A SENSE OF ENGLISH
This is the last of our series of looking at the IELTS exam. Each skill that is tested in the exam – listening, speaking, reading and writing – requires different techniques to be employed for success. We’ve been looking at some of these over recent weeks.
This makes it quite different from studying English per se. A Taiwanese student came to me recently confused about how to approach the exam.
His question was: “Do I need to study specifically for IELTS, or do I need to study general English first?”
He was holding a copy of “English Vocabulary in Use” (intermediate level) in one hand and explained that his father was pushing him to take IELTS as soon as possible and try and get on a Masters course in January.
I told him clearly that you can only prepare specifically for IELTS when you have a certain level of general English. IELTS is not separate from general English, but some aspects of it do require particular preparation.
If a student has an advanced level of general English, preparation for IELTS will not take long. If they don’t, they should seek to acquire this first.
Trying to prepare for IELTS before having mastered the basics of English grammar and learnt a substantial amount of English vocabulary is like trying to run before you can walk.
That’s a simple analogy, but it hits the nail on the head. (How many of you know that expression? Go and find out if not!)
IELTS is a very well thought-out test. It’s a very fair and reasonable way of assessing a student’s ability to cope with the demands of studying at university level in English.
Last time I said we would have a brief look at the second part of the Writing exam.
Ability to write well in another language is always improved by how much you read. Exactly the same relationship exists between your speaking ability and how much you listen to English.
So, reading a lot of similar articles to the kind you have to write in IELTS is the best thing you can do to prepare. There is no shortage of such articles to be found on the internet as well as in your set language books.
Part 2 requires you to analyse an opinion or some sort of problem and write an appropriate response. As with all IELTS tests, make sure you fully understand what you are supposed to do.
There are many key sentences structures that you will almost certainly be able to use. Make sure you are fully familiar with the three basic conditional sentences and the nuances between them (these are always winning grammatical structures with examiners).
Your response will involve expressing your opinion, so make sure you are fully equipped with a wide range of suitable sentences and structures. Remember how important variety is; the examiner doesn’t want to read the same expressions over and over again.
You will be marked on whether or not you have covered all the requirements of the task. It’s not just about getting the grammar right – your ideas and the way you express them must have both cohesion and relevance.
Make sure you get the right help from your teacher about format. Your sentences and paragraphs should have a progression and a
logic to them and should start and finish in the right place.
Ideas are conveyed in distinct ways in different languages, so what may seem logical to you (as you translate from your native language) might be clumsy or unclear in English.
Developing a sense of English in your writing, as in your spoken English, is vital for IELTS success and your future studies at university. Wishing you all the very best!
621 words
Charlie de Wirtz is a highly experienced international teacher of English and Spanish and the author of two books, Spanish with Carlos (ISBN: 978 0954608804) and A Sense of English (ISBN: 978 0954608842). He also proofreads personal statements, university essays and dissertations for university students. In the 1990s he started and ran his own EFL School in Eastbourne where he currently resides, continuing to devote his time to teaching and writing language material.
Monday, 29 June 2009
A SENSE OF ENGLISH
A SENSE OF ENGLISH
We’ve been considering some practical ways to approach the different parts of the IELTS exam and now we’re going to look at Part 1 of the writing test.
The test is divided into two parts. In part 1 you have to describe in your own words a diagram or some data. Sometimes the test takes another form (a description of a process) but here I want to concentrate on describing graphic information.
The data may be represented in different ways. Bar charts, pie charts and graphs may all be used. Make sure you know exactly what each one is. That’s a first and obvious step.
When describing data, bear in mind that different ways exist of saying the same thing. For example: “53% of people in Europe…” could equally be expressed by saying “just/a little over half of people in Europe…”
You should have at your fingertips two or three different ways of saying everything you want to say. Then you can mix up the use of them to produce variety of expression and gain more marks.
If you have a graph, then you can often talk about trends. Numbers can “rise” or “fall”, or you could use the nouns “increase” or “reduction”.
For example: “The graph shows a reduction in the number of…” or “The number of………has fallen.” Take note: these examples are not necessarily full sentences in themselves; they should (where appropriate) be further qualified by mentioning the time period over which the rise or fall has taken place.
You can further clarify information by using adjectives or adverbs with your nouns and verbs. Their use will gain you crucial extra marks.
Words such as “decline”, “peak”, “drop”, “steady/steadily”, “considerable/considerably”, “gradual/gradually”, “sharp/sharply”, “relative/relatively”, “slight/slightly” should all be completely familiar to you and comfortable for you to use.
There is no excuse not to be fully prepared. Search for statistical and graphical information online (there’s no shortage!) and practise analysing and explaining it.
Get a native speaker (they don’t need to be a teacher but they DO need a reasonable level of intelligence!) to help you. Practice with them over and over again until you are confident.
There are also particular grammar structures that you will certainly need to be able to interpret and describe data effectively. Again, there is no excuse not to be fully prepared if you know that you are going to need them.
Make sure you are completely conversant with numerical and comparative expressions (e.g. “twice as expensive as…”) and general comparatives and superlatives of adjectives (“long, longer, longest”).
Stick to sentence structures that you know are correct. That means you are going to have to learn a lot of them, but this is the practical element to passing IELTS.
Studying for IELTS is not the same as studying English generally. It is a specific exam for entering university, and it seeks to test specific skills that you WILL need at undergraduate and post-graduate level.
This should serve as an extra motivation for you to prepare yourself well. The skills you learn while preparing for IELTS you will use again and again when you get to university.
It is a test that has not been designed to trip you up, but to enable you to see how well you will/would cope studying at university in England. The techniques that you need to pass the exam you will also need in order to get the best out of your university programme or course.
Next time we will look at some more aspects of how to approach the Writing test, and in particular part 2.
We’ve been considering some practical ways to approach the different parts of the IELTS exam and now we’re going to look at Part 1 of the writing test.
The test is divided into two parts. In part 1 you have to describe in your own words a diagram or some data. Sometimes the test takes another form (a description of a process) but here I want to concentrate on describing graphic information.
The data may be represented in different ways. Bar charts, pie charts and graphs may all be used. Make sure you know exactly what each one is. That’s a first and obvious step.
When describing data, bear in mind that different ways exist of saying the same thing. For example: “53% of people in Europe…” could equally be expressed by saying “just/a little over half of people in Europe…”
You should have at your fingertips two or three different ways of saying everything you want to say. Then you can mix up the use of them to produce variety of expression and gain more marks.
If you have a graph, then you can often talk about trends. Numbers can “rise” or “fall”, or you could use the nouns “increase” or “reduction”.
For example: “The graph shows a reduction in the number of…” or “The number of………has fallen.” Take note: these examples are not necessarily full sentences in themselves; they should (where appropriate) be further qualified by mentioning the time period over which the rise or fall has taken place.
You can further clarify information by using adjectives or adverbs with your nouns and verbs. Their use will gain you crucial extra marks.
Words such as “decline”, “peak”, “drop”, “steady/steadily”, “considerable/considerably”, “gradual/gradually”, “sharp/sharply”, “relative/relatively”, “slight/slightly” should all be completely familiar to you and comfortable for you to use.
There is no excuse not to be fully prepared. Search for statistical and graphical information online (there’s no shortage!) and practise analysing and explaining it.
Get a native speaker (they don’t need to be a teacher but they DO need a reasonable level of intelligence!) to help you. Practice with them over and over again until you are confident.
There are also particular grammar structures that you will certainly need to be able to interpret and describe data effectively. Again, there is no excuse not to be fully prepared if you know that you are going to need them.
Make sure you are completely conversant with numerical and comparative expressions (e.g. “twice as expensive as…”) and general comparatives and superlatives of adjectives (“long, longer, longest”).
Stick to sentence structures that you know are correct. That means you are going to have to learn a lot of them, but this is the practical element to passing IELTS.
Studying for IELTS is not the same as studying English generally. It is a specific exam for entering university, and it seeks to test specific skills that you WILL need at undergraduate and post-graduate level.
This should serve as an extra motivation for you to prepare yourself well. The skills you learn while preparing for IELTS you will use again and again when you get to university.
It is a test that has not been designed to trip you up, but to enable you to see how well you will/would cope studying at university in England. The techniques that you need to pass the exam you will also need in order to get the best out of your university programme or course.
Next time we will look at some more aspects of how to approach the Writing test, and in particular part 2.
A SENSE OF ENGLISH
A SENSE OF ENGLISH
Last month I gave some tips for how to approach the IELTS speaking exam. This time we are going to think a little about the reading test.
For any readers not familiar with the reading test, a good starting point is www.examenglish.com/IELTS/IELTS_reading.htm - there is an example text and five accompanying questions.
One of the difficulties that most students have is time. The exam consists of three different passages of reading, which can total more than two-and-a-half thousand words.
There are then 40 questions and only sixty minutes to answer them all. You should also bear in mind that the questions become progressively more difficult.
Another challenging aspect of the exam is that the subject matter that comes up can be about almost anything.
You might get a reading text about nuclear power stations, for example, which could include some vocabulary of a technical and specialized nature.
So, are you expected to know all the words in the dictionary? Do you have to understand the texts perfectly to pass the IELTS reading test? Of course the answer is no.
The questions are designed to test your general understanding of the text. This means you need to develop a technique that I call “thin-slicing”. This refers to ways of separating the key information from the rest.
Try the following method to do this. Read the whole of the first paragraph. Then read the first line of each of the other paragraphs. The first line introduces you to what the rest of the paragraph is going to be about.
This will then help you to locate the specific areas of the texts that relate to the different questions. It is not a substitute for reading the whole text from start to finish (see below), but it is the best way to give yourself an overview.
Think of it like spreading a world map out on the table in front of you and locating immediately the different continents. When the question then asks you to locate a smaller place, you’ll at least know which part of the map to start looking at.
After that read the set of questions that relate to the text, and then read through the whole passage.
When doing this, don’t stall over trying to unravel complex sentence structures. The time to do that is when you are sure that that particular part of the text relates directly to one of the questions.
Following this method puts you in the best place to then locate the specific information that the question requires you to find.
There are several types of multiple-choice questions that are used. Sometimes you have to choose one answer only from a choice of four, other times it’s a case of selecting several answers from a list.
Whatever type of question is used, always ask three questions about each multiple-choice option. The answer to all three questions must be “yes” for it to be a correct option to select.
Firstly, is it actually mentioned in the article? Even though it may look like a reasonable or true answer, it might not be sourced in the text.
Secondly – if the statement/option is mentioned, is it true according to the information in the article? Make sure you’ve read the question very carefully as well in this case, as sometimes it’s easy to understand the exact opposite of what is being asked.
The third question to ask? Is the statement/option relevant to the question? It’s not enough that it is mentioned in the article and concurs with the information given. It must be specific to what the question is asking.
Good luck to all those sitting IELTS anytime soon - next month in this column we will look at the Writing test.
Last month I gave some tips for how to approach the IELTS speaking exam. This time we are going to think a little about the reading test.
For any readers not familiar with the reading test, a good starting point is www.examenglish.com/IELTS/IELTS_reading.htm - there is an example text and five accompanying questions.
One of the difficulties that most students have is time. The exam consists of three different passages of reading, which can total more than two-and-a-half thousand words.
There are then 40 questions and only sixty minutes to answer them all. You should also bear in mind that the questions become progressively more difficult.
Another challenging aspect of the exam is that the subject matter that comes up can be about almost anything.
You might get a reading text about nuclear power stations, for example, which could include some vocabulary of a technical and specialized nature.
So, are you expected to know all the words in the dictionary? Do you have to understand the texts perfectly to pass the IELTS reading test? Of course the answer is no.
The questions are designed to test your general understanding of the text. This means you need to develop a technique that I call “thin-slicing”. This refers to ways of separating the key information from the rest.
Try the following method to do this. Read the whole of the first paragraph. Then read the first line of each of the other paragraphs. The first line introduces you to what the rest of the paragraph is going to be about.
This will then help you to locate the specific areas of the texts that relate to the different questions. It is not a substitute for reading the whole text from start to finish (see below), but it is the best way to give yourself an overview.
Think of it like spreading a world map out on the table in front of you and locating immediately the different continents. When the question then asks you to locate a smaller place, you’ll at least know which part of the map to start looking at.
After that read the set of questions that relate to the text, and then read through the whole passage.
When doing this, don’t stall over trying to unravel complex sentence structures. The time to do that is when you are sure that that particular part of the text relates directly to one of the questions.
Following this method puts you in the best place to then locate the specific information that the question requires you to find.
There are several types of multiple-choice questions that are used. Sometimes you have to choose one answer only from a choice of four, other times it’s a case of selecting several answers from a list.
Whatever type of question is used, always ask three questions about each multiple-choice option. The answer to all three questions must be “yes” for it to be a correct option to select.
Firstly, is it actually mentioned in the article? Even though it may look like a reasonable or true answer, it might not be sourced in the text.
Secondly – if the statement/option is mentioned, is it true according to the information in the article? Make sure you’ve read the question very carefully as well in this case, as sometimes it’s easy to understand the exact opposite of what is being asked.
The third question to ask? Is the statement/option relevant to the question? It’s not enough that it is mentioned in the article and concurs with the information given. It must be specific to what the question is asking.
Good luck to all those sitting IELTS anytime soon - next month in this column we will look at the Writing test.
Thursday, 25 June 2009
A SENSE OF ENGLISH
A SENSE OF ENGLISH
For foreign students hopeful of securing a place at university in the UK, preparing for IELTS (International English Language Testing System) can be very stressful, not to mention costly.
At a cost of £100 just to sit the exam, repeated failure to get the required result can considerably dent the bank balance!
Employing some general strategies, like reading a wide range of articles, and listening to discussions of an academic or formal nature will of course help, but effective preparation for IELTS must also involve the use of some more specific techniques.
Each of the four disciplines that are tested (Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening) requires different skills that should be honed through practice. Today we will highlight some important points that relate to the Speaking, as this is the one that tends to pose the biggest problem for Asian students.
Although you don’t know what is coming up in parts 2 & 3 of the Speaking test until the day itself, your first priority should be to fully prepare Part 1, in which you have to talk about yourself. There is no excuse not to be properly ready.
Start by make headings on a piece of paper: My country/hometown, My family, My studies/job/career, My interests/hobbies. Then prepare (with the help of your teacher or a native speaker you trust) 10 or 15 quality sentences about each. Commit these to memory, and practise them until the point where you feel completely comfortable using them.
Bear in mind the marking criteria for the exam: fluency, range and accuracy of vocabulary/grammatical structures and pronunciation will all be assessed. Diligent preparation will enable you to score highly in each of these facets and send you into part 2 with confidence.
In part 2 you have a minute to prepare to speak about a particular topic. The challenge here is to find the balance between making your thoughts or story easily understandable to the examiner and attempting to impress with your sentence structure and vocabulary.
Ask yourself this question: when you try to construct more difficult sentences, do you hesitate more or find yourself starting the sentence again? (Sometimes more than once?) My experience of preparing Asian students for IELTS is that they often do this.
An important tip: Hesitancy is specifically mentioned as something the examiner must mark down. Also, starting a sentence again reflects badly on you, as it shows that you hadn’t thought through the whole idea first.
Only start a sentence that you know exactly how it is going to end. If that means that you are more limited to shorter sentences, then so be it. That is preferable to making two or three attempts to express an idea, which will make the examiner tired.
If the question you are confronted with is difficult, keep things simple. If you are asked to talk about an interesting journey that you have made, and you can’t think of anything, make something up. The examiner doesn’t know you. You can lie if it helps you. The exam is a test of your English, not your morality!
For parts 2 and 3 you need to memorize some sentence structures that are transferable to different situations. Prepare thoroughly how to describe people and places in detail, have ready a range of expressions to offer your opinion together with appropriate sentences to justify it.
Very important: do not prepare it on your own! You will need the help of a capable native speaker with the sentences and expressions you want to memorize. Make sure it’s someone who you trust in a linguistic sense; someone who can understand exactly what it is you are trying to say and then put it into good quality English for you.
For foreign students hopeful of securing a place at university in the UK, preparing for IELTS (International English Language Testing System) can be very stressful, not to mention costly.
At a cost of £100 just to sit the exam, repeated failure to get the required result can considerably dent the bank balance!
Employing some general strategies, like reading a wide range of articles, and listening to discussions of an academic or formal nature will of course help, but effective preparation for IELTS must also involve the use of some more specific techniques.
Each of the four disciplines that are tested (Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening) requires different skills that should be honed through practice. Today we will highlight some important points that relate to the Speaking, as this is the one that tends to pose the biggest problem for Asian students.
Although you don’t know what is coming up in parts 2 & 3 of the Speaking test until the day itself, your first priority should be to fully prepare Part 1, in which you have to talk about yourself. There is no excuse not to be properly ready.
Start by make headings on a piece of paper: My country/hometown, My family, My studies/job/career, My interests/hobbies. Then prepare (with the help of your teacher or a native speaker you trust) 10 or 15 quality sentences about each. Commit these to memory, and practise them until the point where you feel completely comfortable using them.
Bear in mind the marking criteria for the exam: fluency, range and accuracy of vocabulary/grammatical structures and pronunciation will all be assessed. Diligent preparation will enable you to score highly in each of these facets and send you into part 2 with confidence.
In part 2 you have a minute to prepare to speak about a particular topic. The challenge here is to find the balance between making your thoughts or story easily understandable to the examiner and attempting to impress with your sentence structure and vocabulary.
Ask yourself this question: when you try to construct more difficult sentences, do you hesitate more or find yourself starting the sentence again? (Sometimes more than once?) My experience of preparing Asian students for IELTS is that they often do this.
An important tip: Hesitancy is specifically mentioned as something the examiner must mark down. Also, starting a sentence again reflects badly on you, as it shows that you hadn’t thought through the whole idea first.
Only start a sentence that you know exactly how it is going to end. If that means that you are more limited to shorter sentences, then so be it. That is preferable to making two or three attempts to express an idea, which will make the examiner tired.
If the question you are confronted with is difficult, keep things simple. If you are asked to talk about an interesting journey that you have made, and you can’t think of anything, make something up. The examiner doesn’t know you. You can lie if it helps you. The exam is a test of your English, not your morality!
For parts 2 and 3 you need to memorize some sentence structures that are transferable to different situations. Prepare thoroughly how to describe people and places in detail, have ready a range of expressions to offer your opinion together with appropriate sentences to justify it.
Very important: do not prepare it on your own! You will need the help of a capable native speaker with the sentences and expressions you want to memorize. Make sure it’s someone who you trust in a linguistic sense; someone who can understand exactly what it is you are trying to say and then put it into good quality English for you.
A SENSE OF ENGLISH
A SENSE OF ENGLISH
THE THIRD CONDITIONAL
“If I hadn’t finished the evening off with that cocktail, I wouldn’t have woken up with that terrible headache this morning….” Most of us know the experience that this sentence is referring to, but would you have been able to correctly construct the sentence in English?
This is an example of the Third Conditional, and seemingly it’s being used here to express regret. There is some good news and some bad news about the Third Conditional – let’s start with the latter and then cheer ourselves up!
Third Conditional sentences are difficult to form, as the tenses used (the Past Perfect and the Conditional Perfect) both involve the use of the auxiliary verb “to have”. This means that the sentences are quite long. Sounding natural when speaking also involves mastering the contractions (e.g. “had not” to “hadn’t”, “would have” to “would’ve”, etc).
There is also the added complication that “would” can be replaced by other modal verbs to create a nuance of meaning. This happens in all the different Conditional sentences. That’s why I believe it’s extremely useful to study Conditionals and modal verbs together.
At first, it’s enough to think about getting the structure right. My view is that it’s better to focus on that first, and become very familiar with the tenses that you need for the Third Conditional. Then you can think about adding the fluency.
As a student of other languages myself, I am aware of a tendency that we have to try and speak too quickly, especially when we are surrounded by that language in our every day life. We want to imitate what we hear. But trying to run before we can walk disturbs our later learning patterns. Trying to sound too fluent too soon usually results in mistakes becoming habits.
When habits become very engrained, they are hard to undo. Why not train yourself to be patient from the outset, and get things right bit by bit?
In last month’s article I highlighted the typical “If I/you would…” mistake. Lots of students put “would” in the ‘if clause’ of a Conditional sentence out of habit. That is only correct in a couple of quite rare contexts, yet many students continuously make the mistake and struggle to correct it. Make sure the habits you form in learning English are beneficial ones.
The Third Conditional then, is hard to form because of its complicated structure and extensive use of contractions and modal verbs. The good news, though, is that it is easy to understand when it should be used.
It always relates to a past action/event that had a result. Look back at our example sentence in paragraph 1. Something happened last night (I had that last cocktail on top of all the other alcohol I had drunk) and – because of that - there was a result (I had a terrible headache when I woke up this morning).
Can you see what our Third Conditional sentence does? It imagines the opposite of what really happened, i.e. the opposite action and the opposite result.
“If I hadn’t finished the evening off with that cocktail…” this is telling us that the reality was I DID have a cocktail as my final drink, and….”I wouldn’t have woken up with that terrible headache this morning….” is telling us that the reality was I DID wake up with a headache.
It sounds like the speaker is expressing regret! But without a full context we can’t be sure. Can you think of another emotion that is often expressed through the use of the Third Conditional?Give that some thought.
THE THIRD CONDITIONAL
“If I hadn’t finished the evening off with that cocktail, I wouldn’t have woken up with that terrible headache this morning….” Most of us know the experience that this sentence is referring to, but would you have been able to correctly construct the sentence in English?
This is an example of the Third Conditional, and seemingly it’s being used here to express regret. There is some good news and some bad news about the Third Conditional – let’s start with the latter and then cheer ourselves up!
Third Conditional sentences are difficult to form, as the tenses used (the Past Perfect and the Conditional Perfect) both involve the use of the auxiliary verb “to have”. This means that the sentences are quite long. Sounding natural when speaking also involves mastering the contractions (e.g. “had not” to “hadn’t”, “would have” to “would’ve”, etc).
There is also the added complication that “would” can be replaced by other modal verbs to create a nuance of meaning. This happens in all the different Conditional sentences. That’s why I believe it’s extremely useful to study Conditionals and modal verbs together.
At first, it’s enough to think about getting the structure right. My view is that it’s better to focus on that first, and become very familiar with the tenses that you need for the Third Conditional. Then you can think about adding the fluency.
As a student of other languages myself, I am aware of a tendency that we have to try and speak too quickly, especially when we are surrounded by that language in our every day life. We want to imitate what we hear. But trying to run before we can walk disturbs our later learning patterns. Trying to sound too fluent too soon usually results in mistakes becoming habits.
When habits become very engrained, they are hard to undo. Why not train yourself to be patient from the outset, and get things right bit by bit?
In last month’s article I highlighted the typical “If I/you would…” mistake. Lots of students put “would” in the ‘if clause’ of a Conditional sentence out of habit. That is only correct in a couple of quite rare contexts, yet many students continuously make the mistake and struggle to correct it. Make sure the habits you form in learning English are beneficial ones.
The Third Conditional then, is hard to form because of its complicated structure and extensive use of contractions and modal verbs. The good news, though, is that it is easy to understand when it should be used.
It always relates to a past action/event that had a result. Look back at our example sentence in paragraph 1. Something happened last night (I had that last cocktail on top of all the other alcohol I had drunk) and – because of that - there was a result (I had a terrible headache when I woke up this morning).
Can you see what our Third Conditional sentence does? It imagines the opposite of what really happened, i.e. the opposite action and the opposite result.
“If I hadn’t finished the evening off with that cocktail…” this is telling us that the reality was I DID have a cocktail as my final drink, and….”I wouldn’t have woken up with that terrible headache this morning….” is telling us that the reality was I DID wake up with a headache.
It sounds like the speaker is expressing regret! But without a full context we can’t be sure. Can you think of another emotion that is often expressed through the use of the Third Conditional?Give that some thought.
A Sense of English
A SENSE OF ENGLISH
Sentences that start with an ‘if’ clause are known as Conditionals - like my “If I had a pound…” sentence above. They are vitally important in English as they are used so often. It is estimated that native speakers use an average of about 35 Conditional sentences A DAY in their everyday speaking.
There are three main types of Conditional sentence, each of which follow a particular grammatical structure. They are referred to as the First, Second and Third Conditionals, and all of them have two clauses (or parts) to the sentence.
It is highly advisable to study them together as a self-contained subject within English grammar. If not, they can be a cause of confusion. For example, did you understand exactly what my sentence at the beginning of this article means? Let’s have a look together:
“If I had a pound for every time I have heard this grammar mistake, I would be a very rich man.”
Firstly, notice the two clauses in the sentence, separated by the comma. This sentence is an example of the Second Conditional, and the key concept to understand is that it is used to talk about something imaginary.
The tense used in the ‘if’ clause is the past simple (“if I had…”). However the meaning is not past. But you wouldn’t know that if you hadn’t studied the Second Conditional as a particular sentence type with a specific use and meaning.
The sentence imagines something; it is not real. In other words, I don’t have a pound for every time I have heard that mistake. Whenever ‘if’ is followed by the past simple, something imaginary is being expressed.
Let’s demonstrate the point with another couple of examples of the Second Conditional:
If I had time, I would learn French. (The speaker is telling us that in reality he doesn’t have time.)
If John didn’t smoke, he would probably still be able to run the marathon. (The speaker is telling us that John still smokes).
The explanations given in brackets tell us that – through the use of ‘if + past simple’ - the speaker is imagining something that is not real at the time of speaking. The reality is the opposite of what the past tense expresses. That’s what the Second Conditional is all about.
Conditional sentences need lots of time and practice to master. For all serious students of English, however, it is essential to be fully competent at using them. Simply put: You cannot communicate effectively without them.
There are two aspects to mastering them. Firstly, you must clearly understand the ideas that they convey, and how those ideas relate to either a real or imaginary situation in the past, present or future.
Secondly, you need to know the grammatical structures of the three types of Conditional, and the many variations that are possible. This is easy enough in written English, when you have time to think, but that’s not a luxury that you have when speaking.
So, what’s wrong with “if you would…”? Would and the other modal verbs can (and indeed are) used very often in Conditional sentences, but never in the ‘if’ clause. They are used in the other part of the sentence. There is one very rare exception to this, but that’s for another time..
Wednesday, 24 June 2009
A SENSE OF ENGLISH
Learning English poses different problems for different nationalities. Pronunciation, word order, sentence structure, tenses – these are just a few examples of potential problems for the student of English.
The particular difficulties will relate directly to the way that English differs from whatever your mother tongue is. Learning fourteen different tenses in English will, for example, cause significant problems to Hungarian students but be relatively straightforward to those whose first language is a Latin-based one, like Italian, Spanish or French.
Hungarian, although considered a grammatically complex and difficult language to learn, uses only three tenses - past, present and future. One vital aspect of English that students from China, Korea and Japan in particular have to contend with is the use of Modal Verbs. These refer to a set of special words which support a main verb in a sentence, lending extra meaning and often (crucially) conveying the spirit in which something is said. The key Modals are Can, Could, Should, Would, Must and Might.
Modal Verbs are never used in isolation. They are always connected to another verb and convey varying degrees of possibility, probability and necessity of events or situations.
Although even intermediate students of English are familiar with Modal Verbs and have some idea about these concepts they are used to express, being able to use them in real life communication - and in a way that sounds natural - represents a real challenge.
Comparison is one key way for non-native English speakers to enhance their understanding of the nuance of meaning that using different Modals implies. Take for example the following two sentences:
A If I finish my work at the office before 9pm, I’ll join you for a drink at the pub.
B If I finish my work at the office before 9pm, I might join you for a drink at the pub.
The first sentence uses a future tense indicating that the speaker’s mind is made up. He is deciding on a course of action now, and is effectively promising to go the pub (as long as he finishes his work).
In the second sentence the speaker is refusing to commit himself to going to the pub. Instead, he is informing the person he is talking to that – although there is some possibility of him going to the pub - he will decide later, and not now. Maybe after finishing his work he will feel too tired and will want to go straight home. Using might leaves his options open.
It is very important to emphasize that in both cases the result (i.e. going to the pub or not) depends on whether the speaker finishes his work before 9pm. If he doesn’t, he won’t go. The condition is clear.
The use of will in sentence A does not therefore relate to the certainty of him going, but to the certainty of his intention. And in sentence B, going to the pub or not after work depends not only on whether he finishes his work before 9pm, but also on what his feeling or situation is after finishing. Confused? Don’t worry if your answer is yes. Developing a sense of the nuance of meaning that Modal Verbs carry is essential to effective and high-level communication in English. But it’s usually not achieved without a prolonged period of time being spent in an English-speaking country.
The more you can increase your exposure to English through the media, and your own contacts, the more your personal sense of English will develop.
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