Warm-Up 4 and the end of the course

Warm-Up 4 doesn't give you any marks (!), but it is, perhaps, a way for you to see the collective wisdom of the group about two key areas in the In-Tray exam: complaining and apologising. Since you don't get any marks for it, you don't have to do it either - but I'm sure that your contributions will be gratefully received by everyone else, if you do!

You publish your Warm-Up 4s as comments to this blog post.

The In-Tray Exam is based on the idea that you work for a temporary agency (like Manpower) and have been sent in to cover the work of one of the people employed by one of the companies on this course. An in-tray is the plastic or metal tray on your desk into which all the paperwork you have to deal with is placed. When you've dealt with it, it's transferred to your 'out-tray' to be sent off or filed.

The exam itself will be posted on the course web site on Friday, 27th April (via the Module 4 section of the site). It's a .pdf document which you can either download or read directly from the screen. When you read it, you'll notice that there are four writing tasks to complete, but you're given three complete sets of tasks to choose between, one for each of the companies in the course materials.

You don't have to stick to the same company for all four tasks - you can switch from one company to another, or you can stay with the same company all the way through.

You submit your In-Tray Exam to David Richardson as a Word document by e-mail. (If you're using Microsoft Works, rather than Word or an equivalent, remember to save the document as an .rtf - Rich Text Format - document, or David won't be able to open it).

When the exam's been received, David will print it on paper, mark it manually, write a mark and commentary for each task, and, finally, add your In-Tray Exam marks to the marks you've received for your Warm-Ups and Send-Ins. When the total exceeds 60 marks, you've passed, and when the total exceeds 80 marks, you've got a 'VG'. Your marks are reported on LADOK, the Swedish national university computer, more or less the same day the exam's marked.

When everything's finished, David puts your exam, the commentary and a statement of your total marks into an envelope and posts it to whatever address we have for you (if you've recently moved, or haven't given us your address, please let us know your current address as soon as possible). He'll also send you a mail straightaway with your final result.

At the end of the final mail is a link to the on-line course evaluation. This is totally anonymous - and, besides, you've already got your mark, so you can say what you like! Feedback from you is very valuable to us (even if you don't get any direct benefit from it!) and all of us on the course team greatly appreciate hearing what you've thought of the course.

Good luck with the exam! The due date is 3rd June … but, as usual, we'll be understanding if you're a little late.

General Comment on Warm-Up 3

Once again, you've done a good job on this task. Formal English can seem a bit pedantic, but the reason it's like that is that when you write reports like this, you have to express yourself in precise and unambiguous terms … which is the exact difference between good formal English and good informal English!

In other words, when you speak or write informally, you don't want to strip away the nuances so that what you say can only be interpreted one way … and when you express yourself formally, the opposite occurs. Compare, for example, what a proposal of marriage might sound like with the form of words which is used in the marriage ceremony!

This particular task had a number of hidden 'traps' in it, so here are some tips about how you can avoid them:

1. Colloquial Language

This is a very difficult area, because it's hard to see from the word itself whether or not it's colloquial. 'Diggers', for example, as some of you discovered, is colloquial: they're called 'excavators', or sometimes 'front-loaders', if they're the kind which, say, pick up large amounts of sand at a time. A front-loader will often have a 'back-hoe' attachment which allows it also to excavate … just to make things difficult. 'Dumper trucks', on the other hand, isn't colloquial - that's what they're called (they're small vehicles, like a huge wheelbarrow with an engine!).

2. Rules and Regulations

There's a subtle difference between these two. 'Rules' are for situations you've entered into on a voluntary basis; 'regulations' are part of the law. Thus a private club can have rules - if you break them, you might be thrown out of the club, but you won't be arrested. Regulations, on the other hand, are written into the law (or the basis on which they're written is written into the law). If you break them, there can be legal consequences.

3. The Language of Obligation

This is a particularly difficult area for Swedes, since the word 'obligatorisk' looks so much like 'obligatory' … but there are all sorts of differences.

Let's get 'obligatory' out of the way first. Mostly, this word is used in similar situations to the ones where 'rules' are used: for situations you've entered into voluntarily. A doctor, lawyer or priest (or even a teacher!) has certain obligations which are part of their profession. A doctor, for example, has an obligation to suggest the best course of treatment for you, not because she could be arrested if she doesn't, but because she swore an oath when she became a doctor to behave this way, which was an obligation taken on freely. Another way to look at it is that an obligation (which is 'obligatory') comes from within the individual.

If you don't have a choice about something at all (either because of regulations, or because of common sense, such as testing your parachute before you go up in the air), then it's compulsory.

You might be 'recommended' to do something (like wear warm clothing before you jump off a mountain in a paraglider!), but if you're 'advised' to do something, that's a great deal stronger. I might be advised to check the wind speed too before I jump off that mountain. They can't actually stop me, though, if I choose to ignore either a piece of advice or a recommendation.

And if I'm following the regulations in the law, I'll be 'required' to do something (like having my driving licence with me if I drive a car in Sweden - in the UK you used only to be required to produce it at a police station within three days!). Having your licence on you when you drive in Sweden is therefore a 'requirement' and you can be prosecuted or fined solely on the basis that you left it at home before you sat in the car and drove off.

In this exercise, then, the Chinese were required to follow the regulations because that's compulsory in Sweden!

Warm-Up 3

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 she's on a site visit, but the written version of her recommendations will use different grammatical structures and different words … because it's written and formal, not spoken and informal.

Remember that you've only got FIVE sentences to produce - you don't need to write the entire report.

Feedback on Warm-Up 2

I've just finished marking the Warm-Up 2 tasks and here's some general feedback (if you've submitted the Warm-Up, but not received feedback, let me know and I'll see what's happened; if you've not submitted yet, it's not too late!).

Firstly, nearly everyone worked out that the best way to get your money back is to be calm, dispassionate and factual. It's tempting to let off steam, but the only practical effect of that (in a letter of complaint) is to make things take longer! The recipient of this letter probably just wants to get rid of you by paying you off (the sums involved are tiny), so she probably wants to avoid bad publicity, more than anything else. On the other hand, she's not going to admit anything that might end up costing the company mega-bucks in a court case!

There were one or two cases where the letter came across as much too informal too. You're trying to impress on the company that they're dealing with a professional - someone who's angry at the moment, but could easily be placated by the insertion of money into her bank account! You need to be strictly formal in this letter, so using 'get', short forms or friendly closures like 'Best regards,' aren't a good idea.

Here are some specific points about language which cropped up in Warm-Up 2:

1. Defining and non-defining relative clauses

Sorry to get all technical on you!

Relative clauses often start with 'which' or 'that', and there are some of them that provide information essential to your reader's understanding of what you're talking about ('defining relative clauses') and some which add a little extra information, but aren't strictly necessary for your reader to understand the basic message ('non-defining relative clauses'), like these ones:

Defining relative clause:

He gave her the password which opened her computer account.

(I.e. out of all the passwords in the world, this one was the special one which did the job.)

Non-defining relative clause

She used the password to open her account, which meant that she was able to answer her new boss' mail on time.

(I.e. using the password is one thing - answer the mail is another.)

Did you notice the punctuation?

Non-defining relative clauses use a comma, defining relative clauses don't.

What this comma does is shows your reader what connections you're making between information in your sentence. There are cases where getting this connection wrong can make it extremely difficult for your reader to understand what you're saying.

In the defining relative clause example above, for example, putting a comma in says that the password somehow opened the account all on its own, without her needing to do anything. You can imagine other sets of instructions where this might really confuse someone. Let's say they have to carry out two operations. Making what you need to carry out the first one use a non-defining relative clause could easily make someone imagine that they don't need to do anything else, like this:

Take the key, which opens the security lock, and fetch the file from the filing cabinet inside the file room.

(Non-defining relative clause … so it's 'extra', unimportant information … so the person fetching the file could well end up standing outside the room with a key in his hand, not realising that he has to use it to get into the room!)

Take the key which opens the security lock and fetch the file from the filing cabinet inside the file room.

(Defining relative clause - it's much more clear what the person has do now, isn't it.)

This may seem to be terribly unimportant, but remember that famous Swedish example:

Avrätta ej vänta!

(Execute - not - wait)

Is that 'Avrätta ej, vänta!' (Don't execute [him], wait!) or 'Avrätta, ej vänta!' (Execute [him], don't wait!)?

2. In/on/at

Prepositions often cause problems - it's usually more or less impossible to explain why you use one, not another. In this case though …

When you're talking about time and place,

IN is for the big things (in Sweden/in 2012)

ON is for the middle-sized things (on Main Street/on Monday)

AT is for specific points (at the corner of Main Street and Lexington/at 3.00 pm).

Warm-Up 2

Warm-Up 2 is all about complaining. 'The Hire Car from Hell' is all about really bad treatment when renting a car in the USA. The idea for this Warm-Up came from the wonderful film,"Trains, Planes and Automobiles", with Steve Martin and John Candy. The task is set up so that you don't have any other option than to write a well-composed letter to the company in the USA - and hope for the best. The sum of money involved is too small to make it worth your while starting a legal action (at least from this side of the Atlantic - it'd be different if you were living in the USA, where they have Small Claims Courts). There's also a lot of scope for 'he said-she said' situations (which is how they describe situations where one person says one thing, and the other person says something different in American English).

The task itself is quite limited: you only have to write FIVE sentences from the letter you'd write (i.e. NOT the entire letter). The point is to see whether you can calibrate your language, so that you express yourself firmly, but refrain from insults and gratuitous comments that will just result in your letter being filed in the trash can! Once again, there's a link to the Send-In Task which comes next.

You submit your Warm-Up Task 2 by copying your text into a comment. Remember to include FIVE sentences only - and to include your name in the submission.

By the way, if you don't know what the 'redeye' is, take a look at the first comment on this post.

Feedback on Warm-Up 1

I think I've marked all the Warm-Up 1s which have come in so far. If you've submitted yours, but not received feedback from me, mail me and I'll see if I can find out what happened to it.

If you haven't submitted your Warm-Up 1 yet, it's not too late! I'm quite happy to mark tasks which come in after the due dates, so just post it on the blog and I'll get an automatic notification.

I was very pleased with your efforts! You managed to produce personal presentations which had the right degree of informality, but were still rather formal. You managed to meet the goal of showing why the company was smart to hire you, too, which is probably the main function of such public personal presentations (i.e. it's all about your company, not about you!).

Remember, though, that the Send-In 1 presentation to existing clients will have to use a different tone (your Internet Tutor can help you out if you're not quite sure which tone to use!).

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Here are some general comments about the language you all used (you could call these 'frequently-made mistakes'!).

1. There's an exercise about capital letters in Module 1 - it's worth taking a look at it. Common capital letter mistakes were with job titles and academic subjects. If you're the boss of the company, your title is:

Managing Director

I.e. all the 'information words' in a title need capital letters, not just the first one. ('Information words' are the words which convey information, rather than being there for grammatical purposes, so words like 'of' and 'a' aren't usually capitalised).

Sometimes, though, job titles are generic (i.e. they describe a position you'll find in most companies, such as 'accounts clerk'). In those cases they aren't your specific job title, so they need lower-case letters.

Take a look at this example of academic subject titles too:

"He used psychology on his Psychology lecturer to get an extension for his late essay."

Note that the first 'psychology' is the generally-understood idea of messing with people's minds, whereas the second one is an academic subject. Words like 'engineering' and 'computer science' often create a certain amount of confusion if you get the capitalisation wrong.

2. If you're going to use a continuous verb (e.g. "I have been working here for four years.") you're stressing the passing of time. If you're stating a fact, you're going to use the simple form ("I work here as a computer technician." Note the generic job title without capital letters!).

In business communications you're most often stating facts, so ask yourself whether you really, really need that continuous tense, if you want to use one.

3. Talking about -ing forms, not all of them are verbs. There's a whole class of words called prepositions and these need some kind of noun form after them. For example:

I'm looking forward to a nice cup of coffee.

I'm looking forward to seeing you.

That 'seeing' is a noun form, not a verb form, and 'to' is a preposition, even though it sometimes works on the side in parts of verbs!

If English were easy, you wouldn't need teachers, would you!

4. Semi-colons definitely make your writing look posh … if you get them right!

The key thing to remember about semi-colons is that whatever they are being used to separate, the separated items must be equal in strength. The items also need to be longer and more complex - if they're simple and short, a comma would probably be better.

5. If, however, you're writing a sentence with one 'heavy' section and another 'light' one (e.g. where the 'light' section is a consequence of or 'follow-on' to the 'heavy' one), then you need a colon (if you're being formal) or a dash (if you're being less formal), like this:

In 2011 the company developed a new strategy: to break into the Far Eastern market.

The bit to the left of the colon is the main message of the sentence; the bit to the right of the colon is a further explanation of the main message. (I hope you noticed the use of a semi-colon here too!).

Warm-Up 1

This is the post to which you add your Warm-Up 1 task as a Comment (i.e. click on the Comment button below). When you add your Comment, don't forget to write your name on the post! You'd be amazed how much detective work I sometimes have to do to find out who actually wrote the comment!

Warm-Up 1 asks you to write a personal presentation for a web site. This is a general message that goes out to everyone who visits the web site of the new company you've just got a job with. I.e. it needs to be informative, but a bit general - and a good piece of advertising for your new employer. In other words, you need to show how smart your new employer is for hiring you!

You'll find a couple of useful links on the Warm-Up 1 page: one from the 'How to Do Things' site with some general advice, and an example of personal presentations from the Ericsson company.

When the Warm-Ups have all been marked and sent back (by me, David), I'll post a general comment in a post on this blog, with advice for everyone about Send-In Task 1.