Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Lecture 6
Social and functional-stylistic varieties
Back to Standard English Grammar
Spoken form:
You must wait three weeks before you can charge the ceiling price you
applied for. The Office of Price Administration can always change the price. If
they do, they will write you a letter
2. When well softened, they /ends/ are pushed together and, the heating
continued, the thickened glass being blown out a little and allowed to
collapse until all the abrupt changes in thickness have been eliminated all
round the joint and it is marked by a single moderately thick ring of hot glass.
I borrowed it.
When?
Today.
Who from?
Money-lender?
Young Jolyon bowed his head.
Turn the following example of spoken English into more formal, written
English, incorporating relative clauses where appropriate. The beginning has
been done for you.
"I've started a new job, did I tell you? It's a sales representative with a
company. It produces garden funiture., 'Sunnosit', it's called, and it's based in
Thornton. Thornton is a small town in the Midlands. The area manager is due
to return next year - he's been with the company for over thirty years. This
means, if I do well, I might get this job. One great advantage is having a
company car. Well, I have to have a company car, because the job involves
visiting different parts of the country. My colleagues are quite ambitious - I
get on well with them, but it means the atmosphere at work is rather
competitive. I don't mind. Apart from that, the job's fine."
Read the following text loudly and clearly without a dictionary, and
without asking any questions. Then write down all the words and expressions
in italics, and any others that you do not know. Look carefully at the context
of each unknown word or expression, and write down what you think it might
mean.
Drumming
Drumming is what you might call basic burglary. You pick a dead
gaf a house you know or think is empty sound the drum by knocking at
the front door to make sure, stroll round the back, get in through a window
and turn the place over.
... Joe worked on an unvarying schedule. Once inside, he bolted all doors,
leaving one ground-floor window open, thus, like a wise general, securing his
retreat. It seldom took him more than four minutes to go through the house.
He took only easily portable stuff, jewellery, ornaments, cash, if there was
any; he seldom bothered with clothes unless there was an exceptionally good
fur coat.
He would leave by the front door, taking his time and emerging
hat in hand, still carrying on an imaginary conversation, for the benefit of
passers-by. Little details that the average drummer never bothered about
were very important to him. Never wear your hat while moving about in a
strange house...
For the most part my job was to sit in the front room and keep my eyes glued
to the gate while Joe turned over upstairs. This gave us an extra few seconds
in which to take stoppo if the householder did come back while we were
still on the premises.