General Feedback on Warm-Up 3

The task this time was to turn informal, spoken English into formal, written English - and you generally did very well. However, there were a number of points which came up several times, so I've got plenty to write about this time.

To start with, be careful not to include any colloquial language in your reports. 'Colloquial' means 'spoken', and a typical piece of colloquial English is to call the GB pound 'quid' and the US dollar 'buck'. These aren't slang, since everyone knows what they mean (slang can properly only be understood by someone who's in a special group of people), but you don't see the terms used in, say, a contract of employment.

In this task there was plenty of colloquial language in the inspector's comments, such as 'digger' instead of 'excavator' and 'hard hat' instead of 'safety helmet'. 'Dumper truck', on the other hand, is what these small vehicles are called! 'Get' cropped up too a couple of times: you should try to avoid using this verb altogether in formal writing. Use 'obtain', 'receive' or 'become', for example.

One tricky point is that English often uses words which arrived from Romance languages (such as French, Spanish and Latin) for formal purposes, but Germanic words (from Dutch, German and Old Norse) for informal ones. Thus, "we start at 9.00" is informal, whilst "we commence at 9.00" is formal. The Scandinavians in the group thus tended to have greater problems with formality this time than the students from other language backgrounds! It's unfair, but that's life, I'm afraid!!

Short forms (such as 'I'm' and 'they've') were used by a couple of people too. Avoid these in formal writing by writing the abbreviated form in full, e.g. 'I am', 'they have'.

'Rules' and 'regulations' also caused some problems. 'Rules' are made up by members of a particular group or society, whilst 'regulations' have the force of law. Thus a particular practice might be against both union rules and legal regulations. Confusingly, both these words come from the same Latin root - it's just that their meanings have diverged over the centuries, as they've been used in different contexts.

Another group of words which are like this is: 'compulsory', 'obligatory' and 'required'. The Latin roots of the first two amount to more or less the same thing: something forces you to do something. 'Required', on the other hand, originally just meant 'asked for' (any word with '-quire' in it comes from the Latin word 'quaere', which means 'to ask'). However, nowadays 'compulsory' has taken on the connotation of 'necessary according to the rules of an organisation or society' (a bit like 'rules'); 'obligatory' has the connotation of 'morally necessary'; whilst 'required' has the connotation of 'it says so in the law'. Native speakers sometimes mix these up, since, in a particular situation, the difference between things you have to do and things you ought to do can be fairly meaningless - but there's no reason for you to be this sloppy too!

If you think, for example, of the legal requirement to wear a seat belt when you're driving in a car, you are fined if you fail to comply with the legal requirement; you might, however, be disciplined by your company if you fail to observe their compulsory ruling to wear a seat belt whilst driving a company car; and you might feel an obligation to your family to protect your life and health by wearing a seat belt.

'Safe' and 'secure' also caused problems. This is another example of the need to remember the context in which you use a particular word in English. In general, 'safe' refers to physical safety, whilst 'secure' refers to psychological factors. Think of the difference between a 'security officer' and a 'safety officer'. The former is a kind of guard who keeps the bad guys away. The latter makes sure that no-one actually hurts themselves whilst they're on the premises. Sometimes the security officer actually wants to hurt people! If you have Swedish as your first language, ignore the fact that these two words will both be translated as 'säkerhet' in the dictionary, but think of 'safety' as 'trygghet' and 'security' as 'säkerhet'.

Finally, the prepositions 'in-on-at' caused one or two problems. These have 'literal' meanings, but also meanings that have arisen out of usage. I.e. 'in' has a connotation of 'inside', 'on' one of 'on top of' and 'at' one of 'right in front of'. In both time and place, however, they express a range of focus from the very wide to a specific point.

Thus, with expressions of time, you use 'in' for the large unit (in January, in 2010), 'on' for the smaller unit (on Monday), and 'at' for the specific point (at 9.30). When you're talking about space, 'in' is for the large area (in Sweden, in Skåne, in Malmö), 'on' is for a much smaller space (on Nygatan), and 'at' is for the point (at Nygatan 18, at the corner).

The construction site in this exercise is a very ambiguous place! The workers work 'on the construction site' (in the 'literal' sense of the word), whilst visitors arrive 'at the construction site' (the non-literal specific point in space).

If English were easy, you wouldn't need teachers!