Tag Archives: Medical Collocations for the CELBAN

§ Why collocations matter ~ spotting the errors ~ CELBANPrep Writing Level One

Posted on December 16, 2013 | Leave a comment

Dear Friend,

With the assistance of a writing coach, IENs work on writing assignments on a weekly basis. This personalized writing tutoring allows a person to develop test taking strategies that increase their score on the CELBAN. See if you can spot some of the errors in the phrases below:

A patient complained about why should the nurse must asks so many questions..
and not to right away help the patient.
Little that the patient knew that the nurse was already helping the patient.
The nurse focused her full attention to the patient.

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500 Should joint pain be singular or plural when writing a report for CELBAN Writing Task 2?

Posted on December 7, 2013 | Leave a comment

Updates 2021

Corticosteroids and antibiotics are prescribed to treat joint pain and sore throats.

Hi Kim,

I have a question again!! Do I need to change joint pain? It affects multiple joints.

This question was asked by an IEN during her CELBANPrep Writing Level Two.

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600 Should headache, earache or sore throat be singular or plural when writing a report for CELBAN Writing Task 2?

Posted on November 26, 2013 | 1 comment

Updated 2021

Dear Friend,

In writing about Henoch Schonlein Purpura, an IEN with a family history with this disease wrote:

Symptomes of this disease are purpuric rashes all over the body, joint pain and cold like symptoms like headache, sorethroat and earache.

Noticing that headache, sore throat and earache were singular I asked, ” Do you understand why earaches and sore throats are plural?”

She replied, “I did research on, why do we use earaches or sore throats? But I could not find the reason. So, can you please explain that to me? Thank you.

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