a Subject + Verb.  The whole phrase needs to be rewritten!

Word Class and Word Form

I make a distinction between WORD CLASS and WORD FORM which might seem small at first, but has an important effect on how you might correct the error. Take the following example:

It is so highly concentrated that the liquidity of the HKD market is relative slower.

"Relative" is a problem of WORD CLASS.  The writer has used an adjective, but they need an adverb.  "Slower" is an adjective, and the writer needs an adjective, but it's not quite right for their purpose. The problem is WORD FORM.  The adjective they need is "slow", not the comparative form "slower".  This is like the difference between "bored" and "boring", both forms of the word are adjectives, but carry a different meaning. You're probably bored now, because this blog is boring.

Collocations Resources

I tend to label a lot of vocabulary errors as issues of COLLOCATION.  An introduction to collocations will be included in the early stages of all the courses I teach on, but my basic example is always that in English (an many other languages, so I’m told), a combination like “ride a bicycle” is a good collocation, and “drive a bicycle” is not.  In academic writing, I often find myself correcting “bad” collocations like “make a research” (it should be something like DO or CONDUCT RESEARCH)

In order to correct COLLOCATION errors by yourself, here are some online resources for you to explore. Let me know if you have any questions about how to use / access any of the sites, and tell me also if you have any particular requests regarding online resources.

Dictionaries
cambridge dictionaries online
longman online dictionary
macmillan online dictionary
oxford dictionary (and the less legal oxford collocations dictionaryhttp://5yiso.appspot.com/)

Corpora and Concordancers
collins concordance and collocations sampler
mark davies' british national corpus search
a huge but fairly anonymous concordancing site

How to resolve problems of pattern grammar

International students often come to the UK after years of studying English in their home country, and are surprised to be told that they are not using words properly, especially when this relates to “easy” words that they learned a long time ago.  I suspect that this is because they’ve learned words through translation or as items on vocabulary lists.  As a result, there’s never been any emphasis on how to use words correctly.  Given how common words like MAKE, MOST, and ALMOST are, I am sometimes shocked at how few of my students can actually use them in a sentence, despite the fact that they are just a month or two away from starting postgraduate courses. 

I use the term PATTERN GRAMMAR in my feedback to highlight exactly this phenomenon.  A student has probably chosen an appropriate vocabulary item, but hasn’t used it correctly.  I like the term PATTERN GRAMMAR because I think it encourages us to think of strings of words, and not just words as individual items.  If I want to use the word AFRAID, for example, I need to know that I can either write “I am afraid of heights”, “I am afraid of old men with big moustaches” (be + afraid + of + NOUN PHRASE) or “I am afraid to go there alone” (Be + afraid + to + verb).  I can even go with “I am afraid that I cannot come to class today” (be + afraid + that + Subject + Verb).

If you have an error highlighted as a problem of PATTERN GRAMMAR (which may just be highlighted in yellow, for you to work out by yourself), you can try to fix it by following this process:

1.       Go to a good dictionary, like The Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of English

2.       Look at the listed patterns of use for your key word.  Can you find the example that best reflects your meaning?

3.       Compare YOUR pattern with the dictionary example.

4.       Adapt your pattern so that it reflects what the dictionary tells you.

There are some complications that might get in your way, so it’s worth considering the following questions:

a)      Are you checking the right form of your key word? 

-      sometimes errors occur because the pattern for a noun, says, is not applicable to its corresponding verb.  We say HAVE AN INFLUENCE ON, and HAVE AN EFFECT ONN (both nouns, and both followed by noun phrases), but not *the USA influences on the UK, or *tiredness affects on exam performance (no preposition follows the verb: it should just be THE USE INFLUENCES THE UK, and TIREDNESS AFFECTS EXAM PERFORMANCE)

b)      If your key word is a verb, is it TRANSITIVE or INTRANSITIVE?

-          again, a good dictionary will tell you this (often with an I or T next to the entry for a verb).  A TRANSITIVE verb needs to be followed by an object; an INTRANSITIVE does not take an object (which will also mean that it can’t be used in the passive voice).  This should explain why *the researchers measured and *the crash was occurred 

Recording and Learning Vocabulary

Some important considerations when recording and learning new vocabulary:

1. Is it useful? Consider field and register - the Academic Word List Highlighter may help you here.

2. What does it mean? A good dictionary will help you. Try Cambridge's free online dictionaries. There's no problem with using translation to understand basic meaning, but you will still need to consider all the other points here.

3. How can you remember it? This article by Scott Thornbury may be useful.

4. What type of word is it? (adjective, verb, noun, adverb - context and a dictionary will help.  If it's a noun, is it countable or uncountable, singular of plural?).

5. How can you use it? Look at the context in which you found it, think about collocation (search The Oxford Collocations Dictionary for help) , and the patterns that it may be used in. Cambridge's free online dictionaries list possible patterns of use under each definition.

6. Does it belong to a FAMILY of words? Finding the word "unilaterally", for example, can open your eyes to "lateral" and "unilateral".

7. Is there anything IRREGULAR about this word / phrase? What do you need to remember about it? Is it a noun with an irregular plural form (e.g. children, people), is it an intransitive verb (if you don't know what "intransitive" mean, check the glossary of the Internet Grammar of English).

8. Can you pronounce it? Again, a good dictionary will give you a phonemic transcription of a word's pronunciation, and online dictionary sites like Cambridge's have sound clips of how to pronounce each word (with British and American variations provided).

Collocations Quiz

If you're still not quite sure what a collocation is, try this very short and sweet quiz on the BBC Learning English website. 

Pattern Grammar

I often find myself using the term PATTERN GRAMMAR when trying to diagnose problems with students' writing, but I wonder if they always understand what I mean by this...I certainly don't think that many other teachers are likely to use the term with them. As far as I can remember, I think that I first heard the term used during a talk by Dave Willis, who wrote a book called Rules, Patters and Words : Grammar and Lexis in English Language Teaching. There's actually a sequence of slides from one of Dave's talks available online here, but I'll try to give my own perspective on things...

My students tend to already know hundreds of patterns without ever having stopped to think about them. When someone learns English, they'll probably realise quite early on that when they use the verb LIKE, they're going to use a noun of some kind straight afterwards (e.g. I like sleeping, I don't like this blog). They'll find the same can apply when they use WOULD LIKE (I'd like a banana sandwich), but when they start talking about plans or aspirations, they need to employ a more complex pattern of words. After all, "I would like a train driver when I'm older" doesn't reflect the ambition "I would like to be a train driver when I'm older". So this is pattern grammar...when you use a particular word, you'll need to know what pattern of prepositions and word forms follows it. The verb GIVE, for instance, can be followed by"me all your money!" and "all your money to me!" but not "for me all your money".

Quite understandably, when a student writes in English, there are going to be some patterns that they need but have not yet learned, and there may be some patterns that they've seen before, but which get forgotten or confused because of the influence of the student's first language. It used to frustrate me that students would produce patterns that they had clearly never seen before in English (and give ME more work to do in correcting their work), but I eventually came to realise that incorrect patterns may be the result of guesswork (perhaps applying a pattern they know for a similar word) or translation. I recently learned, for instance, that in Arabic, the pattern used with CONSIDER is CONSIDER + SOMEONE + AS + SOMETHING, which explains why so many of my Arabic-speaking students insert an unnecessary "as" into expressions with CONSIDER.

So how can we avoid problems with pattern grammar? I would recommend three approaches:

1. Be patient and realistic. Nobody is going to learn the pattern for every English word overnight. Any learner of English will encounter new patterns throughout their life. I know people who are extremely proficient in speaking and writing in English but who still make occasional slips with patterns.

2. Learn patterns when you learn vocabulary items. Any time you learn a new word, check the pattern that follows it. If you write new vocabulary down, write it in the pattern in which you first encountered it. Likewise, if you notice an unfamiliar or surprising pattern while reading, make a note of it and learn it. Do you really know a word until you know how to use it?

3. Use a good dictionary. The Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary online is free and with every definition gives examples of the pattern in which a word may be used. When writing an essay, give yourself sufficient time to check patterns that you are unsure of before submitting your work. If feedback from a teacher indicates problems within particular expressions, identify the key word, look it up in a dictionary, and check the patterns which the word may be used within. A student of mine recently produced the expression "they seek for better opportunities". A quick look at the verb SEEK in the dictionary throws up the examples "seeking jobs", "seeking asylum", and "legal advice should be sought". No "for" anywhere...the pattern is simply SEEK + OBJECT. Easy!

Which vs That

OK. What's the difference between WHICH and THAT?...let's take a deep breath and then begin...

Perhaps the first step should be to look at DEFINING RELATIVE CLAUSES. In Cassell's Students' English Grammar, Jake Allsop defines relative clauses as being "like adjectives in that they give information about a noun or a pronoun". However, unlike most adjectives, relative clauses FOLLOW the noun (e.g. the woman that I love, the book that I read).

There are two types of relative clause - DEFINING and NON-DEFINING. Suppose I was to say "I hate the student". Would you know which student I was referring to? I think not, because I have lots of different students. If I DEFINE which student I mean, you will understand more clearly. So, how about "I hate the student WHO ASKS ME QUESTIONS ABOUT GRAMMAR AT THE BEGINNING OF CLASS, BEFORE HE HAS EVEN SAID HELLO TO ME". With this extra information, you can understand that "the student" is Yasir. The clause "WHO ASKS ME QUESTIONS ABOUT GRAMMAR AT THE BEGINNING OF CLASS, BEFORE HE HAS EVEN SAID HELLO TO ME" provides a definition of "the student". OK? Hmm....perhaps I should have chosen a shorter and more simple example. How about "I never eat food". It's not true, is it? So we add "I never eat food WHICH HAS BEEN REHEATED IN A MICROWAVE". The extra information defines the type of food to which I am referring (it's very hard to define defining relative clauses without using defining relative clauses. I love grammar).

The examples I have given so far contain examples of WHO and WHICH, but not THAT. So here's the first key difference between WHICH and THAT:

WHO refers to people (like THE STUDENT WHO ASKS ME GRAMMAR QUESTIONS). WHICH refers to things (like FOOD WHICH HAS BEEN REHEATED IN A MICROWAVE). THAT, however, can refer to both. So we can say THE STUDENT THAT ASKS ME GRAMMAR QUESTIONS and THE FOOD THAT HAS BEEN REHEATED IN A MICROWAVE. Easy. Lovely. Perfect...WHICH = THINGS, while THAT = THINGS or PEOPLE...simple...

If only life were always that simple...actually there are some relative clauses in which it is NOTpossible to use THAT. These are NON-DEFINING RELATIVE CLAUSES, which just give extra information. That last sentence is an example of one, but here are two more:

- I hate Yasir, who comes from Saudi Arabia.

- I read War and Peace, which many people find difficult boring, in less than a week.

In these two sentences, I expect my reader to know who / what I am referring to when I write YASIR or WAR AND PEACE. My reader doesn't need a DEFINITION of these nouns, but I want to provide some extra information, so I provide it through a relative clause. Notice, however, that these relative clauses are surrounded by commas. The comma shows that the clause is separate and, if you like, not ESSENTIAL for understanding my main point. In cases like this, it is NOT POSSIBLE to use THAT. So we can't say "I read War and Peace, that many people find difficult..." or ""I hate Yasir, that comes from...". No no no...

So here is a second key point about WHICH and THAT. Don't use THAT after a comma. This is useful to know, because sometimes WHICH is used to continue a sentence and give extra information about a whole clause or statement. THAT is not used for this person. For example:

- I missed my bus, which is why I was late for class.

- I ate too much cheese last night, which is why I had nightmares.

Remember that THAT does not follow a comma, so if we wanted to use it in these examples, we would have to start a new sentence:

- I missed my bus. That is why I was late for class.

- I ate too much cheese last night. That is why I had nightmares.

Of course, if we are developing an argument in academic writing, we are more likely to use THIS than THAT, because THIS makes the subject seem more immediate and relevant to our reader. This is why (can you see what I'm doing?) you will not find many sentences which begin with THAT in academic writing.

No doubt you are bored of reading this by now, but I should mention two further functions of THAT and WHICH that / which (ha ha) show how different they are.

WHICH is used for questions when, as Jake Allsop states "you wish to identify one or more things or people from a group of things or people". For example:

- Which do you prefer, coke or pepsi?

- Which Spice Girl would you most like to kill...sorry, I mean kiss?

- Which shirt shall I wear tonight?

In such questions, it would be impossible to replace WHICH with THAT. The same is true when we creat a noun phrase with WHICH, such as in the sentence "I can't decide which shirt to wear tonight" or "I don't care which Spice Girl you kill first". Yes, I meant "kill" that time...

Finally, THAT has functions which / that (ha ha again) cannot be performed by WHICH. One is DEMONSTRATIVE, like in the phrase "that time" (two sentences back - remember?), "I want that one!" or even "I don't want to kiss that Spice Girl".

THAT is also a conjuction (e.g."It's so funny that you want to kill the Spice Girls" and "I find it surprising that the Spice Girls are all still alive") and can be used to report speech and ideas - something that university students SHOULD find incredibly useful. Consider expressions like:

- I think that I love you.

- I believe that I love you.

- I know that I love you.

- Don't forget that I love you...

- Have you heard that the Spice Girls have broken up?

...and so on and so on. That's enough love for one evening. Notice, though, how THAT is used to introduce a statement or idea, and it allows us to use one subject and verb after another. I KNOW THAT THIS IS NOT EASY BUT TRY TO REMEMBER THAT I AM DOING THE BEST I CAN...

If you're really clever, you'll ask why I didn't write "the best THAT I can"...but that's a question for another day...