Think in English with Adah

We had a really great trip to Dalian last May during the Community Event of our company. Dalian seems to a dreamland for people from over-crowded cities such as Guangzhou, Shanghai and Hong Kong.  Known as a city famous for tourism, Dalian carries a bit romantic and exotic hue:  pointed rooftops in Russian style, roads curving along the coastlines, European villas upon hills and seaside, foreigners walking on the street with bare feet coming from a morning swimming in the sea… Even the Russian pop music on our shuffle bus brought us to this retired lifestyle of Dalian. 

But that is not all the elements that Dalian is made of. Restaurants have titles in Korean and Japanese characters where waiters and waitresses are dressed with the latest hairstyles. You could also discover that the splendid night views of the squares and busy shopping streets are exactly the same as the things that people in any other big cities live up to. All of those remind me we are in a city full of modern moves, just like Guangzhou or Shanghai.  

The sea in Dalian holds the most clean and cool water than any other seas I have ever been to. I could not resist the temptation of stealing a piece of the beautiful scenery home. Although feeling guilty, I picked some stones from the Silver Beach. Even glasses have been polished into a round shape by the blue water of the sea of Dalian.   

It has been nearly a month since the terrible catastrophe happened in Sichuan. It is a relief to know that our country has made great headway with rescuing all injured people and people whose lives are still at risk of floods or mudslides that might be caused by the recently formed lakes. The time had come for us to lament over the passing of the victims during the 3 days of mourning and more practically, the enire nation is exerting all efforts to condole and help the needy people in the disaster area. Most of the rescuer soldiers risked their own lives in order to save people they did not know. But all of us know that we share a same name “Chinese”, which is no longer born by a group of people who wore little caps with long braids but is a name of people with a whole new set of connotations - persistence, openness and nobleness.

Time will pass but in our life we will never forget what happened to us as both Chinese people and as a nation in the past few weeks. Let’s face the pains and deal with them by redoubling our efforts at work in the following weeks, months and years until this moment becomes one of the most touching experiences seared into the deepest memory of our lives.

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! : )

What if you look up a word like “chestnut” and find yourself straining your brain to comprehend a definition like this: any of several attractive deciduous trees yellow-brown in autumn yield a hard wood and edible nuts in a prickly bur?

What if you feel helpless when you could not find the definition of a newly-coined word such as “spork”?

Don’t panic. We’ve got some visual aids for you. You can not only understand what they are, but also view how they look.

Here is what you need to do to “see” those existing words. Go to www.dict.cn,  put in the word and punch “Enter”. If the word you are looking for is not a new-born, there must be very explicit explanation and examples on the webpage. And here comes the knack.

Click on”查看图片“ on your right hand:

Next you will be directed into Google’s picture engine. There you will find a crazy amount of pictures showing what the target words “look” like.

If you cannot find any definition for some newborn words such as “spork”, put the words in the blank (see the above picture).  You can only access Google pictures engine in this way because the main link has somehow been blocked in our office.

Enjoy the pictures! : )
 

Hey everyone! I set up this blog to share some of my experience of learning English as both a language and more importantly, a way of thinking.

Most trainees spend almost one third of their school years in learning English and they complain all the time that they are not good at it. Is it our English pronunciation that holds us back? The fact that Chinese people carry lighter accent when speaking English becomes pleasantly obvious when we talk to people from other Asian countries. So it is not about our prounciation or accent.

Or is it true that we do not know as many words as what should be enough? Nah. Never! A lot of trainees use SO MANY complicated words in their quizzes that I always turn to online dictionary for help.

Grammar is never a problem for Chinese English learners. Most of you can write in correct tense and make perfect use of subjectives such as “would” and “were”. As one of our colleague trainer John said, our English education focus too much on grammar. The truth is, grammar is one of the last things that you need to spend one of your third school time on.

It seems there is actually nothing in our way of learning English. What is holding back our fantastic pronunciation and our great bank of vocabulary? Nothing but confidence!

So why cannot we be as confident when we speak English as when speaking Chinese? English is just a language. It is totally NOT linked with intelligence, integrity or any other qualities that people may rely on when looking at a person. It is absolutely unfair to judge a person in terms of whether he/she is not good at a language that is not his/her mother tongue. No one is qualifed to do that because everyone has a language that is totally foreign to him/her.

We are all smart and fast learners. All we need is a little bit more confience. What you can do is find more opportunities to speak during discussion sessions. Seize the time and speak up!