Think in English with Adah

This is the game we used in the discussion session this week.

One of the objects in the following sets of 4 is odd. Please choose the odd one and explain the reasons. Some sets allow more than 1 reasonable answer.

Example:

Cabbage fish tomato carrot

Answer: Fish is the odd one out because the others are all types of vegatables.

1. Duck turkey lamb chicken

2. Milk salt rice tomato

3. Banana mango pineapple raspberry

4. TV computer mobile fridge

5. Syrup sauce icecream chocolate

Make your own choices and write your own explanations.

by Kerry Maxwell, author of Brave New Words, with recordings by speechinaction

“gas-sipper” also “gas sipper” noun [C] informal
a vehicle which is cheap to drive because it does not use a lot of fuel

“gas-sipping” adjective [U]

‘Should you dump the SUV for a gas-sipper? That’s the question everyone is asking these days …’
Business Wire 30th June 2008

‘Scooter sales appear to be climbing faster than the price of gasoline … Smith said his business has grown 200 percent in the last few months. It’s been so good that he’s now collecting deposits on the gas-sippers until he can catch up with the backlog.’ -Houston Chronicle 3rd July 2008

‘Meanwhile, the Japanese manufacturers are continuing to crank out gas-sipping hybrids (Toyota’s Prius is selling like hotcakes) and companies you never heard of are beginning to market a wide range of hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles for neighborhood or short distance use.’ -Western Farm Press 16th July 2008

Price, recorded mileage, colour … cup-holder? The factors influencing which car to purchase are as diverse as the motorists themselves. If, however, your main priority is fuel consumption – whether that’s for financial or strictly eco-friendly reasons – then what you should be looking to buy is a gas-sipper.

With the cost of fuel reaching record highs on both sides of the Atlantic, suddenly it seems more important than ever to consider those ‘miles to the gallon’ (or ‘litres per 100 kilometres’ in metric terminology). The question is just how far can our beloved four-wheeled friend travel on a full tank of juice? Whereas in recent years we were preoccupied with vehicle size, both for practical and aspirational reasons, we’ve now realised that there’s something to be said for economy, whether wanting to save cash, or the planet. And the English language has responded. The nineties gave us the gas guzzler, and the noughties has correspondingly seen the emergence of the gas sipper.

Following the pattern of gas guzzler and related adjective gas-guzzling, vehicles which are economical on fuel can be described as gas-sipping. As well as conventional cars with low running costs, the term gas-sipper can apply to alternative forms of transport which are cheap to run, such as motor scooters and electric or so-called hybrid cars (cars with more than one power source, such as batteries or an electric motor as well as a conventional engine).

The current period of escalating fuel prices, coupled for many consumers with a growing environmental conscience, has created an unprecedented demand for gas sippers. Scooter manufacturers are reporting record sales. In the car industry, technological innovation becomes increasingly significant, as manufacturers struggle to meet the demand for more energy efficient, gas-sipping models. This is particularly the case in countries whose governments have imposed a gas-guzzler tax, which is a levy on large, energy-inefficient domestic vehicles.

Background

The expression gas-sipper is new for 2008, and is of course an extension of the ‘drinking’ metaphor used in gas guzzler (according to the Macmillan English Dictionary, to guzzle is ‘to eat or drink a lot quickly …’ whereas to sip is ‘to drink in small amounts’). Gas is short for gasoline, a word used in American English whose British equivalent is petrol. Though gas is US only, gas guzzler is used in both varieties, with far less evidence for lexicalisation of expressions such as petrol guzzler.

Related neologisms in this domain are the expressions ecodriving and hyperdriving, (also ecomiling and hypermiling) which refer to the practice of adapting your driving style in order to reduce fuel consumption. Typical measures include better anticipation of traffic flow (therefore reducing the amount of braking and accelerating, which wastes fuel), driving in higher gears, and maintaining a steady (and preferably slower) speed. Drivers who adopt these measures are correspondingly referred to as ecodrivers/ecomilers or hyperdrivers/hypermilers.

Search the Web Google hits on 28th July 2008

gas sipper 32,700
gas-sipping 59,500
fuel sipper 25,800
fuel-sipping 95,500
ecodriving 73,400
hyperdriving 1,100
ecomiling 54
hypermiling 719,000
ecodriver 4,460
ecomiler 6
hypermiler 270,000
gas guzzler 1,030,000
gas-guzzling 876,000

We have learned a lot of facial expressions and feelings that human beings would experience everyday. I am not confident in that all of you can still remember how to describe those complicated emotions that we have in ourselves every day. However, I do believe you can understand that the cycle of language learning that we introduced during one of our dialogue sessions involves 3 steps: “learning”, “memorizing” and “practising”. A cycle is so in that it is an ongoing process during which every step in it will recur once in a while. There is only one kind of raw materials which needs to be repeatedly used during all of the 3 steps in the learning cycle, which is language input, including new words, sentence patterns and new sound combinations.

An reflection on my own English learning experience also tells me that our human brain espeically an adult brain is heavily reliant on repeated language input when acquiring a foreign language. If you revisit our old training materials and practice those language points in them as often as possible, you will find out it is really worthwhile in doing so for you will become more familiar with the language terms we’ve learned in the past.

 Enough for the linguistic muttering! Let’s revisit those facial expressions and emotions shown in the following pictures:

We discussed about what should be the right preposition (small words such as ‘on’, ‘off’ and ‘out of’) to be used when we enter or leave transportation tools. We didn’t spend too much time in looking into this topic at class because we don’t want to turn our lively English training sessions into Medieval Latin school teaching grammar, do we? : )

So this entry may shed you some light on how to use these small but possibly important words properly. I have found some useful references and I have categorized them into the following types:

1. To get on/ off + transportation tools large in size

To get on/ off (as a phrasal verb) means - to enter/ leave a train, bus or aircraft (or any vehicle that is large in size) from “Cambridge advanced learner’s dictionary”.

E.g.
To get on/ off a plane

To get on/ off a bus

To get on/ off the train

2. To get on/ off + transportation tools that we ride above

E.g.
To get on/ off a bike

To get on/ off a horse

3. To get in/ out of + transportation tools small in size

E.g.
To get in/ out of a car

To get in/ out of a taxi

4. “You! Get off my car!!”

Sometimes you can also hear native speakers use this above sentence. This sentence in oral English means ‘Don’t touch my car/ Leave my car alone!” instead of “getting out of my car”.

If you are still interested in the difference between “to get off the car” and “to get out of the car”, why not do a little exploring at following link with a thorough discussion on this topic?

“Off the car of Out of the Car?” at http://www.english-test.net/forum/ftopic2657.html

I hope this post can bring you to the awareness of the importance of the details of English.

I am going to post some common mistakes I found in trainees’ essays from the bi-weekly quizzes out of two reasons.

First, some of the mistakes are so common that I give the same revisions and suggestions to trainees who made them over and over again. If I post the mistakes here, all I need to do is to refer trainees to my blog. This will cut a good part of the duplicating work.

Second, it would be better if the mistakes from quizzes are sorted out into categories and explained in an organized way. Trainees may get a better idea of similar mistakes and will get to know the root cause behind those high-frequency errors.

Here we go.

1. Weak beginning

The following sentences came from the beginning of trainees’ essays. 

Essay title: Are You a Support of Voluntary Euthanasia? Why?

(a) * “Yes. I support that. …” (The example came from a trainee’s essay. Names will be ommited here to avoid causing any unwanted feelings. The asterisk “*” means the sentences are incorrect in certain ways, which will be explained as below. )

The problem with (a) is that we don’t usually answer the essay title in a yes-or-no way. The first sentence of a convincing English essay should be powerful and overwhelming.  A smart writer usually spends a bit more time in working out a very witty beginning sentence to attract readers. Otherwise, readers might probably be turned off and lack of interest to read on.

Essay title: Should Students Invest in the Stock Market? Why?

(b) * “As we know, Chinese stock market attracts all people, they talk about stock market every second, and we know some students also buy stocks, they are involved in the stock market. So the discussion comes up: should student invest in the stock market.”

All sentences in (b) serve great as an introduction to the topic. But the thing is, readers are not interested at all in how the dicussion became into being because almost every reader already has some basic knowledge (or commonsense) about the stock market.

Suggestion: Cut it short and come down to the dicussion right after you type the first word.

2.  Overly general sentences with broken information

I don’t know whether it is a patent of Chinese people to write overly general sentences or not, but most people would define sentences shown in following examples as carrying a “Chinese tone”:

(c) *”Stock market reflects various relationships (-_- meaning?), economic phenomena (-_- such as what?) and thoughts of people(-_- what kind of thoughts?).”

(d) *”On the other hand, students doing that can broaden their prospect and social experience, and improve their ability about analyst, logic, mathematical comprehension and something else. (-_- what on earth do all those concepts mean?)“

All the phrases with sophisticated concepts in bold font seem to mean a lot of things. But they actually mean nothing. It is somehow useless to put forward so many concepts without giving clear examples of each of them. For instance, if you want to talk about economic phenomena in the stock markt, you could talk about bull market or bear market and the reason behind those so-called economic phenomena.

Suggestion: Less is more. The more clear you write, a better understanding that your readers can get.

(e) *”From preventing from inflation(-_- meaning?), everyone should do investment (-_- why? What is the connection between the two clauses?).”

Chinese people sometimes jump from one thought to another, without giving any information to connect the 2 thoughts. However, English essays are believed to be more reader-friendly because a sentence always leads you well to the next. I believe this is the only way to convey your ideas effectively to your readers.

Suggestion: So give your readers more reference on how you come to an abrupt conclusion.

3. Boring sentence structures  

(f) *“Letting the people that you love suffer so much is not good!”

(g) *”Students investing in the stock market moderately is a good thing.”

(h) *”I think allowing students invest in the stock market is really a bad thing.”

(i) *”Social experience and investing in the stock market for students is not a bad thing.”

(j) *”Moreover, their economic condition that they easily ignore is not good.”

 …-_-

Suggestion: Read more English articles by native speakers. Borrow some great sentence structures everyday from fantastic writers and make them your own.

4. Chinese translation  

(k) *“They need to face risks, need to learn more knowledge about investment.” (suggested revision => need to face risks and learn more knowledge…)

(l) *“…, parental guidance is recommended when their children are participating the stock market investing activity.” (suggested revision=> are investing in the stock market)

(m) *“Firstly, these students have stayed at school for more than 12 years, they are really in lack of touch of society.” (=> suggested revision = > really lack social experience)

(n) *“From so many examples, they may have a good cognition: the money should be earned by hard work, and no cakes fall from the sky.”(suggested revision=> understanding)

(o) *”Touching the society and investing in the stock market for students is not a bad thing.”(suggested revision=> Social experience)

When we write in a foreign language, sometimes we inevitably use some words or phrases inherited from our mother tongue.  It is not our fault to write in this way because we do not think in the same way as English native speakers. But there are still things we can do to avoid writing “Chinglish” sentences.

Suggestion: Think in English when you write an English essay! Do not translate Chinese sentence structures or words into English because the two languages are sometimes independent of each other. 

If you really need to know the English word for a Chinese thought, check it in a dictionary to make sure the English translation has the right meaning.

5. Repeatition

(p) *“Now in the law of China, there is no law to prevent students from investing in the stock market.”

(q) *”If we throw a ball to the wall, the ball will rebound back.”

Suggestion: Make it a habit to cut your essay short. Always delete superfluous words.

6. Long sentences without giving your readers a break

(r) *“As we know that, Chinese students have less opportunities to have more practice in the school, because many parents still insisit that students’ duty is study, but I think that shool is only a place to guide students how to study, so, stock market is also a place to pratice.”

It is such a common problem of trainees that they such long sentences that readers might need to raise their memory (like that of a computer -_-) to process those long sentences.

Suggestion: Split a sentence up into several when it is longer than 2 lines. Spare your readers more time to relax their eyes and brain.

I really hope those suggestions can help all of you! : )