Building your vocabulary

Most international students are concerned about the size of their English vocabulary. This is clearly an important factor in both writing and reading. But the following points are worth considering:

• New words that you meet will be either specialist vocabulary or general academic vocabulary. For example, if you are a medical student there are words such as 'vaccination' which belong to your discipline and which you soon learn. But there are also many words used in most academic texts e.g. 'evolutionary' that you will need to use. This general vocabulary may be harder to master.

• Everybody has two sets of vocabulary; active and passive. Passive vocabulary are words that you recognise but do not use in speech or writing, while the active vocabulary, which is smaller, are words that you can use more fluently in your written or spoken language. As time goes by, words can move from the passive to the active store.

• Do not try to learn all the new words that you meet. Many will be unimportant. If the same word recurs frequently, then it is worth memorising.

• Pay special attention to verbs.They can play a critical role in your understanding of a sentence. It can be useful to keep a record of new verbs in order to make your writing more effective.

• Studying suffixes and prefixes will help you understand much new academic vocabulary. A good example are the suffixes -phile and -phobe. An Anglophile is someone who loves England, while the opposite is an Anglophobe!

Note-making - a vital step in essay writing

Notes are for your personal use so you should create your own style. Your teachers will not read or mark them, but you need to make sure you can still understand your notes months after reading the original book or article.

a) To avoid the risk of plagiarism you must use your own words and not copy phrases from the original.

b) The quantity of notes you make depends on your task: you may only need a few points, or a lot of detail.

c) Always record the source of your notes. This will save time when you have to write the list of references.

d) Notes are often written quickly, so keep them simple. Do not write sentences. Leave out articles (a/ the) and prepositions (of/ to).

e) If you write lists, it is important to have clear headings (underlined) and numbering systems (a, b, c, or 1, 2, 3,) to organise the information. Do not crowd your notes.

f) Use symbols (+, >, =) to save time.

g)  Use abbreviations (e.g. = for example). You need to make up your own abbreviations for your subject area. But do not abbreviate too much, or you may find your notes hard to understand in the future!

But remember, taking notes is not a substitute for writing your essay! Don't delay starting to write for too long!

English - the global language of protest

Why do protesters as far apart as Bangkok, Cairo and Kiev carry banners and signs written in English? 

Many street demonstrators know that their protest marches will be filmed by international news media, and watched by millions around the world who cannot read Thai, Arabic or Ukrainian. So the logical way of explaining their political demands is by writing their signs in English - the international language of political protest. On top of that, protesting in English is cool - linking the protesters to the Anglo-Saxon democracies.

But before you get your paintbrush out and set down your demands, maybe it's a good idea to check the spelling first - see above!

Countable or uncountable?

 'Traffic' is an example of an English uncountable noun. We cannot say 'a traffic' or 'three traffics'. You need to learn the most common uncountable nouns:

accommodation
advice
behaviour
commerce
data
education
equipment
furniture
information
knowledge
money
news
permission
progress
research
scenery
staff
travel
trouble
vocabulary
weather
work

Note that many uncountable nouns can be 'counted' using an extra noun:

A piece of advice
An item of equipment

Compare:

All universities conduct research (in general)
The research I began four years ago (specific)

In American English there is a tendency to use certain nouns in the plural e.g. behaviours, accommodations.

Also, note that some nouns can be both countable and uncountable. These are often words for general concepts e.g. love, life, war, death:

Love is a powerful emotion (uncountable)
He had three great loves: his work, his garden and his dog (countable)

The first Christmas card

 

This design, showing a family celebrating Christmas, was produced in 1843 in Britain, just after the introduction of the postal service. Only 2,000 of the hand-coloured cards were printed, which may explain their high price of one shilling (about £5 today).

 

Since then sending cards has become a popular feature of the Christmas holiday in many countries, since they allow people to make contact with friends and relations who they may not have seen all year. Today, however, the quantity of cards sent is declining, since e-cards can be sent electronically at little or no cost.

 

In December many students find they have to spend the holidays away from their homes and families for the first time. This may be a difficult experience, but it also gives the chance to rest and relax after a busy term, and maybe catch up with some good movies!

 

I would like to wish all readers of this blog a Happy Christmas and a Successful New Year!

 

 

Amazing adverbs

 

 

Adverbs are used in academic texts in two important ways.

 

1) To modify verbs or adjectives:

 

Reasonably good data is only available for the last thirty years

 

Decomposition eventually ceases in modern landfills

 

2) Individually, often at the start of a sentence, to introduce new points or link back to a previous idea:

 

Currently, the earth's atmosphere appears to be ...

 

Alternatively, the use of non-conventional renewable energy ...

 

There are three main groups of adverbs used in the first case:

 

a) Adverbs of time

 

The previously published report ...

 

b) Adverbs of degree

 

The argument was significantly refined ...

 

c) Adverbs of manner

 

Historically speaking ...

 

In the second case, at the start of sentences, writers must be careful not to use adverbs which reflect the writer's own opinions e.g. luckily, happily, sadly.

 

The following are usually followed by a comma at the start of a sentence:

 

Recently, there has been a marked trend ...

 

Increasingly, women are starting families ...

 

Originally, tea was drunk from small bowls ...

 

Currently, over five thousand people work ...

 

Traditionally the costume was worn on feast days ...

 

Other common adverbs used in this way are:

 

Clearly

 

Obviously

 

Alternatively

 

Similarly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A simple way to get the best mark for your exam essays

When you have to write essays in exams, time is vital. But students often make the mistake of not fully answering the question given, and so they lose marks. This is because they ignore part of the question.

Essay titles often have two parts e.g.

'How can schools make better use of IT (information technology)? Are there any drawbacks to using IT in the classroom?'

Before starting to write, you must decide how many words to give to each part. In this case you may decide that the first part (How ...) is more important and should have 60% of your answer, so the second part (Are there ...) would get 40%.

If you are writing 1,500 words the introduction and conclusion should take about 20%, which is 300 words, leaving 1,200 for the main body. The first part would then have about 700 words, and the second part 500.

If you do not organise your answer in this way you may find you have written too much for the first part, and do not have enough time to answer the second part properly.

The same principle applies to essays done for coursework: even if there is less time pressure it is still important to balance your answer in this way.