The problem. Is that many people have fossilized errors?
Incorrect uses which are becoming a part
of what they write.
Here is an example.
These books are interesting.
Probably lots of people seeing that sentence will detect the
error immediately. It should be. These books are interesting.
But this is a common mistake, because the words this and these
sound so similar.
That's why this book sounds right to a lot of people.
It's easy to spot the error here, because the sentence
only contains 4 words and because I told you that
there is a mistake.
But how to find a mistake when it's in the middle of a
long essay that you wrote?
How can the person who wrote.
This books are interesting.
Spot the error.
That's the problem.
After all. That person wrote this books because
they think it is correct.
They didn't make the mistake on purpose.
After writing an essay of 250
words. You might spend perhaps 2 hours self correcting it.
You should take the view that a lot of what you wrote might be
incorrect. So ask yourself about each sentence.
Am I sure that is correct?
What evidence do I have?
If your name is Anna and you've written the sentence,
my name is Anna.
Then you can be sure it's correct.
Because you've seen sentences
like. My name is Julie.
And my name is John.
In books that you know are written in correct English.
If you think hard, you can feel that you have a good reason.
It's a very common structure.
Which you know you know.
That is the important point.
Use sentences that you know are correct as models for
your own writing.
If you have any doubts.
Where can you find such sentences?
In the dictionary, if you look up the word this in the
Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary you will find the
entry makes very clear with explanations and examples.
That this is used before
singular nouns. And these.
Before pure and ends.
Indeed, there is even an example which starts like this.
These books are.
I've chosen a very simple example here.
But the same goes for other mistakes.
For example, if you've used a preposition after a verb.
Is it the right preposition?
Prepositions are a notorious source of error.
If you've used another verb after a verb.
Is the 2nd verb in the right form?
Should it be the infinitive?
Or the ING form.
At first it seems a lot of time.
And it is. But it is a very efficient use of your time
because you're checking your English.
The English you like to use.
You will soon find that you don't need to check so much.
Because you know, you know.
That is, you are building up a body of English phrases and
structures. Which you can use with confidence.
Now I want to introduce you to a
tool. That will help you a lot.
The British national corpus.
The British National Corpus is a huge online corpus of correcting
issues. A corpus is a large collection of texts which is
held on computer and can therefore be accessed
electronically.
And in the case of the British National Corpus,
you can access it online.
The British National Corpus contains the texts, but not
the pictures or photographs.
The texts found in lots of newspapers.
Periodicals journals no holes and nonfiction books.
Letters are messages, essays, etc.
And the transcripts of lectures, casual, everyday conversations,
and radio programs.
All this language, the novels, newspapers, conversations, etc
was produced in the later part of the 20th century.
In total, the corpus contains approximately 100 million words.
What can you do with such a corpus?
Well, if you go to.
This address.
You will see a box where it says enter text.
There you can write a word or phrase.
Let's say we write depend.
We click on go.
And then you will see a page that starts like this.
Your query was depend.
Here is a random selection of 50 solutions from the 3448 found.
And below this notice.
Are 50 examples of depend.
In sentences from the corpus.
There are 3448 examples of deep end and 50 of them.
I'll show it to you.
They're shown to you in context.
In the sentences from books and newspapers, for example, which
form part of the corpus.
Here is an example.
One of the uses of deepend.
In the corpus. A 64470 local involvement in nationwide
politics does not just depend on intellectual evolution,
however, but on the strong conviction the national
affairs affect one's life and so need to be considered.
If you click on a 64.
You see this.
A 64 one step backwards. 2 steps forward.
Passive Ridge Roger Oxford. Clarendon Press, 1990 Pages 1797
S units. 41,000 and 9 words.
This tells you where the sentence comes from.
As you can see. It comes from a
book called. One step backwards. 2 steps forward.
It's often useful to know where the sentence comes from.
If it is a published book.
Then you know that it is being
carefully written. And carefully edited.
That's important for us on this
course. Because we want to be sure we are using good models.
Models we can rely on.
Reliable examples.
The British National Corpus contains approximately 100
million words.
But 10,000,000 words of that is spoken English.
Now spoken English is not such a good guide to written English.
In spoken English people make mistakes. They change direction
in the middle of the sentence.
They stop and then they start again.
They talk in a way that is OK
for talking. But not for
writing. Where there are different rules.
So remember.
If you are using the British National Corpus to check if a
phrase is correct in writing.
You need to find evidence in written texts.
And then that you can tell where the phrase comes from
by clicking on the letters and numbers.
A 64 for example.
Which appear in blue on the left just before the sentence.
If later you repeat this exercise, you will get a
different selection of 50 examples of deepend.
And don't forget that you can also get examples of depends and
depended. And depending.
And if you want, you can also write a phrase for
example depends off.
If you do that, you discover that the phrase depends off
occurs 10 times in the 100
million words. Here is an example.
It all depends, of course on what is meant by the feminine.
Ah.
Earlier in the course.
We decided that depends on was
wrong. And it was wrong. In the sentence we were looking at.
But here we see that there are
exceptions. And this is very normal. the British National
Corpus contains approximately 100 million words.
Has a lot of language.
There are lots of things that you wouldn't have thought were
possible. Until you see them.
For example. If you asking me speakers if you can use of after
deep end. They will probably say no.
Until you say.
And what about it? It depends, of course on the weather.
And then they say, Oh yes, I hadn't thought of that.
But remember. Just because of phrasing, your writing also
occurs in the British National Corpus. Doesn't mean that you
have used it correctly.
Ideally you need to see the phrase used by two or three
writers. In just the way you want to use it.
Now here's the task for this module.
I want you to look at this sentence.
Then he said us he had always worked as waiter.
Now there are two mistakes in that sentence.
You can probably see them immediately.
But finding the errors is not the task.
Or not yet anyway.
Now we can divide that sentence into pairs of words.
Then he, he said, said us, as he he had had always.
Always worked, worked as as waiter.
That's nine pairs.
Notice that most of the words form part of two pairs.
He is the second word in then
he. And the first word in he said, for example.
You can look up each pair in the British National Corpus and see
how often it occurs.
For example, the pair, then he.
Occurs 5890 times.
And the pair, he said occurs thirty 4737 times.
Your task is to find the numbers for all nine pairs.
Which of the two lowest numbers?
Where are the two mistakes in the sentence?
As usual, if you have any doubts, then the forum is the
place to discuss this.