English Grammer Introduction words level

In this first week of the course, we want to introduce you to the concept of style at the word level with suggestions about how to use words well to enhance your writing. Good grammar and coherent sentence structure are the foundation of effective writing, but you also need to choose words well. I’ve already talked about how crucial your writing quality will be to your success in your studies and in the workplace. I’m now going to talk about how central your choice of words will be to your writing quality. How word-aware are you? How much do you appreciate how your handling of words can help you to produce clear, economical, precise, logical, and compelling writing. Words are your greatest tools. Read, read, read! Write, write, write! English is tricky. Sometimes a word that means something in one context means the opposite in another: a slim chance and a fat chance mean much the same, but a wise man and a wise guy have very different meanings. English is constantly changing. New words (neologisms or coined words) such as cronuts and phablet enter the language and, once they become popular many are added to dictionaries. Think of the many added since the rise of the Internet. Take these for example. Avatar, hashtag, trolling, and meme. Then there’s what’s called the Cupertino error. This arose when automated spelling checkers substituted Cupertino, a city in California where Apple has its headquarters, for the word ‘cooperation’. 2013 was the year that ‘selfie’ was named ‘word of the year’, though it was coined in Australia about 20 years ago. The word ‘twerking’ isn’t new either. It was coined 20 years ago in New Orleans. Neither is ‘Oh My God’ (OMG), which was first used by Winston Churchill in 1917. ‘Unfriend’ apparently goes back to 1659. Do you have any favourite words? A recent survey in London resulted in 'serendipity' and 'Quidditch' topping the poll of favourite words. What are some of your favourite words? I love ‘redolent’ and ‘resonate’. After this video, we’ll ask you to put one of your favourite words into our word cloud. You’ll be able see the favourite words of the people doing this MOOC. Do you have any pet-peeve words and expressions? That is, ones that make you wince when you see or hear them.‘One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the last moment’. The Modernism Centre.‘Language is the palette from which we draw all the colors of our life’. Anthony Jackson, The Asia Society, NYC. We need now to cover some important concepts related to word usage, such as voice, tone, and style. Voice is your relationship with your reader, what ‘comes through’ about you through your writing. How you present yourself to your readers. What sort of person does my reader think I am as they read my words? Voice is what makes a writer distinctive. How would you describe your voice in any writing that you have done? Is your voice breezy, reassuring, sincere, humble, opinionated, knowledgeable, funny, minimal, bemused, wry, poetic, dramatic, idiosyncratic? How did the purpose of your writing affect the voice that you were aiming for? Do you visualize your reader when you write? That’s a very helpful strategy. Tone is the effect of your message on your reader. Do you think that your readers feel informed, pleased, motivated, bored, patronised, intimidated, or irritated by your writing when they read your messages? Your writing style is the result of choices that you make at the word level, the sentence level, and beyond the sentence in paragraphs. We’ll concentrate on words this week and deal with sentences and paragraphs in later weeks. The poet Coleridge once said that the infallible test of a perfect style is ‘its untranslatableness into words of the same language without injury to its meaning’. So, be sure to: • Choose your words carefully • Understand the difference between denotation (dictionary definition) and connotation (associations that a word conjures up) • Acquire a rich and ample vocabulary, your repertoire of words • Use figures of speech such as metaphors and similes— James Wood in How Fiction Works says that they create a ‘little explosion of fiction’. • Be aware of the pro’s and con’s of using adjectives and adverbs, which we’ll cover in later weeks. Although it’s not a good idea to use a foreign phrase that readers won’t necessarily know, there is a French expression that encapsulates what you should aim for: ‘le mot juste’, the intensely right word. This table, which is also in your COURSE RESOURCES, is helpful in highlighting many ways in which you can create and maintain your credibility as a writer. There are many instances where you will need to decide whether to use one or two words. Add your own to these examples. This must-have policy is one that you must have. This set-up is one that will set up a firm structure. There are many differences between North American and Australian/British spelling. Catalog/Catalogue, Center/centre, Color/Colour Defense/defence Organize/organise Mold/mould You can find many extra examples to add to these. There are many differences in terms between North American and Australian/British terms. Faucet/tap Movie/film Candy/sweets Cookie/biscuit Elevator/lift Check/bill Find extra examples to add to these. Those of you interested in correct spoken communication should try to avoid the mispronunciation that occurs in Australia in Strine (Australian) and Waynespeak. These are Australian variations on standard spoken English, but there are equivalents in other countries. Daily Writing Tips, a very helpful North American website that’s listed in your Course Resources for this week, has a list of 50 incorrect pronunciations that you should avoid. Watch out for Wayne words. Wayne words are Australian expressions not pronounced correctly. Examples are: expresso instead of espresso, anythink instead of anything, dateth instead of date, deteriate instead of deteriorate, haitch instead of aitch and stastitic instead of statistic. And avoid Strine (Australian) expressions. Examples include: Marmon dead for your parents, semmitch for sandwich, nerve sprike tan for nervous breakdown, spin-ear mitch for spitting image and emma chisit for how much is it? As we've said a few times this week, English is tricky. You will notice all of these words end in ‘ough’, but are pronounced differently. Enough, although, plough, through, hiccough. One further undesirable habit in some speakers is that of using ‘fillers’; What if JFK had said in his inaugural address: ‘Ask not what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country, actually’? That’s the end of our session on words. You’ll find loads of extra information on words in the course resources. Next week, we’ll move up a level to sentences, which will be covered by Amber and Catherine.