Writing Assignment 1

One reason humans resist new technology is they are not confident enough with new technology. Firstly, people lack confidence in technology because they are ignorant of technology’s benefit. Not enough exposure to new technology causes people to fear new technology and keep visualizing negative results. For example, some people resist using hybrid cars instead of normal cars. They do not know that the hybrid car’s consumption of petrol is less than that of normal cars, yet the performance of hybrid cars is better. Instead, people are comfortable with their existing way of life. Secondly, people might think that new technology will cause difficulties. For instance, people are afraid of using solar systems to generate heat because they think that when there is no sunshine, there is no heat produced. This misunderstanding could lead people to resist new technology. In another example, instead of doing online transactions, people prefer to go to a bank and complete their transactions there. Thirdly, people do not believe that machines can do certain jobs better than humans. Since people are not confident with new technology, they are afraid that the technology will create problems. For instance, people are afraid that the cheque deposit machine might lose their cheque or cannot complete their transactions due to machine errors. Another example is doing surgery by using an electronic arm. Some people insist that the surgery be done by a doctor instead of an electronic arm, even though there are many successful examples of machine-conducted operations. In conclusion, people resist new technology because they lack confidence in it. Ignorance of the benefits, worry about the inconvenience, and doubt in reliability all contribute to their lack of confidence.

Task 2:Common Grammar Mistake

One of my common grammar mistakes is subject-verb agreement in which the subject comes with words like all of, most of, and some of. I used to write sentences like “All of the boys is playing in the field.” In the sentence above, we should use “are” instead of “is”. Firstly, we must determine whether the subject is singular or plural by looking at the noun that follows the words indicating the noun’s portion. When thinking of agreement, it is the noun that we should look at (Singh and Singh, 2003, pg. 75). In the above example, boys is a plural noun, so we must use plural verb. Secondly, we consider an uncountable noun as a singular noun. Thus, we should use to singular verb when the noun is uncountable. Another example is “The rest of the time were wasted.” In this sentence, the noun is time and time is uncountable. Therefore, the correct sentence for the above example should be “The rest of the time was wasted.” Thirdly, expressions like “none of the girl” and “neither Ali nor Bahad” are special cases. When we meet with words like none or neither, we consider the subject singular, so we must use a singular verb when we need to consider the agreement. For instance, a sentence like “None of the girls are my friends.” is wrong. Since we treat “none of the girls” as a singular noun, a singular verb should be used. In conclusion, we must determine the subject by looking at the noun, whether it is a singular noun or plural noun when it comes to agreement. When we meet words like none or either, singular verb should be used.

Reference
Singh, Jagjeet & Singh, Adrian. (2003). Remedial English Grammar. Shah Alam, Fajar Bakti.

This is an exercise i took from ITSELF.

Fill in the blanks with an appropriate form of the verb given in the bracket:
Passage 2:
Why English?

The English language is used by more people in the world than any other living language today. This may seem surprising at first. After all, the population of the United Kingdom (1) __is____ (be) one of the smallest in the world. But of course the UK is not the only country whose native language (2)__is_____(be) English; the majority of people in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (3)_____are___(be) also native English-speakers. However, even if you add up the populations of these countries the total only (4)______comes__(come) to about 400 million, which (5)____is____(be) less than one-tenth of the population of the world.

Who else (6)______speaks___(speak) English? Well, if we count all the English-speakers in India, Singapore and Hong Kong, that (7)_____adds____(add) another 700 million to the total. Add all the people speaking English elsewhere and the total English-speaking population of the world (8)_____comes___(come) to an impressive one and a half billion!

This figure shows that there (9)____are____(be) more non-native speakers of English than there are native speakers. Why is this? There is one important historical reason: the influence of the British Empire -- the Empire that stretched across the globe. Although the Empire no longer (10)_____exists___(exist), the English language is firmly rooted in its former colonies -- in Africa, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the Far East, Australia, New Zealand, the Caribbean and North America.

Other important reasons for the spread of English language (11)__are_____(be) economic. English is the language of international business and commerce. It is also the native language of the United States. So, any country wanting, for example, to trade with the United States, or to take advantage of its technology, (12)___needs____ (need) to operate in English. Also, most scientific and technological developments have been made by English-speaking societies. To keep up with such developments, to talk about them in international conferences, or write and read about them in scientific journals and books, scientists, scholars and students must be able to understand English.

These are obvious reasons for the spread and interest in the English language. But there is a rather less obvious reason. English is also the language of a popular culture. All over the globe millions of young people listen to pop music and watch pop videos. The stars who perform in English (13)____are____(be) by far the most famous. The songs of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Police, Sting, Michael Jackson, and hundreds of other American and British singers (14)____are___(be) heard all over the world. English has become an international language.

English is well suited to this role. Unlike many other languages, it has a built-in flexibility that (15)__allows______(allow) constant adaptation and assimilation. In English, vocabulary from other languages (16)____is_____(be) often used, new words and combinations of words can be coined easily, nouns can be turned into verbs and vice versa.

Furthermore English does not suffer from having an academy (as (17)__does_____(do) France) which monitors the language and sets the standards of 'correctness'. What is correct in English (18)_____is____(be) often, simply, what (19)___is_____(be) accepted as appropriate and understandable by those who (20)____speak____(speak) it, whether they are native or non-native speakers.

This flexibility helps to explain why English has survived so well, why it can vary so much from speaker to speaker and why it has become a world language.

Passage taken from: GUO Jieke, YANG ying, JIN yan. 2002. College English Fast Reading (Book 2). Shanghai Foreign Languages Education Press.

This exercise is adapted from:

http://courses.nus.edu.sg/courseware/ITSELF/downloadexercise/gsu2e.doc