a piece of information for 1st-year students

2006-09-12T16:00:00.000+03:00

Dear students,

I have a piece of good news for you.
The prices for Round Up appeared to be lower than we had expected.

Round Up level 3 - 32 grn.
Round Up level 4- 32 grn.
Round Up level 5 - 33 grn.

Students contribute to the Blog

2006-09-12T12:28:00.000+03:00

Dear Students,

Tatiana Botsva, a 4th-year- student of our Faculty, found some interesting information concerning the History of English and some facts about Modern English Grammar. I hope, you will like these texts. Moreover, they may be taken a the basis for your Exam Texts.

E&P

Was the first computer 'bug' a real insect?

The story is told that one of the early electromechanical computers suffered a failure because a hapless insect had crawled into the vitals of the machine and been squashed between the contacts of a relay. The incident was written up in the log-book and spread from there throughout the whole of the infant computer industry. However, although the account seems to be genuine, the word is older: the event was recorded as an amusement for posterity precisely because the term 'bug' was already in use. The term in fact originates not with computer pioneers, but with engineers of a much earlier generation. The first example cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is from the Pall Mall Gazette of 11 March 1889:

Mr. Edison, I was informed, had been up the two previous nights discovering 'a bug' in his phonograph - an expression for solving a difficulty, and implying that some imaginary insect has secreted itself inside and is causing all the trouble.

It seems clear from this that the original 'bug', though it was indeed an insect, was in fact imaginary.

Should I write 'a number of people is' or 'a number of people are'?

Although the expression 'a number' is strictly singular, the phrase 'a number of' is used with plural nouns (as what grammarians call a determiner). The verb should therefore be plural: 'A number of people are waiting for the bus'.

This is not the case with 'the number', which is still singular: 'The number of people here has increased since this morning.'

What is the origin of the dollar sign ($)?

Many suggestions have been made about the origin of the dollar symbol $, one of the commonest being that it derives from the figure 8, representing the Spanish 'piece of eight'. However, it actually derives from a handwritten 'ps', an abbreviation for 'peso' in old Spanish-American books. The $ symbol first occurs in the 1770s, in manuscript documents of English-Americans who had business dealing with Spanish-Americans, and it starts to appear in print after 1800.

The name 'dollar', however, derives from the Dutch or Low German word daler (in German taler or thaler) - originally Joachimstaler, referring to a coin from the silver mines of Joachimstal, in Bohemia (now Jáchymov in the Czech Republic), which opened in 1516.

What is the correct way to spell 'e' words such as 'email', 'ecommerce', 'egovernment'? Should they be hyphenated or capitalized or neither?

We do not have a policy on e-words, because what we show in our dictionaries depends upon the evidence available to the editors at the time a particular dictionary was prepared. It is the Concise Oxford Dictionary which sets our own house style; unlike the complete Oxford English Dictionary it is frequently revised and so can incorporate linguistic changes and reflect current usage. The edition at the time of writing is the first impression of the 11th edition, which came out in 2004. This shows the e-prefix ('denoting the use of electronic data transfer, especially through the Internet') in lower case (Of course it would have a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence).

The Concise does not have an entry for e-government, but we expect one to appear in this form (compare e-cash, e-commerce). We recommend email, as this is now by far the most common form. If in doubt with other words, hyphenate - this is the most comprehensible form of such words.

Are there any English words containing the same letter three times in a row?

The usual rules of English spelling outlaw triple letters. Hyphens are inserted into words such as bee-eater, bell-like, chaff-flower, cretaceo-oolitic, cross-section, egg-glass, joss-stick, off-flavour, hostess-ship, puff-fish, toll-lodge, and zoo-organic.

A person who flees is a fleer, and a person who sees is a seer (though to avoid confusion with seer meaning `foreteller', the forms see-er and seeër have been used).

Nevertheless, we have encountered curious forms such as crosssection, and the complete Oxford English Dictionary does contain instances of frillless, bossship, countessship, duchessship, governessship, and princessship, and the county name Rossshire.

Graphic representations of noises, such as brrri>, shhhi>, and zzzi>, do not really count as proper words.

The only other word with a triple letter is the invented word Amerikkkan, which is intended to symbolize the racist aspect of American society by including the initials of the Ku Klux Klan.

What is the origin of the word 'OK'?

There have been numerous attempts to explain the emergence of this curious colloquial expression, which seems to have swept into popular use in the US during the mid-19th century. Most of them are undoubtedly pure speculation. It does not seem at all likely, from the linguistic and historical evidence, that it derives from the Scots expression 'och aye', the Greek ola kalai> ('it is good'), the Choctaw Indian okei> or okehi> ('it is so'), the French aux Cayesi> ('from Cayes', a port in Haiti with a reputation for good rum) or au quaii> ('to the quay', as supposedly used by French-speaking dockers), or the initials of a railway freight agent called Obediah Kelly who is said to have written them on lading documents he had checked.

The oldest written references to 'OK' result from its adoption as a slogan by the Democratic party during the American Presidential election of 1840. Their candidate, President Martin Van Buren, was nicknamed 'Old Kinderhook' (after his birthplace in New York State), and his supporters formed the 'OK Club'.

This undoubtedly helped to popularize the term (though it did not get President Van Buren re-elected!). During the late 1830s there had been a brief but widespread craze in the US for humorous misspellings, and the form orl korrekti> which was among them could explain the initials 'OK'. Such a theory has been supported by more than one distinguished American scholar, and is given in many dictionaries, including Oxford dictionaries.

The only other theory with at least a degree of plausibility is that the term originated among Black slaves of West African origin, and represents a word meaning 'all right, yes indeed' in various West African languages. Unfortunately, historical evidence enabling the origin of this expression to be finally and firmly established may be hard to unearth.

What is the proportion of English words of French, Latin, or Germanic origin?

It is very hard to make this estimate, particularly as many words reached English, for example, from Latin by way of Norman French. However, the result of a computerized survey of roughly 80,000 words in the old Shorter Oxford Dictionary (3rd edition) was published in Ordered Profusion by Thomas Finkenstaedt and Dieter Wolff (1973). They reckoned the proportions as follows:

· Latin, including modern scientific and technical Latin: 28.24%

· French, including Old French and early Anglo-French: 28.3%

· Old and Middle English, Old Norse, and Dutch: 25%

· Greek: 5.32%

· No etymology given: 4.03%

· Derived from proper names: 3.28%

· All other languages contributed less than 1%

2006-09-04T21:40:00.000+03:00

So, my dear 2^nd-year students, you are going to take an exam in English this winter. What will it consist of?

First, it is going to be a Grammar Test. You already know what it may look like.

Second, it is working with a new text. You will have to read an unknown text (not larger than

1 page A4). To assure me that you understand it you will have to retell it in brief, answer my questions and do some tasks.

We are going to prepare for this during the whole term.

Third, you will have to demonstrate your ability to speak not only about physics. It means, you will have to prepare texts on your choice to have a conversation with your lecturer. We haven’t trained such things yet, so I am going to go into detail.

To start with, the amount of texts may differ (4, 6 or 8) depending on the desired mark.

Then (mind that!) – texts should be discussible. It means they should contain thoughts that may cause different points of view. Moreover, the task is not to learn the texts by heart and retell them like a poem; you will have to present the main idea of the text and then stand for your point of view answering the lecturer’s questions (sometimes provocative).

After that, there usually appear questions: Where can I find such texts? How large should they be?

So, these are some requirements to examination texts.

You may laugh but they can be found on the Internet, and not only there. You may go to the University library, the Foreign Literature department and look through some books, magazines or Encyclopedias. Librarians will help you.

The main requirement to the text (beside it being discussible) is: it should be composed by a native speaker and be written in good English.

On the other hand, texts shouldn’t be overloaded with complex grammar structures and contain a lot of unknown (for you!) words.

What the texts should be about?

There are the 3 “broad” topics for everybody: Education, An English-Speaking Country, My Future Work, (or How I Can Benefit My Country).

The remaining topics (1 or 3 or 5 correspondingly) are completely on your choice.

Prior to making the final decision whether the text meets all the requirements or not you should consult me. You may print the chosen text or place it on a CD/DVD (not on a diskette – I have no appliance to read it) or just send me a link to it. The reference to the source is obligatory!

Now you see that my part of the work is going to be essential

. That is why I announce the deadline for choosing texts: October, 31.

And the last remark in accordance with the question. Starting with November,1 we will discuss the most interesting texts in the group.

A Happy New Academic Year!

2006-08-31T23:11:00.000+03:00

Dear students,

your vacations are over. I hope, you all had a good rest. Now it's time to study. I congratulate you with the beginning of the new academic year and wish you to be successful in studying Physics and especially English.

You will be able to download texts, tasks, links to interesting information from this blog. I also plan to post marks for your control papers here and comments on your individual tasks.

physicists- prefer- english