Part IV Syllabus and Lesson Plans 17 Creating a Syllabus
18.1 English for Writing Research Papers
2.1
Ex 1: The key info needs to be put at the beginning of the phrase.
S1 . It is diffi cult / not easy / rare to fi nd a candidate with all the right qualifi cations … S2. A foreign language should be learned at a young age.
Ex. 2: S4 is better because most readers will want to know why they should do something before hearing the details of how it should be done. For instance, when explaining the rules of a game, you tell people what the aim is (to score a goal) before you tell them how this is achieved (you have two team of 11 players who …).
S3 is fi ne, but if the sentence were much longer it would become more of a problem.
Ex 3: S5 is the least readable as it separates the subject from its verb. The other three are all fi ne.
Ex 4: all true
3.13
The paragraph could be divided up at the these points: Firstly … Secondly … Thirdly
… Fourthly … The maximum …
4.1
Ex 2: d, a, c, d (Note that c is a description of a, this aspect ; if c referred to both a and b, then it would say these aspects ).
5.1
Ex 1: The quotes are all about making life easier for the reader. This entails maxi- mum effort on the writer's part, but minimal effort by the reader.
6.1
Ex 1: They are all ambiguous / ridiculous. 1) seems like the vet starts mating a panda, 2) death of a fellow worker, not their own, 3) try = to put on trial, 4) the fi rst time he / she was sentenced, he / she was not actually subjected to the death penalty, 5) red tape = bureaucracy, 6) gas seems to have a human origin, 7) obviously if it was too close it was going to crash [not really ambiguous, just ridiculous], 8) the kids did the cooking, they were not eaten, 9) the numbers were cut, not the dropouts, 10) teachers need training on how to teach sex education. Although these are designed to be funny, ambiguity is one of the key failings in scientifi c papers, and several cases of ambiguity can lead to a paper being accepted only 'subject to English revision'.
7.1
This is a key exercise. Very often, although the author knows what he / she did and what other authors have done, this difference is not clear to the reader. So the answer to all three questions is the same: "It is not clear."
9.1
Ex 1: The idea is to show students that even if they have limitations (both on a per- sonal level or in terms of their research not providing what they hoped for), this is not a problem and in fact it can be turned into a benefi t. Persistence is important, as highlighted by those people whose ideas were initially rejected. However, there is a limit - some scientists even end up dying to prove their point.
11.1
Ex 2: possible answers showing different approaches: a) Bertrand Russell claimed that that we as human beings can only know about our world through science. b) According to Bertolt Brecht it is a scientist's job to contribute knowledge to the community. c) US plant pathologist, Elvin Stackman, stated that it is not the role of scientists to delay their research by investigating ethical considerations. d) Western civilization has been developed at a much greater speed by science than by Christianity (Burroughs, 1880). e) As noted by Bronowski, asking challenging questions, which may not always seem relevant or appropriate, scientists can make important fi ndings [9] (where [9] refers to the bibliography, in this case Bronowski J: The Ascent Of Man. Boston, Little Brown and Co., 1973, p 153).
12.1
Ex 1: suggested answers: 1 b [Cut the fi rst eight words], 2 d, 3 c, 4 d, 5 b [Cut: An observation on ], 6 a, 7 d
13.1
Ex 2: The results, i.e. did they actually manage to convert plastic into gold? This is a surprisingly frequent mistake that researchers make when writing their abstracts.
16.1
Ex 2: The principle problem is that some sentences contain more than one step, and that these steps are not always in chronological order - if you followed the steps correctly the bomb would explode immediately (if there was a trigger device on the lid) or just before the last step! The enumeration of the steps through the use of fi rst , second and fi nally , is in this case not helpful as in fact there are six steps. The phrases are sometimes unneces- sarily verbose (e.g. the cutting of the green wire … be subjected to a cutting process ).
18.1
Ex 1: Discussion B is the most effective.
20.1
Ex 2: 1) In this context the underlying problem is that from an economic point the process is too costly, which would thus make it prohibitive to purchase. 2) This is the fi rst time that such a result has been found in the fi eld of n uclear p hysics. 3) The samples were weighed (av. 5 g) then subjected to Smith's method ( Smith et al., 2017) and each sample was associated to one of three categories. 4) In addition, in the fi nal phase the micro-thin strips of tissue were examined under the microscope . 5) The infl uence of the color of the structure was found to have a greater infl uence than the type of behavior .