Doesn't time fly when you're enjoying yourself! It seems like it was yesterday we started this course on a cold, wet night in Kalmar, and now it's almost time for the In-Tray exam.
The exam itself will appear on the web site on Friday. You'll find it in Module 4 on the In-Tray Exam page. You'll see another useful page there too: In-Tray Exam procedure. So … what exactly is an In-Tray, and why are you being examined about it?
Your in-tray is the tray on your desk where all the incoming documents are placed. As you work through them, you do your day's work! The In-Tray exam sees you as a temp (worker from a temporary agency, like Manpower) who's been taken on by the three companies in the course. You have to draft responses to various documents that have come in, or situations that have arisen. These responses are going to be in the form of letters of complaint and apology, an internal memo and a brief report.
The practicalities work like this:
• you open (or download) the .pdf document which is the exam booklet
• you choose the particular tasks you want to answer (remember that there are 16 alternatives - four for each company - but you only write four in total)
• you write the documents you need to write …
• and then send them to David, either as e-mail attachments or as print-outs which you put in an envelope (it helps if you put all your four answers into the same electronic document, if you're attaching it to an e-mail, but this isn't compulsory)
What happens then …
… is that I print the document out, mark it in green ink (because people have bad memories of red ink from school!), make specific comments on each task, give each task a mark … and finally send everything back to you. I'll send you a notification of your final result by e-mail, but the actual marked tasks, together with my detailed comments are sent back to whatever address we have for you - so make sure that you've let me know, if you've moved house since the course began in February.
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get back to me.
Monday 14 April 2008
Warm-Up 4
Warm-Up 4 doesn't give you any marks (!), but it is, perhaps, a way for you to see the collective wisdom of the group about two key areas in the In-Tray exam: complaining and apologising. Since you don't get any marks for it, you don't have to do it either - but I'm sure that your contributions will be gratefully received by everyone else, if you do!
Thursday 3 April 2008
Feedback on Warm-Up 3
I think I've now finished marking Warm-Up 3, so here's my general feedback on how you performed on the task.
This task was all about turning informal spoken English into formal written English and you've all got the right basic idea of a) turning the focus away from the people and towards the situation or phenomenon you're describing; and b) using the right kind of formal language.
It's difficult to find the right formal tone, if you're not used to this sort of language, and quite a few of you didn't realise that a 'digger' is an excavator when you're talking formally. A dumper truck, however, is the same no matter how formal you are!
We also use far fewer phrasal verbs in formal English, preferring a word of French or Latin origin instead. 'Expire' for 'run out' is one of these examples.
Then there's the problem of English having so many damn words! You ought to be able to 'certify' an excavator … except that this particular verb is chiefly used to describe what a psychologist does when he commits someone to a mental hospital! You also ought to be able to 'certificate' one, except that this verb is only used in the context of a new drug - or a new aircraft - being brought on to the market and receiving official permission to be launched from a government licensing authority.
The tool you can use to help you here is a thesaurus. Roget's Thesaurus is the standard one in English. Here's part of their entry for 'expire':
Main Entry: expire
Part of Speech: verb 1
Definition: end
Synonyms: back gate, buy it*, cease, close, conclude, conk, croak*, decease, deep six, depart, die, elapse, end, finish, go, kick off, lapse, meet maker, one-way ticket, pass, pass away, pass on, perish, quit, run out, stop, strike out*, terminate
Antonyms: begin, commence, live, start, thrive
Here's the direct link: Thesaurus.com
Use the thesaurus to find some synonyms for 'get' too - it's too colloquial for just about anything other than e-mails and memos on this course.
Apart from that, don't forget to use the full form of verbs, instead of short forms, like 'I'm' and 'won't'.
Good luck with Send-In Task 3!
This task was all about turning informal spoken English into formal written English and you've all got the right basic idea of a) turning the focus away from the people and towards the situation or phenomenon you're describing; and b) using the right kind of formal language.
It's difficult to find the right formal tone, if you're not used to this sort of language, and quite a few of you didn't realise that a 'digger' is an excavator when you're talking formally. A dumper truck, however, is the same no matter how formal you are!
We also use far fewer phrasal verbs in formal English, preferring a word of French or Latin origin instead. 'Expire' for 'run out' is one of these examples.
Then there's the problem of English having so many damn words! You ought to be able to 'certify' an excavator … except that this particular verb is chiefly used to describe what a psychologist does when he commits someone to a mental hospital! You also ought to be able to 'certificate' one, except that this verb is only used in the context of a new drug - or a new aircraft - being brought on to the market and receiving official permission to be launched from a government licensing authority.
The tool you can use to help you here is a thesaurus. Roget's Thesaurus is the standard one in English. Here's part of their entry for 'expire':
Main Entry: expire
Part of Speech: verb 1
Definition: end
Synonyms: back gate, buy it*, cease, close, conclude, conk, croak*, decease, deep six, depart, die, elapse, end, finish, go, kick off, lapse, meet maker, one-way ticket, pass, pass away, pass on, perish, quit, run out, stop, strike out*, terminate
Antonyms: begin, commence, live, start, thrive
Here's the direct link: Thesaurus.com
Use the thesaurus to find some synonyms for 'get' too - it's too colloquial for just about anything other than e-mails and memos on this course.
Apart from that, don't forget to use the full form of verbs, instead of short forms, like 'I'm' and 'won't'.
Good luck with Send-In Task 3!
Tuesday 18 March 2008
Feedback on Warm-Up 2
Having now - finally - marked all the Warm-Up 2s, I thought I'd give you some general feedback. It's too late for Send-In 2, unfortunately, but the same kinds of exercises come up in the exam at the end of the course too, so this feedback might be useful anyway.
You handled the task very well, in general. Most people avoided the temptation to score points, which is smart, but concentrated instead on describing what happened calmly and factually. What many of you needed to work on, though, was formulating your demands clearly - so that the US company can just pay you what you want and get rid of you! In other words, a clear statement of what would make you happy is probably all you need in a case like this - the US company won't mind paying you (it's such a small sum that the administration alone costs them more).
There were some language points which recurred, and here's an explanation of the ones I think lots of people need to be careful with:
1. The word 'inconveniences' ought to exist … but it doesn't! There's a grammatical distinction between words which identify individual items (e.g. 'chair') and ones which describe general phenomena (e.g. 'inconvenience'). The point is that the words in the second category don't have plural forms, so you can't put an 's' on the end of 'inconvenience'.
2. Colloquial language is the language of speech, not of writing. Everyone knows that 'quid' and 'buck' are the everyday, spoken names of the currencies of the UK and the US, but we write 'pounds' and 'dollars' in contracts. 'Get' is one of these colloquial expressions - avoid it if you can when writing formal letters.
3. Prepositions are always tricky. 'In', 'on' and 'at' are particularly so. Here's a trick that works nearly all the time:
When you're talking about places and periods of time, 'in' is for the largest unit, 'on' for a smaller one and 'at' for a point in space or a point in time. Thus, it's 'in 2009', 'on Monday', 'at 8.00 am' and it's 'in Sweden', 'on Storgatan' and 'at no. 29 Storgatan'.
4. The verb 'appreciate' has been causing problems. When you use the word on its own, it means 'increase in value' (my house appreciated by 10% last year). When you want it to mean an expression of gratefulness, it needs an object (like 'it'). I.e. "I would appreciate it if you would …"
5. Be careful with 'would' and 'should'. "Your representative told me that I should receive a discount" is actually saying that the guy is hoping and speculating - not making any kind of firm undertaking. Change 'should' to 'would' and it becomes a promise.
6. Short forms have been causing problems. 'I'm', 'don't', 'can't', etc work very well in informal letters to people you know. You can't use them in formal letters though (I'm writing informally at the moment, which is why I don't write 'cannot'!).
If you'd like further explanation of any of these points, don't forget to ask!
You handled the task very well, in general. Most people avoided the temptation to score points, which is smart, but concentrated instead on describing what happened calmly and factually. What many of you needed to work on, though, was formulating your demands clearly - so that the US company can just pay you what you want and get rid of you! In other words, a clear statement of what would make you happy is probably all you need in a case like this - the US company won't mind paying you (it's such a small sum that the administration alone costs them more).
There were some language points which recurred, and here's an explanation of the ones I think lots of people need to be careful with:
1. The word 'inconveniences' ought to exist … but it doesn't! There's a grammatical distinction between words which identify individual items (e.g. 'chair') and ones which describe general phenomena (e.g. 'inconvenience'). The point is that the words in the second category don't have plural forms, so you can't put an 's' on the end of 'inconvenience'.
2. Colloquial language is the language of speech, not of writing. Everyone knows that 'quid' and 'buck' are the everyday, spoken names of the currencies of the UK and the US, but we write 'pounds' and 'dollars' in contracts. 'Get' is one of these colloquial expressions - avoid it if you can when writing formal letters.
3. Prepositions are always tricky. 'In', 'on' and 'at' are particularly so. Here's a trick that works nearly all the time:
When you're talking about places and periods of time, 'in' is for the largest unit, 'on' for a smaller one and 'at' for a point in space or a point in time. Thus, it's 'in 2009', 'on Monday', 'at 8.00 am' and it's 'in Sweden', 'on Storgatan' and 'at no. 29 Storgatan'.
4. The verb 'appreciate' has been causing problems. When you use the word on its own, it means 'increase in value' (my house appreciated by 10% last year). When you want it to mean an expression of gratefulness, it needs an object (like 'it'). I.e. "I would appreciate it if you would …"
5. Be careful with 'would' and 'should'. "Your representative told me that I should receive a discount" is actually saying that the guy is hoping and speculating - not making any kind of firm undertaking. Change 'should' to 'would' and it becomes a promise.
6. Short forms have been causing problems. 'I'm', 'don't', 'can't', etc work very well in informal letters to people you know. You can't use them in formal letters though (I'm writing informally at the moment, which is why I don't write 'cannot'!).
If you'd like further explanation of any of these points, don't forget to ask!
Monday 17 March 2008
Warm-Up 3
I'm posting this here now because some of you have *already* started wanting to post Warm-Up 3!
I'll amend this post with some specific Warm-Up 3 information nearer to the deadline.
I'll amend this post with some specific Warm-Up 3 information nearer to the deadline.
Monday 3 March 2008
Warm-Up 2
Warm-Up 2 is all about complaining. 'The Hire Car from Hell' is all about really bad treatment when renting a car in the USA. The idea for this Warm-Up came from the wonderful film, "Trains and Planes and Automobiles", with Steve Martin and John Candy. The task is set up so that you don't have any other option than to write a well-composed letter to the company in the USA - and hope for the best. The sum of money involved is too small to make it worth your while starting a legal action (at least from this side of the Atlantic - it'd be different if you were living in the USA, where they have Small Claims Courts). There's also a lot of scope for 'he said-she said' situations (which is how they describe situations where one person says one thing, and the other person says something different in American English).
The task itself is quite limited: you only have to write FIVE sentences from the letter you'd write (i.e. NOT the entire letter). The point is to see whether you can calibrate your language, so that you express yourself firmly, but refrain from insults and gratuitous comments that will just result in your letter being filed in the trash can! Once again, there's a link to the Send-In Task which comes next.
You submit your Warm-Up Task 2 by copying your text into a comment. Remember to include FIVE sentences only - and to include your name in the submission.
By the way, an FAQ for this task is: what's a 'redeye'? If you'd like to know, take a look at the first comment on this blog post.
The task itself is quite limited: you only have to write FIVE sentences from the letter you'd write (i.e. NOT the entire letter). The point is to see whether you can calibrate your language, so that you express yourself firmly, but refrain from insults and gratuitous comments that will just result in your letter being filed in the trash can! Once again, there's a link to the Send-In Task which comes next.
You submit your Warm-Up Task 2 by copying your text into a comment. Remember to include FIVE sentences only - and to include your name in the submission.
By the way, an FAQ for this task is: what's a 'redeye'? If you'd like to know, take a look at the first comment on this blog post.
Friday 22 February 2008
Send-In Task 1
Just a few words about Send-In Task 1 …
Remember that you send this task to your Internet Tutor - not to David in Kalmar.
There are three alternative Send-In Tasks 1 to choose from: red, green and blue (or Påryd, The Västervik Experience and Alsjöholm). You only have to do one of them.
Each variant of the task has three sections, and the variants have been constructed so that they ought to be of an equivalent level of difficulty (i.e. there isn't an 'easy' variant and a more difficult one).
Finally, the only stupid question is the one you don't ask! If you need help understanding what to do, contact your Internet Tutor.
Good luck with the task - and have a nice weekend.
Remember that you send this task to your Internet Tutor - not to David in Kalmar.
There are three alternative Send-In Tasks 1 to choose from: red, green and blue (or Påryd, The Västervik Experience and Alsjöholm). You only have to do one of them.
Each variant of the task has three sections, and the variants have been constructed so that they ought to be of an equivalent level of difficulty (i.e. there isn't an 'easy' variant and a more difficult one).
Finally, the only stupid question is the one you don't ask! If you need help understanding what to do, contact your Internet Tutor.
Good luck with the task - and have a nice weekend.
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