Week #2 Feedback: We want linguistic feedback

Thank you for your hard work on blogs. Some of your blogs were impressive. For those of you who want more linguistic feedback, I have summarized below mistakes that second language learners tend to make in English. Your class has not distinguished itself by not following this trend.

1. Subject Verb Agreement
Third person singular present tense--add -s. A nearly universal issue for ESL students.
Ex: She have either a claim in contracts or torts.
Ex: CEO or CFO have
Ex: ...when that prohibition apply to persons...
Ex: She send her boyfriend...

2. Tense Shifting
Particular to writing: ESL students may start in one tense and inappropriately shift to another within a sentence, a paragraph or a piece of writing.

3. Contractions
Contractions are informal, used to symbolize reductions in spoken language. They do not belong in academic writing. ESL students often use contractions as a way to demonstrate fluency.

4. CAPITALIZATION
ESL students sometimes inappropriately capitalize words. Rules for capitalization can be found here.

a. ALL CAPS
Specific to Latinos/Brazilians and Asians--These students often and without a clear explanation, use all caps with place names, proper names, and sometimes, for events, e.g. OLYMPICS, WORLD CUP.
As noted in last week's final class, using all caps to emphasize something is generally inappropriate in English. You will see this technique used in lengthy form contracts, e.g. adhesion contracts, but, otherwise you will not encounter it in formal written English.

b. Capitalizing the first letter of legal terms is often not necessary.
Please refer to the rules for capitalization at the link above.
Examples: He breached a Fiduciary duty. (There is no need to capitalize fiduciary.)