Good text / bad text?

Task

Read the text below and decide it you think it is well written. Then re-write the text with any necessary changes you think would improve it.

First type of diabetes disease is call insulin dependent diabetes. so there is not enough amount of insulin to regulate blood sugar level in human body. All the patients in this situations needs insulin treatments to compensate abnormal level of insulin hormone in the bodies. It is sure. Most can be under 30 year and some statistics say that most of cases type one diabetes is this like 70% and first boy was treated was 1922 called Leonard Thomson. Research people try to know what can be cause of type one of diabetes and some factors are genetic and environmental and immunological factors and many risks. It’s hard to know how to make this problem better.

 

Paraphrasing 4

Task

Find a paragraph (no more than 50 words) from an article that you have read this week, and paraphrase it. Post the original and the paraphrased version so we can share and compare ideas. You will discuss your texts in class with your classmates, so please bring a copy of the original text and your text to class on Friday.

Paraphrasing 3

Task

Paraphrase the text below and post your paraphrased version here so we can share ideas and discuss in class.
Preserving Food
One of the chief problems with food is its relatively short storage life. Since earliest times man has tried to preserve his perishable foods by drying or adding salt, sugar or spices. It is one thing to preserve foods safely to allow broader distribution and reasonable shelf life. It is quite another to embalm food that is too far gone to be acceptable as fresh.

Paraphrasing 2

Task

Which sentences are closest in meaning to the five sentences below? Please share your answers here, we will also discuss the reason why in class.
1.    25% of adolescents who have one baby have a second baby within two years of the first baby’s birth.

• a.    25% of babies are born to mothers who are adolescents.
• b.    One out of four adolescent mothers has another baby before the first baby reaches his second
  birthday.
• c.    A quarter of adolescent mothers gives birth when their first born is two.
• d.    25% of adolescent mothers become pregnant again when their first babies are two years old.

2.    It has been reported that the richest one percent of Americans own 40% of the country’s wealth.

• a.    The richest 1% are 40 times as wealthy as the rest of Americans.
• b.    If the gap between rich and poor continues to grow at the current rate, the richest one percent will
  soon own 40% of the country’s wealth.
• c.    40% of the country’s wealth is in the hands of only 1% of Americans.
• d.    99% of Americans own 40% as much as the richest 1%.

3.    The judge was relieved when the jury was finally ready to announce its verdict.

• a.    When the jury announced its verdict, the judge was relieved.
• b.    The judge asked the jury to arrive at a verdict.
• c.    The judge welcomed the prospect of an imminent verdict.
• d.    The jury welcomed the judge’s relief.

4.    Research data suggest that girls who witnessed maternal abuse may tolerate abuse as adults more than girls who did not.

• a.    Women who witnessed the abuse of their mother as teens are more likely to become abusive adults.
• b.    Women who observed the abuse of their mothers when they were young are more likely to endure
  abuse themselves.
• c.    Women who were abused as children are more likely to abuse their own children.
• d.    Girls who testify about maternal abuse tolerate abuse as adults more readily.

5.    Martha thinks that the issue of adolescent problems is important to write about.

• a.    Martha thinks that adolescents like to write about their problems.
• b.    Martha feels that writing about adolescent problems is worthwhile.
• c.    Martha believes that the dream of most adolescents is to write something important.
• d.    Martha thinks that adolescents can write about their problems.

Paraphrasing 1

You will need to support your ideas when you are writing an assignment. We do this by quoting things we have read, and by paraphrasing. Paraphrasing means selecting the key information from a text and putting it in your own words. By using your own words, you avoid plagiarism (taking somebody else’s idea and claiming they are your own). You can be penalised for plagiarism, so it must be avoided.

Task

Read the short text about a universal language, then read the paraphrase. Compare the the texts and find words from the original text that have been replaced in the paraphrase and note them down.

e.g. peoples -> humans

Original passage
Language is the main source of communication between peoples. However, so many different languages have developed that language has often been a barrier rather than an aid to understanding among peoples. For many years, people have dreamed of setting up an international, universal language which all people could speak and understand. The arguments in favour of a universal language are simple and obvious. If all peoples spoke the same tongue, cultural and economic ties might be much closer and, goodwill might increase between countries. (Kispert, 2000)

(Oshima, A. & Hogue, A. (1999) Writing Academic English Longman)

Paraphrase
Humans communicate through language. Because there are so many languages in the world, language has not always been a help to communication. It can be an obstacle. For a long time, people have wanted an international language that speakers all over the world could understand. There are clear and straightforward arguments for a universal language. Such a language would build cultural and economic bonds, and would also create better feeling among countries. (Kispert, 2000)

Principal Features of Academic Style

Listed below are the main features of academic writing style with examples.

 

1. The use of hedging expressions to avoid claiming inappropriate certainty

e.g.     Students tend to focus on lab work, rather than writing up.

        -> A lack of funding may have led to lower safety standards.

 

2. Avoidance of first and second person pronouns (I; we; you; my; our; your etc).

3. The use of impersonal expressions and the passive voice

e.g.     It can be concluded that …

            It has been claimed that …

 

4. The avoidance of informal vocabulary and grammar

e.g.  a lot of research has been done

->  a great deal of research has been conducted

       this study aims to find out the causes of the desease

->  this study aims to determine the causes of the desease

       there were not many machines available

->  there were few machines available

      Originally, it was developed in Germany.

->  It was originally developed in Germany.

           

5. Avoidance of informal punctuation such as contractions and dashes; colons and semi-colons feature commonly in academic style.

6. The predominance of complex rather than simple sentences, and of long rather than short paragraphs.

7. The use of referencing to indicate sources.

Task

Read the texts in the previous post (Detecting different writing styles) and see if you can find examples of the above features in text numbers 2, 3 and 5. We will discuss your ideas in class, but feel free to post any comments too!

Detecting different writing styles

Read the texts below quickly

1: It starts with a single cell. The first cell splits to become two and the two become four and so on. After just forty-seven doublings, you have 10,000 trillion (10,000,000,000,000,000) cells in your body and are ready to spring forth as a human being. And every one of those cells knows exactly what to do to preserve and nurture you from the moment of conception to your last breath.

You have no secrets from your cells. They know far more about you than you do. Each one carries a copy of the complete genetic code – the instruction manual for your body – so it knows how to do not only its own job but every other job in the body too. Never in your life will you have to remind a cell to keep an eye on its adenosine triphosphate levels or to find a place for the extra squirt of folic acid that’s just unexpectedly turned up. It will do that for you, and millions more things besides.

2: The first crucial step in the development of the modern scientific world-view was the Copernican revolution. In 1542 the Polish astronomer Nicolas Copernicus (1473-1543) published a book attacking the geocentric model of the universe, which placed the stationary earth at the centre of the universe with the planets and the sun in orbit around it. Geocentric astronomy, also known as Ptolemaic astronomy after the ancient greek astronomer Ptolemy, lay at the heart of the Aristotelian world-view, and had gone largely unchallenged for 1,800 years. But Copernicus suggested an alternative: the sun was the fixed centre of the universe, and the planets, including the earth, were in orbit around the sun (Figure 1).

3:

Pharmacogenetic tests identify variations (or mutations) in a person’s genetic makeup in order to predict their responses to a medicine. The results may indicate whether a patient will respond to a particular medicine, and/or whether they may experience side effects. It may also yield recommendations on dosage. The test could be done directly by analysing a person’s DNA – researchers may look for the presence, absence or change in a particular gene. Or it could be done indirectly by examining molecules that are influenced by DNA, such as RNA and proteins. Pharmacogenetic tests can be performed on blood samples, cheek swabs, or, as with some cancers, on biopsy tissue.

4:

In December, philosopher and artificial intelligence expert Aaron Sloman announced his intention to create nothing less than a robot mathematician. He reckons he has identified a key component of how humans develop mathematical talent. If he’s right, it should be possible to program a machine to be as good as us at mathematics, and possibly better.

Sloman’s creature is not meant to be a mathematical genius capable of advancing the frontiers of mathematical knowledge: his primary aim, outlined in the journal Artifical Intelligence (vol 172, p2015), is to use such a machine to improve our understanding of where our mathematical ability comes from. Nevertheless, it is possible that such a robot could take us beyond what mathematicians have achieved so far. Forget robot vacuum cleaners and android waitresses; we’re talking about a machine that could spawn a race of cyber-nerds capable of creating entirely new forms of mathematics.

5:

The recent uptake of mobile phones has been accompanied by some concern about possible health risks.¹ In the general population, the health effects most often attributed to mobile phone use are non-specific symptoms. Excluding sensations of mild warmth, the most commonly reported symptoms are headache, burning, dizziness, fatigue, and tingling.² Mechanisms to explain these phenomena remain speculative, and although the pulsing nature of “global system for mobile communication” (GSM) signals has been suggested to be partly to blame,³ experiments that have exposed healthy adults to GSM signals under blind conditions have not found any significant effects on the reporting of symptoms.⁴

Task

1. What kind of text do you think they are from? (an academic book, an academic journal paper, a scientific website, a popular science book, a newspaper /magazine article
2. How would you describe the language in each extract?
3. Consider examples of academic or informal language use or style.  We will discuss your ideas in class, but feel free to post any comments too!
   

Connections

Take a picture of something that is related to your field of study and in no more than 100 words explain the connection and why you chose this thing. You can post the picture with the written account or just the writing.

Description

Find an item that you use daily and write a description of it in no more than 30 words without saying what it is. Your classmates will add comments to guess what your item is!

Discovery

Task

Imagine you are a famous scientist who has discovered something new. Write a short post to summarise your findings. Explain clearly what you have discovered and how. Remember your classmates are free to add comments so be prepared to answer their questions!