Where Swedes Get it Wrong When Writing English

Swedes are among the most eager in the world to learn foreign languages, particularly English. They love talking in languages other than their own, and when it comes to conversation, they happily switch into English. And the Swedes, before any other nation, have found that mastering English, the wor [...]
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Swedes are among the most eager in the world to learn foreign languages, particularly English. They love talking in languages other than their own, and when it comes to conversation, they happily switch into English. And the Swedes, before any other nation, have found that mastering English, the world's lingua franca of today, is part of their country's economic, cultural and scientific prowess. Today, more and more dissertations are written in the English language, which is slowly but steadily turning into a medium of instruction across Swedish universities, colleges, institutions and schools.

This book is specifically written to improve Swedes' writing skills in English. It is the product of almost a decade of teaching, editing and researching at the university. There is no shortage of books written in English and targeting Swedes. But most of the material is meant to amuse rather than educate. Some of the material takes the humor side when considering Swedish habits, customs and attempts at learning English.

This is a serious book. It is corpus-based and is meant primarily to help Swedes write English properly, without errors if possible. It is designed both as a textbook and a publication that can be used by the majority of the Swedish people as a guide on how to improve their English writing skills.

The book targets a wide spectrum of readers, ranging from high-school and university students, to teachers, academics and professionals. Exercises and tips on how to identify erroneous instances and pitfalls and ways to correct them make up the bulk of the book. There are special chapters on different writing tools and skills in English. There are special chapters on how to write, along with tips on how to link sentences and paragraphs together to produce an essay. University students and academics have special chapters on quoting and paraphrasing ? the tools whose mastering is essential when writing.

The erroneous instances the book discusses and analyzes are not selected haphazardly. They are among the most frequent samples the author has come across in more than a decade of English language teaching in Sweden. Each of the book's 16 chapters deals with one particular area found to be problematic for Swedes when writing English.

The book can be seen as ?a student grammar in action?. Grammatical concepts are simplified but not at the expense of accuracy. The book differs from mainstream English grammar and English language teaching publications in several aspects. First, it heavily relies on language usage rather than language theory. Second, it analyses and discusses authentic samples of language, i.e. the frequent errors Swedes make when writing English. Third, it provides plenty of exercises, all arranged and designed in a manner that differs from traditional English language teaching counterparts. Fourth, readers are not left on their own to struggle with the exercises. Each example starts with an explanation, a sample of relevant error, which hopefully readers will try to solve on their own before moving to the correct versions.