4. Fine-tuning
This tutorial concentrates on:
-The consistency of your line of argument
-The support for your claims
-The logic behind your arguments
-Improving clarity and flow
-Writing more concise sentences
Academic Language Centre
6. Critical thinking:
Make sure that you clearly distinguish
between
- facts and opinions
- certainties and uncertainties
both while you are reading and when you
are writing.
Academic Language Centre
7. Logical fallacies:
• Hasty generalisation (jumping to a conclusion, claim based
on too little evidence):
• Commercials in favour of unhealthy food should be
forbidden, because they lead to a consumption-oriented
society and subsequently to overweight .
• Oversimplification (linking 2 events as if one caused the other
directly, whereas the causes may be more complex):
• Obesity leads to people becoming depressed.
• Inappropriate appeal to the reader / inappropriate tone
• Obesity costs an unnecessary amount of valuable health
care time, time that could be better spent on curing other
diseases.
Academic Language Centre
8. Relative clauses:
There are two types of relative clauses:
1.Defining relative clauses, in which the
information that you give is essential
2.Non-defining relative clauses, in which the
information that you give is extra.
Compare:
My sister who lives in London is a musician.
My sister, who lives in London, is a musician.
Academic Language Centre
9. Relative clauses:
- Defining:
By 4.30, there was only one painting which /that
hadn’t been sold. (essential, no comma)
- Non-defining:
The train, which was already an hour late, broke
down again. (extra, commas used)
Academic Language Centre
10. Being concise:
Concise: short and clear, expressing what needs to be
said without unnecessary words
(Advanced Learners’ Dictionary)
Typical examples of unnecessary words:
•
•
•
•
•
really
quite
basically
totally
completely
Academic Language Centre
12. editing
Final check before submitting the paper:
-Think of a good title
-Argumentation check
-Vocabulary check (formal English)
-Grammar and spelling check (not everything
is picked up by a computer!)
-Bibliography
-Consistent lay-out
Academic Language Centre
14. Candidate for a Pullet Surprise
by Mark Eckman and Jerrold H. Zar (1992)
(also known as “Ode to a spell checker”)
“I have a spelling checker.
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea…..
15. Candidate for a Pullet Surprise (continued)
…….Eye ran this poem threw it,
Your sure reel glad two no.
Its vary polished inn it's weigh.
My checker tolled me sew…….
16. Candidate for a Pullet Surprise (continued)
…..A checker is a bless sing,
It freeze yew lodes of thyme.
It helps me right awl stiles two reed,
And aides me when eye rime…………….”
17. Style Sheet (on BB-site)
-Font and font size.
-The line spacing
-The margins
-paragraphing
-Use of page numbers
-Personal details, name of tutor, word count etc.
-Title, footnotes, style of referencing Bibliography.
18. The title:
Titles often contain one or more of the
following elements:
-a reference to the main topic
-a reference to the aim of the author
-a reference to the conclusion
-the main topic as a question
-a general statement which is then refined
Academic Language Centre
19. nominalisation
Academic writers frequently use the noun
forms of verbs; rather than focusing on the
action (verb) they focus on the concept (noun).
Water hyacinths are rapidly spreading into drainage
systems and are restricting the rate at which the
water flows.(=verb)
The rapid spread of water hyacinths into drainage
systems is causing restrictions in the rate of water
flows.(=noun)
Academic Language Centre
20. Academic Writing and Culture
- Paragraph Structure
- Plagiarism in a cultural context
22. Rhetorical differences
- Sociologists and anthropologists: logic is a
cultural phenomenon
- Diversity in culture leads to diversity in logic
- Logic is not a universal phenomenon
- Logic is the basis of rhetoric, so rhetoric is
not universal either
23. Rhetoric and academic writing
- English: thought patterns evolved from
Platonic Aristotelian thought (ancient
Greece)
- Thought patterns are linear:
- Paragraph starts with a topic sentence;
- Subdivisions of topic statement;
- Each subdivision supported by
examples/illustrations;
- Goal: to develop idea in topic
statement, then relate that to rest of
essay.
24. “Foreign” writing
- Feedback students receive:
- Information is there but paragraph lacks
structure
- Paragraph lacks cohesion
Problem: writing by foreign students
often violates the expectations of the
native reader.
25. Arabic (Semitic) languages
Old Testament:
(1) His descendants will be mighty in the land
and
The generation of the upright will be blessed
(2) For the Lord knoweth the way of the righteous:
But the way of the wicked shall perish
26. Oriental writing
Definition of college education:
‘Colleges are institutions of education that
give degrees. We need culture and
education in life. While animals have
remained as they were, man has made
progress because he has learned about
civilization. To improve our high
civilization, we need education. Therefore
college education is important and we
don’t need to question it.’
(Based on Kaplan 2001:17)
27. Romance and Russian writing
- Digressions away from topic sentence
- Sometimes very long sentences
In academic essays we tend not to mix facts and opinions within one paragraph. The two are usually clearly separated into different paragraphs (e.g. the conclusion). or into different sections of a research paper (the Discussion section in the IMRD model)
If you do, however, then you must use the kind of language that makes it absolutely clear to the reader which is which.
Use phrases such as: in my opinion, this can be interpreted as, it is my understanding that.
For expressing (un)certainty, cf. slides that go with chapter 5 about tentative language, also called “ hedging your claims” .
Whole books have been written about critical thinking so it would be beyond the scope of this writing course to discuss it in more detail than this.
Listed here are some common pitfalls for beginning writers. The problem is, of course, that these statements seem true to most people so they do not critically assess them.
The Dutch especially find it difficult to get the commas right because in Dutch commas are used a lot more often than in English, but other nationalities struggle as well.
Ask them: How many sisters have I got?
In the first sentence, I have more than one sister. This is about the one who lives in London, but I have at least one other sister who obviously lives somewhere else.
In the second sentence, the information is extra and not used to define which sister, so I have only one sister who happens to live in London.
Notice also the difference in intonation and pausing when you read those sentences out loud.
It is in the nature of academic papers to contain information which is essential, so as a rule-of-thumb you could say:
When in doubt, leave them out. (i.e. the commas)
This usually works out.
In defining clauses both which and that can be used, although which is considered to be more formal.In non-defining clauses, which is used.
So all in all, in academic writing which is always correct, although Word will underline it with a green wriggly line so you may think there’s something wrong. There is not!
DON’t go to the next slide yet, but read out the first verse:
I have a spelling checker.
It came with my PC.
It plane lee marks four my revue
Miss steaks aye can knot sea.
Ask if that made sense. Then go to the next slide: read out again and ask them to read along.
Jerrold H. Zar, but
Graduate School
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, IL 60115
[email_address]
(Current mailing address: Department of Biological Sciences, same university)
Title suggested by Pamela Brown.
Based on opening lines suggested by Mark Eckman.
Published in the Journal of Irreproducible Results, January/February 1994, page 13. Reprinted ("by popular demand") in the
Journal of Irreproducible Results, Vol. 45, No. 5/6, 2000, page 20.
Journal of Irreproducible Results, Box 234, Chicago Heights IL 60411 USA.
Phone 708-747-3717; Fax: 708-727-3657; e-mail: jir@interaccess.com; Web site: www.jir.com
There are 9 verses. By the author's count, 123 of the 225 words are incorrect (although all words are correctly spelled).
This is based on homophones in English.
Homophone = two or more words that sound the same but differ in meaning / origin. In this poem, the authors managed to collect an impressive number of these words indeed, and also managed to put them into a poem that actually makes sense as long as you don’t try to read along.
The poem neatly illustrated the issue in a very funny way: spell checkers can be useful, but don’t rely on them exclusively: you as a writer are the best person to check the spellling in a paper! Proofread yourself, as spelling checkers do not pick out everything: they don’t “understand” what you want to say and are therefore unable to deal with these homophones.
Style sheet contains stipulations about the following things:
See above
In journalism, catchy headlines are very important as they may increase the sale of a newspaper or magazine. The Economist excels at witty headlines. A word such as Grexit was actually coined by them the beginning of June 2012, and everybody immediately started using it. Sure enough, a week later there was a letter to the Editor stating that as it was an Aegean affair it should actually be called Grexodus.
While I am in no way suggesting that students should come up with catchy headlines a la Economist, the example above does illustrate the importance of titles and headlines.
Up until now students may have had just a working title, but it is often easier to think of a good title once you are finished than when you start out, so they may need to rethink their title at this stage.
Kaplan pg 12 top
Linguistic criteria: we can see this when looking at the language itself, when we compare, for example, a sentence such as “This book is blue” in different languages:
Dit boek is blauw
Cette livre est bleu (Fr)
Buku ini biru (Ind)
Evident that these sentences, which refer to the same blue item, have different forms in different languages.
American philosopher Peirce: If Aristotle had been Mexican, his logic would have been different
Kaplan pg 13-14
Kaplan pg 13
Kaplan pg 15-16: Examples can be found in the Old Testament. Paragraphs are developed by series of parallel constructions, in which the first and the second part have a particular relation to one another. They may be separated by a conjunction.
First: synonyms: second part of the statement puts the first part in balance, coordinating conjunction used
Second: idea in first part is emphasised by a contracting ideas in the second part.
These are coordinated, while in English academic writing subordination is more often used, giving rise to a more linear structure.
Oriental writing (discuss before going to next slide)
Central idea in paragraph described in circles, becoming wider.
Gives English readers a sense of indirection.
Kaplan pg 17.
First definition of college
Then different direction, culture and education
Then moving further away from main point, connects civilization to education
Then final sentence which seems more like a topic sentence. The concept of college education still has not been defined. Throws an English reader.
Silva (pg 18): Chinese students place their topic sentences at the end of the paragraph, moving from cause to effect. (Students study hard, so they get high grades (TS)
English paragraphs go the other way around, from effect (Many students obtain high grades for their essays (TS)) to cause (this is because they study hard.
This is an essentially different structure.
Kaplan pg 19-20
Digressions give English reader the idea that some ideas are irrelevant.
Often the ideas in the digressions are relevant to the central idea, but only indirectly, not in a direct sense.
