You will be able to:
-Understand the difference between formal and informal tone in academic writing
-Apply formal tone to your own papers
-Understand how unity makes their writing smoother
-Identify and practice using coherence devices
Verbs
Which is more formal?
1. According to some biologists, coming up with clear proof of the decreasing numbers of frogs has been difficult.
2. According to some biologists, offering clear proof of the decreasing number of frogs has been difficult.
Often in lectures and everyday spoken English, (verb + preposition) is used. (E.g. goes up, figure out, bring up). However, there is a tendency for academic writers to use a single verb whenever possible.
This same principle can be applied to other categories of words:
1. Crash test dummies are really important for automotive crash tests.
“really important for” →“an integral part of”
2. In Hong Kong there is one cell phone for just about every two people.
“just about” → “nearly”
3. We got encouraging results using structural bamboo rather than timber.
“got” → “obtained”
4. There has been a lot of interest in how background sounds, such as music, affects an individual’s ability to concentrate.
“a lot of “→ “considerable”
5. Consumer interest in electronic billing and payment is getting bigger and bigger.
“getting bigger and bigger ” → “increasing”
In groups, work through THESE PRACTICE EXERCISES.
Next review these guidelines for FORMAL GRAMMAR. Afterward, revise the sentences as a group for formal grammar.
Coherence
Below is a powerpoint on coherence devices that can be used in writing.
COHERENCE
Unity
Unity refers to the idea that each idea must be related to the main idea of the whole piece of writing. In other words, each sentence in a body paragraph must relate to the topic sentence of that paragraph in some way, each topic sentence must be related to the thesis statement, and the thesis statement must be related to the topic of your essay.
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