Report: Recently, I chanced upon an article on the standard of spoken English...

[Thang77]

In my report to my principal, i wrote 1 sentence like this :
"Recently, i chanced upon an article on the standard of spoken English in school published by the Strait Times newspaper."
can you help check if there are anything problems with the tone as well as the grammatical mistakes? By the way, can i replace the phrase verb "chanced upon" by "came across"?
thanks in advance!

[Kitosdad]

Yes you can.

You can also change ( i ) to I, and 1 to one.
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[Thang77]

yeah, thanks very much. and is there anything wrong with the tone. I am asking so because this is a formal essay and i am not sure about the tone i used.

[Kitosdad]

Thang, both are equally suited for the task.
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Keep it simple ... Keep it interesting.

[Thang77]

i am sorry, can you explain further? i don't really get what you mean

[Kitosdad]

Good morning Thang, sorry for the delay.

Both have the same meaning, but " I chanced upon " sounds a little more formal as that is what you are searching for.
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Keep it simple ... Keep it interesting.

[Alan]

Hi Thang,

'Chance upon' has an almost poetic sense about it and to use the construction in a report wouldn't to my mind be appropriate. I would suggest ''come across' would be better in your context.

Alan
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English as a Second Language
You can read my ESL story Present Simple

[Thang77]

thanks very much!