Things to Remember: Lost in Translation

Q. What have this group got in common?

A parking. A reality. A casting. Footing. Heavy! A latenight. A marketing. A Ticket.
A.They're mistakes waiting to happen!

A simple rule – if it's an English word (or looks like one) the chances are about 99:1 that it's used wrongly (from an English point of view) in Spanish. None of the above are used in English how you use them. Your reader can only see them as either a mistake or a mistranslation. Be careful!
Brian Smith

Whiteboard Grab: 5 Questions

Here's a recent whiteboard related to planning your writing.

Remember to try to be as specific as possible with the consequences that come from your answers to the questions.

Here's an example if it was, for instance, an email to Sally about your holidays:

Q1 . Who´s it for? My friend, Sally.

> So it's informal

>> So I start with something like "Hi Sally!"

>>> So I finish with "Write soon!"

>>>> Just before that I probably need something like "Keep in touch" or "Let me know"

>>>>> I probably need something like "Thanks for the email" at the start too.

>>>>>> I need to remember it's informal when I express other functions (asking for things, apologising perhaps) and in my vocabulary.

Do the same for questions 2 to 4 and question 5 is the total of 1 to 4, pretty much.

Good luck!

Are we alone in the Universe?

Hello everyone.

This is not a discussion of SETI, but homework!

You write your homework. You finish it. Hallelujah, you think. Done. Now let's hand it in and see how many yellow highlights I get this time!

But are you doing everything you can to reduce those highlights?

The reality is that some people do not check thier writing as much as they need to. One reason for this is because it is, if we're honest, not always that interesting and actually pretty difficult.

We can't check it for you, I'm afraid. But you could check it for each other. There are almost certainly one or two students in your group you know quite well now (hopefully more than that!). Why not agree to finish homework a couple of days early, and hand or send it to each other before you hand it or send it in? Email is rather useful for this...

You'll check thiers, they´ll check yours and you might both get some corrections, some opinions and even some ideas for how to do another one better in the future. If you'd like to find someone to share writing with, ask around your class, or have a chat with your teacher - they can ask the group for you if needs be.

Try it. You might like it.

Brian Smith

Exam Comments from Miles Brickman

Miles this week had some interesting comments on the Cambridge exams.

He would like to remind everyone taking the exams (and also taking our exams) to focus on what you can do and what you know and try not to place to much attention on things you think you can't do as well as you'd like to.

During your studies you will have practised a whole range of topics and may be surprised about how much you actually know.

One way to see this. Look through the list of labels on the right of this page. Just looking at the question types - review, article, informal letter, report and so on* - you can probably visualise one and know what makes it distinctive. You can think of some of the vocab and grammar that are typical of them. (*You probably know why we prefer "and so on" to the Spanish equivalent!)

So our general comment is - look on the postives, and try not to worry about negatives too much. You have gained new skills and understand new things - here's a chance to put them to good use.

Good luck!