VV064 Week 2
Formal and Informal Language; Reporting Verbs; Passives
Exercise 1:
Change the verbs in bold into the passive and change the sentences correspondingly.
a) We should reject this conclusion for two reasons.
b) We would never have published this book without additional financial support from the Nansen
Institute.
c) A new satellite, which we will launch next month, will detect global pollution.
d) To preserve originality of thinking, we have kept editing of all chapters to a minimum.
e) Experts presented and discussed a total of ten innovative papers during the two-day workshop
sessions.
Exercise 2:
A) Look at the two following texts about survey sampling. Read them and determine which
one is more formal or academic (highlight any words or phrases that help you in analyzing
the texts).
B) How many words are there in each text and in each sentence? Count the words.
Text 1
I used survey sampling when I did my first research project. It was about how many people lived in
my neighborhood and who those people were. I needed statistics in order to discover the
demographics around where I lived. You can use survey sampling in a lot of disciplines and I used it
because I knew it was an accepted method.
Text 2
Survey sampling is a quantitative method of research which is a 20th century phenomenon with most
of its growth since the 1930s. Today, it is a widely accepted method for providing statistical data on
an extensive range of subjects. Disciplines such as sociology, social psychology, demography, political
science, economics, education and public health all rely on sample surveys.
VV064 Week 2
Reporting Verbs
Exercise 3: Look at the following sentences and complete them with the words below.
Told, said, advised, warned, suggested, asked, offered, ordered.
1. “I’d go and see a doctor if I were you,” Bořek said to me.
Bořek _______________ me to go and see a doctor.
2. “Can you come and help me with this box?”
John _______________ me to help him with this box.
3. “Květa, this is an exam!! Shut up now!!!”
The headmaster _______________ Květa to shut up.
4. “That road is very dangerous so just be very careful!”
His mother _______________ him that the road was very dangerous and to be careful.
5. “Liverpool won the match last night.”
The journalist _______________ that Liverpool had won the match the previous night.
6. “Why don’t we go and see that new film at the cinema.”
Bill _______________ going to see the new film at the cinema.
7. “I can come and look after the children tomorrow night.”
Jane _______________ to come and look after the children the following day.
8. “The lesson starts at six o’clock in the evening.”
The teacher _______________ us that the lesson started at six in the evening.
Exercise 4: Complete the following sentences from academic texts with appropriate words or
phrases.
Boynton (1982, p. 79) _______________ the reader that ordinary chocolate is “too frail to withstand
heat, moisture and proximity to baked beans”.
Hanks (2004, p. 257) _______________ an idiom as an expression whose “meaning . . . is distinct
from the sum of its parts”.
Smith (2005) _______________ with Fry (2003) when she maintains that many students have trouble
with reporting verbs.
Some people subscribe to the idea that chocolate is unhealthy, but Boynton’s (1982) book
_______________ this claim.
This paper _______________ the effects of alcohol on memory and _______________ that further
research be done as a matter of urgency.
VV064 Week 2
Exercise 5:
Change the following verbs into nouns.
a) increase d) categorise g) define
b) occur e) exclude h) assume
c) develop f) assess i) delete
Exercise 6:
Exercise: Identify the informal expressions in the following sentences and replace them with a more
formal (academic) equivalent.
a) There are various reasons why she is considered a bit conservative.
b) Theorists have paid little attention to that stuff.
c) In this paper, we wanna focus on flow-based detection of online brute force and dictionary
attacks.
d) The comments she received after her presentation were pretty good.
e) The law against cell phone use in cars is terribly difficult to enforce.
f) This kind of network represents an interesting environment.
g) Speaking freely is recommended, ´cause unscripted presentations are easier to follow.
h) The analysis did not yield any new results.
i) There do not seem to be many viable solutions to this problem.