If you are an upper-intermediate to advanced student of business English, you should definitely listen to the Manager Tools podcast over at www.manager-tools.com. This cast is aimed at native speakers of English, so they don’t provide transcriptions or vocabulary lists, but if you are at all interested in management, productivity or business etiquette, you should find these casts an interesting and fun way to improve your business English listening skills and learn new business English vocabulary.

The two hosts, Mark Horstman and Mike Auzenne, use an informal conversation format, but they are meticulously well prepared and their content is always thought-provoking and interesting. If you listen actively, you can learn lots of idiomatic American English as well as business English vocabulary. The Manager Tools website also has a forum you can sign up for (it’s free), and there you will be able to learn more business English vocabulary as well as discuss business topics in English with other listeners. Here is the blurb from the Manager Tools website:

Manager Tools is a weekly podcast focused on helping you become a more effective manager and leader. Each week we’ll be talking about new tools and easy techniques you can use to help achieve your management and career objectives. If you’re tired of a lot of management theory and would rather learn specific actions you can take TODAY to improve your management performance, we think you’ll enjoy the manager tools podcast.

I hope you’ll enjoy the Manager Tools casts as much as I do!

Here is the link to their list of all previous Manager Tools Podcasts.

Copyright 2008 L. Linstruth - www.betteratenglish.com.

Advanced listening tip for students of Business English

Transcript

Hi and welcome to the first grammar edition of the Better At English Podcast. Lori here, comin’ atcha from the humble B@E studios here in southern Sweden.
Usually I focus on vocabulary and conversational English in these podcasts. But even if you’ve got an impressive vocabulary and are an amazing conversationalist, you’ll still look like a total dork if you make careless grammar mistakes in your writing. And by “mistake” I mean things that are errors by anyone’s definition of standard English, not contested usage points where expert opinion is divided (for example, the serial comma).

Some grammar mistakes are surprisingly frequent even among educated native speakers of English. When it comes to written English, a lot of these mistakes involve words or phrases that sound the same but are spelled differently. Usually these mistakes are obvious when someone points them out to you, but when you are busy focusing on what you’re trying to say rather than worrying about grammatical accuracy, it’s easy to let the sound you hear in your head trick you into writing the wrong form. Unfortunately, if you make this kind of mistake, you run the risk of making a really bad impression with your writing. But luckily, some of these mistakes are really easy to fix if you just know what to look for.

One of the most notorious of these grammatical pet peeves is when people write the wrong form of its/it’s. That’s what I will try to help you with today. This may be a bit difficult to follow if you are just listening, so I suggest you go to the website and have a look at the transcript.

Its vs. it's: avoiding dorky grammar mistakes

Its/it’s has two forms. One form has an apostrophe, spelled I-T-apostrophe-S, and is a contraction of it is or it has.

Here’s an example where it’s means it is: “Hooray! It’s time for grammar!”

This means “Hooray, it is time for grammar.”

Here’s an example where it’s means it has: “Wow! It’s been a long time.”

This means, “Wow! It has been a long time.”

I can combine these two examples like this:

“Wow, it’s been a long time since I heard a student say, ‘Hooray, it’s time for grammar!’ ”

That means, “Wow, it has been a long time since I heard a student say, ‘Hooray! It is time for grammar!’ ”

The other form of its has no apostrophe, it’s spelled I-T-S, and is the possessive form of the pronoun it, which you can use when you’re talking about something of or belonging to an “it.”

Here are some examples:

1) Sweden is famous for its social welfare system and hot blonde chicks.
2) Volvo is famous for its boxy-but-safe car design.

Neither of those sentences would make sense if you replaced its with it is or it has.

Luckily, when you are speaking nobody can hear whether or not your brain is putting in apostrophes where they don’t belong. Writing is where you will get in trouble.

Here is how you can avoid writing the wrong form of its/it’s when you have an important piece of writing where you cannot possibly afford to look like a dork.

1) So here’s step one. When you write, ask yourself if the it’s/its you’re about to write means it is or it has. If it does, then you can use the it’s form WITH an apostrophe. If it doesn’t make sense, then you need the its form WITHOUT an apostrophe.

Here’s an example:

Sweden is famous for its social welfare. Can you say, “Sweden is famous for it is social welfare” or “Sweden is famous for it has social welfare”? Nope, it doesn’t work, so you know you need its with NO apostrophe.

If you are still confused, then try replacing the its/it’s with another pronoun: his, her, or their. If one of those make sense grammar-wise, then you need its with NO apostrophe. Here’s an example:

Volvo is famous for its boxy-but-safe design. You can try “Volvo is famous for their boxy-but-safe design.” Yes, it makes sense! So you know that you use its with no apostrophe.

2) The second thing you should do is use the find feature of your word processing software to search for all instances of its (no apostrophe) and it’s (with apostrophe). For each instance you find, perform the it is / it has test or the his-her-their pronoun test. If you take the time to do this, you will never risk turning in piece of writing containing this dorky grammar mistake.

Good luck! It’s been a lot of fun making this first grammar podcast for you. I hope you’ll find it useful for avoiding the dorky its/it’s mistake.

Before I sign off, just a little update on the two favors I asked of you in the last episode. Thanks to all who have recommended your favorite English books — I really appreciate your input! If you still haven’t made a recommendation, it’s not too late. I’ll be collecting suggestions for another week or so, and then summarize them on the website.

I had also asked you how you would feel about mild swearing in these podcasts. So far only one person has told me that it wouldn’t be a good idea. To make it easier for you to have your say, I’ve put a poll up in the sidebar of the website at Better At English dot com. If you have any positive or negative feelings about mild profanity or swear words in these podcasts, please take the time to let me know.

Finally, I have some really cool news. Recently I started guest podcasting with Ben over at Very Vocabulary dot com. It’s a 20-minute weekly vocabulary podcast that teaches a handful of advanced vocabulary words each week. It’s aimed mainly at native speakers, but would be good for upper-intermediate to advanced learners of English as well. I hope you’ll head over to Very Vocabulary dot com and check it out! Our first joint episode should be up in the next few days.

Thanks to all of you who have been writing in with feedback and kind words about the show. I really appreciate it! Special thanks to the nice person from Korea who left a review on the iTunes site. Reviews really help a lot to get new people interested in the show, so if you like what I do here, please take the time to leave a review on iTunes. If only one of every one hundred iTunes listeners left a review, there would be TONS of them, and it would totally make my day.

That’s it for this time. We’ll see you next time here at Better at English dot com. Bye for now!

Copyright 2008 L. Linstruth - www.betteratenglish.com.

Grammar mistakes that make you look like a dork: its vs. it's

When researching new content for Better at English, I come across a lot of great listening material on the net. Unfortunately, a lot of it is impossible to use for podcasts here because of copyright issues. But that doesn’t stop me linking to these listening resources so that you can listen on your own. So each week I will summarize the interesting links that I come across.

Note that these audio files will be most suitable for upper-intermediate to advanced learners, because transcripts and vocabulary lists, and other supported learning material are usually not included.

OMG: IM Slang Is Invading Everyday English

This is an interesting article discussing how Instant Messaging (IM) slang is spreading to other contexts. It features some interview quotes with David Crystal, and interviews with native speakers on what they think about people using IM slang.

• Read the article on NPR.
• Direct direct link to the audio. [Windows Media Player]

English as a Global Language

Hear David Crystal discussing his book, English as a Global Language. It’s from a few years ago, but the topic still highly relevant to many visitors here at Better at English. And David Crystal (one of my favorite authors on language) is always interesting.

• Link to article on NPR. From there you can click to listen to the audio [Real Media Format]

Orwell on Writing: ‘Clarity Is the Remedy’

From the NPR series, You Must Read This. Hear author Lawrence Wright singing the praises of Orwell’s classic essay, “Politics and the English Language.”

• Read the article on NPR.
• Direct link to the audio [Windows Media Format].
• Read the Wikipedia article about Orwell’s essay.
• Read Orwell’s original essay.

Copyright 2008 L. Linstruth - www.betteratenglish.com.

Listening resources for advanced learners of English: 6 Oct 2006

Why is it that you only see those pesky, embarrassing typos in important pieces of writing AFTER they’ve gone to press? Like this one from one of my own archives:

…he never fully recovered from the pubic humiliation of having his…

I’ve never fully recovered from that particular "pubic humiliation" either. When you work with words for a living, you really can’t afford to let mistakes like that slip by. And even if writing isn’t your profession, typos can still make you look careless at best, ignorant at worst. Modern spell checkers are useful tools, of course, but they don’t catch everything. My spell checker didn’t save me from the unfortunate "pubic incident" because spell checkers highlight only words that they can’t find in their dictionaries. Pubic is a perfectly good word, just incorrectly wielded in this context. But why didn’t I see it myself?

I didn’t catch the typo myself because my brain, expecting to find the word public, filled in the missing L. Our brains are masters at getting us to see what our experience and expectations tell us we should see. Thus the pubic/public problem wasn’t the only typo that managed to slip by in that text: I tend to flip letters when I type, and there were several instances where I’d typed form instead of from; my brain, doing what brains like to do, had quite merrily transposed the letters back into their correct positions as I proofread because it knew what I had meant to type.You’ve probably already thought of a few things your own fingers tend to fumble over when typing.

Everyone has been guilty of letting a typo slip through at some point, so your ego can probably recover from what are obvious mechanical errors. But what if you happened to let one of the pet peeves of eighth-grade English teachers slip unnoticed into your writing when you’re not looking, unspeakable horrors such as writing loose when you mean lose? Of course you know the difference between loose and lose, but when your deadline is imminent and you’re writing in a last-dash, coffee-fueled frenzy, it’s easy to read right past this kind of slip-up. And there are plenty of uncharitable people in the world who will not see it as a mere slip-up, but rather as a grave indication that you have the intelligence of a turnip. (Note: I am not one of those people!)

So you can’t trust your spell checker or even your own brain when it comes to proofreading your own texts. It sounds like a hopeless case, doesn’t it? Luckily, it’s not. Here are two proofreading methods that can help:

1) Enlist the help of a second reader to help you proofread. It works like this. Your friend slowly and carefully reads aloud from a hard copy while you silently read either the online version or another hard copy. Because the text is new to your friend, her brain is not as likely as you are to fix mistakes as she reads along. Between the two of you, you’ll catch far more errors than you would on your own. You then correct them on the online copy while your friend watches to make sure that you don’t inadvertently add another error. Don’t have a second reader available? Then point 2 is for you.

2) Use text-to-speech software in place of a second reader. You read silently on the hard copy (you’ll catch more errors on a hard copy than you will online) while the text-to-speech software reads the text aloud to you. You will be surprised at how many errors you catch this way, errors that you probably never would have noticed when reading silently to yourself. Mark the changes on the hard copy, and then VERY CAREFULLY enter them into the online copy.

Of course, no method is guaranteed to catch everything. But if you use either text-to-speech software or a second reader, you will have done just about everything you can to minimize the risk of pub(l)ic humiliation because of unfortunate typos. Good luck!

Note: this post is part of a “how to” group writing project over at ProBlogger.net.

Links:
Microsoft reader
http://www.microsoft.com/reader/downloads/pc.asp
Microsoft text-to-speech engine (choose your language)
http://www.microsoft.com/reader/developers/downloads/tts.asp

How To Configure and Use Text-to-Speech in Windows XP (Microsoft Knowledge Base)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306902/

How to automate Excel Text to Speech in another Office program
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/287120/

How to configure Text to Speech for Microsoft Word
http://www.gmayor.com/word_text_to_speech.htm (this is the method I use myself)

Free text-to-speech software
http://www.naturalreaders.com/index.htm
http://www.readplease.com/english/downloads/
http://www.wordtalk.org.uk/ (looks good – integrates with MS Word)

For-purchase text-to-speech software
http://www.tanseon.com/products/voicemx.htm (free trial version)
http://www.alivemedia.net/textspeech.htm (free trial version)
http://www.fog-ware.com/products/ispeak.htm (no demo, but looks good)

Copyright 2008 L. Linstruth - www.betteratenglish.com.

Proofread like a pro: how to catch those pesky mistakes your spell checker misses