Academic Writing for International Students of Business

1 Five areas of difficulty

 Find the mistake in each sentence and correct it.

(a) The proposal has both advantages and disadvantage.

(b) The majority of workers in Nigeria is under 30.

(c) There are few young people in rural area.

(d) Many places are experiencing an increase in crimes.

(e) Each companies have their own policies.

These sentences illustrate the main problem areas for international students:

(i) Nouns should agree with verbs, and pronouns with nouns:

Those problems are unique.

There are many arguments in favour.

(ii) Uncountable nouns and irregular plurals have no final ‘s’:

Most students receive free tuition.

The main export is tropical fruit.

(iii) General statements normally use the plural:

State universitieshave lower fees.

Singular or

Plural?

UNIT

2.12

The choice of singular or plural can be confusing in various situations, such as in

the use of countable and uncountable nouns. This unit illustrates the main areas of

difficulty and provides practice with these.