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.