Warm-Up 3 is all about turning informal, spoken language into formal, written language. The prompt is the kind of thing a health-and-safety officer might say when he's on a site visit, but the written version of his recommendations will use different grammatical structures and different words.
Remember that you've only got FIVE sentences to produce - you don't need to write the entire report.
Tuesday 24 March 2009
Friday 13 March 2009
Feedback on Warm-Up 2
I think that I've now marked everyone's Warm-Up 2 - the hire car from hell. If you're still waiting for your feedback, get in touch and I'll get it back to you as soon as I can.
There are four points which I'd like to comment on, having read everyone's Warm-Ups:
1. strategy
2. short forms
3. formal words
4. assure-ensure
1. It's important to get your strategy right when you complain. Firstly, you need to ask yourself what you hope to achieve. It ought to be something concrete, like getting your money back. If, on the other hand, you're just hoping to let off steam and feel better, it's much better to try chocolate, beer - or friends! In other words, don't try to score points in a letter of complaint, or engage the sympathy of the person you're writing to about the awful treatment you've received. Remember that they work for the company you're complaining about, so you could end up making your position worse by alienating them. Being factual and dispassionate is the best strategy - you can always save the threats for the second letter, if 'reasonable' doesn't work!
2. Short forms are forms like "can't", "I'm" and "don't". When you write formal letters, you don't use short forms at all - you have to write the forms out in full: "cannot", "I am" or "do not".
3. There are also some words which just don't fit in formal letters. One of these is "get" and another is "maybe". In my comments I've described these as "colloquial", which means, basically, "spoken". If you think of the difference between "buck" and "dollar", "quid" and "pound", or "spänn" and "krona", you can see the difference between colloquial and formal language. The colloquial words aren't slang, because everyone understands them, but you say them, rather than write them (though you can write them in informal contexts).
4. Finally, the difference between "assure" and "ensure" came up quite a lot in these Warm-Ups. If I assure you that my intentions are honourable, I'm basically making a promise. If I ensure that you get your money, then I see to it that it happens. It's the difference between a promise and a guarantee.
Good luck with Send-In Task 2
There are four points which I'd like to comment on, having read everyone's Warm-Ups:
1. strategy
2. short forms
3. formal words
4. assure-ensure
1. It's important to get your strategy right when you complain. Firstly, you need to ask yourself what you hope to achieve. It ought to be something concrete, like getting your money back. If, on the other hand, you're just hoping to let off steam and feel better, it's much better to try chocolate, beer - or friends! In other words, don't try to score points in a letter of complaint, or engage the sympathy of the person you're writing to about the awful treatment you've received. Remember that they work for the company you're complaining about, so you could end up making your position worse by alienating them. Being factual and dispassionate is the best strategy - you can always save the threats for the second letter, if 'reasonable' doesn't work!
2. Short forms are forms like "can't", "I'm" and "don't". When you write formal letters, you don't use short forms at all - you have to write the forms out in full: "cannot", "I am" or "do not".
3. There are also some words which just don't fit in formal letters. One of these is "get" and another is "maybe". In my comments I've described these as "colloquial", which means, basically, "spoken". If you think of the difference between "buck" and "dollar", "quid" and "pound", or "spänn" and "krona", you can see the difference between colloquial and formal language. The colloquial words aren't slang, because everyone understands them, but you say them, rather than write them (though you can write them in informal contexts).
4. Finally, the difference between "assure" and "ensure" came up quite a lot in these Warm-Ups. If I assure you that my intentions are honourable, I'm basically making a promise. If I ensure that you get your money, then I see to it that it happens. It's the difference between a promise and a guarantee.
Good luck with Send-In Task 2
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