Some grammar tips – to improve your writing

The examiners who assess your OET Writing, will be looking to see you have followed the set
down criteria:

- Appropriateness of language (e.g. don’t address Dr Bill Jones as “Dear Doc”)

- Cohesiveness (e.g. no confusion or incongruities in your sentence structure)
- Grammar/Spelling (correct use of prepositions, phrasal verbs, joining words & so on)
- You have done the task (You have requested the recipient to do all the things in the task)

We believe it is important to have a good grasp of prepositions, verbs, joining words, how
to correctly use a comma (,) a semi-colon (;) and a colon (:) and using an adverb /
adjective correctly [i.e. know the difference]. Last but not least, you need to be excellent at
using articles, “a”, “an” “the” or know when object does not need one.

PREPOSITIONS are those little in-between words: in, on, to, from, into, behind, beside, up,
down, with, also – and there are more. Purdue University have an excellent website to help
writers. For material on prepositions: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/594/01/
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/engagement/3/5/

VERBS – the action word – like sit, jump, sing, talk, go, went, speak, write –
See http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/599/01/
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/630/01/ and
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/601/01/

JOINING WORDS (“conjunctions”) – joining a short sentence / or a clause of a sentence –

to another clause / another short sentence – words like yet, however, because, so,
therefore, and, consequently
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/engagement/index.php?
category_id=3&sub_category_id=4&article_id=76

USING COMMAS, SEMI COLONS, COLONS

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/604/01/
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/566/01/
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/596/01/

ADJECTIVE or ADVERB? Which one is correct for this part of my sentence?

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/536/01/ has got excellent guidelines.
Easy rule to remember: an adverb usually ends in an “ly”
e.g. The nurse removed the canula quickly. That is an “OK” sentence, but it ends with the
adverb. It would be much much better if it ended with the object – the ‘canula’. So …
The nurse quickly removed the canula. Yes! Excellent!

ARTICLES
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/591/01/
Use “an” before a, e, i, o, u “an” and “a” are both indefinite articles
“the” is the definite article