Help with Grammar & Academic Writing (Website Recommendation)

If you like grammar to be explained to you very clearly then you probably want to take a look at this website. 

The Lecturette is a website with short, simple slideshows (like Powerpoints) about grammar and academic writing. Just click on something you want more explanation about and the slideshow in the middle of the page will try to explain it. It looks like the website has most of grammar points that you would find in a grammar book. However, what I really like are the extra slideshows about academic writing. Definitely worth looking at if you are preparing for university courses in English.

If you are on Twitter you can also get updates about new lessons from Piet.

Backchaining for Speaking and Presentations Preparation

“I sometimes struggle putting long sentences together. For this reason I get very apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience.”

The sentence above can be difficult to say correctly the first time. When I give a presentation I certainly don’t know everything I’m going to say. However, there are some parts of a presentation that you need to practise a lot.

Usually, you want to know how you are going to start and finish your introduction and your conclusion. These are important sentences, especially the first sentence. If you present your first sentence well then you build confidence which helps you during the rest of the presentation.

So we don’t need to know every word we are going to say... but we do need to practise a few key sentences.

How?

Backchaining. Here is an example of backchaining:

audience. 

large audience. 

a large audience. 

to a large audience. 

present to a large audience. 

to present to a large audience. 

have to present to a large audience. 

I have to present to a large audience. 

when I have to present to a large audience. 

apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience. 

very apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience. 

get very apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience. 

I get very apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience. 

reason I get very apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience. 

this reason I get very apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience. 

For this reason I get very apprehensive when I have to present to a large audience. 

Research shows that backchaining is a great way to practice speaking and it is much more effective than starting at the beginning when you have a problem.

Here is another example of back'chaining:

Phonetically	Non-Phonetically
/ʃən/  /eɪʃən/  /reɪʃən/  /ɪəˈreɪʃən/  /rɪəˈreɪʃən/  /tɪərɪəˈreɪʃən/  /dɪˌtɪərɪəˈreɪʃən/	shun  ay-shun  ray-shun  or-ray-shun  ree-or-ray-shun  tia-ree-or-ray-shun  de-tia-ree-or-ray-shun

You've just backchained the word ‘deterioration’.

So you can backchain with whole words or, if you are having problems with a specific word, you can back-chain the word alone. This method really helps learners to get the right stress and the right sounds (especially if you focus on the phonetics).

Think about how you might practise these example sentences (I've also provided the phonetic script to help you):

“Unfortunately, the deterioration of the city in the 80s led to a number of social problems.”

/ʌnˈfɔːʧnɪtli ðə dɪˌtɪərɪəˈreɪʃən əv ðə ˈsɪtɪ ɪn ðiː ˈeɪtiːz led tʊ ə ˈnʌmbə əv ˈsəʊʃəl ˈprɒbləmz/

“Good morning. Welcome to this presentation. Today I’m going to discuss issues of international trade and its relation to social welfare in various countries.”

/gʊd ˈmɔːnɪŋ/
/ˈwelkəm tə ðɪs ˌprezenˈteɪʃən/
/təˈdeɪ aiːm ˈgəʊɪŋ tə dɪsˈkʌs ˈɪʃuːz əv ˌɪntəˈnæʃənl treɪd ənd ɪts rɪˈleɪʃən tə ˈsəʊʃəl ˈwelfeə ɪn ˈveərɪəs ˈkʌntrɪz/

If you really want a challenge, try using backchaining to improve your speed and pronunciation of a tongue twister.

Remember, in general, good presentations are about
expressiveness, intonation and audience involvement.
A lot of this comes from good pronunciation and
good pronunciation comes from lots of practice!

Coherence in Academic Writing (University Preparation Tip #3)

Here is a short comic.  The hairy character is called Irwin and the woman he's telling his story to is Broom-Hilda.

Broom-Hilda by Russell Myers

I hope you see there is a problem with Irwin's story, specifically about the structure and about the topic of the story. If you don’t see the problem, read the story again. Look at each picture and try to answer this question: What is the main focus of the story in part 1, in part 2, in part 3, etc?

Do you see the problem now?

Part 1 is about the Young Princess, whereas Part 2 is about Uncle Hernando and Part 3 is about the Great Depression. The story has no focus... no coherence.

Make sure you don’t have this problem in your writing by:

1. Deciding on one specific topic. 
2. Making sure the topic and conclusion sentences of each paragraph tries to connect the paragraph’s idea to your essay topic. 
3. Re-reading your work several times to make sure you have clear coherence in your writing. 
4. Getting a friend/colleague to read your essay and asking their opinion about the coherence of the work. 

If you want a bit more help understanding this topic, you might want to take a look at an earlier article I wrote - Cohesion and Coherence.

Enjoy,

Gordon

Plagiarism – So What? (University Preparation Tip #2)

Plagiarism is stealing ideas from other writers without explaining in your text that these ideas belong to another person. It can be a whole chapter, a section, a paragraph, a sentence, maybe only part of a sentence. It is a BIG academic culture shock to many students and probably one of the most complicated academic ideas to completely understand.

I will probably write more about plagiarism in the future but this is a short post to say this: Plagiarism is a serious problem in many countries. Here is my evidence:

Pál Schmitt (Picture from BBC)

This is Pál Schmitt. He was the President of Hungary from 2010 to 2012. In April 2012, Schmitt had to resign as president of the country because it was discovered that his Ph.D. was mostly plagiarised from Bulgarian and German sources. You can listen to the story from the BBC or click here to listen and read it.

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg (Picture from Wikipedia)

This is Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg. He was the German Defence Minister and many people believed that he would be the next Chancellor of Germany. Unfortunately, in March 2011, Guttenberg was forced to resign when it was discovered that he had copied more than half of his 475-page Ph.D. thesis from other sources.

Ioan Mang (Picture from Twittweb)

This is Ioan Mang. He was the Education Minister of Romania until May 2012 when he was forced to resign because of multiple counts of plagiarism in many of his academic papers.

There are other cases or plagiarism where the politicians still have their jobs but many people want them to resign; Romania’s Prime Minister Victor Ponta, Russia’s Cultural Minister Vladimir Medinsky and German Education Minister Annette Schavan.

Tony Blair (Picture from Wikipedia)

This is not only something that individual people do. Countries have also plagiarised. In 2003, the British Government, led by Tony Blair, copied the work of Dr. Ibrahim al-Marashi to make a document that Britain and America used to ‘prove’ that Saddam Hussein was making WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) in Iraq. Al-Marashi’s academic work was plagiarised and then used as military intelligence and this document helped to start the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

All of these cases of plagiarism have been found quite easily now with the latest plagiarism-checking software that nearly all universities use.

Plagiarism is becoming easier and easier to identify and it is causing big problems for very powerful people. So my advice to students from other countries is that this is important and you need to spend some time thinking about it and you need to make sure that you understand what it is 100%.  If you don't understand, you need to speak to your tutors/lecturers/supervisors/teachers and get them to explain it to you so you do understand.

Not understanding plagiarism is not an excuse for plagiarising.

How Useful is Translation? (University Preparation Tip #1)

The simple answer is... very useful.

However, there are some major problems. Here is a paragraph in a variety of different languages. I've selected languages of students I've had in my pre-sessional classes in recent years.

First of all, can you guess what the different languages are? Your options are Vietnamese, Korean, Malay, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Indonesian and Arabic.

A

本款已被翻译使用谷歌。你也许可以看到，有几个明显的错误，你可能不完全了解，在这里我想传达的想法。出于这个原因，谷歌翻译，绝对是一个坏的选择为您的学术著作。你是使用和发展自己的技能，英语好得多。

B

وقد ترجمت هذه الفقرة باستخدام جوجل. يمكنك ان ترى على الأرجح أن هناك عدة أخطاء واضحة، وربما كنت لا أفهم بالضبط الأفكار أحاول أن أنقل هنا. لهذا السبب، جوجل ترجمة هو بالتأكيد خيارا سيئا لكتاباتك الأكاديمية. كنت أفضل حالا بكثير استخدام وتطوير المهارات الخاصة بك في اللغة الإنجليزية.

C

ย่อหน้านี้ได้รับการแปลโดยใช้ Google คุณอาจจะเห็นว่ามีข้อผิดพลาดที่เห็นได้ชัดหลายและคุณอาจไม่เข้าใจความคิดที่ว่าฉันพยายามที่จะสื่อความหมายที่นี่ ด้วยเหตุนี้ Google แปลเป็นมั่นเหมาะตัวเลือกที่ดีสำหรับการเขียนบทความทางวิชาการของคุณ คุณมีมากดีกว่าการใช้และพัฒนาทักษะของคุณเองในภาษาอังกฤษ

D

この段落は、Googleを使用して翻訳されています。あなたはおそらくいくつかの明白なエラーがあることを確認することができますし、おそらく正確に私がここで伝えしようとしているアイデアを理解していません。この理由は、Google翻訳は間違いなくあなたのアカデミック·ライティングのために不正なオプションです。あなたは英語で自分のスキルを使用して、開発からはるかに優れています。

E

Perenggan ini telah diterjemahkan dengan menggunakan Google. Anda mungkin dapat melihat bahawa terdapat beberapa kesilapan yang jelas dan anda mungkin tidak tepat memahami idea-idea yang saya cuba untuk menyampaikan di sini. Atas sebab ini, Google translate adalah satu pilihan yang buruk bagi penulisan akademik anda. Anda adalah jauh lebih baik menggunakan dan membangunkan kemahiran anda sendiri dalam bahasa Inggeris.

F

Ayat ini telah dijabarkan dengan menggunakan Google. Anda mungkin dapat melihat bahwa ada kesalahan yang jelas beberapa dan Anda mungkin tidak persis memahami ide-ide saya sedang mencoba untuk menyampaikan di sini. Untuk alasan ini, Google translate jelas merupakan suatu pilihan yang buruk untuk menulis akademis Anda. Anda jauh lebih baik menggunakan dan mengembangkan kemampuan Anda sendiri dalam bahasa Inggris.

G

Khoản này đã được dịch bằng cách sử dụng Google. Bạn có thể có thể thấy rằng có một số lỗi rõ ràng và có thể bạn không hiểu chính xác những ý tưởng tôi đang cố gắng truyền đạt ở đây. Vì lý do này, Google translate chắc chắn là một lựa chọn tồi cho văn bản học thuật của bạn. Bạn đang tốt hơn nhiều bằng cách sử dụng và phát triển các kỹ năng của riêng bạn trong tiếng Anh.

H

이 단락은 Google를 사용하여 번역되었습니다. 당신은 아마 여러 가지 명백한 오류가있다는 것을 볼 수 있으며, 아마도 바로 내가 여기 전하기 위해 노력하고 아이디어를 이해하지 않습니다. 이러한 이유로, Google 번역은 확실히 당신의 학문적 작문을위한 좋은 방법입니다. 당신은 영어로 자신의 능력을 사용하고 개발에게서 훨씬 더 있습니다.

Here are the answers:

A – Chinese

B – Arabic

C – Thai

D – Japanese

E – Malay

F – Indonesian

G – Vietnamese

H – Korean

How many did you identify correctly? One of them might be your native language. Did you notice how it doesn't look very good? The language is not very good and this is because I used Google Translate. This is the original English sentence:

“This paragraph has been translated using Google. You can probably see that there are several obvious errors and you probably don't exactly understand the ideas I'm trying to convey here. For this reason, Google translate is definitely a bad option for your academic writing. You are much better off using and developing your own skills in English.”

If you are using Google Translate too much, then it is important to know that the paragraphs you give your tutors are of similar quality to the examples I've shown you here.

If you want another example of this problem, follow these instructions:

1. Go to BBC News
2. Choose any article. 
3. Copy and paste a paragraph into Google Translate
4. Translate the text from English into your language. 

I hope you will notice that the translation is not perfect. Some of the translations might be very good (and some of them might be very bad as well) but all the translations will have some errors that will be obvious to you.

So what are the problems with this translation? 

1. A university tutor or pre-sessional teacher cannot help a student who uses an online translation website. A student who uses a website like Google Translate does not understand the grammar and vocabulary they are giving their teacher, so they will not understand the corrections they are given either. 
2. If a student needs to use a translator for their work then they are using non-English sources of information. This is useless for a university degree in Britain. How can your university tutor help you if they cannot read the original information you are using? Using an online translation website is often a sign of plagiarism, (I will always put this word, ‘plagiarism’, in red on this blog because it is a serious academic crime). Even if you have not plagiarised, using a translation website looks very suspicious and your tutors might not trust your work.

English for Academic Purposes (Website Recommendation)

I'm teaching EAP at the moment.  That means 'English for Academic Purposes' and that basically means English for university or college.  It's quite different from IELTS or TOEIC in many ways: the essays are much longer, effective listening needs more vocabulary and better understanding of grammar, and there is a lot about academic 'culture' that needs to be taught such as referencing and citation to avoid plagiarism.  I want to talk about plagiarism in a future post but at the moment this is a small blogpost to direct you to a great website:

Using English for Academic Purposes by Andy Gillett

This is a brilliant website that explains a lot about English for university and college courses.  Thanks, Andy Gillett!

Alternatively, you can visit to mobile site if you are accessing from a smartphone: Using English for Academic Purposes Mobile