Warm-Up 1: General Comment

At time of writing, I think I've marked everyone's Warm-Up 1 and sent it back. The only person I'm a bit worried about is "Linda Andersson" (I couldn't find your e-mail address, so could you mail me so that I can send you your Warm-Up back).

The Warm-Ups were really well done: I awarded marks ranging from 2.5 to 5. If you're wondering what your mark actually means, it works like this. When I mark your work, I keep the ECTS grades in mind. This means that 2.5=50%=Pass. There are five steps between 2.5 and 5, which represent the five steps between Grade E and Grade A in the ECTS system. So … if you've got 3.5/5, that's the equivalent of getting 70% or a Grade C (or a VG in the old system). In my twisted teacher mind (!), I ask myself questions like "does this warm-up merit a pass?" and "how good a pass does it merit?" That's how I arrive at the final mark. If you'd like to hear from me exactly how I arrived at the mark I did, just get in touch and I'll tell you in detail. You're also welcome to get in touch if there's a comment you don't understand. Sometimes larger points of grammar pop up and there's only a limited amount of space in a Comment box to use to give explanations with.

Here are the areas lots of people need to work on:

1. The conventions governing when we use capital letters in English. There are a couple of pages about this in Module 1.

2. The distinction between formal and colloquial language. 'Colloquial' means 'spoken', and there are different usages depending on whether you're speaking or writing. The word 'buck', for example, in its meaning of US$ is known to everyone (thus it isn't a slang expression), but contracts say "dollars", not "bucks". There are several words in general English which you ought to avoid in more formal business English. Here are two of them: "maybe" and "get".

3. Don't forget the apostrophes!

4. Academic qualifications at undergraduate level come in two varieties in the English-speaking world: Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) and Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.). You mention the specific subject in brackets afterwards, like this: B.A. (Geography). If, however, you want to talk more generally about your qualification, mainly to emphasise the subject, you can use this form of words: a Bachelor's degree in Tourism Studies (from the University of Timbuctoo).

There's a podcast out about my reactions to Warm-Up 1 - and I'm just about to post one about Send-In 1 too.