I'm not a native English speaker and from time to time I have some trouble with correct translating to English or simply with grammar or structure of the sentences etc. I thought about asking you English speaking lot, if you don't mind. And since I've tried, but haven't find this kind of thread here, here's a new one! Right now my problem is that soon I'm leaving for an international scientific conference in Iceland and I'm preparing my first ever poster that I want to present there. I have some trouble with one short description of a diagram. I wrote: "Diagram of lapwing song-flight as described by Dabelsteen, with the parts we focused on highlighted." I know it's probably not the best sentence ever... My professor found it confusing and suggested: "....with the parts we focused on being highlighted." But it doesn't look that great to me, either... Does it sound better? Or could you help me restructure the sentence so it makes more sense? Please?
Personally I believe that two short sentences are usually better than one long one - how about. Diagram of lapwing song-flight as described by Dabelsteen. The parts we focused on are highlighted. or Diagram of lapwing song-flight as described by Dabelsteen. The Highlighting shows the parts we focused on.
i would go for something along the lines of "diagram of lapwing song-flight as described by dabelsteen, highlighting the focused-on parts" btw, enjoy iceland, it is an awesome place
Ok, one more question: "A pilot study was carried out by Grønstøl (Ardea 84: 45-55) within one large colony in Norway in 1996. Beyond this study, we observed lapwings in several colonies and solitary pairs......." Again, my professor wrote the beginning of the second sentence. Does "beyond" make sense there?
Hmm, that's not bad, either Oh, I will! Apart from one birdwatching excursion I probably won't leave the city, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless You sound like you've been there?
yup, i've had two overnight stays in reykjavík before (although i'm a very lousy tourist so i didn't see a ton of things, mostly just lifted weights, took pics of the city and enjoyed being there ) regarding that second one, i would think "besides" might fit better, but i'm not sure. either way, i think clarifying the rest of the phrase would help more, but i can't be sure without knowing what follows after solitary pairs (i'm thinking along the lines of "several colonies and solitary pairs of lapwings were observed" or "were also observed", but it depends on how the statement ends)
Nice, I'll be at the outskirts of Reykjavík as well, but will stay for a week. Most of it will be at the conference, though. It goes: "A pilot study was carried out by Grønstøl (Ardea 84: 45-55) within one large colony in Norway in 1996. Beyond this study, we observed lapwings in several colonies and solitary pairs and examined birds in a greater variety of habitats (meadows, arable land...)." I'd like to say that we did something more, something that wasn't done in the pilot study, but I'm not sure if "beyond" fits there
How about: "In addition to this study..."? Or, if your observations were after the pilot study, you could write: "Following this study, we observed...".
Thanks. It would probably need to be: "In addition to what's been done in this study...". To explain, the study inspired us to do our research. But there were things they examined and we didn't and vice versa. I'd just like to shortly state what we did apart from things that have already been done. So I wouldn't say the observations were completely after the study.... But I could somehow go from there, probably.
That's a bit of a messy sentence, and mixes tenses somewhat. How about: "Following from Grønstøl's findings, we observed..."? Or: "In addition to the work of Grønstøl..." Or: "In addition to Grønstøl's findings..." Or: "Inspired by Grønstøl's findings..." Or: "Inspired by Grønstøl's study..."
i would use "in addition to what was done in that study", but that's just my personal preference. i'd then follow it with your observations on colonies and pairs, and a short blurb on differences between the studies (say, something like employing X/studying X/focusing on X or however the phasing would go, as a complement to the Y studied/employed/focused on/whatever in the pilot study)
No, that's not really the right context for it, although I couldn't put into words why not. English is a funny language
"What was done in that study" looks pretty clunky to me. "In addition to that study" says all of that, but in a more concise manner.
Still doesn't really say what she wants to express. You could have "Further to Grønstøl's study...", but I don't think that's as good as "Following on from Grønstøl's study...".
It is, I'm quite confused already and don't know how to write down what I mean Thanks a lot for the ideas, I'll probably used something like that. I thought I would take the poster to be printed today, but I found some other little problem so I'll wait till Monday and look at it again later this evening (it's time for training! ).
