Some tricky questions

Every now and then I'm going to post a couple of tricky questions about English grammar and usage for your edification, amusement and delight! In other words, they aren't a part of the course, but you might find them interesting anyway. I've posted the answers as a Comment to this post, so if you want them, you just have to click on the Comment link at the bottom of the post (in other words, this is a tricksy way of enticing you to get used to the Comment feature too!). Here's the first lot:

1. Which of these is right?

a) I'm looking forward to meet you.
b) I'm looking forward to meeting you.

Why?

2. You see these abbreviations in a business letter. What do they stand for … and what do they mean?

a) i.e.
b) e.g.
c) q.v.
d) N.B.
e) p.p.

3) You're listening to a presentation about a major new exhibition centre which is proposed to be built in Kalmar by the Chinese. One of the people in the audience says, "It's going to be a white elephant." What on earth do they mean?

How to post your Warm-Ups

If Jonna starts getting worried about where her post went - don't! I've republished it as a comment to the Warm-Up 1 post, and you can see it if you click on the Comment link just at the bottom of that post. Right now, it says "1 Comments" … and that's you, Jonna!

It takes a while to get used to the Team Blog, but let me go through the procedure for posting Warm-Ups, just to make sure. When you've produced your task (in, say, Word), copy the text. Then, in the Blog, click on the Comments link at the bottom of my 'Warm-Up 1' (or 2 or 3 or 4) post.

What you'll see is the screen at the top of this post. You paste your Word text into the box called 'Leave your Comment', and then click on the 'Login and Publish' button. If you want to take a look at what your post will look like before you publish it, click on the 'Preview' button.

But what if you've published it … and you really wish you hadn't?

Just send me a mail and tell me which post you want taken away. It takes me less than a minute to find a post and delete it (just like I did with Jonna's).

If you need more help, feel free to get in touch.

Warm-Up 1

Warm-Up 1 isn't due for a while … but I know that some of you will be raring to go, so I'm posting the information today.

All the warm-ups are intended as practices for the following Send-In Task or In-Tray exam, and the idea is to get some specific feedback yourself about your performance in that area of the course, and to gain from the accumulated knowledge of everyone else in the class.

I'll thus be sending you a piece of detailed, private feedback, together with a mark out of 5, to your e-mail address, and making some general comments about things people did well, or should have avoided, as soon as most of the Warm-Ups are in. The aim is that you should receive the feedback before you write the Send-In Task.

Warm-ups are posted on the Course Blog - Send-In Tasks are sent to your Internet Tutor

Hope that's clear!

------

With any Warm-Up Task, read the instructions carefully. Here they are for Warm-Up 1:

Write the text of the letter you'd write to apply for this job. In other words, you don't need to include addresses or your actual resumé, but do include the salutation and the closure.

Just give us your ideas: which of your personal qualities and experiences would you mention to attract Hollywood Megastars and get you on your way to Hollywood?

(If you want to find out what a salutation and a closure are, check out the Course Meeting page in Module 1.)

So … what you have to post on this blog is the 'middle' of a letter, probably starting "Dear …" and finishing with your name. It's only a short letter, so you have to make an impact rightaway - impress the woman, and she might call you for interview.

Remember that it doesn't have to be true! We don't know what you look like, so if you want to tell her that you won a gold medal for Sweden at the recent European Athletics Championships, that's OK. You'll be getting marks for language, for the selection of information and for the way you present it (e.g. in which order of importance you present it).

My advice is to write it in Word first, and then paste the text into the text box … which you will see when you click on the Comment link just under this blog posting.

Don't forget to write your name on your posting - you might know who 'Nettan' is, but I don't!

Have fun with Warm-Up 1.

The web site is now active …

I've just finished checking through and amending the web site (though I bet I haven't discovered absolutely everything that needs changing, so don't forget to let me know if you find anything that a) doesn't work or b) that's a bit too old-fashioned).

So … we're ready to go. I'm meeting the students who're coming to Kalmar tomorrow evening (in room E309 in the Nisbethska Building at Linnégatan 5), and you'll find the worksheets I'm going to be using in Course Module 1.

I'm just about to broadcast the next podcast too, which has some specific instructions about how to get started (the trick is to click both The Big Picture and This Way to the Course Materials links from the Home Page …).

We hope you enjoy the course … and the you remember that:

The Only Stupid Question is the One You Don't Ask!