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!

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

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.