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MASARYK UNIVERSITY
Language Centre
ACADEMIC WRITING COURSE
for PhD students and novice researchers
SESSION 2
SESSION 1 SUMMARY
Style and micro structure aspects of academic writing.
HOME ASSIGNMENT REVIEW
a) Title analysis.
b) Peer-review analysis.
c) Texts of high stylistic quality task comment.
1. MACRO LEVEL
text types; text structures 2. MEZZO LEVEL
paragraphs 3. MICRO LEVEL
academic style; words, sentences
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1. SENTENCES
1.1. Analyse the quality of the following sentences from the academic style point of view.
a) Since it was, as mentioned, a test, we did not try to achieve the best results, we just wanted to verify
the idea of time characteristics.
b) Common types of DNA damage that interfere with replication fork progression are chemical
modifications (adducts) of DNA bases, which are created by reactive drugs that covalently bind DNA
either directly or after being metabolized in the body and are grouped in two categories: monofunctional
alkylating agents with one active moiety that modifies single bases and bifunctional alkylating agents
that have two reactive sites and crosslink DNA with proteins or, alternatively, crosslink two DNA bases
within the same DNA strand (intra-strand crosslinks) or on opposite DNA strands (inter-strand
crosslinks), which pose a severe block to replication forks.
c) So we focus on that research.
d) However, although the effect of the rubber particles on the mechanical properties of copolymer
systems was demonstrated over two years ago,8 little attention was paid to the selection of an
appropriate rubber component.
e) Not only hardware requirements are becoming more demanding than what can be supplied.
f) The databases tend to preselect papers published in English, thus, underrepresenting research
published in other languages. (Swales, J., Feake, C.,2009:103)
g) Other factors must be considered in order to answer the question as to why nanomechanical
properties of the treated samples (cryosectioned and time-varying etched UHMWPE samples) were
higher than the untreated samples. (Ho et al. 2003:364)
h) Actually, it’s quite a silly proof!
i) "Galileo is at the heart of our new industrial policy," EC Vice-President Antonio Tajani said once the
separation confirmation had come through.
j) Such excellent feedback from the visiting auditor.
k) We use the notion of a bidirectional flow (biflow in short) [12] to formally define this basic type of the
attack: let b = (start fwd, start rvs, srcIP, dstIP, proto, srcPrt, dstP rt, pkt fwd, pkt rvs, byt fwd, byt rvs) is
a biflow, where start fwd is a timestamp when the request starts, start rvs a timestamp when the
response starts, srcIP is the source IP address, dstIP the destination IP address, proto used network
protocol, srcPrt source TCP/UDP port, dstP rt destination TCP/UDP port, pkt fwd and byt fwd amount of
transferred packets and bytes in the forward direction and pkt rvs and byt rvs amount of packets and
bytes in the reverse direction.
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2. ABSTRACTS
2.1. What are abstracts and why do we write them?
2.2.
Abstracts are very common in academic writing, and they have a fairly standard form. Which essential
parts should an abstract consist of?
2.3. Read the abstracts and identify their parts.
(a)
(1) The present study was conducted to determine the prevalence of Listeria monocytogenes in smoked
fish in Sokoto, Nigeria. (2) A total of 115 different species of smoked fish from the various retail outlets
and market places within the metropolis were analysed for the presence of L. monocytogenes using ISO
culture method. (3) Out of the 115 samples analysed, 29 (25%) were positive for L. monocytogenes. (4)
Other Listeria species isolated in this study are L. grayi 13 (11%), L. innocua 10 (9%) and L. ivanovi 15
(13%). (5) The remaining 48 (42%) of the sample were negative for Listeria species. (6) The study
shows that L. monocytogenes and other Listeria species are common contaminant of smoked fish, and
this may pose serious public health implications. (Salihu et al., 2008)
(b)
(1) Personalized Web applications automatically adapted for different clients and user preferences gain
more importance. (2) Still there are barely technologies to compensate the additional effort of creating,
maintaining and publishing such Web content. (3) To address this problem, this paper introduces a
declarative, component-based approach for adaptive, dynamic Web documents on the basis of XMLtechnology.
(4) Adaptive Web components on different abstraction levels are defined in order to support
effective Web page authorising and generation. (5) Hierarchical document components playing a
specific semantic role are also defined. (6) The hyperlink view for defining typed links is spanned over
all component layers. (7) Beside the reuse of both implementation artefacts and higher level concepts,
the model also allows to define /sic./ adaptive behaviour of components in a fine-granular way. (8) As a
further benefit the support for ubiquitous collaboration via component annotations is introduced. (9)
Finally, the stepwise pipeline-based process of document generation is introduced and performance
issues are sketched.
(Adapted from: Štěpánek, L., deHaaf, J., Hradilová, A.(2011): p.172; (Fiala et al. 2003:58) UVT seminar, 1.11.2011)
2.4. Read the abstracts above again and identify words or groups of words in each sentence that
determine the sentence function.
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2.5. Read the following abstracts and analyse their quality.
ABSTRACT A
ABSTRACT B
ABSTRACT C
ABSTRACT D
Geographic indications (GIs) stand at the intersection of three hotly debated issues in international law:
international trade, intellectual property and agricultural policy. Akin to a trademark, a GI identifies a
good as originating in a particular region, where a given quality of the good is attributable to its place of
origin. Well-known GIs include champagne and prosciutto di Parma. Although GIs have a long history,
in recent years they have become central to the debate over the expansion of intellectual property
rights in the World Trade Organization. We argue that GIs have gained greater political salience and
economic value due to major changes in the global economy. Proponents of GIs also raise more diffuse
concerns about authenticity, heritage and locality in a rapidly globalizing world. After explaining the
origins of the effort to protect GIs in international law, we assess the normative justification for these
unusual intellectual property rights. Some GI protection in international law is justifiable. But the existing
level of protection afforded by the World Trade Organization – as well as current demands of the
European Union for even greater protection – is unjustified. We defend this position through careful
consideration of the major theoretical bases for property rights.
This publication examines how Western publishing houses have entered the Chinese magazine market.
Based on the industrial economics approach, the aim is to identify a successful market entry strategy into
an emerging media market regarding entry timing, entry mode, entry process, and product choice.
Applying a qualitative, exploratory approach, comparative case studies are used as primary research
method and the market entries of four Western publishing houses are analyzed. Findings reveal that an
early entry with cooperative entry modes and choosing a successful cooperation partner are important
factors in the entry strategy. Further, an incremental expansion process and choosing a global brand that
has already been successful world-wide facilitates the market entry. Obtaining general experience in
internationalization and near-market experience could be identified as crucial issues for entering an
emerging media market. (Strube, 2010)
We describe all commutative minimal clones.
Let α be such that 0 < α < ½. In this note we use the Mittag-Leffler partial fractions expansion
for Fα (θ) = Γ (1- α - θ/π) Γ(α)/ Γ(α- θ/π) Γ(1- α ) to obtain a solution of a Wiener-Hopf integral
equation.
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ABSTRACT E
ABSTRACT F
ABSTRACT G
(Sources: A) Kearnes, K.A., Szendrei,A.(1999): The Classification ofCommuztative Minimal Clones, Discussiones Methematicae, Algebra and Stochastic Methods 19, p.147; B)
Plasmacytoid dendritic cells employ multiple cell adhesion molecules sequentially to interact with high endothelial venule cells – molecular basis of their trafficking to lymph
nodes,Takahiro Matsutani*, Toshiyuki Tanaka, Kazuo Tohya, Kazuhiro Otani, Myoung Ho Jang, Eiji Umemoto, Kanako Taniguchi, Haruko Hayasaka, Koichi Ueda and Masayuki
Miyasaka ,http://intimm.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/19/9/1031; C) McGregor, M.(1997): On a Generalised Wiener-Hopf Integral Equation, Archivum mathematicum (Brno)
33, 273; D)http://www.ejil.org/journal/Vol18/No2/art5.htmlKal Raustiala And Stephen R. Munzer; E) Petr Fiala, Vít Hloušek, Markéta Pitrová, Pavel Pšeja, Petr Suchý:
Evropeizace politických stran a zájmových skupin: základní problémy a směry analýzyAbstract: The Europeanization of Political Parties and Pressure Groups: Basic Problems and
Directions of Analysis (Pol.čas.2006/1) http://www.iips.cz/index.php?show=001022001004; Harvey, J. Writing a Conference Paper, a lecture at Research Writing Pprogramme,
Grygenog, 1st May 2008) C. Asklund, N. Jørgensen, N.E. Skakkebæk and T.K. Jensen: Increased frequency of reproductive health problems among fathers of boys with
hypospadias; http://humrep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/22/10/2639
The article tries to evaluate the Europeanization research agenda from the point of view of a politicssphere
and actor-centered approach. The authors postulate that the concept of Europeanization is
lacking in regards to problems of political process and its dominant actors – political parties and
interest/pressure groups. The article consists of several parts. First, a critical examination of existing
Europeanization conceptualizations is provided. Second, the impact of democratic transition and
consolidation upon Europeanization in new member countries of the EU (and in potential candidate
states) is examined. Third, ways of necessary adaptation suitable for analyzing politics in terms of
Europeanization are suggested and discussed. The article concludes with sections devoted to agendasetting
for research about the Europeanization of political parties and interest groups. The overall tenor of
the article is to point out the necessity of integrating Europeanization-related issues, methodological, and
research tasks into a broader framework of comparative politics/comparative government; and that the
theoretical basis of actor-oriented Europeanization research should be drawn more from this area of
political science than it has been in previous research.
The paper will attempt to find out by way of a survey and assessment of how the half-tone process (a
technique used in printing to reproduce the full range of tones in a photograph or other illustration) was
used in popular journals by women photographers such as Margaret Steel, Joyce Monroe, Cecilia Beeley,
Jane Allen-Banks, Ida Heloc, and Mable Star, among others. The paper tries to explain how the
photographers had to master and understand the way in which the process affected a disintegration and
lightening of tonal areas of the photograph when printed, and how they had to, then, consider this when
developing the photograph print prior to processing. The paper may apply Feminist theory and see
weather in fact women were better able to adjust to the demands of the new technology than men or not.
I will use a great many high-resolution images of half-tone prints to make my points clearer.
BACKGROUND: Some studies have suggested an association between paternal subfertility and hypospadias
among their sons, although the association has not been systematically investigated. We therefore compared male
reproductive health among a group of fathers of boys with hypospadias and a group of fathers to normal children.
METHODS: A total of 64 fathers of boys with hypospadias participated; 349 partners of pregnant women served as
a control group. All men delivered a semen sample, had a blood sample drawn, underwent a physical examination
and completed a questionnaire.
RESULTS: Fathers of boys with hypospadias had a significantly lower median sperm concentration (54.1 x 106/ml)
(P = 0.004) and total sperm count (222.0 x 106) (P = 0.009) than the controls (81.2 and 326.0 x 106/ml). In addition,
the fathers of boys with hypospadias more often reported to have had disorders in the urogenital system
(hypospadias, cryptorchidism and testicular cancer) (11/64) (P < 0.001) than the control group (16/349). No
significant differences in waiting time to pregnancy was observed, however, 15% of fathers to boys with
hypospadias had received fertility treatment.
CONCLUSIONS: Fathers of boys with hypospadias not only have an increased frequency of hypospadias, but also
decreased semen quality. Most likely fathers and sons share the same susceptibility genes for reproductive
dysfunction, but additional impact of environmentalfactors cannot be excluded.
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2.6. Suggest changes that will reduce the length of this abstract (208 words) to the requested maximum
of 200 words:
Given the demand for interventions that may prevent the development of persistent musculoskeletal
pain problems, we investigated the effects of a cognitive-behavioural program in a group of non-patients
with neck or back pain symptoms. Two hundred and fifty-three people selected from a population study
were invited to participate. These people had experienced four or more episodes of relatively intense
spinal pain during the past year but had not been out of work more than 30 days. Participants were
randomly assigned to either a cognitive-behavioural group intervention or a treatment as a usual
comparison group. The experimental group received a standardized six-session program, provided by a
trained therapist according to a manual. A significant overall analysis at the 1-year follow-up showed
that the cognitive-behavioural group produced better results on 26 of the 33 outcome variables. Group
comparison indicated that the cognitive-behavioural group, relative to the comparison group, had
significantly better results with regard to fear-avoidance beliefs, number of pain-free days, as well as the
key variable of sick leave. Participation in the cognitive behavioural group reduced the risk for long-term
sick leave during the follow-up by threefold. Thus, despite the strong natural recovery rate for back pain,
the cognitive-behavioural intervention produced a significant preventive effect with regard to disability.
(Linton & Ryberg 2000)
2.7. Think of any academic text/talk you have written/given, or you are expected to write/give and write
its abstract (max.250 words).
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3. PARAGRAPHS
3.1. What is a paragraph?
3.2. Watch the paragraph song and note down as many aspects of academic paragraph writing as
possible.
3.3. Look at the paragraph features and discuss what they mean:
► coherence / cohesion
► development
►direct structure
► length
Topic sentence
(expressing the “problem”)
Expansion of point
Evidence/ support
Closing sentence
(e.g. solution)
The emphasis of the criminal justice system has
until recently been on the battle between the
offender/defendant and the state/prosecutor and
not the actual harm experienced by the victim. In
Fact victims have had minimal participation in the
criminal justice process; their role being primarily to
provide information to the state prosecutor with no
involvement in prosecution and sentencing. McShane
and Williams (1992, p. 260) contend that “victim
neglect is not simply a result of indifference, it is a
logical extension of a legal system which defines
crime as an offence against the state”. They argue that
this neglect can be remedied by training of personnel
within the criminal justice system and through victim
support services.
(Adapted from Alison Brown, 2007)
3.4. Watch the “Writing Structured Paragraphs” lecture presented by Ken Cage (Massey University) and
discuss the TEE(C) rule.
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3.5. Topic sentence: Choose the best among the four topic sentences for each paragraph below.
A)
1. There are two broad theories concerning what triggers a human’s inevitable decline to death.
2. Some scientists believe that human contains an “internal time clock” which forces them eventually to
die.
3. We all must die some day.
4. My biology professor gave an interesting lecture Thursday.
A) …………… The first is the wear-and-tear hypothesis that suggests the body eventually succumbs to
the environmental insults of life. The second is the notion that we have an internal clock which is
genetically programmed to run down. Supporters of the wear-and-tear theory maintain that the very
practice of breathing causes us to age because inhaled oxygen produces toxic by-products. Advocates
of the internal clock theory believe that individual cells are told to stop dividing and thus eventually to die
by, for example, hormones produced by the brain or by their own genes.
B)
1. Soldiers need discipline.
2. We commonly look on the discipline of war as vastly more rigid than any discipline necessary in time
of peace, but this is an error.
3. Although soldiers are not always disciplined, they serve an important social function in wartime.
4. In times of peace, soldiers often convert easily from wartime pursuits to the discipline necessary
successfully to complete in even the most competitive marketplace.
B) ……………The strictest military discipline imaginable is still looser than that prevailing in the average
assembly-line. The soldier, at worst, is still able to exercise the highest conceivable functions of freedom
-- that is, he or she is permitted to steal and to kill. No discipline prevailing in peace gives him or her
anything remotely resembling this. The soldier is, in war, in the position of a free adult; in peace he or
she is almost always in the position of a child. In war all things are excused by success, even violations
of discipline. In peace, speaking generally, success is inconceivable except as a function of discipline.
C)
1) The supervisor-supervisee relationship may not be properly understood.
2) Supervisees expect their tutors to fulfil a wide range of different roles.
3) There are more agents involved in the supervision of students´ research.
4) The role of the supervisor is essentially positive in nature.
C) .......... They are there to stimulate students, to keep them on the straight and narrow, and to provide
encouragement during difficult periods when they may face various challenges. Their role is not lead
their supervisees but to advance their own thinking by challenging their ideas, suggesting other avenues
of enquiry or argument, and provoking them into thinking about things in alternative ways. Supervisors
can also be a valuable repository of information and well positioned to direct students to relevant
literature as well as potentially helpful professional connections – both individual and institutional.
(Adapted from: from Blank,D.: "The Eternal Quest"; Mencken, H.L.: " Reflections on War" in: http://ww
wuottawa.ca/academic/arts/writcent/hypergrammar/rvtopic.html; Murray, Beglar, 2009:20 )
3.6. Read the topic sentences below and predict the content of the paragraph.
a) There is an essential difference between a fact in science and a fact in humanities.
b) The paper is organized as follows.
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3.7. Closing sentence: Choose the best among the three closing sentences for the paragraphs below.
A)
When it comes to the arts, there is a clear case for subsidy. The arts have nothing to do with making
money. They exist in order to express certain essential truths about human beings by means of new
kinds of poetry, music, painting, and so on. However, these new kinds of art may not be popular, and
thus there may be little support by the general public for them, and so artists cannot rely on selling their
work to provide them with an income. In fact, history shows that many artists have not been properly
appreciated while they were alive. For example, Mozart, whose works are so popular nowadays, lived
close to poverty for most of his life.
Possible closing sentences:
1. Thus, in order to ensure their survival, it is essential for the arts to be subsidised.
2. If he had been subsidised, Mozart would not have been so poor.
3. When the arts have to make money, they are no longer fulfilling their true purpose, but instead
become a branch of commerce.
B)
It is misleading to think that the natural must be good, or that it must be unavoidable. Everything that
happens is natural, and much that happens is avoidable. Not all human biological adaptations are good.
Man’s bellicosity was noted long before Darwin, and it may involve biological adaptations. Warfare might
even have been a prime force in the exploration of proto-human intelligence: for small human beings to
hunt big game in a group take intelligence, but not enough might be enough: the game do not get
smarter as the hunters do. In war, over the millennia, both you and your enemy will become as smart as
each other: he is of your species. Military and diplomatic guile both could become objects of a genetic
arm race. ..........
1) This is why warfare is in the centre of studies that seek to identify what type of adaptation features
may lead to violent behaviour.
2) Still, if men are adapted, given certain cues, to killing, looting, destruction and rapine, it should not be
assumed such things are good.
3) However, when people interact, and each is equipped to select others as models for adaptation, the
emergent social effects on the notion of good can be remarkable.
4) Thus, natural phenomena would be too simplistic even in the context of Darwinist theories.
(Adapted from: Waters,M., Waters,A.: 1995, p.110.;Goodin, Petit, 2001: 603)
3.8. Read the sentences below and decide whether they are closing or simply final sentences of a paragraph.
a) When these specific lipids are the target of mass spectrometric analysis, they present a considerable
challenge because of their trace concentrations, the presence of isomeric forms, and the
chromatographic separation techniques that are required.
b) A great many people do not want to publish; they simply want to communicate with each other.
c) Thus, to consider the thermal treatment the most significant controlling agent would be too simplistic
even in the context of synthetic routes in general.
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3.9. Development: Decide what the function of each sentence (e.g. topic sentence, development of the
main idea, evidence, support or example, or closing sentence) is in the paragraph below.
(1) As a medium for social life, an existing time constrains the choices of individuals and groups. (2) If
other people use certain sequences as major points of reference in their own lives, a person wanting to
enter those lives must take the sequences into account, or even adopt them as reference points. (3) G.
William Skinner showed, for example, that in China the market schedules of adjacent centres dovetailed
in a way that permitted merchants to make the rounds over regular cycles. (4) Market areas thus
delineated became effective units for marriage, social mobility, and regional politics as well (Skinner,
1964; 1985). (5) In Europe before the metric system, measures of cultivated land area usually referred
either to the amount of seed it required or the amount of time it took to plough; thus, people made the
organization of time, space, property, and labour intersect (Kula, 1986; Ruiz, 1992). (6) In company
towns, schools, military bases, monasteries, and other loci ordered by a single dominant time, activities
such as gossip, flirtation, drinking, personal care, and fighting unintentionally but almost inevitably take
their own sequences from those of the dominant time; they take place in the interstices offered by that
time. (7) In all these regards and more, established times constrain social action. (Tilly, 1994: 3)
3.10. Coherence and cohesion within paragraphs
Text coherence means a connection of ideas on the idea level; text cohesion is the way the writing
holds together from the grammatical point of view. Each sentence should relate to the other sentences
in the paragraph. What cohesive devices that assist in creating text cohesion can you think of?
(Adapted from Alison Brown, 2007)
3.11. Look at the two following paragraphs and decide which of them has a better overall plan. Support
your opinion with evidence.
A)
The ancient Egyptians were masters of preserving dead people’s bodies by making mummies of them.
Mummies several thousand years old have been discovered nearly intact. The skin, hair, teeth, fingerand
toenails, and facial features of the mummies were evident. It is possible to diagnose the diseases
they suffered in life such as smallpox, arthritis, and nutritional deficiencies. The process was remarkably
effective. Sometimes apparent were the fatal afflictions of the dead people: a middle-aged king died
from a blow on the head, and polio killed a child king. Mummification consisted of removing the internal
organs, applying natural preservatives inside and out, and then wrapping the body in layers of
bandages.
B)
The ancient Egyptians were masters of preserving dead people’s bodies by making mummies of them.
The process of mummification consisted of removing the internal organs, applying natural preservatives
inside and out, and then wrapping the body in layers of bandages. It was a remarkably effective
practice. Indeed, mummies several thousand years old have been discovered nearly intact. Their skin,
hair, teeth, fingers and toenails, and facial features of the mummies are still evident. Their diseases in
life, such as smallpox, arthritis, and nutritional deficiencies, are still diagnosable. Even their fatal
afflictions are still apparent: a middle-aged king died from a blow on the head: a child king died from
polio.
(Adapted from: Alison Brown, 2007; Fowler, Aaron & Anderson: 2001, pp. 81-2)
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3.12. Read the following five paragraphs and decide which are appropriate for academic writing and
which are not? Discuss why.
1. The course through elementary school can vary considerably from child to child, and overall problems
can range from mild and easily managed to severe and intractable, depending upon factors such as the
child's intelligence level, appropriateness of management at school and parenting at home,
temperamental style of the child, and the presence or absence of complicating factors such as
hyperactivity/attentional problems, anxiety, learning problems, etc.
2. One of the most difficult parts of the detection is minimizing the influences in time characteristics
caused by a network. Packet inter-arrival times always change as they go through the network and they
are never the same. Thus we have to find techniques of how to compute and reduce the inadvisable
variability. Another difficult part represents the number of situations which can occur during the
communication, e.g. established connection, dictionary attacks, file transfer or tunnelling other protocols,
etc. These two points cause the biggest problems and we have to deal with them.
3. The goals and objectives of a dissertation are quite different from the goals and objectives of a journal
article. Dissertations are like memoirs – they contain a great deal of “process” information in addition to
the research “content.” The process information allows the dissertation committee to see all the roads
one investigated when selecting and defining the research problem, all the plans one considered before
selecting the final methodology, and many other details that would be considered extraneous in a
journal article. Dissertations are lengthy for the same reason that legal trials often are lengthy – the
writer is providing reams of evidence, i.e., meticulously building a case to back up the ultimate
conclusions that are offered. Such laborious justification regarding what was or was not done, or
considered, in a research project – leaving no conceptual stone unturned – is not expected nor
appropriate to journal manuscripts.
4. Hegel has been immensely influential, not least for bequeathing the dialectic and the division of
history into a few great epochs to Marx. He was the son of a tax official in Stuttgart. While at the
theological seminary at Tubingen, he became interested in the works of Rousseau and Kant. His
Lectures on the Philosophy of History outline the developmental pattern of world history. He was worried
by class divisions but did not see them as unbridgeable.
5. Salman Rushdie's essay 'Commonwealth literature does not exist', written in 1983, articulates a stage
in the literary emergence and development of the (once - but no longer?) colonised, leading from the
critical denigration and self-doubt of the term 'colonial literature'; through 'Commonwealth literature'; to
the concept of 'post-colonial literature', which still acknowledges the colonial past as a defining
presence; to the current precarious discovery of 'new literatures in English', in which the shift to the
plural celebrates diversity. There have been no references to Commonwealth literatures, nor even to
post-colonial literatures.
(Adapted from: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/academicwriting/30.html, Pollard,R. Q. Jr. :From Dissertation to Journal Article: A Useful Method for Planning
and Writing Any Manuscript http://www.ispub.com/ostia/index.php?xmlFilePath=journals/ijmh/vol2n2/writing.xml, UVT seminar 1.11.2011)
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4. COHERENCE AMONG PARAGRAPHS
4.1. Divide the following text into paragraphs.
(Remember that each paragraph should develop a particular theme.)
What is the difference between an expert and a novice writer?
Researchers Bereiter and Scardamalia have spent the last thirty years exploring what makes an expert
writer. They have examined how school-children and academic writers go about the process. One of the
interesting findings is that expert writers undertake the writing process differently from the novice writers
(Bereiter and Scardamalia, 1987). Novice writers adopt a linear approach to their writing and tend to
take each of the writing process elements in turn. The reason they do this is because they are not at the
stage of managing and controlling more than one element at a time. Consequently, they gather
information for an essay without giving thought to how they are going to use the information at a later
stage in the writing process. On the other hand, expert writers keep a mental map of the finished
product or essay in mind while they are gathering information and during the drafting process.
Consequently, they keep moving backwards and forwards through the various elements of the process
which they accomplish with ease and skill. Thus, if anyone wishes to become an expert writer, it is vital
to take firm control of the different elements. To improve results, it is essential to begin considering
whether they are good time managers. Most students have to write assignments within tight deadlines –
either self-imposed or externally imposed by tutors. Therefore, they need to be effective and efficient in
their control of the whole process.
(Source: Price, Maier, 2007: p.282 v Štěpánek, deHaaff, Hradilová:Academic English: Akademická angličtina, 2011, p170)
4.2.
What devices that assist in creating text coherence can you think of?
5. Home Assignment
5.1. Write a structured peer-review to your colleague’s writing.
5.2. Write an abstract or a piece of text in a paragraph length.