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Everyday English for Managers LESSON 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE

PUNCTUATION LESSON 2 PARTS OF SPEECH

THE NOUN THE SENTENCE AND ITS VERB THE VERB AGREES WITH ITS SUBJECT VOCABULARY AND SPELLING

LESSON 3 TENSE KINDS OF VERBS THE PREDICATE AND OBJECT SIMPLE AND COMPOUND SENTENCES VOCABULARY AND SPELLING

LESSON 4 COMPLEX SENTENCES

THE CORRECT ORDER OF WORDS AND CLAUSES DIRECT AND INDIRECT SPEECH VOCABULARY AND SPELLING

LESSON 5 ACTIVE AND PASSIVE VOICE

THE PARAGRAPH ADVERBS IDIOMS VOCABULARY AND SPELLING

LESSON 6 THE ARTICLE THE INTERJECTION AND THE PREPOSITION COMPOSITION, THE SENTENCE AND PARAGRAPH VOCABULARY AND SPELLING

LESSON 7 LETTER WRITING COLLECTIVE NOUNS

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VOCABULARY AND SPELLING

LESSON 8 BUSINESS LETTERS

LESSON 9 ESSAY WRITING COMPREHENSION COMPARISON OF ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS

LESSON 10 COMPREHENSION PRECIS MESSAGES AND REPORTS

LESSON 11 WORDS AND THEIR CORRECT USE USING THE TELEPHONE IDIOMATIC ENGLISH

LESSON 12 BRUSH UP YOUR SPELLING PROVERBIAL EXPRESSIONS REVISION

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ENGLISH LESSON 1 Content: INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE PUNCTUATION

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INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE

"Anyone who wishes to become a good writer should endeavor.... to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous and lucid". So said the Fowler brothers, who were responsible for compiling the Concise Oxford Dictionary.

It would be worth your while to examine this quotation carefully, and even to memorize it, so that the aims of good writing are clearly set out in your mind when you yourself attempt to write. Do not think that these aims apply only to people who write books. No, they apply to anything that is written, whether it be a letter to a friend or an office report. Let us examine this quotation more carefully:

a. Your writing must be direct. This means that you must get to the point of what you wish to say and not confuse your reader with details that are not to the point.

b. Your choice of words should be simple. Now, that does not mean that you should write childishly. Far from it! Use a variety of words to give interest and life to your writing, but do not use difficult words just because you think it is clever. An reader likes to feel that he can understand what he is reading straight away without having to re-read the passage several times to get the meaning.

c. You must be brief. This does not mean that you should leave a half of what you are trying to write. What is does mean is that you must leave out what is unnecessary. In other words, do n be "verbose". Do you know what "verbose" means? It means saying something in a lot of words when a few words would be quite enough.

d. Be vigorous in your writing, make it alive and interesting to read, rather than dull and boring. Of course, you will need a lot of practice before you can write well, but dullness can always be avoided if you take the trouble to use a variety of words rather than to keep repeating the same ones. For example, if you are describing something that is "dark", you need not use this one word all the time, you can also use the words "gloomy" and "somber".

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e. Your writing should be clear, so that your reader immediately understands what you wish to tell him. You must be careful to plan your work so that the reader can follow the thread of your thoughts.

"Variety is the spice of life". A variety of words is also the spice of good writing. Now, how can you learn a variety of words so as to make your writing interesting?

First of all you can, and should, read anything you can get hold of that is worthwhile. Not comics! If you cannot always read good books and magazines, make a point of reading the newspaper every day. Newspaper writing is not always all it should be, but the articles will give you the opportunity to learn new words, besides giving you a wider general knowledge of everyday events.

However, there is one book that is absolutely essential to everyone and especially to a student of English. This is a Dictionary.

A dictionary not only gives you the meaning of words and how to spell them correctly, but is also gives alternative words which have nearly the same meaning. So, if you have difficulty in thinking of an alternative word which will make your writing more interesting, look in your dictionary for help. Of course, you have to be careful that the alternative applies to what you are writing about. For example,

let us suppose that you are writing about the building of your house. You have been talking about "bricks and cement" and you want to use another word for them. You could use the word "materials". but, in another context the word "material" can also mean "woven cloth" and, of course, that would not have the same meaning as "bricks and cement"!

Correct spelling in everything you write is most important and so easy if you take the trouble to consult your dictionary. A golden rule to follow is: "When in doubt, check with the dictionary". Mis-spelt words will not only lose you marks in an examination, but will count against you in your business career.

How to use a dictionary

In case you do not know how to use a dictionary, this is how you go about it:

Look at the illustration, which is part of a page from a well-known dictionary. What do we learn

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from it. First of all, you should read the introduction to your dictionary, because in this introduction the person who wrote it gives you information on the way he has set out the dictionary, what the various shortened forms mean and how you can get the most value out of the dictionary.

Study the illustration again and notice these points. See illustration on page 4.

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a. At the top of the page - on the extreme left and the extreme right you have the words "paddle" and "pail". This means that first word explained on that page is "paddle" and the last explained is "pail". Would it be any use looking on that: p for the word "paradox" or "possession"? No, it would not, because both these words do not fall alphabetically between "paddle" "pail". These key words which you find at the top of the list make your work of finding words so much easier because you should not look right down the page - you know at a glance whether word you need is contained between the two limits.

b. Between these two key words, you may find other words with little marks over certain letters. These are to help you say the words correctly. Any words in the dictionary which contain the same marks over the letters are pronounced in the same way as those letters are. Most dictionaries give detailed lists of pronunciation in the front notes. You will notice in the illustration that all the words in heavy type have a word in italics behind them - this shows the pronunciation. This is very necessary in English because it is not a phonetic language. That is, words are not always pronounced as they are spelt. Take the word, "pheasant", for instance. The initial "ph" is pronounced as an "f", but you would never spell the word "finish" as "phinish".

c. What else can be learnt from the illustration? Look at it again. After each of these words explained you will see some abbreviations such as "n", "v.i", "adj" and so on. Look, up in your introduction to see what these 'abbreviations mean. In this instance "n" means "noun", "v.i" means "verb intransitive" and "adj" means "adjective". So a dictionary can tell what part of speech a word is. There is a danger here, however, because often you can only find out what part of speech a word is by actually using it in a sentence. Take the word PLAY as an example and read these two sentences;

"I play soccer every Saturday afternoon". "I saw a very good play on Television last night". They both use the word "play" but, in the first sentence, it is a verb because it denotes an action, while in the second one it is a noun because it denotes a thing. A good dictionary will tell you if a word is used as more than one part of speech.

d. Now we come to one of the most important items in a dictionary: the meaning of the word. A word often has more than one meaning and a good dictionary will give as

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many meanings as seem to be necessary.

e. Following the various meanings of the word, you find words derived from the original one; that is, which are formed from the original one.

f. Finally, in this illustration you have the information contained within the square brackets. This is the Etymology. Do you know the meaning of this word? Look it up in your dictionary. It means the origin of the word and how it was formed. Look at the entry following "paddle". It states the word is a synonym and compared to the Scottish word "pattle".

When you use a dictionary, you seldom use it to find all the six words given above. At this stage you will only need to use it to find the meanings of the words and how to spell them correctly.

Have you understood the meaning of all the words used so far in this lesson? Your first Self-Help Exercise will be a check. If you find that you do not know the meanings of all the words, check in your dictionary and look at the answers at the end of the less