My common grammar mistakes-porfolio 2

“What is the difference between ‘a/an’ and ‘the’” and “What article do I have to use now” are the questions which used to be on my mind when I tried to describe things that I meant. So I have had a summary of using correctly English to help me and you memorize the usage of articles. First of all, how many types of articles does English have? In fact, there are two types: one is indefinite (an, a) and definite (the). Secondly, although “a” and “an”, two indefinite articles, indicate singular countable nouns, they have differences. “A” stands in front of the consonant sounds and whereas “An” does stand in front of the vowel sounds. The emphasized thing is consonant sounds and vowel sounds because you sometimes have to use “An” instead of “A” although the nouns or phrasal nouns begins with consonant and inversely. I have some useful examples such as “an hour”, “an honor”, “a one-man show”, “a European”, “a university student”, “a NUSSU member”, “an FBI agent” and “an SIA stewardess” are helpful examples (Low, C., & Pan, D., 2007). Thirdly, “the” is used when nouns are particular or specific, and countable or uncountable. Moreover, “The” also stands in front of the name of rivers, ocean, seas, points on the globe, geographical areas, but “the” is not used before the name of countries, cities, mountain, continents. To sump up, a/an are used when the nouns refer to any member of the group, indefinite things, whereas “the” indicate particular ones.

Reference
Low, C., & Pan, Daphne. (2007). The write right guide (6^th ed). Centre for Development of Teaching and Learning: National University of Singapore.

Then, this is the practical exercise for you.

SELF Materials Articles Advanced

Exercise 2

Read the passage below and edit it by filling in the correct articles: ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘the’, or ‘zero article’(Ø). There are twenty errors altogether.

Personal information management has come long way since Filofax became ‘in’ thing for executives in late 1980’s.

Today, diaries are no longer made of paper- they are mini computers which can process information at touch of a button, allow users to surf Internet or even play music video clips. Not only that, typical personal digital assistant (PDA) can have memory capacity of 16 to 96 MB, or enough space to store information kept in more than 100 paper diaries.

Ever since Palm- mother of modern-day PDAs- launched Palm Pilot in 1996, much has changed. Colour screens and vast leaps in memory capacity have changed humble handheld gadget from mere digital Filofax to pocket multimedia hub.

However, once you decide to buy handheld products, it doesn’t stop there. More than 145,000 developers for Palm operating system (OS) alone are busy producing software and hardware accessories. This means that users can attach anything to their PDAs, from digital cameras to devices that massage their backs. Your palmtop can also be television remote control unit, game theatre, database, book reader, humble pocket calculator and even phone.

Some traditional phone manufacturers like Motorola (Accompli A388, available next month) and Nokia (Communicator 9210, available now for $1288) satisfy convergence -gadget fans by putting useful diary functions into their handsets. But Palm OS and Pocket PC products are still superior PDAs. Choice between two, however, is personal.

(Adapted from an article by Steve Dawson - Tech Talk, The Straits Times: Thursday, April 4, 2002)

You can find the answer at http://courses.nus.edu.sg/courseware/ITSELF/ by clicking on the tab Grammatical Exercise/Articles.

I wish you a enjoyable reading and practicing.

Extra assignment. Disadvantages of STEM education.

That “Engineers must join with scientists, educators, and others to encourage and promote improved science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education” is the key for engineers to “acquire the knowledge and tools required to meet society’s needs” (National Academy of Engineering, 2008). However, “a coin always has two faces”, more focus on STEM education most likely means less time for education in language arts and lots of corresponding disadvantages can be foreseen. The first thing that is pointed out is the weakness of communication skills, especially vocal skills. Majoring in STEM, engineers pay most attention to the formulas, equations, structures of the materials in which the dry literal language is most likely used. So it is evident that an engineer who is good at solving mathematical problems and drawing the system’s structure doesn’t mean he will verbalize the representations of those things well. Moreover, the lack of exposure to more normal and social issues makes it hard for engineers to begin a small talk with strangers and easily make the conversation boring. Secondly, once engineers mainly focus on STEM, they may lose their creativity. Most of inventions and innovations have arisen at the beginning of thinking of non-existent and “pretty crazy” things. But the lack of language art education is in harmony with the lack of abstraction in the mind of engineers and leads to the shortage of romance and imagination that are strongly required for creating brand new things for the world. Last but not least, the deficient preparedness for a workplace might be considered as the most disadvantage of the lack of attention to language arts. Engineers have been certainly well trained to be capable of operating systems and machines. Are engineers, however, taught how to behave well and deal with real-life problems among colleagues in the offices that may happen frequently? That is the really big obstacle when the engineers experience themselves in the real working environment. So, as arguments considered above, though STEM is indispensable for engineers, the language arts education is surely necessary for excellent would-be engineers.

References

National Academy of Engineering. (2008, February). Introduction to the

grand challenges of engineering. Retrieved June 3, 2008, from

http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9221.aspx