Portfolio Analysis

Use the digital version of your portfolio (corpus) to search for and correct your own mistakes. Make the corrections on your paper copy, because you will remember them better this way, and you will have a permanent record of what you have learned.

You should have the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary (OALD) at hand. Pay attention to the examples (collocations) and grammatical information in each entry.

I will also refer to the General Index on my homepage (http://www.mdmorrissey.info/). Look under the initial letter, e.g., possibility under "p", relative clauses under "r". There may be more than one entry for some topics. In that case you should read all of them. If you have limited online time, cut and paste the entries into a file that you can read later.

I will put the words you should look up in italics, e.g., possibility. This means you should look up "possibility" in the OALD and in my Index.

I will put the suggested search strings in quotation marks; e.g., "possibility". This means you should search your corpus exactly that sequence of characters (in Word, Bearbeiten, Suchen), without the quotation marks.

Once you have understood how to make a correction, do so throughout your entire corpus before going on to the next problem or topic. This will reinforce your understanding and help you remember the correct version.

Post your questions--but only after you have studied the entires in the OALD and my Index, please-- to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/mdmorrissey.

Paragraphing

There should be a blank line between each paragraph.

Spelling

Use Word or some other spelling checker to check your spelling.

Punctuation

No comma before noun clauses. Look for ", that" or ",that", ", what", etc. Which are noun clauses and which are relative clauses? If "that" begins a relative clause, it should either have no comma or be "which".

Read about restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses. Then look for "who", "whom", "that", "which ", "where", and "whose", and decide which are restrictive or nonrestrictive, and punctuate accordingly.

Read about other uses of the comma and look for "," in your corpus. Are they correct? Remember that commas are often optional, and usage also varies with style and dialect. British English (BE) uses less punctuation than American English (AE), for example.

If you want to find cases where a comma should divide long independent clauses, for example, look for "and", "but", "or" and the other coordinating conjunctions in your corpus, and supply commas where advisable. Remember that you can adjust your search parameters in Word (Suchen, Erweitern) in various ways, to find parts of words or whole words or expressions, capitalized or not, etc.

You can also look for sentence adverbs in your corpus, and supply commas where needed.

Vocabulary and collocations

Here are some items to start off with. First look the word up in the OALD and the General Index. Then search your corpus for it. Remember that you may have to search more than once to find all the examples, if there are different forms of the word, e.g., "possibility" and "possibilities", "mean" and "meaning".

possibility

experience

aspect

especially

mistake

baby

mean

become

There are plenty of mistakes like these, of course, but let us concentrate first on grammar.

Grammar

Read about the major parts of the sentence:

1. The noun phrase

2. The verb phrase

3. Complementation

4. The prepositional phrase

5. Pronouns and other pro-forms

6. Negation and non-assertion

7. Comparison

8. Adverbials

Now read about some specific problems in each area. Here is my Grammar (general contents above) according to the frequency of specific errors. The number to the right of each category represents the frequency of errors in that category (in my sample), expressed as a percentage of the total number of errors in all categories (1-8), rounded off to the nearest whole number. + means that errors in this category are less than .5%.

First read the linked page. (Download it and save it in the same folder this file is in, so that you can read them both offline). Remember that the examples are examples of errors (or problems, as I prefer to call them), that is, of sentences that most native speakers would not say. In some cases I have starred the unacceptable or problematic sentence or expression to contrast with the acceptable version, e.g.:

*He gave me an information.

He gave me some information.

Then search your corpus for examples of problems in each category. In many cases you can use Word's Search function to find all the occurrences of key words or phrases, and you can decide for yourself if these uses are correct or not in each instance. You can find many of these key words in the examples. In other cases, for example, concerning tense usage, a mechanical search is impossible since you cannot connect the problem with a specific word, so you will have to scan (read quickly) through your corpus and find the relevant places in the text yourself. In the last column I will make some suggestions to help you search.

	Grammatical Category	% of all errors	Look for
1.	The noun phrase	31
1.1	Generic reference	5	"industrialization", "capitalism", "society", etc., abstract nouns ending in "tion", "ment", etc. See examples.
1.2	Specific reference	5
1.2.1	Specific definite and indefinite reference	4	"Finnish language", "death penalty", Easter holidays", etc. See examples.
1.2.2	A(n) with professions, nationalities	+
1.2.3	One vs. a(n)	+	"A", "An", especially at beginning of sentences.
1.2.4	Which vs. what	+
1.2.5	This/that vs. these/those	1
1.3	Unique reference	1
1.4	Count and mass nouns	5
1.4.1	Mass nouns and the plural, a(n)	4	"preference", "condition", "hair", etc. See examples.
1.4.2	Count nouns and count quantifiers	1	"deal", "much", etc.
1.5	Adjectives as noun phrase heads	1
1.5.1	Abstract adjective as noun phrase head
1.5.2	Ellipsis of noun phrase head	+
1.6	Possessive and genitive expressions	3
1.6.1	Possessive with parts of the body, clothing	1	"hair", "heart", "life", "health", etc. See examples.
1.6.2	Own	1	"own"
1.6.3	Inanimate nouns and -s genitive	+
1.6.4	Pronouns and of genitive	+	"of me", "of him", etc.
1.6.5	Possessive adjectives and relative clauses	+
1.7	Quantifiers	2
1.7.1	Last few, next few	1	"last", "next"
1.7.2	Some in time adverbials	1	"some"
1.8	Predeterminers	1
1.8.1	Position of predeterminers	+	"both"
1.8.2	All with temporal nouns	+	"all the"
1.9	Other premodifiers	2
1.9.1	Noun modifying -ing participle	+
1.9.2	-ing participle modifying noun	1	"ing"
1.9.3	Order of adjectives before noun	+	"blue", "green", "old", "new", etc.
1.9.4	Plural noun as premodifier	+	"dollars", "euros"
1.9.5	Addresses	+	"Street", "St.", "Ave.", etc.
1.10	Postmodifiers	5
1.10.1	Infinitive vs. preposition + participle	2	"possibility", "problem", "danger", "idea", etc. See examples.
1.10.2	Infinitive introduced by wh- word	1	"question", "problem", etc.
1.10.3	Conversion of infinitive to relative clause	+	"hints", "conditions", "rules", etc.
1.10.4	Restriction on -ing participle clauses	+	"ing"
1.10.5	Being introducing relative clause	+	"being"
1.10.6	Relative pronouns	1	"who", "whom", "that", "which", "when", "where"
1.10.7	Position of postmodifier	+	"more", "else"
1.10.8	Omission of relative pronoun	+
1.10.9	Omission of that in appositive clause	+
1.11	Noun clauses	1
1.11.1	Infinitive vs. participle	+	"ing"
1.11.2	Non-finite clause as extraposed subject	+
1.11.3	Extraposition of nominal relative clause	+
2.	The verb phrase	26
2.1	Future and present	2
2.2	Past and present	2
2.2.1	Past vs. present	2
2.2.2	Back-shifting	+
2.3	Progressive 3	3
2.3.1	Verbs not allowing the progressive	1	"existing", "thinking", "lying", "coming"
2.3.2	Progressive and temporary or incomplete action	2
2.3.3	Progressive with adverbs of indefinite frequency	+	"sometimes", "often", etc.
2.3.4	Progressive with adverbs expressing continuous activity	+	"always", "constantly", etc.
2.3.5	Progressive as time-frame	+
2.4	Perfective	8
2.4.1	Perfective and state-up-to-present	4	"since", "for", "ing"
2.4.2	Perfective and indefinite past	3	"have", "haven't", "has", etc.
2.4.3	Past perfect	1	"had"
2.5	Conditional sentences	4	"if", "when", "would"
2.5.1	Real conditions	1
2.5.2	Unreal conditions	2
2.5.3	Understood if clauses	1
2.6	Modal and auxiliary verbs	2
2.6.1	Shall	+	"shall"
2.6.2	Should	+	"should", "ought"
2.6.3	Must	1	"must"
2.6.4	have (got) to	+	"have to", "had to", etc.
2.6.5	Will	+	"will"
2.6.6	Omission of auxiliary verb	+
2.7	Be to + infinitive	2	"is to", "are to", etc.
2.7.1	Subject of infinitive after be to	1
2.7.2	Verbs occurring as infinitive after be to	1
2.7.3	Be to + infinitive in if clauses	+
2.8	Subjunctive	+	"demand", "suggest", "order", etc.
2.9	Formation of past tense and past participle	1
2.10	Subject-verb agreement	2
3.	Complementation	9
3.1	Verbs not allowing infinitive objects	3	"justify", "stop", "enjoy", "miss", "risk", etc. See examples.
3.2	Verbs not allowing -ing participle objects	1	"help", "wish", "make", etc.
3.3	Verbs not allowing finite clause objects	1	"make", "speak", "summarize", etc.
3.4	Intransitive and transitive verbs	1	"reign", "disguise", "make", "thank", etc.
3.5	Misuse and omission of to	1	"want", "make", "have", etc.
3.6	Omission of infinitive subject	1
3.7	Malformation of infinitive subject	+
3.8	Position of infinitive clause subject	+
3.9	Position of complement	1
3.10	Time reference of perfect infinitive object	+
3.11	Like + infinitive vs. participle	+	"like"
3.12	Adjectives not allowing infinitive postmodifier	+	"worth", "sure"
3.13	Adjectives not allowing modification by passive infinitives	+	"difficult", "easy", etc.
3.14	Verb of perception as infinitive postmodifier	1	"angry", "interested", "excited"
3.15	Future time reference with infinitive postmodifier	+
4.	The prepositional phrase	18
4.1	That clauses and infinitives as prepositional complements	1	"for to", "for that"
4.2	Misuse and omission of various prepositions	18	"about", "after", "by", etc.
5.	Pronouns and other pro-forms	3
5.1	Reflexive pronouns	+	"myself", "themselves", etc.
5.2	How vs. what +	+	"how", "what"
5.3	Such	+	"such"
5.4	So	+	"so"
5.5	Or so	+	"or so"
5.6	Do the same	+	"do the same"
5.7	Formulaic questions	+
5.8	Sentence relative clauses 1	1	"what means"
6.	Negation and non-assertion	3
6.1	Non-assertive forms after negative words	2	"no one", "hardly", "at all", etc. See examples.
6.2	Assertive vs. non-assertive forms in questions	+
6.3	No modifying subject complements	1	"no"
7.	Comparison	2	"as", "than"
7.1	Comparison of non-equivalent items	+
7.2	Comparison of equivalent items	1
7.3	Enough and too	+	"enough", "too"
7.4	Another	+	"another"
7.5	Such vs. so	+	"such", "so"
8.	Adverbials	8
8.1	-ly as adverb suffix	2	"ly"
8.2	-]y as adjective suffix	+	"ly"
8.3	Initial negative adverbs and inversion	1	"Never", "Nowhere", "Seldom", etc.
8.4	Misuse of various adverbs	1
8.5	Position of various adverbs	3	"a bit", "already", "always", etc. See examples.
8.6	Infinitive clauses as adverbials	+
8.7	For + -ing participle vs. infinitive of purpose	1	"for"
8.8	Being introducing adverbial clause	+	"being"