Class Nine, Correcting Innovia, Smerf titles and vocab.

Summary of class 23 Nov 2009:

We're getting close to the end. The final DST is on the 7th December. It will be an in-class essay and questions.

This week we looked at your articles about Innovia cafés.

The first remark was that it is important to include all the key information from the “prompts” in your article. Some details can be left off (such as the price of the coffee), but most of the information provided should be used or at least made reference to.

The second remark was about if Innovia Cafes is a singular or a plural word. Compare the following two sentences:

- Innovia Cafes is a company.

- *Innovia Cafes is a restaurant.

Both of these sentences have the “same” grammar, but one is correct and the other is not. This is because of the semantics, the meaning of the words which refer to and describe Innovia Cafes (IC).

“Company” implies a composite of several franchises, referring to Innovia Cafes as a proper noun. It is therefore correct.

“Restaurant” is an individual unit and makes the Cafes part of IC a common noun, and it is plural. So the verb conjugation in the second sentence is WRONG and should be singular.

Pay attention to this interplay of syntax and sematics.

Here are two examples of your essays.

A: Very Good

Welcome to Innovia Cafes where spending a marvellous time with your family around good food and drinks at an affordable price (affordable prices) comes true.

This well known brand of cafes is already strongly established in England, with its 16 cafes in London and many others in the South of England.

Did you know that every year 10 new cafes are ready to welcome you (opened to serve you) ? And (not a new sentence) that we expect to open 20 more restaurants in the next 3 years?

But, as you already know we have a strong competition with the (some) expensive American chains that will (tense) serve you the same food quality as us. Why should you and your family have to pay more? Here you can have a nice time without worrying about the price.

Come and help us to improve our only weakness, our customer service. Innovia Cafes needs you!

B: Needs grammar work and restructuring. Please correct for your homework.

Despite the fact that each day, there is a strong competition from American chains and that there’s a reduction of workforce because of the crisis which leads to some complaints (factual errors), Innovia Cafes chains are still in the place (???). They reach all kinds of people thanks to their innovative offers.

Everybody is invited to share a good coffee around a table. Indeed, there are a lot of choices as far as food which can explain their success. But above all, their majority success is the low prices. Contrary to other competitive chains like Starbuck, Innovia Cafes are cheaper than them, (conjunction needed) they have reasonable-priced products, which is their main asset.

A few years ago, nobody could have known what could happened to them. The expansion was sudden and (new sentence needed) since that, nothing can stop their rise, 16 cafes in London and in the south of England, 10 new restaurants per year and 20 in the next 3 years. (the part between the two greens needs reworking) At this pace, we can expect a global expansion, it seems inevitable (redundant).

Yellow means a vocabulary problem.

Blue is a grammatical problem.

Green is a structural error or incomprehension.

*Watch out for the use of THEY. Who do you mean? This pronoun usually refers to the last “plural” referent which precedes it. Please verify use of pronouns.

HOMEWORK:

1) Write the outline you would use for question C of the previous essay about SMERFS (Cf: last blog entry). Include your Topic Sentences, but you do not need to write out the examples or details.

2) Correct the second Innovia Cafes essay.