Your marked-up baseline
Read out what you circled in your Lesson 1 baseline. For each mark: what exactly was wrong?
The five patterns
Collected across Lessons 1–5
| Pattern | What appears | What it should be | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| Protected title | I’m a landscape architect. | I'm a landscape designer. | Claims a licence she does not hold — the one pattern here that is not just about language |
| Resumptive pronoun | a designer who she trained in Brazil | a designer who trained in Brazil | PT relative clauses often keep the pronoun; English drops it |
| Missing discourse marker | Two flat, unconnected sentences | joined with including / as a result | Leaves the reader to infer a relationship that should be stated |
| Spec register in conversation | a 59.0% reduction was achieved (said aloud, casually) | we got it down by almost sixty percent | Reads as rehearsed rather than confident in a spoken genre |
| One-word translation under pressure | Yes, I’m an architect back home. | It's not quite the same system — the closest equivalent would be… | Overclaims an equivalence between two systems that do not correspond |
Which patterns are language, and which are not
Sort the five patterns into two piles. Patterns 2, 3 and 4 are grammar and register — get them wrong and a reader notices something slightly off. Patterns 1 and 5 are different: they are accurate or inaccurate claims about a regulated fact, and getting them wrong means saying something professionally untrue, not just something ungrammatical.
This is the same distinction Units 7 and 8 drew between a grammar error and a professional failure — except here, for the first time, the professional failure carries a legal edge rather than just a credibility one.
Fix them
Each sentence carries one grammar or reference error from Phase 02. Rewrite it.
1. A landscape designer, who she trained in Brazil, is licensed under B-C27.
2. She has completed projects in three counties. She has completed a project in Lafayette.
Rewrite each inaccurate or over-precise line as something you could actually say. Use the word given.
I'm a landscape architect. DESIGNER
Yes, I’m an architect back home. EQUIVALENT
A 59.0% reduction in impervious surface was achieved. ALMOST
Audit your own baseline
Task card
Your Lesson 1 baseline, marked up
Read it aloud, fixing every instance of the five patterns as you go.
- Fix the title first, even if it means restarting the sentence.
- Read aloud — cohesion breaks are easier to hear than to see.
- Say the corrected version straight through at the end, without stopping.
Which pattern was yours?
Of the five, which did your own baseline actually contain? If it was pattern 1, that is worth sitting with for a moment — it is the one this whole unit exists to catch.
Before the next lesson
Homework. Prepare your full professional introduction and a one-line description of a project you would pitch to someone who has never heard of you. Next lesson, they ask.