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English & Linguistics / Re: The random etymology of the day
« on: August 27, 2014, 10:52:08 AM »
It's true! Back in the olden days, when debtors were trying to duck creditors,they used to have to say "The checkmate is in the mail." The added difficulty of the phrasing led many to be captured and forced to pay. Thus there was much popular pressure to shorten things and get away.
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English & Linguistics / Re: Dear Expert
« on: August 27, 2014, 10:49:01 AM »
Interesting thoughts.
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English & Linguistics / Re: Dear Expert
« on: August 25, 2014, 02:52:01 PM »
I'd live fir there to be a rules based approach, but clearly if there were this wouldn't be a problem for so many.
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English & Linguistics / Re: Dear Expert
« on: August 25, 2014, 12:43:11 PM »
Thank you! That's exactly the kind of advice and warnings I need!
I will try to implement your suggestions, and basically, while it still comes down to practice and exposure, you've given me ideas on how to make it less frustrating for all concerned.
Yay!
I will try to implement your suggestions, and basically, while it still comes down to practice and exposure, you've given me ideas on how to make it less frustrating for all concerned.
Yay!
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English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« on: August 25, 2014, 12:38:09 PM »
Example:
If it's all the same to you, I'd like to change the topic to the phrase "your mother"
If it's all the same to you, I'd like to change the topic to the phrase "your mother"
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English & Linguistics / Re: Dear Expert
« on: August 23, 2014, 04:59:23 PM »
I'm sure she'll manage it. I just don't want to steer her in a direction that is either wrong or more time consuming or frustrating than it needs to be. I really want to help. I can give her hundreds of practice sentences as I am a frequent reviewer of very badly written stuff from Chinese universities. She's already better than most of these folks, so I'm just picking examples of the specific things she wants work on. I figure it'd be better than critiquing her own writing at this point.
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English & Linguistics / Re: Dear Expert
« on: August 23, 2014, 03:32:09 PM »
That's kind of what I thought, that practice and repetition is the only way. Hoping someone with experience teaching ESL to this population would have a better solution.
For the a versus an, the problem doesn't appear to be the rule about vowel or consonant. I wish it were that simple. It's more like that they realize that there should be an article sometimes, but not sure when, and they use a/an some times when it should be the, and vice versa, intermingled with not using an article at all. Or using one when one isn't required. It seems like the usage is random, and certainly not rules based.
And, yes, I agree that these are common problems. They mark this very bright competent engineer as someone who cannot be used to write reports on her own or edit the work of others, and that limits her future as supervisory positions all require the ability to edit writing others have produced, and write well on ones own. The company is taking steps to have a more purposeful QC step using tech writers, but she will still be at a disadvantage if all her work costs the company more to fix than the work of other engineers does.
So, she can't get by having the same flaws as 95% of her countrymen. Not if she wants to rise up in the private sector. She will have a ceiling in our firm, I suspect. And we are one of the more flexible firms. More importantly, she wants to address this, and it seems like it should be fixable.
For the a versus an, the problem doesn't appear to be the rule about vowel or consonant. I wish it were that simple. It's more like that they realize that there should be an article sometimes, but not sure when, and they use a/an some times when it should be the, and vice versa, intermingled with not using an article at all. Or using one when one isn't required. It seems like the usage is random, and certainly not rules based.
And, yes, I agree that these are common problems. They mark this very bright competent engineer as someone who cannot be used to write reports on her own or edit the work of others, and that limits her future as supervisory positions all require the ability to edit writing others have produced, and write well on ones own. The company is taking steps to have a more purposeful QC step using tech writers, but she will still be at a disadvantage if all her work costs the company more to fix than the work of other engineers does.
So, she can't get by having the same flaws as 95% of her countrymen. Not if she wants to rise up in the private sector. She will have a ceiling in our firm, I suspect. And we are one of the more flexible firms. More importantly, she wants to address this, and it seems like it should be fixable.
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English & Linguistics / Re: The random etymology of the day
« on: August 23, 2014, 09:55:51 AM »Typhon was a figure in Greek mythology, his wife Echidna was "the mother of all monsters". She must be infinitely disappointed with her zoological namesake.
Echidna is old Greek for lover of blow hards.
Echidna not!
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English & Linguistics / Re: Funny English and Linguistics stuff...
« on: August 23, 2014, 09:52:01 AM »
I don't think that invalidates Jonathon's explanation, though. Sarcastic use of a common hares s understood to flip its meaning or put a non-literal spin on it. It shouldn't be expected to track to a literal, or even typical figurative use of the phrase.
Like the joke about two negatives make a positive, but two positives don't make a negative. "Yeah right!"
Like the joke about two negatives make a positive, but two positives don't make a negative. "Yeah right!"
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English & Linguistics / Re: Dear Expert
« on: August 23, 2014, 09:31:02 AM »
Annie, in particular, but feel free to chime in even if you aren't Annie...
I could use some advice on how to help a Chinese born engineer with pretty decent English writing skills learn a few basics to make her writing sound less stereotypically Chinese. In particular, is there a good way to teach when a native English speaker would use a, an, and specially the?
There are a couple of other things that she struggles with, but otherwise her writing is actually very clear and easy to understand. The one or two other things she'd like to work on are proper use of state-of-being verbs (is and are seem to disappear or are used indiscriminately), and there are some just odd constructions for things that are basic statements used frequently such as "crashes are due to a number of reasons". Not hard to understand, but atypical use of the word reason when normally you'd see the word "factors" or a construction like "crashes occur for a number of reasons". Minor, but it marks her as a non-native writer in a field that values writing skills, and is clearly dominated by US educated engineers with sufficient biases against women and foreigners that having her writing stand out in this way can negatively impact her career.
I've put together a list of sample sentences from Chinese authored papers that I've reviewed, but I'm thinking this may be a slog for her if the only thing I do is throw hundreds of bad sentences at her without maybe some explanation of the "rules".
I personally don't know all the rules, though. I can readily spot the bad usage and tell her what it should be.
Is that going to be enough, with tons of practice will she develop an ear and an eye for this?
I could use some advice on how to help a Chinese born engineer with pretty decent English writing skills learn a few basics to make her writing sound less stereotypically Chinese. In particular, is there a good way to teach when a native English speaker would use a, an, and specially the?
There are a couple of other things that she struggles with, but otherwise her writing is actually very clear and easy to understand. The one or two other things she'd like to work on are proper use of state-of-being verbs (is and are seem to disappear or are used indiscriminately), and there are some just odd constructions for things that are basic statements used frequently such as "crashes are due to a number of reasons". Not hard to understand, but atypical use of the word reason when normally you'd see the word "factors" or a construction like "crashes occur for a number of reasons". Minor, but it marks her as a non-native writer in a field that values writing skills, and is clearly dominated by US educated engineers with sufficient biases against women and foreigners that having her writing stand out in this way can negatively impact her career.
I've put together a list of sample sentences from Chinese authored papers that I've reviewed, but I'm thinking this may be a slog for her if the only thing I do is throw hundreds of bad sentences at her without maybe some explanation of the "rules".
I personally don't know all the rules, though. I can readily spot the bad usage and tell her what it should be.
Is that going to be enough, with tons of practice will she develop an ear and an eye for this?
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