Professional Issues Poor oral presentation skills Poor literary - - PDF document

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Professional Issues

Communicating in English

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Employers' views of graduates

(Remember this?)

• Inarticulate and illiterate:
• Poor oral presentation skills
• Poor literary skills

– grammar, sentence structure, punctuation, spelling

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Sources of English

• Saxons, Jutes, Angles, Normans (really

Vikings)

• How has it spread?

– British colonisation, American “Coca Cola- nisation”

• Do Americans speak English?

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Questions

• How many common words are used

differently between Britain and the USA?

• NB English-English is a minority dialect
• How many learn English as a 2nd

language?

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And the answers are …

• 1000 (Bill Bryson)
• 1 - 1.5 billion

– 250 million Chinese study English – Common 2nd language in 89 countries

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The Importance of English

• Quotations taken from Bill Bryson's

“Mother Tongue”

– “Two thirds of all scientific papers are published in English” (Economist) – “Nearly half of all business deals in Europe are conducted in English” – “More than 70% of the world's mail is written and addressed in English”

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• “The teaching of English is Britain's sixth largest

source of invisible earning, worth some £500M per annum”

• “English is the most studied and emulated

language in the world”

• “Many English words have become more or less

universal” (airport, passport, hotel, telephone, bar, soda, cigarette, sport, golf, tennis, stop, OK, weekend, jeans, know-how, sex appeal, no problem)

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Such as …

Q+7 3= M?G )?g E=+7 #!C C+EG?C!EG

• man bilong wokim gaden
• Rot
• Kaikai
• rot bilong kaikai
• Bagarup

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… meaning

• Check-in
• Hot Dog
• Snack Bar
• Restaurant
• Direct phonetic

translation into Cyrillic (Russian, Bulgarian etc.)

• Farmer
• Road
• Food
• Digestive Tract
• Disaster
• Papua New Guinea Pidgin

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“Scientists Must Write”

Chapter Titles

• 1. Scientists must write
• 2. Personal records
• 3. Routine communications
• 4. How scientists should write
• 5. Think - plan - write - revise (includes exam

advice)

• 6. Choosing words
• 7. Using words
• 8. Helping your readers

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9. Numbers contribute to precision

• 10. Illustrations contribute to clarity
• 11. Finding information
• 12. How to write a report on an investigation
• 13. Writing a report on your investigation
• 14. Talking about science

Appendices:

– Punctuation – Spelling (knowledge of grammar is assumed) – Computer Appreciation

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Unstructured writing

• Implies unstructured thought

– Or lack of care or consideration

• Is difficult to read and remember
• Is impossible to assimilate and understand
• Is prone to duplication or omissions
• Careless writing (bad spelling or grammar)

distracts from the message

– And again, implies lack of care

• Every time you communicate, how you do it

conveys a message

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Documents

TITLE Author name(s), Author affiliation(s), Date (Abstract)

• Introduction (What this document is about)
• Sections describing the work
• Conclusion (What has been achieved, proved, etc.)
• References
• machine produced, spell checked

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Things that irritate markers

• Bad spelling in spell-checkable documents
• Poor structure
• Misused apostrophes
• Their / there; here / hear; two / to / too
• Passivity

– This report attempts to show a possible … – This report shows a …

• Rambling

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Always redraft it

"I have made this [letter] longer, because I have not had the time to make it shorter.“ Blaise Pascal, "Lettres provinciales", letter 16, 1657. Generally a written passage will get shorter and better every time you revise it

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Good discipline

• (say for a report)
• Imagine you are giving it as a presentation

– Condense it to (say) 12 bullet points

• Or: draw out the structure as a diagram
• Or: Read it aloud
• If a tricky point gives you trouble

– Say it briefly in ordinary English; write it down

• A picture is worth 1000 words

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Scientific papers

• Write in “reportese”

– 3rd person – “We unplugged the gizmo before it caught fire” becomes – “The device was immediately unplugged and thermal damage was avoided”

• But don’t get turgid or timid or pompous
• Banish anything that breaks the narrative

flow to an appendix

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Examinations

• Read the rubric and the questions and answer

the questions set, not ones you have invented

• Start your answer to each question on a new

page

• Fill in the “questions attempted” column on the

front page (1, 2, etc, not 1a, 1b, 2a, 2b)

• Don't write “you do this” etc, the examiner won't!

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Examinations

• Strategy: Use your time wisely; the first 50% of

marks for a question are more easily obtained than the last 50%.

• “A mass of irrelevant verbiage is no substitute

for facts” (Professor, Lord Flowers)

• Third year marks constitute 50% of final degree

assessment

• You can lose more marks through poor strategy,

panic or misreading the question than through poor knowledge

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Presentations

• What are your worst presentation

nightmares?

• Answers from the floor … ?
• Most can be avoided with a little thought

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Presentation Nightmares 1

• Nervous

– Practice, starting with small groups – Know your material and how you’ll start – Be yourself, try to relax

• Lose the place or find material doesn’t work

– Have cue cards that you can read while standing

• Best to know the slide after the one showing

– Never, ever, ever, try to read material verbatim – Take time to think if you need to – Don’t over-apologise

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Presentation Nightmares 2

• Your lose your material / things go wrong

– Backup copy – acetates, paper even. – Have someone else fix things while you talk

• Tough question

– Have some stock answers – E.g. “I’d really need notice of that question…”

• A-V

– If possible check out the venue beforehand

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Breakout

• Why do scientists/engineers need to write?
• When will they need to write?
• What are the consequences of poor

communication?

• 10 minutes but …
• This time your spokesperson presents your

results!

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• Why scientists/engineers need to write:

– To communicate – To remember – To think – To plan – To organise

from “Scientists Must Write” by Robert Barrass

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Grammar

• Question: Is the following a sentence?

– This is a sentence.

• Question: Is the following a sentence?

– Whereas this is not a sentence.

• Question: Which of the following is

correct?

– The group have decided … – The group has decided ...

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Grammar

• Question: Is the following a sentence?

– This is a sentence.

• Question: Is the following a sentence?

– Whereas this is not a sentence.

• Question: Which of the following is

correct?

– The group have decided … x – The group has decided ... √

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Grammar

• Question: Which of the following is

correct?

– The amount of people who ... – The number of people who ...

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Grammar

• Question: Are the following sentences

grammatically correct?

– Me and Jim went down the pub. – Between you and I, Jim's drinking too much. – “Try and drink less”, I told him. – “Please return your empty glasses to myself”, said the barman. – “If myself or any of my staff can help you please ...” (GNER)

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Grammar

• The sentences should be:

– Jim and I went to the pub. – Between you and me, Jim's drinking too much. – “Try to drink less”, I told him. – “Please return your empty glasses to me”, said the barman. – “If I or any of my staff can help you, please ...”

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Grammar

• Question: Which of the following is

correct?

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• During the day, most of the windows were
• closed. The windows which were open were

closed at 5.00 pm.

• During the day, most of the windows were
• closed. The windows, which were open, were

closed at 5.00 pm.

• During the day, most of the windows were
• closed. The windows that were open were

closed at 5.00 pm.

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• During the day, most of the windows were
• closed. The (windows which were open)

were closed at 5.00 pm.

– i.e. some of the windows were open

• During the day, most of the windows were
• closed. The (windows which were open

were closed) at 5.00 pm.

– a logical impossibility

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• During the day, most of the windows were
• closed. The windows, which were open,

were closed at 5.00 pm.

• Now refers to all the windows, but were

they open or were they closed?

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• During the day, most of the windows were
• closed. The windows that were open were

closed at 5.00 pm.

• Correct. Note the difference using “that”

rather than “which”

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Spelling

• Question: Which of the following words are

correct?

– Separate √ seperate x – Behavior us behaviour √ – Travelled √ traveled us – Independant x independent √ – Dependant √, n. dependent √, adj. – Recieve x receive √

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Why verb when you can noun?

• This product fragrances your house
• YUK!

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Punctuation

• Question: Which (if any) of the following is

correct?

– It's a dog's life. – I gave the dog it's bone. – Potatoe's - 1Kg for 50p

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Punctuation

• As seen:

– It's a dog's life. – I gave the dog it's bone. – Potatoe's - 1Kg for 50p

• Should be:

– It's a dog's life. – I gave the dog its bone. – Potatoes - 1Kg for 50p

• (Potato’s = “grocer’s apostrophe”)

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And one from Lynne Truss

A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots into the air. “Why?”, asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it

• ver his shoulder.

“I'm a Panda”, he says, at the door, “Look it up.” The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation.

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And the answer was …

• “Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like

mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.” From: “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” by Lynne Truss

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Ignore punctuation at your peril!

• An English professor wrote the words,

“Woman without her man is nothing” on the blackboard and directed his students to punctuate it correctly.

• The men wrote: “Woman, without her man,

is nothing.”

• The women wrote: “Woman: Without her,

man is nothing.”

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Or:

• Leonora walked on her head, a little higher

than usual Caesar entered on his head A helmet on each foot A sandal in his hand he held His trusty sword to boot

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Book List

• “Scientists Must Write”, R Barrass,

Routledge, 2002

• “Mother Tongue”, Bill Bryson, Penguin,

1991

• “Between You and I (A LITTLE BOOK OF

BAD ENGLISH)”, James Cochrane, Icon Books, 2003

• “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”, Lynne Truss,

Profile Books, 2003