Objectives
When
you have finished this section, you will be able to
§ recognise technical terms
specific to particular academic or scientific discipline
§ select appropriate words from
the general academic vocabulary and use them in your own academic writing
Resource
List
1)
Academic
Vocabulary List in grammatical categories by Rick Smith:
2)
Exercises
on academic vocabulary, texts and concordance lines:
3)
The
Longman Vocabulary site with exercises:
4)
Victoria
University of Wellington’s site on Academic Word List and how to use it:
Key Concepts
§ Academic vocabulary
§ Headwords & inflections
§ Academic Word List (AWL)
Procedure
A.
Before Class
1. Review Features of Academic Writing.
a. Note the choice of specific words/vocabulary
used that differentiates a text as
academic.
b.
Look at the websites in the Resource List and
familiarize yourself with the
academic
word/vocabulary lists and also the sublists.
B. In
Class
Recalling what you have learnt from the
websites, either in pairs or in a small group,
compare your answers for Tasks A, B, C & D. Be prepared to share your answers with
the rest of the class.
C.
After Class
Study the Additional Resources given at the end
of this handout.
Tasks
A.
Discussion
1. Working with a partner, start by going
through Sublist 1 from the AWL Site 4. If
you know these words, move to Sublist 2 and work down to Sublist 10. As you move down the
Sublists, note the words that are familiar.
2.
Compare the words you are familiar with
to those your partner is familiar with.
Discuss the words you are familiar with. Are
these words from your own discipline
or from your own vocabulary repertoire?
B. Word Building
Below are some head
words or the stem form of a word. Try to work out the
various forms of the given head words,
that is the inflections of the word.
e.g.
analyse
|
analysed
|
analyser
|
analysers
|
analyses
|
analysing
|
analysis
|
|
analyst
|
analysts
|
analytic
|
analytical
|
analytically
|
analyse
|
|
analysed
|
analyses
|
analysing
|
|
|
|
§
conceive
§
valid
§
undertake
§
seek
§
precise
§
straightforward
§
trend
§
residue
§
regime
§
albeit
C. Application
1.
In pairs or
in small groups, reduce the informality of the following sentences by
providing formal alternatives for the
underlined words. Consult the AWL Site 4.
(a) Additionally,
citizens in democratic regimes get easy access to information the
Internet provides.
(b) Government
agencies made forms and searchable databases online, making it
easier for citizens to get their questions
answered.
(c) For countries enjoying the benefits of
freedom and democracy, embracing the
Internet has been relatively painless. For
other nations, the course of action has
proved more difficult.
(d) The Internet will have become so interwoven
in the fabric of their economic life
that cutting off access will not be
possible. De facto freedom of information will
slowly emerge
in these countries, even if never officially recognized. This will
be one of the Internet's most important
contributions to global civilization.
(e) Internet
pornography, now a multibillion-dollar industry and one of the first
profitable sectors of the Internet economy, becomes a problem when it
involves
children
or is viewed in a public setting. One study guesses that 20% of all
white-collar males access pornography online while at work.
(f) Finally, as we grow more
dependent on the Internet, we grow more vulnerable. Before the Internet,
viruses could be spread from one computer to another only through floppy disks.
With the widespread availability of software downloaded from websites or sent
out through email, viruses now spread like wildfire, covering the world in
hours.
(g) With so much of our public life now available
online, terrorists no longer need to risk coming here to gather information before
an attack, nor do they need to meet in person to talk.
(h) The same factors that empower
legitimate Internet users also empower those opposed to our national interests.
There is no escaping this basic fact.
2.
Examine the underlined words and phrases in the
following text. Replace these words by
selecting
appropriate words from the AWL so that
the text is
formal and academic.
|
A Computer that Can “Read” the Mind
by
The National Science Foundation (US)
For
centuries, the concept of mind readers was strictly the domain of folklore
and science fiction. But according to new research published today
in the journal Science, scientists are closer to knowing
how specific thoughts activate your brains. The findings tell
the power of computational modelling to improve your understanding of
how the brain processes information and what you think.
The
research was conducted by a computer scientist, Tom Mitchell, and a
cognitive neuroscientist, Marcel Just, both of Carnegie Mellon University.
Their previous research, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF)
and the W.M. Keck Foundation, had shown that functional magnetic resonance
imaging(fMRI) can really detect and locate brain activity when a
person thinks about a specific word. Using this data, the researchers made
a computational model that made a computer to correctly figure out
what word a research subject was thinking about by analysing brain scan data.
In
their most recent work, Tom and Marcel used fMRI data to develop a
more sophisticated computational model that can foretell the brain
activation patterns associated with concrete nouns, or things that we
experience through our senses, even if the computer didn’t already know
the fMRI data for that specific noun.
|
Your Answers
|
Additional Resources
& The workbook, Focus on vocabulary: Mastering the academic
word list, by Schmitt and Schmitt (2005), which is largely informed by
the authors’ research on vocabulary and their extensive experience teaching
vocabulary, is a useful resource that ES1102 students can independently use to
develop their vocabulary in two semesters.
Copies
of this book, along with an answer key, are available at the Centre for English
Language Communication SELF (Self-Access English Learning Facility, http://courseware.nus.edu.sg/itself/).
Another useful resource is the online website developed by
Tom Cobb (Université du Québec à Montréal).
Complete
Lexical Tutor v.6.2 at http://www.lextutor.ca/
The
Complete Lexical Tutor
v.6.2
is a free website with a concordancer, vocabulary profiler, exercise maker,
interactive exercises, and other language learning resources for students,
researchers, and teachers.
ES1102
students will find the interactive tools useful for developing their vocabulary
and grammatical accuracy. The tutorial
section aims to provide self-access learning opportunities for learners, e.g.,
testing their vocabulary, exploring their vocabulary levels, comparing active
and passive vocabulary, using new words, reading and listening to a novel, and
testing their grammar with concordances.
