Learning Consultancy Partnership
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English language and British undergraduates - what the research says..
Common writing errors and what to do about them
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Congratulations
 to all the award winners and runners up
 

Last week our local Brighton and Hove Business Awards took place and we want to say 'Well done!' to the winners and runners up on their success!

LCP Newsletter
Greetings!

 

This month one of our team found an article in 'The Independent' citing research which found British graduates are nearly three times more likely to make errors in English than those from overseas.

 

Our first article summarises the findings and the second looks at some of the most common errors and how to avoid them.

English language and British undergraduates - what the research says....
 students
A study of final year students has found that British undergraduates are three times more likely to make errors in English than their overseas counterparts. 
 
Professor Bernard Lamb, the president of the Queen's English Society, is due to publish the results in the society's journal 'Quest' next month.

The study reviewed 28 undergraduates work, 18 British and 10 from overseas and found that the British students had, on average, 52.2 punctuation, grammatical and spelling errors per paper compared with just 18.8 for the international students.
 
Spelling errors were common e.g. 'relevent' instead of 'relevant' as was confusion between 'its' and' it's'. Click here to review the article.

Another article in the Telegraph (6 August 2008) also criticised university students' spelling standards arguing that first year students were the worst offenders. 
 
Jack Boverill, chairman of 'The Spelling Society' was quoted as saying "All the data suggests that there are more and more students at university level whose spelling is not up to scratch.  Universities are even finding they have masters-level students who cannot spell".

The ability to write clearly and concisely is becoming increasingly important with the growth of e-mail communication and social media. Is it now up to employers to ensure their employees English language skills are adequate for their needs?
 
Our language communications specialist works with organisations helping them to improve the quality of their business communication.  For more information contact us.
Common writing errors and what to do about them
 

From our own experience and research here are our top 10 most common errors found in business writing and what to do about them.

1.      Incorrect use of commas

A comma indicates a pause and should not appear between two independent clauses without a conjunction.  Commas can be used to separate items on a list or mark out the less important parts in a sentence.

 

2.      Lack of subject and verb agreement

The verb must always agree with its subject and changes depending on whether the subject is singular or plural e.g. the room (subject singular) was (verb) full or the rooms (subject plural) were (verb) full.

 

3.     Apostrophes in the wrong place

Apostrophes are used to indicate ownership or possession e.g. the girl's hat and are also used to show the omission of letters e.g. don't.

 

A common mistake is the use of 'it's' instead of 'its'.  A simple way to test for the correct use is to replace 'it's' with 'it is' to see if the sentence still makes sense.  So "The group made it's (it is) decision" is incorrect and should be "The group made its decision".

 

4.     Splitting infinitives

Splitting infinitives is not as frowned upon as it used to be but it is good practice to keep the infinitive whole.

 

An infinitive is a 'to' plus a verb e.g. "to run".  If an adverb is placed between the 'to' and the verb is has been split e.g. "to quickly run".  It is better to  put the adverb after the verb e.g. "to run quickly".

 

5.      Confusion between I and me

A simple way to check for errors is to take the other person out of the sentence to see if it still makes sense e.g. "Tom and me went to the cinema last week" becomes "me went to the cinema last week" which is incorrect so 'I' must be used instead.

 

6.      Using affect instead of effect

Although there are some exceptions the general rule is that affect is a verb and effect is an noun e.g. "She was deeply affected by the news" versus "The knock on effect of the storm was significant".

 

7.     i.e. versus e.g.

Both of these abbreviations stand for Latin phrases i.e. stands for 'id est' which translates into 'that is' and is used in place of 'in other words' or 'in essence'.

 

e.g. stands for 'exempli gratia' meaning 'for example'. 

 

Don't italicise them; even though they are abbreviations for Latin words, they've been used for so long that they're considered a standard part of the English language.

 

8.      Using passive instead of active voice

An active verb expresses what its subject does and a passive verb expresses what its subject suffers. 

 

Sentences with active verbs are shorter, stronger and more dynamic than those with passive e.g. "It is anticipated that additional resources may be needed" (passive)versus "We anticipate needing additional resources" (active).

 

9.      Using ambiguous words

These are words or expressions that are vague and may mean different things to different people. 

 

One example is value judgements such as 'large', 'significant' and 'soon'.  What is large to one person may be small to another. 

 

10.  Using the wrong tone

The tone of any correspondence will depend on the purpose and key message.  When writing it is important to decide how formal you want your tone to be.

It is common practice in business writing to avoid first-person pronouns, for example the writer will use 'the department' instead of 'I'.  In some cases this is the right approach, for example, legal documents, but in other cases a good approach is to use a tone that is friendly but efficient. 

 

If you would like to test your own grammar take the Oxford Unversity Press Diagnostic Test here . 

Learning Consultancy Partnership provides bespoke coaching and development solutions to meet the specific needs across all levels of an organisation.
 
To find out more, please visit our website at http://www.lcp.org.uk.