Warm-Up 4 Apologising and Complaining

Warm-Up 4 doesn't give you any marks … but we hope you feel that you'd like to contribute anyway. It's a sort of practice for the In-Tray Exam which will be made available next Friday, 17th November, since two out of the four exercises in that exam are about complaining and apologising.

Warm-Up 4 simply asks you to share any experiences you've had with apologising and complaining in English, either in speech or in writing. Which strategies worked well? Which ones were a complete disaster?

I'll mark any specific sentences which need marking from your Warm-Up 4s, and make a general comment about them all here on the blog.

Feedback on Warm-Up 3: False Friends

'False friends' are words which look like one word, but actually mean another one in a foreign language. You can read more about them in general in Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_friend

You'll find a list of Swedish-English false friends here:

http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_över_falska_vänner_mellan_svenska_och_engelska

This list isn't exhaustive, though. The false friend which made its appearance again and again in Warm-Up 3 was 'kontrollera'. The problem with this false friend is that one meaning of 'kontrollera' is 'control', that is, when 'kontrollera' means 'styra' (e.g. "He had problems controlling the car on the icy road."). However, when you're thinking of the French root word, which made its way into Swedish, contrôller, the English word is 'check'.

Here are three more 'formal English' words you need to be careful of:

actual, eventual, consequent

These are English words - what problems do they cause in Swedish?

If you check out my comment on this post, you'll find my answer.

Warm-Up 3

Warm-Up 3 is all about turning spoken English into formal, written English. The scenario comes from a meeting with an American academic in Sweden. She was on a 3-year contract, and she chanced to hear that everyone else, but she, was getting a pay rise. She'd never even thought about joining a union, because the labor unions in the United States are very weak … and only work at all in a very limited number of sectors, such as trucking and airport cargo handling. Since she had no union official to represent her (and to inform her of the next round of salary negotiations), she missed out on a raise.

What you have to do is to choose 5 things that are said, and turn them into formal written English. One hot tip is that when we speak we often focus on who did something, whilst when we write in formal contexts, we focus instead on whathappened.

There are also various words which are used when we speak, but not when we write. Think of the word 'spänn' in Swedish (as in 100 spänn). Everyone knows what it means … but it always says 'kronor' in contracts and on price lists. There are one or two words like that in the text.

The aim of this Warm-Up is to prepare you for report-writing, which comes in the next Send-In Task. We're preparing a podcast about that right at the moment … Post your Warm-Up as a comment to this post, as usual.

I hope you avoided the storm … and that you have a very pleasant weekend in its aftermath!

Feedback on Warm-Up 2 (2): Making recommendations, etc

The language of promises, recommendations and requirements has some unexpected pitfalls in formal English. Since you're all university students, let me give you the authorised, technical version!

When you promise, recommend or require something, you're talking about a hypothetical outcome (since, by definition, when you make the promise/recommendation/requirement, it hasn't actually happened yet). There's a special type of verb which used to be used very commonly in this situation (of talking about things that haven't happened). It's called the subjunctive in grammatical terms, and it has hardly survived in English or Swedish (although it's still common in Romance languages, like French, Spanish and Portuguese). The commonest Swedish subjunctive is 'Lange leve kungen!' (leve, that is).

In English, you end up with strange forms, such as:

If I were you, I would … (thought it was supposed to be 'I was')
I recommend that he be made manager of the New York branch. ('he be'?!!!).
I require that he reimburse the amount immediately. (I thought you always put an 's' when you used 'he')

This type of language is weird, even for native speakers, and is most often found in formal letters and legal documents. The commonest way to avoid it is to use other grammatical constructions:

My recommendation is …

I would like you to undertake to … (me asking for your undertaking is the same as me making a requirement on you)

I was assured that reimbursement would be made … (an assurance is a promise, and is weaker than an undertaking).

You'll find the chapter and verse of all this in any reputable grammar book (usually taking up a couple of chapters) … though you might not have time in your lives to master it! An easier alternative is to try your suggestions out on your Internet tutor … until you develop your own sense of what is right and what is wrong!

Feedback on Warm-Up 2 (1): Keeping focussed

I've just finished marking all the Warm-Up 2s which were posted as Comments on the blog (I'll get round to the few which came in via e-mail later on today). In general, you did really well, keeping your language firm, but courteous, and making realistic demands on the car hire company.

There's one really important principle involved in making these complaints, though: you have to decide whether you're just trying feel better, or whether you want the money! If it's the former, then make as many assertions and score as many points as you like. You need to know, though, that you're largely writing for your own satisfaction - the company will probably just ignore your letter (unless they send it to their lawyers and sue you for defamation!).

If it's the latter, then 'dispassionate' is the key word. Give them a get-out, so that they can concede your demands without losing face (just as important in the English-speaking world as it is in Japan).

Warm-Up 2

Sorry I'm a bit late with this … I've been on a business trip.

What to Do for Warm-up 2

Think of five sentences you might write in the letter which you write as a result of your first phone call.

Post your five sentences as a Comment on this post.

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In other words, I'm looking for five sentences ONLY - not the whole letter. The sentences don't have to be consecutive either (i.e. each sentence can be unrelated to each other sentence).

The idea is that you get the chance to practise achieving the right tone in your complaint. One problem that affects Scandinavian users of English in particular is the short step from being a wimp to using nuclear weapons! In other words, Scandinavians often have a problem expressing themselves firmly, without going over the top and using excessively harsh language.

If you haven't done this yet, check out the 'Complaints' section of Module 2 - there are some exercises there which could help you.

I'm also just about to start recording the next podcast, so listen out for further information there (I'm going to make some suggestions about the position you're in vis-à-vis the car rental company, and how this is likely to affect your choice of language, amongst other things).

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Do you know what the 'red-eye' is? If not, look at the first Comment to this post where I've given you the answer.

If you're wondering where the idea for 'The Hire Car from Hell' came from, it was inspired by a scene from that great movie, Planes, Trains and Automobiles (Steve Martin and the late John Candy). You can read more about it on this site:

http://www.fast-rewind.com/

and then scroll down on the left until you come to the link for the film.

Feedback on Warm-Up 1: 'to' is a tricky word

Which of these is right?

1. I am used to take care of dogs.

2. I am used to taking care of dogs.

(Answer: 2).

The word 'to' has two functions in English: it's part of an infinitive (to go, to see, etc) and it's also a preposition (to town, to my friend's house). The first one is 'att' in Swedish, and the second is either 'till' or 'mot'.

In (2) above, the 'to' is in the second category … so you need something that acts like a noun (substantiv) after it, not something that acts like a verb. The tricky thing about English verbs is that they have a built-in 'noun form', which ends in -ing. So when the 'to' is a preposition, as in the phrase "I am looking forward to", what comes next is either an ordinary noun phrase (e.g. a nice cup of coffee) or an -ing form.

BTW, Swedish verbs have 'noun forms' too - they end in '-ande' - it's just that that form isn't used for anything else (like "I'm taking care of his dogs this week"), so you don't run into the confusion you do with English.

Still … if English was easy, you wouldn't need teachers and we'd all be out of a job!

Feedback on Warm-Up 1: Mrs, Ms or Miss?

You've probably discovered by now that English is more formal than Swedish - and that written business is extremely formal! It didn't use to be that way. If you'd been born about 40 years earlier than you were, you'd have been brought up being even more formal than English.

One example of this is in the use of titles (like Mr or Dr). You can't *not* use them, because it would be too familiar to use someone's first name - doing that puts them on the same status level as a child or a pet. However, 'Mr' denotes only 'male', whilst the old alternatives to denote 'female', 'Mrs' and 'Miss' also give information about marital status. Back in the 1960s, when the feminist movement was getting going in earnest, feminists invented a new title for women, 'Ms', which only denotes 'female' - not marital status. There was a lot of (mostly male) resistance to this at first, but it was really computers that put paid to that. As long ago as 1982, when I applied for a US visa, there were only two alternatives for the title: Mr or Ms.

This is not to say that women don't still use 'Mrs' or 'Miss' to give messages. You'd never have got away with 'Ms. Thatcher', because Mrs Thatcher always made a big deal of her status as a wife. Missie Elliot also made a conscious choice of title … and it'd be hard to imagine 'The Prime of Ms Jean Brodie'. On the other hand, can you imagine the US Secretary of State being addressed as Miss Rice?

In other words, it's a minefield! The name in Warm-Up 1 was deliberately chosen to give you problems … When immigrants arrived in the States in the late 1800s, their names were often mangled deliberately by immigration officials to make them sound more English (e.g. Swanson instead of Svensson). Now, Britt-Inge lives in California - the land of eternal youth. Marital status can be a big issue there. Advertising that you're married or not married might convey subliminal messages about your youth and availability … or you might want to use your marital status as a weapon in the competition for the big prize.

My advice is to play safe, and use 'Ms'. However, don't take my word for it. An early message on this course is that the English-speaking world is diverse and hard to classify. Do you have any thoughts about this usage?

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?