yang

The art of which?

Posted on by Pak Guru

The arts perhaps bring balance and harmony which the arts are not just what you see but what you make others see.

This is potentially sophisticated. You need:

  • The arts perhaps bring balance and harmony in which the arts are not just what you see but what you make others see.

OK, so what’s happening here? Well we have..

independent clause in which independent clause
The arts perhaps bring balance and harmony in which the arts are not just what you see but what you make others see.

But notice that the second independent clause describes the thing mentioned in the rheme of the first independent clause (balance and harmony).

Actually you can also use according to which:

  • The arts perhaps bring balance and harmony according to which the arts are not just what you see but what you make others see.

Hmm OK so let me see if I can create my own example following the same 3 elements. (Just let me roll up my sleeves. Ahem.) OK here goes..

  • Language acquisition is a gradual process in which students struggle to master the grammatical and phonological rules of a new language.
  • Language acquisition is a gradual process according to which students struggle to master the grammatical and phonological rules of a new language.
Notice that in each of these examples which is followed by an independent clause!

OK. Now your turn! Comments below this post, please!

This one and those ones

Posted on by Pak Guru

Teachers should shift from individual learning to collaborative one.

Indonesian flag Here an Indonesian student is translating ‘yang‘ as a substitute for a noun, but running into trouble because ‘learning‘ is uncountable.

This is easy to solve by converting ‘individual learning‘ into a countable noun:

  • Teachers should shift from an individual learning style to a collaborative one.

Notice, too that the same kind of translation is possible with plural count nouns:

  • Collaborative tasks are better than individual ones.

However, this is rather informal and is used more in speaking than in writing.

Nominalisation yin and ‘yang’

Posted on by Pak Guru

In a previous post I showed how you can avoid relative clauses when you’re post-modifying nouns. This is especially useful in IELTS Task 1 writing where you have to modify a statistics word (number, amount, etc.) to include information from the axes of a graph, or from the labels attached to a chart, or from the column and row headings of a table.

Indonesian flag Here I want to appeal to Indonesian students to think again before translating ‘yang‘ when post-modifying nouns. Let’s compare a few sentences written by Indonesian students with their likely equivalents written by native English speakers:

Modified noun picture
Student sentence with error The picture that on the wall is from Australia.
Student sentence without error The picture that is on the wall is from Australia.
Native speaker The picture on the wall is from Australia.
Strategy used preposition phrase to post-modify the noun
Modified noun person
Student sentence with error The person who teach us is PG.
Student sentence without error The person who is teaching us is PG.
Native speaker The person teaching us is PG.
Strategy used ___ing to to post-modify the noun
Modified noun department store
Student sentence with error The department store that located in Bridge Street is SOGO.
Student sentence without error The department store that is located in Bridge Street is SOGO.
Native speaker The department store located in Bridge Street is SOGO.
Strategy used V3 to post-modify the noun

In these examples I used three very useful strategies to post-modify nouns:

  1. preposition phrases
  2. ___ing
  3. V3

Notice that when you avoid the relative pronoun ‘that’ (Indonesian flag YANG!), then you also avoid a common error made by Indonesian students – not adding the verb ‘to be’ to the relative clause.

Try using these strategies instead of relative clauses and see how it increases your score for vocabulary in IELTS writing and speaking!

‘That’ and ‘V3’ in noun phrases

Posted on by Pak Guru

The table shows the percentage of money that allocated by people in different countries for different reasons in 2002.

Indonesian flag Here an Indonesian student has made a noun phrase based on ‘yang di alokasikan‘. A grammar error has affected her IELTS score, but this could have been avoided using more sophisticated – and easy-to-learn – vocabulary.

Improved grammar

  • The table shows the percentage of money that was allocated by people in different countries for different reasons in 2002.

Here I added ‘to be‘ before the V3 to produce a correct passive. However, a native speaker would probably choose more sophisticated vocabulary:

Improved vocabulary

  • The table shows the percentage of money allocated by people in different countries for different reasons in 2002.

Here, instead of the ugly passive structure, which Indonesians always get wrong, I made a nominal group that contains the following elements all joined together:

  • the percentage..
  • of money (preposition phrase)
  • allocated by people (V3 phrase)
  • in different countries (preposition phrase)
  • for different reasons (preposition phrase)
  • in 2012 (preposition phrase)

Other elements are possible in nominal groups, but these are common. I will come back to nominal groups in future posts (for example here) as problems experienced by my current class arise.

Note that there is no ‘that’ in the V3 phrase (Indonesian ‘yang’). And BTW ‘V3 phrase’ is not its official name, but it’s much easier to remember than the official name (which I will keep secret for now..).