Warm-Up 4 and the In-Tray Exam

Warm-Up 4 doesn't give you any marks (!), but it is, perhaps, a way for you to see the collective wisdom of the group about two key areas in the In-Tray exam: complaining and apologising. Since you don't get any marks for it, you don't have to do it either - but I'm sure that your contributions will be gratefully received by everyone else, if you do! Let us all know which strategies for complaining and apologising have worked for you in the past.

You publish your Warm-Up 4s as comments to this blog post.

The In-Tray Exam is based on the idea that you work for a temporary agency (like Manpower) and have been sent in to cover the work of one of the people employed by one of the companies on this course. An in-tray is the plastic or metal tray on your desk into which all the paperwork you have to deal with is placed. When you've dealt with it, it's transferred to your 'out-tray' to be sent off or filed.

The exam itself will be posted on the course web site on Friday, 25th April (when I activate the link on the 'exam' page of the Module 4 section of the site). It's a .pdf document which you can either download or read directly from the screen. When you read it, you'll notice that there are four writing tasks to complete, but you're given three complete sets of tasks to choose between, one for each of the companies in the course materials.

You don't have to stick to the same company for all four tasks - you can switch from one company to another, or you can stay with the same company all the way through.

You submit your In-Tray Exam to David Richardson as a Word document by e-mail. (If you're using Microsoft Works, rather than Word or an equivalent, remember to save the document as an .rtf - Rich Text Format - document, or David won't be able to open it). Open Office documents (.odt format) will also work.

When the exam's been received, David will print it on paper, mark it manually, write a mark and commentary for each task, and, finally, add your In-Tray Exam marks to the marks you've received for your Warm-Ups and Send-Ins. When the total exceeds 60 marks, you've passed, and when the total exceeds 80 marks, you've got a 'VG'. Your marks are reported on LADOK, the Swedish national university computer, more or less the same day the exam's marked.

When everything's finished, David puts your exam, the commentary and a statement of your total marks into an envelope and posts it to whatever address we have for you (if you've recently moved, or haven't given us your address, please let us know your current address as soon as possible). He'll also send you a mail straightaway with your final result.

At the end of the final mail is a link to the on-line course evaluation. This is totally anonymous - and, besides, you've already got your mark, so you can say what you like! Feedback from you is very valuable to us (even if you don't get any direct benefit from it!) and all of us on the course team greatly appreciate hearing what you've thought of the course.

Good luck with the exam! The due date is 1st June … but, as usual, we'll be understanding if you're a little late.

Feedback on Warm-Up 3

I think I've marked all the Warm-Up 3s - if you've sent one in, but not received any feedback, please get in touch and I'll see what's happened. If you've not sent one in yet, there's still time - just enter it on the blog when you're ready.

So here's my feedback …

You all did well on this task! Nearly everyone worked out that a formal report will tend to concentrate on facts and situations, whilst an informal one will often focus on people and actions. You have to use a different type of language too: informal language tends to be less precise and more vague, whilst formal language needs to be as precise as you can make it. That's why words like 'get' aren't often found in formal writing: there are over 50 different meanings of the word in the main Oxford English Dictionary … and the reader of a report needs to know precisely which one you're intending them to understand.

You generally did a good job of finding the colloquialisms in what the inspector said. Words like 'hardhat' and 'digger' are colloquial, whereas, strangely enough, 'dumper truck' isn't.

This is what a dumper truck looks like, by the way:

There were some fairly specific points about language that I want to take up with everyone:

1. Rules and regulations

Clubs, associations and organisations have rules. If you break them, you don't get fined or sent to jail, but you might find that you aren't welcome as a member of that organisation any more.

Regulations are connected with laws. There'll be a law, for example, about safety at work, but the law will need to be backed up with detailed regulations about what you need to do or not do in order to obey the law. Thus the law might specify that safety barriers have to exist, but a regulation will state how high they have to be.

2. Obligatory/compulsory

… which are connected with rules and regulations again! Strictly speaking, an obligation is something that results from you being subject to rules, whilst compulsory is connected with the idea that you can't avoid doing something, even if you wanted to. Thus it's obligatory to obey rules (if you want to stay in the club), but compulsory to obey regulations (if you want to avoid prosecution).

3. Request and require

If you request something, you're asking; if you require something, you're telling! People enforcing laws and regulations tend to require, rather than request.

4. Safety and security

In English safety tends to involve physical safety, whilst security tends to involve psychological feelings of not being in danger. So a Safety Officer will advise workers about how to avoid being hurt, whilst a Security Officer patrols the site at night to make sure that no-one enters it and starts messing about with things or stealing them.

5. Injury, damage and damages

These three words are tricky!

Animate objects, like people and animals, can sustain injuries; inanimate objects, like machines or buildings, can sustain damage; damages, on the other hand, is the money you have to pay out if you've been sued and found liable (skadestånd in Swedish).

6. The company is … or the company are …?

You can see a company in two different ways: as a legal entity or as a collection of individuals who happen to work there. So when you're talking about things the company does as a legal entity, it's going to be singular (is). When the company is acting as a group of individuals, it's plural (are):

The company is introducing a revolutionary new product!

The company are all away on a team-building exercise today.