Текст
                    И. С. Тюрина
MASTERING
ENGLISH


МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ РФ НОВОСИБИРСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ Физический факультет Н. С. Тюрина Mastering English Совершенствуйте свой английский Учебное пособие Новосибирск 2013 1
УДК 81 ББК Ш13(Ан)-923 Т985 Тюрина Н. С. Mastering English. (Совершенствуйте свой английский): Учеб, пособие / Но- восиб. гос. ун-т. Новосибирск, 2013. 191 с. ISBN 978-5-4437-0181-3 Учебное пособие предназначено для магистрантов 1-го курса физического факультета и разработано в соответствии с требованиями основной образовательной программы подготов¬ ки магистра по направлению 00112.68 «Физика», квалификация (степень) «магистр» с уче¬ том компетентностного подхода к иноязычному образованию и развитию межкультурной коммуникации. Пособие составлено в целях совершенствования навыков чтения и интерпре¬ тации аутентичной литературы на английском языке научного содержания; написания анно¬ таций, рефератов и научных статей; умения вести беседу и делать презентации на научные темы как необходимых составляющих профессиональной компетентности в условиях ино¬ язычной коммуникации. Пособие состоит из четырех модулей, один из которых посвящен написанию научных статей, практикума для самостоятельной работы магистрантов, краткого грамматического справочника тем, затрагиваемых в модулях, трех дополнительных разделов справочного содержания, книге для преподавателя и библиографии. Предназначено для использования в учебном процессе на физическом факультете, а также для студентов продвинутого уровня на всех факультетах НГУ. Рецензент доц. кафедры английского языка НГУ И. А. Сухинина Издание подготовлено в рамках реализации Программы развития государственного образовательного учреждения высшего профессионального образования «Новосибирский государственный университет» на 2009-2018 годы. ISBN 978-5-4437-0181-3 © Новосибирский государственный университет, 2013 © Тюрина Н. С., 2013 2
CONTENTS Module One. LIVE AND LEARN 4 Module Two. A JOB WELL DONE 26 Module Three. TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES IN THE WORLD 55 Module Four. WRITING IN THE SCIENC1ES 94 Grammar Page 119 Extensive Activities 123 Tapescripts 138 Appendix One. Writing Up a Small Research Paper 143 Appendix Two. Academic English and Latin Phrases 152 Appendix Three. Writing E-mail 156 Bibliography 162 Teacher’s Book 164 3
Module One LIVE AND LEARN Lead-In 1 Look at the title of the unit. Do you think it is important for learning to continue throughout life? Why / Why not? Tell your partner. 2 a. Which of the following aims of education are most important? Rank them in order of importance, then compare with your partner. • to develop understanding other people/cultures • to learn social skills • to prepare for life in the workplace • to become aware of how the past has affected the present • to develop critical thinking skills b. Which of the following subjects/activities help with achieving the above aims? sociology history mathematics geography reading and writing computer studies languages music/art 3 Paraphrase the following quotations. Do you agree with them? Why (not)? Discuss in pairs: “Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance” Will Durant (U.S. historian) “Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to en¬ slave” Henry Peter (Scottish politician) Reading - One 1 a. You will read an article written by a student who graduated from university with a first-class degree. Before you read, discuss in pairs: 1 What part do the following play in motivating people to excel in education? • desire for professional success • desire for personal achievement • pressure from family/friends/employers 2 With a partner, rank the following according to how necessary you think they are in order to do well at university. discipline competitive spirit 4
understanding what is expected of you organizational skills perseverance intelligence morale b. Read the passage thoroughly. For questions 1-7, choose the answer (А, В, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text. 1. The PhD student who spoke to the writer A exaggerated the need to work hard. В thought the writer would get a First. C succeeded in scaring the writer. D was uncertain how to help the writer. 2. According to the writer, an important factor in success at university is A the ability to understand the market. В acquaintance with lecturers and markers. C clever use of other people’s ideas. D understanding of what was required. 3. In the third paragraph, the writer warns against A trying to second-guess lectures. В expecting to be rewarded. C plagiarism in essays and exams. D offering money to academic staff. 4. In his relationship with the lecturers, the writer tried to A show them that he would make a good salesman. В do his work in a style which matched their expectations. C always have some new ideas to impress them with. D never upset them by submitting ground-breaking work. 5. How did the writer cope with long lists of required reading? A He ignored them. В He wrote his own. C He was selective. D He summarized them. 6. Why did the writer not practice writing exam questions? A He was advised not to. В He thought the practice was rather boring. C He wanted to answer exam questions critically. D He thought it might prejudice staff against him. 7. The writer concludes by advising students to A follow his recipe for success. В make the most of being a student. C concentrate on passing exams. D aim for a First at all costs. 5
How I Got My First-Class Degree What does it take to graduate from university with a First? Mark McArdle, first-class degree holder from the University of Lancaster, shows how he did it. “Don’t spend too much time at the student lounge, do turn up for most lectures and tutorials and do submit all coursework - eventually. “That, I was told by a PhD student during freshers’ week, was all I needed to get a 2:2. For 2:1, I’d require a better attendance record and have to work harder, but not at the expense of being cut off from civilization. And for a First, I would have to become some sort of social outcast, go to every lecture and tutorial (scribbling notes madly), spend every waking moment immersed in academic books, and be among the last to be thrown out of the university li¬ brary at 10pm closing time. Well, I did not give up my life for study. I didn’t attend every lecture and tutorial. I didn’t write down every word spoken in lectures. I didn’t get 80% or more in every essay, project, test or exam. I was usually behind with my reading and occasionally mystified by the syllabus. Sometimes I couldn’t be bothered to go to university and stayed at home instead. But I always knew where I was, what I had to do, and what not to bother with. And I always worked hard on the things that counted: assignments and exams. Getting a degree is about learning, but it isn't just about learning biology, history, English or what¬ ever. If s about understanding what you need to succeed - what, in fact, the university wants from you and what you will get in return. You have to have a feel for the education market and really sell your inspirations. What does the lecturer want? What is the essay marker searching for? Some stu¬ dents try to offer something not wanted. Others want to give very little - they steal the thoughts of others and submit them as their own. But they all want to be rewarded. Exchange, but don't steal, and you'll get a degree. I saw lecturers as customers who fell into two broad categories. There were those for whom lectur¬ ing was an unwelcome interruption to their research work. After all, we were students and what did we know? I would deliberately pitch my essays to this kind ot academic so that my opinions ap¬ peared more as evidence that I had read and understood the key contributions to the debate, rather than as an attempt to pull down monuments. The other type of academics was those who enjoyed teaching and discussing new ideas. They wanted more. They wanted something different, inspira¬ tional, iconoclastic. I would present my arguments to show that I had done my reading and under¬ stood the key concepts, but I would also try to add something more to the issue rather than rake over familiar ground. Essentially, it was a case of working out what was wanted and then delivering it. I can't state exactly how successful this tactic was, except to say that I sold more essays than I had returned as faulty. I could guarantee every book on my reading list was out on long loan from the university library within five seconds of the list being issued. This was worrying at first, but I quickly learned that it was impossible to read all of the books on an average reading list anyway. I sought shortcuts. Col¬ lections of selected readings or journal articles were excellent sources that often saved me the both¬ er of reading the original texts. References in books dragged me all over the place but, with all the courses I had to do, there wasn’t enough time to be dragged too far. I would flick through the book, read the introduction, note any summaries, look at diagrams, skim the index, and read any conclu¬ sions. I plucked out what was needed and made my escape. I revised by discarding subject areas I could not face revising: reading; compiling notes; and then condensing them onto one or two sheets of A4 for each subject area. Leading up to the exam, I would concentrate on just the condensed notes and rely on my memory to dragout the detail hfAxwA them when the time came. I didn't practice writing exam questions, although it was recommended. I prefer to be spontaneous and open-minded. 1 don't want pre-formed conclusions filling my mind. 6
And nor should you; there is no secret to getting a First - this is just an account of how I got my First. Be a happy student by striking the right balance between working and enjoying yourself. Take what you do seriously and do your best. And, no matter what you do, don't forget to appreciate eve¬ ry day of your university studies: it is one of the greatest periods of your life. Vocabulary Practice 2 Match the highlighted words in the passage with their synonyms below. • crucial • search quickly • rejecting • general • bewildered • absorbed • understanding of • discussion Text Analysis 3 Explain the following phrases boldfaced in the text in your own words. 1 being cut off from civilization 2 pull down monuments 3 I plucked out what was needed 4 drag out the detail Discussion In pairs, discuss the following: 1 How similar/different is your method of study to that of the writer? 2 Are there any things about the way you study you would like to change or improve? Think about: • being organised • being more focused • managing your time Reading - Two 1 Speak on the reasons for your decision to continue your education to get Master’ Degree. 2 You will read an article about driving forces and reasons for education. 7
An Education for Life? There is a problem that will touch us all - men, women and children - in the not too distant future, a problem that resolves itself into a question: what is education for? At the moment most of us can answer that fairly practically and without too much soul-searching. On the lowest level, education is for enabling us to cope in an adult world where money must be added up, tax forms filled in, numbers looked up in telephone directories, maps read, curtains measured and street signs understood. On the next level, it is for getting some kind of job that will pay a living wage. But we are already peering into a future so different from anything we would now recognise as familiar that the last of these two educational aims may become as obsolete as a dodo. Basic skills (reading, writing and arithmetic) will continue to be necessary but these, after all, can be taught to children in from one to two years during their childhood. But education, with a view to working for a living, at least in the sense of earning daily bread, may be on its way out right now for the majority of us. Then the question 'what is education for?' becomes much more complex. Because what the future proclaims is: an education is an education is an education. In other words, our grandchildren may well spend their lives learning, as today we spend our lives working. This does not simply involve a straightforward substitution of activity but a complete transformation of motive. We work for things basically unconnected with that work - usually money, prestige, success, security. We will learn for learning's sake alone-, a rose is a rose because it is and not what we can get out of it. Nor need any cynic doubt that we shall not wish to work without there being any obvious end in view. Already, adult education classes are overcrowded - one friend of mine teaching French literature says she could have had 10 pupils for every one she has. Nevertheless, we still live in a very competitive society and most of us will need to reshuffle the furniture of our minds in order to gear our children towards a future in which outer rewards - keeping up with the Joneses - become less relevant than inner and more individual spurs. The existence of competition has always meant doing things because they win us some essentially unconnected advantage, but the aim of the future must be to integrate the doing with its own reward, like virtue. Oddly enough it is in America, that citadel of competitiveness, that the first experiments in this change of mind are taking place. In that New World, there are already organisations set up to examine ways in which competitiveness can be replaced by other inner-directed forms of rewards and pleasures. Take one interesting example in a Foundation whose aim is to transform competitive sport. A tug-of-war, as we all know, consists of one team pitting its strength against another team. The aim is to tug the opposing team over a line and, by doing so, win. In the brand-new non-competitive version, things are very different. There are still two teams on either end of a rope, but now the aim is not to win but to maintain the struggle. As the two teams tug, any individual on either team who senses a coming victory must let go the winning end of the rope and rush over to lend his weight to the other side, thus redressing the balance, and keeping the tug-of-war going as long as possible. If you actually imagine doing this, the startling fact that emerges is that the new game offers more possibilities of individual judgement and skill just because victory is not the aim and the tug-of-war is ended only by the defeat of those judgements and skills. What's more, I think most people would get more pleasure out of the neo-tug than the old winners-take-all concept. So could it be for learning. Most of us, at some time or another, have glimpsed one of the real inner pleasures of education - a sort of one-person chase after an elusive goal that pits You only against You or, at the very most, against the discoveries of the greatest minds of other generations. On a more humble level, most of us have already got some pleasurable hobby that we enjoy for its 8
own sake and become expert in that enjoyment. In my stumbling efforts, since last year, to learn the piano, I have seen the future and it works. 3 Now complete these statements by choosing the answer which you think fits best. 1 In the future envisaged by the writer, a there would be no need to deal with money. b there would be no need to communicate in writing. c there would be few employment prospects. d there would be few educational prospects. 2 According to the writer, the most difficult adjustment for us to make will be a getting used to having more free time. b working without the hope of material reward, c seeing education as being its own reward, d learning essentially impractical subjects. 3 Our duty towards our children will be to a prepare them to set their own goals, b encourage them to be more ambitious, c improve their chances of employment, d teach them basic moral values in life. 4 According to the writer, future learning will resemble the new-style tug-of-war in that a there will be no possibility of falling, b the object will be to avoid winning. c it will depend on operating as a team. d it will involve a personal challenge. 5 The reason for the writer’s optimistic conclusion is that she has a discovered how satisfying learning can be. b shown a new talent for playing the piano, c found how easy it is to develop a new skill, d taken up a hobby for the first time. 4 Vocabulary Practice Look at paragraphs 1-5 and find words or phrases which mean the same as: a can be converted b deep examination of the mind c managed d out-of-date e rearrange f our ideas g prepare... for h competing socially i motives j combine 9
к setting ... against 5 Text Analysis Explain the following phrases from the text in your own words. 1 pay a living wage 2 as obsolete as a dodo 3 earning daily bread 4 an education is an education is an education 5 for learning’s sake alone 6 keeping up with the Joneses (an idiom) 7 that citadel of competitiveness 8 a tug -of- war 9 a goal that pits you only against you 10 on a more humble level Discussion In pairs discuss the following: 1 What are the two traditional reasons for education? 2 What changes might occur in the future? 3 What might make it difficult for us to adjust to any changes in the future? 4 What evidence does the writer give to suggest that we will succeed in adjusting in the future? 5 Why does the author tell us about the tug-of-war game? 6 Why do many people enjoy some pleasurable hobbies? Speak on your extra-curricular activities in a small group and choose the most interesting ones. Language Focus 1 School Days a. Using a dictionary, if necessary, underline the correct word in the sen¬ tences. 1 The school is thought of as highly innovative in that it implements a system of continuous(tests, assessment, finals) to determine grades. 2 One could hear the sounds of a lively (debate, talk, argument) coming from the room where the philosophy class was being held. 3 My brother, who wants to join the clergy, has just entered a (seminary, universi¬ ty, college) 10
4 It was inevitable that the (seminar, lecture, tutorial) would be well- attended as it was being given by the renowned professor, Kurt Riemann. 5 There's no way I'll be able to come. I've got to hand in a two-thousand word (as¬ signment, project, essay) on the Russian Revolution by Monday afternoon. 6 Stephen was caught (copying, plagiarizing, stealing) from his fellow student's test paper and was expelled. 7 For tomorrow, please read this short original (article, text, excerpt) from Dick¬ ens’ Hard Times and be prepared to discuss it in class. 8 If you're really interested in applying, ask the University to send you a (syllabus, prospectus, curriculum) for the upcoming year. b. Work in pairs. Find the odd word in each group, and then say why it doesn’t be¬ long to that group. 1 Algebra - Geometry - History - Trigonometry (History is the odd-one-out because all others are branches of mathematics.) 1 library - science lab - assignment - lecture theatre 3 student’s lounge - short loan - check-out - archive 4 tutorial - experiment - lecture - seminar 5 test - exam - assessment - application 6 cram - revise - attend - brush up 7 skim - scan - leaf through - catch up 8 plagiarize - quote - lift - copy 9 acknowledgements - introduction - bibliography - workshop 10 degree - diploma - distinction - certificate 2 Study Methods a. Look at the study methods in the list. For which of the tasks (1-10) is each method best suited? •revising • cramming • highlighting «editing «note-taking •summarizing • proof-reading 1 Preparing for an end-of-term exam 2 Isolating information from its context 3 Checking and improving on a piece of work 4 Condensing information for quick access 5 Recording information during a class/lecture/seminar 6 Keeping new knowledge fresh in your mind 7 Re-organizing an essay/composition 8 Organizing material into manageable units 9 Ensuring a piece of written work meets all formal requirements (format, word-count, etc.) 11
10 Making important information stand out b. In pairs, discuss the following: 1 Which of the stated study methods do you use? 2 What do you usually use them for? 3 What other methods do you use? 4 How much time do you spend studying? 5 Do you usually study alone or with a classmate? Why? 6 Are exams a fair means of assessment? If no, what would be a better way to assess students? Words Often Confused 3 a. Underline the correct word. 1. Mathew is currently writing his dissertation / tract / critique / discourse on education in ancient Greece for his university degree. 2. Katherine is studying for her fist degree; she is a(n)apprentice / undergraduate / post¬ graduate / scholar student. 3. It is cheaper to live in the university halls of dwelling / abode / residence / habitation than to rent privately. 4. One of the lecturers / trainers / teachers / mentors at her university is a well-known and highly respected writer. 5. The parent - teacher alliance / association / society / company is working hard to raise enough money to build a new science lab. 6. There was silence in the lecture foyer / stage / hallway I theatre when Professor Blackwood announced her resignation. 7. I am not sure which modules I’ll do. I’m going to make an appointment with the aca¬ demic adviser / consultant / specialist I authority b. 1. John’s excuse for not doing his homework was that he had been too tired, but the teacher dismissed / denied / ignored / refused this as nonsense. 2. Gable’s theory pulled / took / attracted / engaged a lot of interest from the scientific community. 3. The approach / entrance / opening / advent of new technology is bound to revolu¬ tionize the function of the classroom. 4. Writing is generally considered a more severe / thorough / demanding / critical task than reading. 5. The library will be sheltered / housed / included / contained in the old building on Bridge Street Collocations 4 a. Match the pairs of adjectives to the nouns to form collocations. first class/Master’s learning 12
degree higher/first-rate correspondence/refresher schooling compulsory/formal certificate postgraduate/2-year fees long-distance/accelerated diploma tuiti on/regi strati on course school-leaving/medical education b. Now use one word from each set to complete the sentences below. 1 learning has proved highly popular in the remote parts of Australia and Canada. 2. In the U. К schooling lasts up until the age of sixteen. 3. Nowadays, a certificate does not necessarily guarantee someone a place in the job market. 4. Please forward the $100 fee along with your completed application. 5. Stella already has a Bachelor of Arts but she is now working towards attaining a degree. 6. My father opened a bank account for me on the day I was born to ensure that I would receive a education. 7. Now that T’ve got this job abroad, I think I had better take a course in Spanish. 8. It will take him at least a year to earn a diploma in child psychol¬ 5 ogy. Tick the boxes to form phrases. In pairs, use the phrases in sentences. Sit Get Have Do good marks an exam one’s homework for one’s finals expelled/suspended the Easter break a biology project extracurricular ac¬ tivities 13
Listening & Speaking Listening 1 Discuss How often do you, as a student, have to speak in public? Is it a pleasure or a torture for you? Do you feel fear before performing? While listening to extract one, you will discover some pieces of advice on how to overcome the fear of speaking in public. 2 You will hear two different extracts. For questions 1-4 choose the answer (A, В or C) which fits best according to what you hear. There are two questions for each extract. Extract One You hear part of an interview about public speaking. 1 According to Tim, why do some people find it difficult to perform in public? A because they become blocked В because they are not very creative C because they fear their performance will not be good enough 2 How can a speaker overcome the fear of performing? A by experimenting with the story and the audience В by sticking to a well-crafted plan C by suppressing panic Extract Two truancy (n) - the action of staying away from school or university without good reason; ab¬ senteeism. To play truancy (v) Do you often play truancy9 Is it punished at university? How? Do you think you have the right to play truancy from time to time? Why? While listening to extract two, pay attention to some controversial points in the explanation of the truancy and discuss them. You hear part of a radio program about truancy in schools. 3 What did the study into truancy reveal about today’s students? A That their socio-economic background plays a role in influencing them В That they have been given too much freedom C That they are heavily influenced by consumer culture 14
4 How can this problem be dealt with? A By involving students themselves in decision-making В By allowing students total freedom of expression C By teaching them life-skills 3 Do you agree with the interviewee that playful freedom is a very important stage in learning how to overcome the fear of performing in public? Do you think that the interviewee is right concluding that now it is the time for educators to allow students to make decisions about their education? Speaking Learning for Life 1 Talk to each other about the situations where the following skills and abilities might be necessary. Then decide which two skills/abilities are most important and should be emphasized in educational systems. • analytical thinking • leadership • team spirit • creativity • people skills • forward planning 2 Discuss the following questions together. 1 Apart from being essential for certain careers, what is the importance of good educa¬ tion? 2 How can governments make sure that everyone has access to good education? 3 What makes a good teacher? 4 To what extent should art be a part of education? 5 How much of a say should parents have in their children’s education? Text Study: Harvard University’s Core Curriculum What is a core curriculum? Is a core curriculum an appropriate solution to educating university students today? What philosophy lies behind the core curriculum? Work in small groups. Study the text. Discuss what Harvard University should do about its core curriculum (continue the core, drop the core, modify the core). Present your conclusions to the rest of the class. While many colleges and universities have moved to offer more specialized curricula to ac¬ commodate students’ need in new job markets, other institutes of higher education have held on to their generalist approach to education and continue to offer a liberal arts curriculum. In 15
an effort to provide a broad education that prepares students to deal with a variety of prob¬ lems, many of these colleges and universities offer a core curriculum, a series of required courses for all students. The idea behind a core curriculum is that it provides the essential knowledge that all educated people should have to participate in the larger society. The core curriculum offered at Harvard University has long been a model for a successful program of general education. Yet, today many professors and students are dissatisfied with Harvard’s core. The philosophy behind the core is that “every Harvard graduate should be broadly educated, as well as trained in a particular academic specialty”. It assumes that “stu¬ dents need some guidance in achieving this goal.” The Harvard core is divided into seven categories of eleven courses: 1. Foreign cultures 2. Historical Study A Historical Study В 3. Literature and Arts A Literature and Arts В Literature and Arts C 4. Moral Reasoning 5. Science A Science В 6. Social Analysis 7. Quantitative Reasoning (Math) All undergraduates must take at least eight of these courses in addition to courses in their major. They are exempt from the three categories closest to their major. This core, though widely acclaimed by many, has not been without criticism. Some profes¬ sors claim that it is no different from the smattering of courses that were offered in the 1960s. No introductory foreign language courses are included in the core. Another criticism is that, ironically, students can meet their core requirements without taking a single course that focuses on Western culture; this intentional omission has been explained by some as re¬ flecting the university’s fear of appearing ethnocentric or even racist by focusing on Western views. Yet, most students are required to study a foreign culture. While this requirement is meant to expose students to a new culture so that they might reexamine the values of their own culture, students claim that many of the courses on foreign cultures do not, in fact, “de¬ velop students’ critical facilities.” Some faculties say that they feel a loss of ownership be¬ cause of the core curriculum, as they are less free to pursue their specialized research and develop courses that interest them. The Harvard administration, along with faculty who support the core curriculum, claim that the core “seeks to introduce students to the major approaches to knowledge in areas that the faculty considers indispensable to undergraduate education". The philosophy underlying the core is that educated people are those who can analyze facts, rather than those who know many facts. They support the core because, they say, the core courses emphasize a particular way of thinking, even though the subject matter may be different. While they educate some of the country’s most promising students, the faculties at Harvard continue to debate the relevance of the university’s core curriculum. Discussion. Think! 16
Compare Harvard University and Novosibirsk State University. Does NSU have a core curriculum? What subjects are included into it? What balance, if any, should be struck between liberal arts and science in the core curriculum? Are you more a generalist or a specialist? Do you know more about less or less about more? Make a presentation on the topic: ’’Similarities and differences in core curricula of two universi¬ ties. Pluses and drawbacks o f both o f them. ” Before you start making a presentation, revise the information connected with this skill. How to Create a Presentation. Parts of a Speech: • Head (Introduction) • Body (Main Points) • Tail (Conclusion) What Do You Want Them to Remember? • People will remember the beginning and the end of your speech. • Take the time to literally write out your introduction and conclusion Before You Open Your Mouth... • Know your audience. • Know your stage. • Know your dress. • Know that your speech starts the moment you walk in the room. • Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and tell them what you’ve told them. Introduction • Before you start speaking, pause to look at your audience, smile, and make them feel wel¬ come. • Be confident, relaxed, and excited to share. Your audience will mirror your attitude. • You have 10 seconds to catch your audience’s attention. Introduction Don’ts • Never start with a bunch of “thank you.” • Never apologize. • Don’t start with a joke if you don’t know your audience. Body and Main Points • This is where you will have the “meat” of your presentation. • Three main points is the best number for a presentation. More that that is usually too much and less than that is usually too little. • If you have a point that is less exciting, put it in between your first and your third point. Conclusion • Transition from your third point into your conclusion. • Don’t introduce any new information. 17
• Summarize the main point you want to leave your audience with and end your message with hope. Transitions in your Presentation • To make your speech smooth, you will want to transition from the end of each point to the beginning of the next one. • For example: о “Next we’ll look at.. .” о “The second point I would like to make is... ” о “My third point is.. .” о “Finally...” о “In conclusion...” о “Today we have looked at...” Giving Your Presentation The literal words you say only make up a small portion of your presentation. You must use your eyes, voice, and body to communicate effectively to your audience. Eye Contact • Do not look at the back of the room. • Do not look at foreheads. • Split the room into 4 pieces and rotate your eye contact to cover the whole room. • If you don’t know what to say, don’t look down. • Make eye contact with the people that seem interested. Facial Expressions • Smile, frown, and use your face to express what you are trying to say. • You can distract people with your facial expressions, so be careful not to be overly expres¬ sive. • Watch out for nervous habits like touching your face or hair, blinking too much, and smiling too much. Vocal Expressions • Proj ect your voice. • Use voice inflection. • Enunciate - Pronounce your words clearly and correctly. • Slow down! Body language • Use your hands to make your point, but don’t distract with huge gestures. • Move to different parts of your stage to show that you are moving to a different point. • Movement is good, but too much movement is distracting. Discover Your Nervous Habits • Fillers: “Like,” “Ummm,” and “You know”. • Podium or object gripping. • Fiddling with papers, clothes, and jewelry. 18
• Trailing off at the end of sentences. • Shuffling and crossing your feet. Finishing Touches • Discover your speaking style. Are you professional or down to earth? • Find your communicative strong points and embrace them. • Give your presentation to a friend and ask for feedback. Remember... Practice makes perfect! The best way to improve your speaking skills is to use them. Use of English Relative Clauses (Revision) Grammar Reference, p. 119 1 Fill in the gaps with the correct relative pronoun or adverb. Indicate where the rela¬ tives can be omitted by placing them in brackets. 1 The man (whoAvhom) you were speaking to earlier is Mike, who is an expert on net¬ works that/which run on Unix. 2 The pupils sang in the concert gave a wonderful performance was praised by their music teacher. 3 My aunt visited me last week, has a house in France she goes every summer. 4 The most interesting fdm I've seen in a long time is the one about the artist went to live in Spain. 5 Our local MP promised to do everything he could to help those houses had been damaged in the earthquake. 6 This is a fdm will be very popular with teenagers enjoy rock music. 7 Laurence, had been having lessons 19
for months, took his test when he was offered a job required a driving license. 8 The first time I visited Portugal I went to a village in there had been a famous battle. 9 Dan, father is Greek, bought a holiday cottage in the village his grandfather lived. 10 Isabelle, to Peter was engaged, applied for a job would entail her moving to Holland the new company was based. 2 Join the sentences using relative clauses. Indicate where relatives can be omitted by placing them in brackets. There may be more than one way to join the sentences. Add commas where necessary. 1. Steve and Lynn are Americans. They own the little restaurant on Bridge Street. Steve and Lynn are the Americans who own the little restaurant on Bridge Street. 2. Property prices are rising. This means many young couples cannot afford to buy their own home. 3. Some teachers want a pay rise. They may organize a strike. 4. Alex has just married a teacher. She lectures in Politics. 5. Jenny has no brothers or sisters. Her parents spoilt her when she was a child. 6. Damascus is a fascinating city. It is the oldest capital city in the world. 7. I gave Mark a paperweight as a birthday present. He is a writer. 8. Pam read a novel. The main character in it was shipwrecked on a desert island. 9. David went to Prague. He attended a conference there. 10. Harry is an engineer. His wife has just given birth to twins. 3 In each of the following sentences, some words can be omitted. Cross them out. 1. All students who are taking Philosophy P319 are notified that Thursday’s seminar is cancelled. 2. Prof. Milton knows everything that there is to know about orchids. 3. The lecturer who you were talking to about physics is a biologist. 4 Haven’t you finished the book which I lent you three weeks ago? 20
5. Anyone who is caught bullying another student risks being expelled. 6. That’s the most stimulating lecture that I’ve been to this semester. 7. The last time that I went to the college canteen, they’d run out of food. 8. I’ve never met anyone who is as knowledgeable as Jones when it comes to minor 18th century women poets. 9. The college bookshop will do everything that is possible to ensure that the books you need for your courses are available at all times. 10. These are the best marks that I’ve ever had for a school project! 4 Chain story: Continue the story. Use an appropriate relative pronoun or adverb in your sentence. Last Monday, Mr. Smith, who is the dean of the university, asked John to his office. 5 Five out of the seven sentences below contain an unnecessary word. Find the unneces¬ sary words and underline them. 1 Pele, is also known as 'the Black Pearl', is regarded as the greatest footballer of all time. 2 Because the teachers who were on strike, the pupils had no lessons for days. 3 The University made the students that pay tuition fees. 4 The place to which the report refers is on the outskirts of London. 5 The story which taking place in Ttaly is about the relationship between a father and his young son. 6 Those whose essays which have not yet been returned are to check with the depart¬ mental secretary on Monday. 7 Mr. Johnson, who is well known for his insistence on punctuality, would not allow the pupils that arrived late to sit the examination. Writing Do you agree with George Reedy, a retired professor of journalism from Marquette University, who said:”The future will belong to those who know how to handle the combination of in¬ formation, who we used to call the “generalists ” Write a discursive (persuasive) essay on this theme. You will have to express your opinion in it. Before you start writing, revise the information of how to write a discursive essay. 21
Persuasive Writing In persuasive writing, a writer takes a position FOR or AGAINST an issue and writes to convince the reader to believe or do something. I The introduction has a “hook or grabber” to catch the reader’s attention. 1. opening with an unusual detail. 2. opening with a strong statement, exaggeration. 3. opening with a quotation. 4. opening with an anecdote: an anecdote can provide an amusing and attention-getting opening if it is short and to the point. 5. opening with a statistic or fact: sometimes a statistic or fact will add emphasis or interest to your topic. It may be wise to include the item’s authoritative source. 6. opening with a question. II The introduction should also include a thesis or focus statement. It tells the reader, “I’ve thought about this topic, I know what I believe about it, and I know how to organize it”. 1. It tells the reader the specific topic of your essay. 2. It imposes manageable limits on that topic. 3. It suggests the organization of your paper. III Body. The writer then provides evidence to support the opinion offered in the introduction. The body should consist of at least three paragraphs. Each paragraph is based on a solid reason to back your thesis statement. Since almost all issues should have arguments on both sides of the question, a good persuasive writer tries to anticipate opposing viewpoints and provide counter-arguments along with the main points in the essay. One of the three paragraphs should be used to discuss opposing viewpoints and your counter-argument. Elaboration: Use statistics or research, real-life experiences, or examples. • Generating hypothetical instance. • Clarifying a position. • Thinking through a process. • Drawing comparisons. • Making an analysis. • Drawing an analogy. • Generating hypothetical instance. IV Conclusion. A piece of persuasive writing usually ends by summarizing the most im¬ portant details of the arguments and stating once again what the reader is to believe or do. 1. Restate your thesis or focus statement. 2. Summarize the main points: The conclusion enables your reader to recall the main points of your position. In order to do this you can paraphrase the main points of your argument. 3. Write a personal comment or call for action: о With a Prediction: This can be used with a narrative or a cause and effect discus¬ sion. о With a Question: This lets your readers make their own predictions and conclu¬ sions. о With Recommendations: stressing the actions or remedies that should be taken, о With a Quotation: it may summarize, predict, question, or call for action. As a general guideline, when writing a persuasive essay: • Have a firm opinion that you want your reader to accept. • Begin with a grabber or hook to get the reader’s attention. • Offer evidence to support your opinion. 22
• Conclude with a restatement of what you want the reader to do or believe. You are going to write a discursive essay on the topic. Do the tasks which follow. • Brainstorm the topic Think of the key questions you need to ask about the topic. Note down your ideas. • Make a plan Look through your ideas and cross out any that you think are not important, or that you will not have space for. Group the remaining ideas into possible paragraph topics. • Think about a thesis Work out a thesis statement of the whole essay, which should be put in the introduction. • Think about vocabulary Remember to make a list of useful vocabulary. • Think about paragraphing Write down topic sentences to each paragraph of the body. • Link your text Use a phrase at the start of each paragraph to provide a link with the previous one. • Think about the introduction and conclusion Use some of the phrases and ideas for your introduction and conclusion (see the examples that follow). • Think about style Do not over-generalize. Always back up your statements and opinions with reasons and examples. • Think about connectors (transition words) Use the phrases form the list that follows. Introduction Conclusion Starting an introduction It is often said that ... It is often argued that... It is fact that... Over the past few years, it seems that... Recently, we have all become concerned that... In the past, people ..., but now, ... These days it seems that Nowadays, we are all becoming aware of the fact that... Transition Words Summing up ideas and arguments To sum up, I tend to think that... All things considered, Ifeel strongly that In conclusion, I would say ... Altogether, Iwoiddargue ... All in all, I think ... Overall, I believe that For continuing a com¬ mon line of reasoning: consequently clearly, then furthermore additionally and in addition moreover because besides that in the same way following this further also pursuing this further in the light of the . it is easy to see that To change the line of rea¬ soning (contrast): 23
however on the other hand but yet nevertheless on the contrary For opening a paragraph initially or for general use: admittedly assuredly certainly granted no doubt nobody denies obviously of course to be sure true undoubtedly unquestionably generally speaking in general at this level in this situation For the final points of a paragraph or essay: finally lastly To restate a point within a paragraph in another way or in a more exact¬ ing way: in other words point in fact specifically Transitional chains, ar¬ ranging paragraphs chronologically: first... second... third... generally... furthermore... finally in the first place... also... lastly in the first place... pursu¬ ing this further... finally to be sure... additionally.. lastly in the first place... just in the same way... finally basically. . similarly... as well To signal a conclusion: therefore this hence in final analysis in conclusion in final consideration indeed The Final Step: Editing and Proofreading You still have a lot of work to do - 80% of a successful piece is in its editing. Practice Read the model text below and underline the thesis statement and transition words providing a link with previous ideas or paragraphs. Analyze the introduction and conclu¬ sion and say what techniques are used in both of them. You may not agree with the opin¬ ion of the author. Many young people behave badly these days because they do not get enough discipline at home. Parents should be stricter. Do you agree? It is often said that children today do not have enough discipline. Fifty years ago, children were supposed to be ‘seen but not heard’ and parents were often authoritarian. Today, children have a great deal more freedom. The result seems to be that they get into trouble more frequently. There are examples of this everywhere. Get on a bus and you are often shocked by the rudeness of children around you. When was the last time you saw a teenager offer a seat to an elderly person? Newspapers and television are full of stories of young football hooligans, or of gangs of young¬ sters who have turned to crime or drugs. So do young people behave badly because their parents are not strict enough? In spite of what many people claim, I believe this is not so. To start with, most of the bad behavior we see around us is, I think, caused by neglect rather than tolerance. It seems that nowadays par¬ ents often do not give enough time to their children. They are too busy with their jobs- after all, the majority of them work these days, whether by choice or through necessity. As a consequence, children grow up as ‘latch-key kids’ That is , they wander the streets until their parents come home 24
from work, and are then ‘dumped’ in front of the television by parents who are too worn out to spend real time with them. Another conclusion is the extent to which television affects young people’s behavior. Clearly many programs contain violence and bad language, and have a negative effect. These are not prob¬ lems that can be cured by disciplining children; they are aspects of the adult world that need to change. In other words, the fault lies not with young people, but with adults. On the whole, I would argue that people who say young people need discipline miss the point. While it is true that bad behavior is increasing, it is often because children are not getting enough love and attention. It is not children who need more discipline- it is parents who need to be stricter with themselves. Now you are ready to write the essay on the topic of this Module. Theme: “The future belongs to generalists, to those people who can handle a lot of information. (The problems of education). ” Take your position For or Against. Express your opinion and prove it in your essay. Be sure to use some of the ideas, vocabulary, grammar, and style that you have learned about in this Module. 25
Module Two A JOB WELL DONE Lead-in 1 a. Which profession(s) would you associate with the following? In what way? Tell your partner. + high earnings - physical tiredness sense of achievement stress job satisfaction danger b. Which jobs do you think would appeal the most to ... • an adventurous person • a caring person • a person who likes children • an ambitious person • a team player • a person who likes to keep fit Discuss it in pairs. 2 a. Rank the following according to how important you think they are for a happy working life (1 = most important, 6 = least important). Then compare your ranking with that of another student. □ pleasant working environment □ recognition of achievement □ good remuneration □ opportunity for creativity □ helping others □ opportunity for personal development b. Which of the following statements best applies to you? Select one (or write your own), then use it to begin talking to your partner about your ideal job. 1. I have a very clear idea of what I want to do. 2. I haven't decided yet, but I want to find a job that I love. 3. I would like to earn as much as possible in the shortest possible time, then retire. 26
4. I would like my work to make a difference to the world. 5. OTHER 3 If a survey asking people what their ideal job would be were carried out at your uni¬ versity, what kind of 'dream jobs' do you think people would choose? Discuss in groups. 4 Paraphrase the following quotations. Which do you agree with? Why? Discuss in pairs: ‘‘‘‘Work is an essential part of being alive. Your work is your identity” Kay Stepkin (VS baker) The only place where success comes before work is a dictionary.' Vidal Sassoon (British hair stylist) Reading-One 1 1 You will read an article about today's public sector working hours. Before you read, discuss the following. a) What do you think are the advantages and/or disadvantages of the following aspects of working hours for employees? b) employers? • long hours • overtime • 9 to 5 • early starts • inflexible/rigid working times • flexi-time • a four-day week • irregular hours • part-time work • working from home • time off 2 Look at the title of the article. Why might employees today need to 'get a life'? 2 Now read the article. Six paragraphs have been removed. Choose from paragraphs (A-G) the one which fits each gap (1-6). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use. Getting a Life Matthew Brown on how one council solved its staff turnover problem by giving workers control over their hours. Six months ago, Carol Wyatt was on the verge of leaving her job as an inquiry officer in the hous¬ ing benefit department of Merton council, South London. It wasn't that she didn't like it; she had even taken a salary cut to take the post in November last year. But the journey to work was taking its toll. 27
1 Normal flexi-time did not apply to the job and Wyatt told her line manager she wanted to leave. She was not the only one. As the authority's assistant chief executive, Keith Davis, admits, the council was hardly what they call an employer of choice. 2 Prompted by the public services union Unison, Merton applied for - and won - £50,000 from the government's challenge fund to a ‘work- life balance’ scheme in three departments, including housing and council benefits. A program was after a series of focus groups, run by consul¬ tancy Briony Group, in which employees were asked to say how they would like to work in an ideal world. Staff raised concerns about rigid working times and inflexible core hours and came up with suggestions for a four-day week and home working. 3 So what changed? Office hours were extended, so that people can now work any time between 7am and 7pnpand^B hours were abolished. Staff can take time off as and when they need it to meet other as long as they make it up and meet their targets. Now as little as half an hour can be taken, even at short notice. Previously, everyone had to book a half day's leave in advance. 4 Other people arrive later in the morning after taking their children to school, or take time out when they have appointments; some people like to work late, when it is quieter; and others work at home some days so that they can be there when the plumber calls, or the new sofa is delivered. 5 Davis is ^^^|t that the scheme is not a backhanded way of improving council services and ex¬ tending working hours. He says: “Of course, there are some basic rules - mainly, that the service comes first. People have to commit to that. But we're finding that staff are working together to cov¬ er each other. They come up with the arrangements themselves. There's a lot of selfrostering." 6 Far from taking it away, Davis is now extending the scheme across the authority, introducing six- month trials in three more departments this month. He is even looking at ways of introducing a nine-day fortnight. 'Now we're asking: 'Why can't it work?' rather than just saying: 'It can't work.' The only thing that could it is lack of imagination.’ A According to deputy benefits manager Rebecca Strang, it was clear within two weeks that the new system was going to work well for all concerned. “It made all our lives easier,” she says. “The staff were happier, team went up, and there was more to finish workloads. If the new system was taken away now, there’d be World War III in my office.” В She had to be in for 9 am, when the phones started ringing, but that meant caring for her el¬ derly mother (and her dog) every morning before braving the rush hour traffic. “I used to get quite stressed sitting on the bus, hardly moving, knowing there was nothing I could do about it,” she says. “I don't handle that sort of thing too well. ” C Although not all ideas were taken up, the pilot has been an unqualified success: sickness levels in the housing benefit section have dropped by half, productivity is up, 28
cases has been dealt with - and Wyatt is still there. Merton was recently held up by the gov¬ ernment as a model of good practice for public sector employers, and has published a na¬ tional guide to work-life balance, funded jointly with Unison. D A survey published last month rams this point home. It reveals that half the employees inter¬ viewed were unaware of the job options on offer to make their lives easier. Managers also confided that while they sympathized with workers’ needs, it was difficult to agree to re¬ quests for flexible working hours or unpaid leave when staff were often already stretched to the limit. E “We had recruitment problems, high levels of sickness and high staff turnover,” he says. “And there was a general feeling that staff morale was low. We felt we needed to do something pro-active.” F The cynic may think it is all a good management^^^ to increase working hours and produce a flexible workforce, but that’s not how the union sees it. “The main thing is that it empow¬ ers staff,” says Sean Cunnisse, Unison’ s branch secretary at the authority. “Although a manager can still say 'No’, now they have to justify their decision, rather than staff having to justify why they should be allowed time off.” G Wyatt now goes to work early, arriving well before 9am to avoid the morning traffic, and leaves mid-afternoon. “It has made all the difference," she says. “It really does make you feel you’ve got more control over your life. It gives me a chance to organize my working time around my other needs. Vocabulary Practice 3 a. Explain the highlighted words in the text. b. Match the items to form collocations used in the text. What do they mean in the text? A В on the suggestions Text Analysis taking its notice raised toll came up with meet their at short verge of targets concerns 1 In pairs, explain the boldfaced phrases taken from the text in your own words. 29
1 "Now we're asking 'why can't it work?' rather than just saying 'it can't work'... ” 2 "I don't handle that sort of thing too well." 3 “Merton was... held up by the government as a model of good practice ..." 4 A survey published last month rams this point home." 5 “The cynic may think it is all a good management ploy ..." Discussion a. What are the advantages of a work-life balance scheme, according to Mr. Brown? Make a list, then discuss it with your partner. b. How important is it to maintain a work-life balance? Think about: health, fam¬ ily, friends. Discuss in groups. Reading - Two 1 You will read an extract from an essay about the role of leaders in an organization. Be¬ fore you read, discuss the following: a In your opinion, which three of the following are the most important qualities for a leader? □ charisma □ management skills □ organizational skills □ foresight □ ambition □ ability to cope with change b Read the essay quickly, paying particular attention to the introduction and the first sentence of each paragraph. Which of the following is the core idea of the essay? a) Leadership is more important than management. b) Management is more important than leadership. c) Management and leadership must complement each other. 2 Now read the article. For questions 1-7, choose the best answer (А, В, C or D). What Leaders Really Do They don 7 make plans; they don’t solve problems; they don’t even organize people; that’s the managers ’job. What leaders really do is prepare organizations for change and help them cope as they struggle through it. Only organizations that embrace both the managers ’ efforts to promote stability as well as those of the leaders ’ to support change can survive in turbulent times. Leadership is different from management, but not for the reasons most people think. Leader¬ ship isn't and mysterious. It has nothing to do with having ‘charisma’ or other exot¬ ic personality traits. Tt is not the province of a chosen few. Nor is leadership necessarily bet¬ ter than management or a replacement for it. 30
Rather, leadership and management are two and complementary systems of ac¬ tion. Each has its own function and characteristic activities. Both are necessary for success in an increasingly complex and volatile business environment. Most corporations today are over-managed and under led. They need to develop their capac¬ ity to exercise leadership. Corporations that are aware of this fact don’t simply sit around waiting for leaders to come along. They actively seek out people with leadership potential and expose them to career experiences designed to develop that potential. Indeed, with care¬ ful selection, and encouragement, dozens of people can play important leadership roles in a business organization. But while improving their ability to lead, companies should remember that strong leadership with weak management is no better, and is sometimes actually worse, than the reverse. The real challenge is to combine strong leadership and strong management and use each to bal¬ ance the other. Of course, not everyone can be good at both leading and managing. Some people have the capacity to become excellent managers but not strong leaders. Others have great leadership potential but, for a variety of reasons, have great difficulty becoming strong managers. Smart companies both kinds of people and work hard to make them a part of the team. When it comes to preparing people for executive jobs, such companies rightly ignore the re¬ cent literature that says people cannot manage and lead. They try to develop leader¬ managers. Once companies understand the fundamental difference between leadership and management, they can begin to their top people to provide both. Management is about coping with complexity. Its practices and procedures are largely a re- sponse to one of the most significant developments of the twentieth century: the of large organizations. Without good management, complex enterprises tend to become cha¬ otic in ways that threaten their very existence. Good management brings a degree of order and consistency to key dimensions like the quality and profitability of products Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change. Part of the reason it has become so important in recent years is that the business world has become more competitive and more Faster technological change, greater international competition, the deregulation of markets, overcapacity in capital-intensive industries, and an unstable oil cartel are among the many factors that have contributed to this The result is that doing what was done yesterday is no longer a formula for success. Major changes are more and more necessary to compete effectively in this new environment. And more changes always demand more lead¬ ership. Consider a simple military analogy: A peacetime army can usually survive with good ad¬ ministration and management up and down the hierarchy, coupled with good leadership concentrated at the very top, A wartime army, however, needs competent leadership at all levels. No one yet has figured out how to manage people effectively into battle: they must be led. These two different functions - coping with complexity and coping with change - shape the characteristic activities of management and leadership. Each system of action involves de¬ ciding what needs to be done, creating networks of people and relationships that can accom¬ plish an agenda, and then trying to ensure that those people actually do the job. But each ac¬ complishes these three tasks in different ways. Companies manage complexity first by planning and budgeting - setting targets or goals for the future (typically for the next month or year), establishing detailed steps for achieving 31
those targets, and then allocating resources to accomplish those plans. By contrast, leading an organization to change begins by setting a direction - developing a vision of the future (often the distant future) along with strategies for producing the changes needed to achieve that vision. Management develops the capacity to achieve its plan by organizing and staffing - creating an organizational structure and set of jobs for accomplishing plan requirements, staffing jobs with qualified individuals, communicating the plan to those people, delegating responsibility for carrying out the plan, and devising systems to monitor implementation. The equivalent leadership activity, however, is aligning people. This means communicating the new direc¬ tion to those who can create coalitions that understand the vision and are committed to its achievement. Finally, management ensures plan accomplishment by controlling and problem solving - monitoring results versus the plan in some detail, both formally and informally, by means of reports, meetings, and other tools; identifying deviations; and then planning and organizing to solve the problems. But for leadership, achieving a vision requires motivating and inspir¬ ing - keeping people moving in the right direction, despite major to change, by ap¬ pealing to basic but often untapped human needs, values and emotions. 1 In the first two paragraphs, the writer compares leadership to management in order to A show that only a few select people can be good leaders. В indicate that leadership is not impossible without charisma. C debunk some misconceptions about the two functions. D stress the necessity of management in the workplace. 2 Modern corporations that wish to develop leadership A take the initiative in the recruitment and training of leaders. В try to encourage existing staff to become leaders. C consciously hire fewer managers and more leaders. D look for people who can be trained to become managers. 3 In order to train people to be both managers and leaders, companies must A avoid misinterpreting recent literature on leadership. В understand that leadership and management are distinct. C learn to value managers and leaders equally. D realize that almost anybody can be good at both. 4 Leadership has recently grown in importance because A doing business has become more complicated. В technology has changed beyond recognition. C the oil market has become unpredictable. 32
D several markets have become deregulated. 5 The writer draws the military analogy in order to A illustrate the necessity of leadership in times of instability. В show why it is essential to manage armies effectively. C give an example of a business that needs to be managed. D draw a comparison between leadership and management. 6 While management sets goals for the near future, leadership A assists management with planning. В contributes foresight for the long term. C tries to change the way we work. D finds ways to improve management. 7 In order to make a vision come true, leadership A has to become involved in problem-solving. В evaluates results and changes its plan accordingly. C concerns itself with people's levels of motivation. D makes sure management goes in the right direction. Vocabulary Practice 3 Match the highlighted words in the essay with their synonyms below. □ appearance □ cultiVoting □□ appreciate change □ magical Dunstable □ prepare □ unique □ hurdles □□□□ positive 4 In your own words, explain the underlined parts. Then use some of them in your own sen¬ tences. □ Personality traits are the distinguishing qualities and characteristics of a person. ‘‘People who are chosen to be leaders must have certain personality traits. ” Text Analysis 5 Find parts of the article where the write 1 talks about what would happen to an organization without good management. 2 tries to make clear the differences between management and leaderships. 3 uses an example which is not directly related to his subject. 4 outlines the way a company should work. 33
Discussion 6 How important is the ability to be a leader for each of the following people? Why? Dis¬ cuss it in groups □ a parent □ ateacher □ an army general □ a scientist a researcher Language Focus People on the Job 1 a. Match A to В to form word combinations describing different kinds of work¬ ers and professionals. Then, in pairs, put them under the appropriate headings in the table below. Some of the words could go under more than one heading. A refuse business computer graphic assembly-line talent plastic famous dental civil general В designer hygienist collector practitioner executive servant surgeon worker scientist programmer scout Manual Creative Blue-collar White-collar Administrative 34
b In pairs, decide which of the adjectives below best describe the jobs and pro¬ fessions above. Give reasons. • fulfilling • arduous • mind-numbing • demanding • grueling • rewarding • hazardous • glamorous • mundane • secure • stimulating • strenuous • stressful • motivating • physical • intellectual 2 In pairs, use the language from the box to help you to ask and answer ques¬ tions about the following: • What kind of a j ob you would like to do in the future • What kind of career you would never consider • What do you do for a living? • Have you ever toyed with the idea of...? • Have you got any plans for...? • What are you aiming for in your career as a whole? • Have you ever thought of...? • Would you ever consider... ? • Do you think you would ever..? • Are you looking forward to retiring? • I work as a... • I hope to (be promoted). • I don't intend (to resign). • Yes, indeed, I am thinking of... • My immediate plans are • Hopefully, I will soon ... •Ido not foresee ... • I will definitely not... • There is no way I would ever... In the Workplace 3 Underline the correct words/phrases. Use a dictionary to help you. 1 Due to the unsafe conditions at the plant, the workers decided to (work to rule, go on the picket line, go on strike) until their demands for improvements were met by the man¬ agement. 35
2 Many employees were (expelled, laid off, removed) as a result of the economic crisis. 3 Not only are we appreciated for what we do but we also receive (perks, benefits, bonus¬ es) at Christmas and Easter. 4 Not too many years ago, miners and factory workers would have to line up outside their employer's office every Friday to collect their (salary, profits, wages). 5 On arrival at the military base, the new (trainees, apprentices, recruits) were told to re¬ port to the registration area. 6 I've just been transferred to this (head office, department, boardroom). Could you tell me where my cubicle is, please? 7 If there is any hope of meeting this deadline, we'll have to work (part-time, overtime, flexi-time) all next week. 8 For us to consider you for the position, you'll need to provide us with at least two (cre¬ dentials, references, applications). Build up Your Vocabulary 4 Underline the word which best completes each sentence. 1 I hope you realize, Ms Hines, that if you accept the (job/ employment/occupation) you will be expected to put in quite a bit of overtime. 2 After receiving a degree in business management, Lynn realized that her true (profes- sion/trade/vocation) was in teaching, so she returned to university. 3 My sister (works/labors/toils) in a beautiful office doing a job that she loves. 4 The latest company (duty/task/project) requires that we all work as a team to meet the dead¬ line. 5 The (staff/union/board) has called a general meeting to hear employee complaints. 6 Tom just received a government (raise/award/grant) to continue his work with the city's homeless. 7 They have several (vacancies/occupations/appointments) to fill, but they can't find the right people. 8 When he failed to comply with the manager's instructions, he was (re- moved/dismissed/deposed). 5 a. Explain the underlined parts of the sentences below. 1 This company deals in pharmaceutical products. 2 This company offers Information Technology (IT) services. 3 This company attracts business from art collectors. 36
4 This company specializes in business travel. 5 This company supplies switchboards and call centers. b. What would be the role of the following professionals? 1 a network administrator 2 a legal advisor 3 a receptionist 4 a telephonist 5 a safety consultant 6 a security guard 7 a human resources manager 8 a communications technology expert 9 a secretary 10 a PR (public relations) officer 6 In pairs, complete the spidergrams with the words given below. Use some of them to fill in the gaps in the sentences. Can you think of more words for each spidergram? □ mate □satisfaction □ title□ loadD place □ shop □ description □ bench □ market □ hunter □ □ station □ centre □ prospects □ horse 37
1 Some of the staff say she’s the manager, some say she’s the owner. Do you know what her actual is? 2 I’m sorry, but nowhere in my does it say that I have to empty the wastepaper bins. 3 At the moment, John has such a heavy that we can’t even get out at the weekends. 4 The assembly-line worker was sacked because he was constantly away from his 5 My wife is a real She puts in eight hours at the office and then comes home and does all the housework. 6 Above the carpenter’s was row after row of bright shiny tools. 7 Match A to B, then use some of the collocations to complete the sentences. You may need to change the form of some verbs. A В 1 make/miss a hours 2 desk/steady b bonus 3 area/stage c a deadline 4 long/irregular d schedule 5 overtime/ severance e post 6 productivity/Christmas f job 7 weekly/packed g manager 8 managerial/administrative h pay 1 If it hadn't been for the overtime I put in, we would have missed the deadline. 2 The director trusted her with a(n) , although her experience was rather lim¬ ited. 3 He used the he got when he was laid off to start a small catering business in Leeds. 4 He decided to give up singing, get a and settle down. 5 The will be paid on the 22nd of December. 6 His includes a meeting with freelance program¬ mers every Friday. 7 The instructed the lighting technician to dim the spotlight a little. 8 He often has to work which makes planning lunch quite difficult. 38
8 a. Look through the words in Ex 8 and look up any unknown ones. b. In pairs, think of a business to start together. First, complete the details of your business below (you can tick as many boxes as you wish. Name of business: Line of business: О communications О travel Г 1 insurance 1 1 entertainment о food / beverage □ accounting □ law □ education о IT о banking & finance П technology (non-IT) □ transport о heavy industry □ medicine □ public relations □ publishing о health & fitness о hospitality Target market: О teenagers О 18-25S О thirty-somethings О over-forties О pensioners □ trend-followers О all ages I I other businesses О other professionals П travelling businessmen о households Location: I I central I I suburban I I on the outskirts I I remote Type of premises: □ privately-owned □ rented □ in office block I I multi-storey building □ in shopping centre c Now tell the class about your business. Use vocabulary from Exs. 7 and 8. E.g.: Smith & Norrington is a leading provider of accounting services for individual pro¬ fessionals and other businesses. We are located in a modern office block in the centre of Madrid. d If you own a real business or work for one, or know someone who owns one, tell the class about it. 9 Every office has one a. Using a dictionary if necessary, say what personality traits of these office work¬ ers are • the whiz • the perfectionist • the paper-shuffler • the gossip • the stirrer • the workaholic • the slave driver • the techno-freak • the yes-man b. Which are positive/negative traits? Discuss in pairs. 39
10 Underline the correct word. 1 As the company was on the edge / verge / rim / side of bankruptcy, the manager was forced to lay off 70% of the employees. 2 We are a growing business, so we're always looking / searching / seeking / asking self-motivated, energetic people to join our ever-growing team. 3 My dad was forced to go on the dole / welfare / charity / unemployment after his business collapsed. 4 She saw an ad about a magazine recruiting / enrolling / enlisting / appointing jun¬ ior editors for their New York office and applied immediately. 5 Because the young novelist had yet to be published, he worked on and on/ off / over / above as a house painter to make ends meet. 6 She's the wife of a multi-millionaire and is used to getting money on order / de¬ mand / command / instruction. 7 It's a great job with a really good salary plus advantages / favors / benefits / extras. 8 The volunteers in our organization work for and on part / side / behalf / support of those who cannot work for themselves. 9 John Flowers works in the bank's South American group / class / division / de¬ partment. 10 Come down to our central warehouse and see the extensive line of appliances on of¬ fer / bid / auction / proposal. 11 Match A to B, then make sentences with the items from A to show their meanings. A В 1 a late manager 2 a manager in question 3 a manager to-be 4 a former manager 5 a so-called manager 6 a present manager 7 a would be manager 8 a stop-gap manager aperson who is bound to become manager a person who was manager before the current one a person who is supposed to be the manager a manager who has died a person who would like to be manager a person who is holding the manager's post tem¬ porarily a manager we're talking about a person who is currently manager 12 For sentences 1-14, think of the word which best fits each gap. Use only one word in each gap. Your Future Each and 0) every young person must stop and ask 1) one very basic question - ‘What can I do with my life?’ This all-important query can be looked 2) in two different ways. Firstly, you can see it as one of the most challenging questions you will 3) have to ask your¬ self. Or, 4) you’re committed to exploring all the options, asking it can start you on the road to a fulfilling career. 40
Sometimes it’s easier if you 5) the big question down into a few smaller ones. For example, ‘How 6) time can I devote to achieving my goals?’ or ‘7) kind of qualifications will I need to acquire?’ But one of the most significant 8) , ‘What are my interests and strengths?’ When you start to consider these, it 9) sense to consider your interests first. 10) all, a successful career is best measured in 11) satisfying you find it, and it’s easier to develop strengths and skills 12) to actually have to learn to find something interesting. You’ve probably thought a lot about your likes and dislikes. But the more clearly you define your interests, 13) closer you’ll be to making smart career choices. You may find 14) you hadn’t recognized that a lot of your experiences up to now indicate particular interests that could be linked to specific careers. Phrasal Verbs Match the verbs with the particles to form phrasal verbs. Use them to com¬ plete the sentences below. into across up off around 1 I just can't seem to get across (communicate) to my boss that he is working me too hard. 2 After a difficult day at the office 1 like to (eliminate) stress by digging in my garden. 3 The owner is terribly busy tomorrow but I'll try to you (fit into) her schedule. 4 If the workers return to their jobs this week, we might manage to (overcome) the delays in production. 5 By the end of the incredibly busy day, Mona had her¬ self (cause to be upset) into quite a state. Listening & Speaking Listening What do you know about quality control companies? Why are they necessary now in Big Business and industry? 41
Extract One You will hear part of an interview about a quality control company. For questions 1-2, choose the answer (A, В or C) which fits best according to what you hear. 1 Why do some companies get involved with IIP? A They are given free badges and office stationery. В They have the opportunity to conduct regular meetings. C They think it gives their company prestige. 2 Why does the interviewer compare the IIP complaints procedure to the world of Big Brother? A He believes that the staff are too intimidated to complain В He disagrees with IIP companies using surveillance cameras. C He thinks that the staff are not risk-takers. Extract Two You will hear a radio interview about employment and students. For questions 1-6, choose the answer (А, В, C or D) which fits best according to what you hear. 1 When Jane was a student A she had to drop out of college. В she had to work as well as study. C she had absolutely no money to live on. D she obtained a generous scholarship. 2 How did Jane solve the problem which she had? A She went to work for “Students at Work”. В She found a job through a newspaper ad. C She got a job through “Students at Work”. D She worked long hours in order to earn a lot of money. 3 What is Neil’s objection to Jane’s situation when she was a student? A She shouldn’t have been obliged to get a job. В She shouldn’t have taken on a boring and unskilled job. C She should have concentrated on her studies. D She should have been proud of working. 4 Neil objects to students working because A it prevents them from developing a strong character. В their educational performance suffers as a result. C it means they don’t get enough sleep. D they don’t have time to go out and enjoy themselves. 5 Neil says that students A don’t want to spend their money on clubbing. В can only buy half the books they need. C would spend their money on clubbing if they could afford it. D are on an inadequate budget. 6 According to Neil, the National Union of Students A is the country’s greatest resource. 42
В only wants a percentage of students’ fees paid. C will demand that the government supports students financially. D will reward students who study hard. How do you make ends meet? If you work, how did you find your job? Is there any kind of such organizations as the National Union of Students or ‘Students at Work’ in Russia? Speaking 1 Discuss the following questions together: 1 Do you think having computers in the workplace is a good thing? 2 What steps should governments take to reduce unemployment? 3 What are the dangers of working too much? 4 Is job satisfaction more important than money? 5 What makes a good boss? 6 What criteria do you think should be borne in mind when assessing fair levels of pay for different jobs? 2 Applying for a Job 1 Work in pairs. Discuss these questions. • What impression do you try to make in an application letter? • Should an application letter be handwritten, typed, or laser-printed? • How important is a well-presented CV or resume9 • Do you always tell the absolute truth in application letters? 2 Work in pairs. Look at this job ad: what would be its benefits - what might be its drawbacks? ACME Atlantic is a well-known and respected trading company. We handle imports directly from manufacturers in 35 different countries, often to our own specifications, and currently export to 46 different countries worldwide. We are looking for enthusiastic people to work in our office in Bermuda on temporary 3-, 6- and 9-month contracts. Applicants must be able to speak and write at least one foreign language flu¬ ently and can be nationals of any country. Experience in import/export will be an advantage, but as special training will be available this is not .essential. The main requirements are a willingness to work as a member of a team, to cope with pressure, to use the telephone in a foreign language and in English and to be prepared occa¬ sionally to work long hours when necessary. There are several posts available and long-term prospects are good, though initially all success¬ ful applicants will be contractedfor a maximum of 9 months. The salary we will offer is excellent. We will pay for your return air fare and provide adequate accommodation at a nominal rent. Apply in your own handwriting, enclosing your resume, to Charles Fox, European Sales Of¬ fice, ACME Atlantic Ltd, 45 Pentonville Road, London EC2 4AC. 43
3 Work in pairs. Look at this resume. If you were interviewing Kevin Willis for the job in Bermuda, what questions would you ask him about his career history? Kevin Miguel Willis Address 1090 Madison Avenue Sheboygan W1 53081 e-mail: kmw@aol.com Res. phone & fax: 555-5656898 Date of birth: 2/21/76 Professional experience : Aug. 1999-present Valentine International: Export clerk Jan. 1998—July 1999 Chicago Products: Marketing assistant May 1997-Dec. 1997 Self-employed: travel guide Jan. 1997-May 1997 Unemployed Education and training: 1993-1995 Green Bay High School, Green Bay, Wisconsin 1991-1993 Oshkosh Junior High School, Oshkosh, Wisconsin Interests: Mountain biking, reading, hiking, skiing, sailing Languages: Fluent Spanish (my mother is Mexican), good conversational French References: Ms Daphne Stern, Sales Vice-President, Valentine International, 44
2205 Jackson Street, Oshkosh, W1 54901 Mrs Francine Dexter, Marketing Director, Chicago Products Inc., 4450 Capitol Drive, Milwaukee, W1 52303 Mr James Wong, Atlas Travel, 9004 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago IL 60607 4 Work in pairs. Look at this application letter from another applicant for the job. In what ways does Arthur Dent seem suitable (or unsuitable) for the job? In what ways are you better qualified for it? Dear Mr. Fox, Work in Bermuda I noted with interest your advertisement in today's Daily Planet. You will see from the enclosed CV that I have three years experience in marketing. My responsibilities have included all types of administrative work, product development, ar¬ ranging and attending presentations, working with clients and solving problems that arise. Although I have an excellent relationship with my present employers, I feel that my pro¬ spects with them are limited and that there would be more scope for my talents with a larg¬ er, more dynamic company. If you consider that my qualifications and experience are suitable, I should be available for interview at any time. Yours sincerely, Arthur Dent 5 Work in pairs. Imagine that you want to apply for the job. Draft an application letter, following these guidelines: 1. Introduce yourself: name, age, nationality, etc. 2. State when you are available. 3. Describe your relevant experience - or justify your lack of experience. 4. Describe your skills in your own language, English and other languages. 5. Describe how you meet the requirements of the job. 6. Say when you’re available for an interview. 45
6 Interviews A Work in groups. Think of the last interview you attended and discuss these questions: • What was the worst thing about it? • What difficult questions were you asked? • Why do you think you were successful, or unsuccessful? • If you could go through the interview again, what would you do differently? • In an interview, do you always have to be completely honest? • What impression do you try to give in an interview? В Work in small groups. Imagine that a young friend of yours is about to attend his or her first interview. Read the advice below and note down some more tips that you would give: • Do your homework: find out about the company. • Prepare some questions to ask about the company and what the job entails. • Wear smart, formal clothes. • Don’t smoke. • Arrive a few minutes early. • Sit up straight. • Look straight at the interviewer. • Expect the unexpected - and don’t panic! • C Work in pairs. Some interviewers give candidates a hard time by asking them difficult questions - like 12 questions below. • Can you think of the hree more questions you might be asked at an interview? Add them to the list. • What would your own answers to each of the questions be? Rehearse your answers with your partner and make notes. 1 Tell me about yourself. 2 What do you think are your strengths and weaknesses? 3 We have a lot of applicants for this job, why should we appoint you? 4 Which is more important to you: status or money? 5 How long do you think you'd stay with us if you were appointed? 6 Why do you want to leave your present job? 7 What would you like to be doing ten years from now? 8 What are you most proud of having done recently? 9 What is your worst fault and what is your best quality? 10 Don't you think you're a little young/old for this job? 11 What are your long-range goals? 12 What excites you about the job you're doing now1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 13 How would you rate your present boss? 14 15 16 46
Use of English Conditionals and Wishes Grammar Reference (p. 120) 1 Complete the conversations. Use the correct form of the verbs in the box. A: What’s wrong? You look worried. В: I am, but I’ve only got myself to blame. If I (0) hadn’t spent so much money, I (I) such a big credit card bill to pay next month. A: Is Lars a careful driver? B: No, he isn’t. If he (2) , he (3) that nasty accident last month. And if he (4) better insurance, his car (5) in the garage at this moment. As it is, he can’t afford to have it repaired. A: Are we nearly at Lan and linhai’ s house? B: No, we’ve still got a long way to go. But if we (6) an hour earlier, we (7) nearly there now. A: I’m sorry, but if you (8) me yesterday that you wanted to leave at eight, I (9) my alarm for sev¬ en. B: How was I to know that you get up so late in the mornings? A: How are things? B: They’ve been better. I’m on a diet and I joined a fitness centre last week. If I (10) the diet and joined the centre six months ago, I (11) so much now and I (12) also a lot fit¬ ter. 47
2 Complete the messages from a message board on the Internet. Use the correct form of the verbs in the box. be can / learn can / study live not do start stop I really admire people who can draw and paint but I can’t draw even the simplest things. If only I (0) could learn to draw! I’d gained weight, my clothes didn’t fit and I didn’t like myself. But since I started run¬ ning every morning, I feel a lot better about myself. I wish I (1) taking regular exercise a long time ago! I come from a family of lawyers and my parents expect me to carry on the tradition, so even though I really wish I (2) information tech¬ nology next year, I’ll get a law degree first. My alarm went off at six this morning. I must have switched it off and gone back to sleep so I was late for an exam. I wish I (3) such a stupid thing! Nothing exciting ever happens in my town and I get so bored! If only I (4) in a city like London or Brighton, I’d be so much happier. I wish my parents (5) way I dress. I wish I (6) too. complaining about the more patient with them 3 Complete the second sentence so that it means the same as the first one, using the word in bold. Use between two and five words. 0 It is a pity I have to go to school today. (wish) I wish I didn’t have to go to school today. 1 lam disappointed that he didn’t call me. (only) If me. 2 I regret leaving my last job. (had) 48
I wish my last job. 3 Please stop criticizing me all the time! (would) I wish me all the time. 4 lam sorry we can’t afford a new car. (could) If only a new car. 5 It is a shame we haven’t got more time together, (had) If more time together. 6 I regret not finishing my university degree. (I) I wish my university degree. 4 Complete the sentences. Use the correct form of the verbs in the box. be(x2) book go grow learn not go not leave not stay ring tell win 0 It’s time you rang your parents. You haven’t spoken to them for ages! 1 Sometimes you speak to me as if I a child and it annoys me! 2 I’d rather we out tonight. I’m not feeling well. 3 It sounds as though she ill. I hope she gets better soon. 4 I’d rather you anything to my parents about my exam results - I wanted to tell them myself 5 Isn’t it time they their parents they’re planning to get mar¬ ried? 6 You’re talking as if you the game when I know you lost it. 7 How can I tell my housemate I’d rather he all of the cooking to me? It’s high time he how to cook for him¬ self! 8 Sometimes Maribel acts as if money on trees! 9 It’s July already and it’s high time we our holiday. I’m afraid we may have left it too late. 10 They don’t want to go by themselves. They’d rather we with them to show them the way. 5 Finish the sentences in your own way. 1. If I could turn the clock back, 49
2. If only I 3. If I could go anywhere, 4. I wish I could 5. I wish I hadn’t 6. I wi sh you woul d 7. I wish I were Word Formation 1 For questions 1-10, use the words below to form words that fit in numbered spaces in the text. Getting the Most out of a Meeting Recognize that most meetings will be 0) chaotic without a good chairperson and an agenda. If your aim is to be 1) , skip most of these meetings Research shows that badly- managed groups 2) make better decisions than those which could be arrived at individually by the more intelligent members of that group. If you feel that the meetings you attend leave room for 3) why not 4) that something is ac¬ complished by bringing your own informal agenda? In 5) orga¬ nized environments few people think far enough ahead to turn up with papers to hand out. If you are the only person who has a handout, you will usually find that the 6) centers on your points. A well-run meeting can definitely generate better ideas than would come from individuals think¬ ing in 7) However, three things are 8) for meetings to work at a truly optimal level: an impartial chairperson or facilitator, a clear structure, and the necessary IT software 9) to model possible alternative 10) to problems there and then. Information will be treated as a neutral commodity and everybody will have their say. 0) chaos 6) discuss 1) produce 7) isolate 2) rare 8) dispense 3) improve 9) apply 4) sure 10)solve 5) poor 2 Fill in the gaps using at, on and to. I The government has been discussing new regulations, due force next April. come into 2 The measures are aimed making it easier for working parents with young or disabled children to have more flexible working arrangements. 50
3 Even those applicants who win their cases a no-win, no-fee basis can see their awards reduced by up to half as solicitors take their cut. 4 He dedicated weeks of painstaking care setting up his company and creating a coherent business plan. 5 SupraCom will spend a massive two million euros advertising over the next two years. Writing 1 Do you agree with the quotation given at the beginning of this Module? ‘Work is an essential part of being alive. Your work is your identity ’ Kay Stepkin. Write a discursive essay expressing your opinion. Follow the steps and the outline dis¬ cussed in Module One. Be sure to use some of the ideas, vocabulary, grammar and style that you have learned in Module Two. 2 In this Module you are given a chance to write another type of discursive essays ‘Suggest¬ ing Solutions to Outlined Problems.’ The steps of writing are the same as those discussed in Module One ( Opinion Essay), but the outline is a little different. The Outline to ‘Suggesting Solutions to Problem Essay’. Introduction Paragraph 1 stating the problem Main Body Paragraph 2 suggestion 1 & result Paragraph 3 * suggestion 2 & result Conclusion Final paragraph Summarizing the opinion * The main body can consist of more than two paragraphs depending on the number of suggestions you want to make. 51
Practice 1 Brainstorm. Look at the following notes which have been made as brainstorming on the topic ‘What can be done to prevent the damage to our environment’. Cross out any that you think are not important or are irrelevant. Then decide how you could group the remaining points to make four or five paragraph topics. Wavs we are damaging the environment • Private cars: fumes causing smog - people can’t breathe • Smoke from power stations and facto¬ ries: acid rain - killing trees + destroying buildings • Habitats (like rainforests) being de¬ stroyed: animals endangered • Too many cars causing congestion: governments building more roads - cut¬ ting down trees + destroying countryside • Burning fuels in power stations: greenhouse effect, global warming - tem¬ perature + sea levels rising, flooding + land turning to desert • Dumping waste at sea: pollutes sea, endangers marine life Measures we should take • Fine owners of ships who dump waste • Recycle • Improve public transport • Use renewable energy resources, e.g. solar + wind power • Use recycled products, e.g. plastic, furniture made from wood, from sus¬ tainable sources • Join environmental groups and organ¬ ize protests • Stop buying cars • Education 2 Think about language. a. The phrases below are often found in this type of essay. Useful phrases. One of the major causes of... is ... (X) causes/leads to/results in ... (x) is due to ... It appears/seems that ... It is quite certain that ... There are many ways in which we could ... One of the most important things we should ... It is essential that we/ the government... Clearly, we have to ... If/When we ..., then we can ... 52
The most obvious solution is to ... Perhaps we should consider ... By doing this we can ... We should/could ... Meanwhile, ... / In the meantime, ... / At the same time, we should ... We would be crazy not to ... The consequences of not ... are ... b. Number the phrases given above using the following categories: 1 Ways to state opinion firmly 2 Ways to state opinions tentatively 3 Ways to express time 4 Ways to make strong suggestions 5 Ways to make tentative suggestions 6 Ways to show what the consequences of an action might be 7 Ways to show the causes of a situation or problem. 3 A Model Essay In the essay below there are a number of mistakes. Read the model and underline exam¬ ples of the following: 1 Three misused linking words 2 An over-generalization 3 An irrelevant sentence 4 A sentence containing over-emotional language 5 Two sentences written in very informal, colloquial language 6 Two irrelevant / unclear topic sentences Rewrite the topic sentences so that each one is clear and relevant and replace the words/ phrases you have underlined with correct alternatives. Various ecosystems are being high systematically destroyed by man. What measures do you think should be taken to prevent further destruction? We can scarcely turn on our televisions or pick up a newspaper these days without being confronted with yet another depressing news item about the environment. As the population of many cities in¬ creases, more and more land is being converted from its natural state to accommodate homes and factories. The direct result of this is the systematic destruction of different ecosystems all over the 53
world which, in turn, has led to seas becoming polluted with poisons, rivers becoming contaminated by pesticides and the air becoming polluted with fumes from vehicles and industry. While the prob¬ lems of pollution and habitual destruction are obvious, the solutions are elusive. Moreover, serious attempts to halt the destruction of ecosystems must be made immediately. As Paul Claudel once said: 'Nature is only an immense ruin'. Clearly, individuals need to become more aware of the consequences of their actions and should act more responsibly. Only if people do so will the Earth be saved from further destruction and the world become a healthier, safer place to live in. People should not expect governments to provide all the solutions. Citizens must begin to recycle goods and packaging whenever possible, as well as buy only environmentally friendly products. Nonetheless, domestic food scraps should be recycled; for example, potato peelings and melon rinds can be turned into substances that enrich the soil. By doing this, we can reduce the amount of non-biodegradable waste being dumped at rubbish tips, thus ensuring that materials such as glass and plastic are not left in earth which could be used as farmland in the future. Despite this, individuals can help protect the earth by using public transport whenever possible. Where such facilities do not exist, sharing lifts is recommended to reduce traffic congestion, noise and vehicle emissions on the roads. The less petrol our societies bum, the better the air quality will be. In addition, if there were fewer cars in circulation, there would be fewer road accidents. Another possible measure to combat industrial pollution would be the imposition of strict fines on wicked, greedy corporations and unfeeling, ignorant businesses which contaminate land, air or wa¬ ter. To be effective, the fines should be heavy enough to deter potential polluters; if they are too small, they could simply be regarded by industries as 'the cost of doing business' and they might be ignored. Finally, governments should be far more responsible. All governments have the funds and technol¬ ogy to provide solar, wind, geothermal and tidal power. The problem is that many governments couldn't care less and wouldn't lift a finger to help their countries by funding research to develop such sources or to discover new ways to produce energy. If, however, this were to happen, the con¬ sequence would be that depletion of finite resources such as oil and coal would be slowed down, or even halted altogether. To sum up, the earth is suffering as a result of the destruction wreaked upon it by humanity. Don't you think it's time we cleaned up this dreadful mess? Now you are ready to write this type of essay: “Suggesting Solutions to Problem Essay”. The theme of your essay is in close connection with the topics you have discussed in Module Two. ‘ WHA T SOULD BE DONE TO SUPPORT THE LIFE- WORK BALANCE IN YOUR LIFE? ’ Use the information you’ve got in this module and good luck! 54
Module Three Technological Changes in the World Lead-In 1 a. Look at the title of the unit. Think about changes in our world from: □ transport □ natural disasters □technology □ environment b. How will these changes affect our lives in the future? Which will have the greatest impact on our lives? Which are changes for the better and which for the worse? Dis¬ cuss in pairs. 2 Look at the following possible technological advances. Which ones do you think will occur in the next 50 years? Are there any which you think will never happen? In groups, discuss your answers, giving reasons for your opinions. • a computer that can hold a proper conversation • a manned mission to Mars • a vaccine against ATDS • an electric car which is as fast as petrol-powered one • a device which predicts earthquakes accurately • a hurricane-proof home 3 Paraphrase the following quotations. What does each one mean? What attitude does each speaker have towards technology? Which quotation is closer to your own ideas? Discuss it. “If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner. ” Omar Bradley (U. S. WW1I Army General) “Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better. ” Richard Hooker (British theologian) Reading - One 1 a. You are going to read an article about Artificial Intelligence (Al). Before reading, in pairs discuss the following questions: 1 What tasks can robots do now? 2 What famous robots do you know from science fiction books or films? 3 Do you believe that we will ever create machines that are able to think as we do? Should we try? 55
b. Now scan the text to find information about the following: Check with your partner. □ Alan Turing □ TheTuringTest Ш HerbertSimon DAM □Christian Goldbach Lbeep Blue c. Read the text. For questions 1-7, choose the answer (А, В, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text. 1 According to the writer, the term ‘artificial intelligence’ A is missing from some scientific dictionaries. В makes us think of machines from sci-fi films. C is overused among computer scientists. D implies that computers can be too clever. 2 Alan Turing A built a ‘universal machine’ in the 1930s. В used his research work to develop an electronic computer. C used code-breaking techniques to build an electronic computer. D created the first artificially intelligent computer. 3 Turing believed that A computers could copy human thought processes. В computer research needed more funding. C computers would eventually replace human beings. D computers might be used for immoral purposes. 4 Computer scientists today A do not distinguish between sci-fi and eality. В are making our dreams come true. C do not agree about the aims of Al development. D are spending far too long on Al research. 5 What is the writer’s view of the Microsoft Paperclip assistant? A it is a very helpful device. В it is not to be trusted. C it is an impressive development. D it is rather annoying. 6 The discovery made by Lenat’s computer program A went against the 18th century mathematical theory. В was greeted with excitement by Al researchers. C showed predictions about Al to be false. D enabled it to win games like chess. 7 According to the writer, what do many mainstream Al researchers think is most im¬ portant? A inventing a computer to beat the Turing Test. В developing computers to become chess champions. C improving computerized services in daily life. D creating computers for entertainment purposes. 56
The Search for Artificial Intelligence Robert Matthews, a leading researcher, outlines his mission It is one of the most evocative phrases in the lexicon of science: artificial intelligence, "Al", the cre¬ ation of machines that can think. Just the mention of it up images of HAL, the all-too- intelligent computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and C3PO the chatty, batty robot from Star Wars. For over half a century, computer scientists have been working towards creating such machines, spending billions of pounds in the attempt. And hanging over their efforts has been a challenge set by a British mathematician widely regarded as the father of Al research: Alan Turing. During the 1930s Turing showed, in theory at least, that a "universal machine" could be built, capa¬ ble of performing all the tasks of any special-purpose computing machine. After war-time work on code-breaking, Turing helped to turn his discovery into the reality of an electronic computer. But he also believed his proof meant that computers could the action of the human mind. In 1951, a few years before his mysterious suicide at the age of 41, Turing published a prediction: by the end of the century, computers would be able to hold a five-minute conversation with humans and 30 per cent of them into believing they were dealing with another human being. It is a that has come and gone, along with huge amounts of funding. Yet no computer is remotely close to passing the "Turing Test". What went wrong? Why has no one succeeded in cre¬ ating Al? In fact, Al is already here, earning its keep in banks, airports, hospitals, factories - even your own home and car. It may not be quite what many were led to expect, but then the story of real-life Al is one of misplaced dreams, bitter and grant-grabbing Today's computer scientists are divided into two broad on the issue of Al. The pragmatists see Al as a means to creating machines that do for thinking what engines have done for physical labor - taking on tasks we humans would prefer not to do: spending endless hours looking out for intruders on CC-TV, say, or scouring heaps of market data for trends or scanning piles of medical images for signs of disease. Then there are the visionaries, still wedded to Turing's challenge and trying to bring the sci-fi image to life. For them Al is all about computerized "assistants" that solve your printer problems and cheeky-chappy robots that talk to strangers. There are some who even see Al as the route to under¬ standing the workings of the human mind. Without doubt, it is the visionaries who have done most to get Al research on TV shows such as Tomorrow's World. It is the pragmatists, however, who have got Al out of the door and into suc¬ cessful applications: the neural network cooking controls of microwave ovens, for example, or the expert system that vets credit card transactions. When current Al technology is pushed closer to its sci-fi image, the results can be more irritating than impressive: witness Microsoft's Paperclip assistant, and the Al-based "help-desks" of some high-tech companies. Even now, 50 years after work began on intelligent machine, only the bravest customers trust the automated telephone ticketing system at their local cinema. Even so, visionary Al researchers working away from the mainstream have some striking achievements. Herbert Simon's 1957 prediction that a computer would make a mathematical dis¬ covery came to pass 20 years later, when a logic-based program named AM, developed by Douglas Lenat at Stanford University, discovered that every even number greater than four seemed to be the sum of two odd primes. In fact, AM had been pipped to this discovery by the Prussian mathemati¬ 57
cian Christian Goldbach in the 18th century; nevertheless the rediscovery of "Goldbach's Conjec¬ ture" by AM caused a stir within the Al community. Simon's prediction that a computer would become world chess champion also came to pass - in a manner of speaking - in 1997 when IBM's Deep Blue computer beat Garry Kasparov, the greatest human exponent of the game. Most likely it will be one of the Al visionaries who finally creates a computer that passes Turing's 50-year-old test. For many in the Al community, however, beating the Turing Test is viewed as lit¬ tle more than a party trick. They are hard at work addressing far more basic issues in Al - like con¬ vincing computers to hand over the cinema tickets you've paid for. Vocabulary Practice 2 Match the highlighted words in the passage with their synonyms below: • time limit • disputes • groups • publicity • imitate • trick • achieved • creates in the mind Text Analysis 3 What do the underlined phrases in the text mean? Discuss in pairs. Discussion 4 In groups, discuss what applications of artificial intelligence you would like to see in the future. Think about: • education • work • entertainment • homes • travel • medicine • finance Reading - Two 1 a. You will read an article about experiencing difficulties while using computers. Be¬ fore you read, discuss the following: 1 Look at the title of the article. What do you think it refers to? Read the first paragraph to see if you were right. 2 Do you ever become frustrated while using computers or other technological devices (e g mobile phones)? How do you react Tell the class. 58
b. Now read the article. For questions 1-15 choose from the sections A- D. Which section(s) mention the following? • Many users feel threatened by the alien quality of technology. • Almost half of all computer projects cost more than expected. • Techies and users tend to blame each other for computer systems falling. • Users believe techies and privies to certain knowledge. • People’s ambivalent attitude towards computers is often humorously depicted. • Techies suffer from a reputation for being arrogant. • Users lack concentration to learn to use new technology. • Techies enjoy new technology regardless of how impractical it might be. • Technology can b used as an excuse for uncompleted work. • Computers increase productivity. • Technical support people do not accept criticism easily. • Few can claim that they’ve never had the desire to damage their computer. 1 . 2 . -■> J . 4 . 5 . 6 . 7 . 8 . 10 11 12 13 9 ... 14 • Technology is often the subject of negative discussions at work 15 The Day of Flying Keyboard A Tracy Sullivan remembers well the day of the flying keyboard. As a summer intern for an American she encountered a co-worker who had a love-hate relationship with his computer. “If things were not going well, he would argue with the computer and hit it,” she recalls. “One day, something really upset him. I saw the keyboard go sailing past my door and crash on the floor a few feet away.” Don’t laugh! Most of you have yearned to do the very same thing at some point or other. Your computer freezes in the middle of an important presentation. Or there’s a blackout and you lose the report that you’ve been for hours. Or your entire project fails be¬ cause the technical support people, or techies as they are called, are more interested in play¬ ing with shiny new technology than installing systems which will deal with your needs. While technology certainly increases workplace output - and the prospect of working with¬ out computers is, well, unthinkable - there’s no denying that it carries with it a certain hint of impending trouble. The network goes down. The cell phone blinks a cheeky “Wait for Ser¬ vice” message. Your Palm Pilot battery dies. And you begin to get very, very angry. That frustration with technology tends to go hand-in-hand with a frustration with the people who runit, so it’s not surprising that business folk love to blame the techies for their technology “There s a near total lack of respect between users and the techies,” says Will Calmas, a psychologist and business coach. В Somehow, technology has become both an ally and a “My computer crashed” is "The dog ate my homework” of the digital age. In fact, our conflicting emotions regarding technology is by now the stuff of popular culture. Scott Adams, creator of the popular comic strip Dilbert, has built a small empire illustrating the daily hostilities between humans and technology. Even the hugely famous comedy show Saturday Night Live has a recurring sketch featuring Jimmy Fallon as Nick Burns, Your Company's Computer Guy. Employees cower and stutter out their network problems, while the Burns marvels at their in¬ eptitude. 59
But frustration with technology isn’t just the stuff of comedy. A 1999 study of network managers by Concord Communications, found that 83 percent of respondents had horror sto¬ ries to share about abusive acts toward computers. Network managers in the survey de¬ scribed broken mice, shattered monitors and kicked-in hard drives - all by-products of dis¬ gruntled users. There's even a name for it: technology rage. Many experts its origins to the simplest of all causes: fear. One very human trait is to fear the unknown - or to fear being thought a fool. With technology, People who are just learning about computers often feel stupid and intimidated, points out Michelle Weil, author of Techno Stress and an expert in the psychology of technology. And because of its slightly foreign and intimidating aura, technology does an absolutely beautiful job of translating fear into anger. C Is this love-hate attitude justified? The answer is an overwhelming “sometimes”. “In reality, more than half of all TT projects fail completely,” says Ravi Ganesan, CEO of SingleSignOn. In fact, the numbers may be even higher. A study examined 400 IT projects from companies of various sizes and found that only 28 percent were successful; 49 percent were over-budget, took longer than expected or had fewer features or functions than origi¬ nally promised; and 23 percent failed altogether. It’s no wonder, then, that technology takes up a generous slice of cynical office conversa¬ tions. For example, one former employee of a leading food company remembers the | of a $2 million financial management system that ultimately chaos and resulted in the firing of the Chief Financial Officer. “We even had a naming party," the employee re¬ calls “I don’t know what we eventually called it - Pain in the Neck, or something.” When an IT project fails, it requires only a short mental hop to blame the technical support department. They are, after all, the people who keep all that machinery running. The prob¬ lem is only made worse by the traditional gap that exists between users and technology folk. IT-business relations often suffer from an assumption - or not - that IT people hold a secret store of knowledge that business people can’t access. “There are all too many network managers who consider themselves to be superior to every¬ one else in the company," agrees Andrew Rudin, partner of an IT consultancy firm. “Telling them about problems is the equivalent of telling them there is something wrong with their child." Eric Lane, president of Men’s Wearhouse, wonders whether his company’s technical sup¬ port staff try to introduce new technology just because they think it's cool. “Sometimes the technology people inside Men’s Wearhouse are simply reacting to propaganda," he says. He theorizes that technology people are like crows - attracted to bright objects without having proof of real benefits. D The techies naturally fight back. For example, Dean Levy, the executive vice president of systems director at Men’s Warehouse, thinks users are too resistant to the change wrought by technology projects. “Sometimes it comes from miscommunication. More often it comes from technophobia,” he says. Then there is the fact - go on, admit it - that non-techies are often unwilling to put in the time to learn new technology. Once senior management decides to learn a new technology, he says, they find that it’s much more complicated than expected, “ft requires a amount of focus,” Levy says, “and most of them just don’t have enough of it.” Such mutual finger-pointing naturally stirs up a potent brew of blame, defensiveness and anger. And not surprisingly, it only fuels the frustration that we have with the machinery it¬ 60
self. In the end, it’s hard to tell the real root cause of our love- hate relationship with tech¬ nology. Whatever the reasons, the results can be by turns irritating, frustrating and devastat¬ ing. And though flying keyboards can often be funny, the consequences might not be. Vocabulary Practice 2 In your own words, explain the highlighted terms. Text Analysis 3 In your own words, say what the writer means by the following: 1 “people who run it”. 2 “My computer crashed" is “The dog ate my homework” of the digital age. 3 "... technology takes up a generous slice of cynical office conversations.” 4 "Telling them about problems is the equivalent of telling them there is something wrong with their child.” 5 “Such mutual finger-pointing naturally strips up a potent brew of blame, defensive¬ ness and anger Discussion 4 a) Work in pairs. Based on the information in the text and adding your own details, prepare and act out a conversation between a “techie” and a computer user. b) How do you understand the expression ‘love-hate relationship’? How do you treat your computer? Can you justify the ‘technology rage’? How do you understand it? Language Focus Advances in Technology 1 a. Underline the correct word/phrase in the sentences. 1 My new cellular phone allows me to send (faxes, text messages, telegrams) anywhere within the country and abroad. 2 Don't forget to turn on the (printer, modem, monitor) if you want to go on-line. 3 The advent of (endoscopic surgery, telemedicine, antibiotics) has greatly reduced the post-operative recovery time of most patients. 4 Supermarkets of the future will make use of (scanners, smart cards, personal organ¬ izers) to read the contents of your trolley and total up your bill. 5 Factories which rely on humans working on (assembly lines, conveyor belts, pro¬ cessing equipment) are becoming a thing of the past. 6 You would be quite astounded by the number of (satellites, space capsules, landing craft) orbiting the Earth. 7 Not only would a (nuclear, solar, diesel) powered vehicle be safe, it would also make 61
use of one of the planet's greatest natural resources. b. What fields of technology are the sets of words related to? Choose from the list be¬ low: • medical • information technology • space • industrial • energy • electronics • communications 2 Which of the following items are part of a computer (PC), an airplane (A), a car (С)? Mark them accordingly. keyboard PC jet engine ignition monitor expansion port landing gear clutch graphics card tail wings steering wheel hard drive gearstick cockpit fuselage brakes accelerator central processor unit (CPU) 3 a. What do the following words mean in everyday context, and what do they mean in the context of computing? • crash • terminal • hack load • navigator • update • web • wallpaper • mouse wizard b. Now, in pairs, ask and answer the questions: 1 Do you own a computer? Do you have access to the Internet? 2 How often do you use your computer? What do you use it for? 3 Do you know how to download/delete files? Describe the procedure to your part¬ ner. 4 Have you ever crashed your computer? What happened? 5 Has your computer ever had a virus? What did you do? 6 Do you think computers are a good or bad thing? 4 Fill in the gaps in the sentences using words/phrases from the list below: • stressful lifestyle • traffic congestion • urban sprawl • extreme weather changes 62
• nuclear power • fast food • unemployment • impersonal service • biological weapons • space junk • GM foods • consumer society 1 I'm terribly sorry I'm late but traffic congestion in and around the city just keeps get¬ ting worse. 2 The recent increase in in the area can be explained by the new automated car plant that has just opened. 3 After a little more than forty years, we have seriously polluted the final frontier with and other debris. 4 We live in a where we find it easier to throw away something that is broken rather than get it fixed. 5 Many teenagers would prefer to go out with their friends for than sit down to a meal with their family. 6 Looking out the airplane window I could see that the unsightly of the city had spread far into the desert. 7 Although the prices at the new shopping complex may be lower, the there keeps me going back to my local market. 8 The government has refused to pass a law which states that all must be clearly marked. 9 It is well known that many countries are hiding stores of potentially lethal 10 Her caused her to suffer from both mental and physical ailments. 11 The we've been having are wreaking havoc on crop production in most parts of the world. 12 could be extremely dangerous if it were to fall into the wrong hands. 5 a. Match the adjectives to the pairs of nouns to form collocations. A В technological inquiry/joumal automated stage/research new age warfare/era scientific factory/appliances high-tech voice discs/camera experimental expl oration/stati on space philosophy/travelers digital gadgetry/industry b. Now, use the collocations to complete the sentences. Use the remaining colloca¬ tions to make up sentences of your own. 63
1 Originally, the Russian , MIR, was sup¬ posed to last for five years, but in fact it remained in operation for fourteen. 2 Professor Smith has recently had his findings published in a prominent 3 This is the product prototype; as you can see, it is still at the 4 has put an end to the use of conventional weapons and traditional battle strategies. 5 Supposedly, , or DVDs as they are called, are far more resistant to scratching than records. 6 People looking for meaning in today’s confusing modem world often immerse themselves in 6 Make collocations with data, components and connection, then use some of them to fill the gaps in the sentences that follow: incoming unsaved main establish a ~ data components , connection internal additional outgoing hardware hinh-cnpprl 1 The storm made it difficult to , so we had limited access to the Internet today. 2 If your computer crashes unexpectedly, you will lose all so remember to save your work regularly. 3 The of a standard computer are the keyboard, the mouse, the monitor and the central unit. 4 Modem computers will recognize as soon as you con¬ nect them, without you having to do anything else. 5 Every time you download something off the Internet, your modem starts converting and storing 64
7 Match A to В to form collocations, then use them to fill the gaps in the sentences that follow (write two words in each gap): Mobilejphones A space on-board mission A В mouse chip silicon drive floppy mat В computers control station 1 Your mouse will work on any surface but, ideally, you should use a 2 The invention of the meant that computers advanced at an unprecedented rate. 3 Put the disk in your and save the file onto it; this way you can use it on any other computer. 4 All mobile phones have a feature which lets you see who's calling you before you answer. 5 A(n) lets you see exactly how much each phone call cost you. 6 My mobile has gone dead, and I’ve left my at home; can I borrow yours? 7 The astronauts will be transported to the tomor¬ row, and will spend the next two months there. 8 The captain made some calculations on the and saw that he had just enough fuel to get back to Earth. 9 As soon as they spotted the problem with the trajectory, told the crew of the space shuttle to turn back. 8 Underline the correct word / phrase. 1 Inside a computer you will find several circuit boards / panels / plaques. 2 When you save your work on a computer, it is stored on one of its storage devices / equipment / tools - the hard disk, the floppy drive or the CD- ROM. 3 It's a mobile phone, but it can be used as a walkie-talkie, too. It's quite an interesting little model / gadget / fragment. 4 A laptop is easy to carry with you, but it's not as powerful as a proper desktop / desk / office computer. 65
5 A word processor is a software application / appliance / apparatus which helps you type, format and edit texts. 6 Before attempting any repairs, make sure you have cut off the power supply / pro¬ vider / source. 7 Text / Passage / Letter messaging has gained popularity over the last few years, be¬ coming one of the most common forms of communication. 8 I’m sorry I couldn’t take your call before; the sign / signal / mark on my phone was too weak. 9 Fill in: make, hold, have or do. 1 field; 3 an important discovery; 5 6 life 9 10 11 12 advances in one's experimental work; 2 a successful mission; 4 an important observation; ground-breaking research; 7 a changing experience; 8 evidence of sth; demonstration; the better; project; a change a an international conference. for scientific a 10 Underline the correct word. 1 A lot of technological changes have happened in re- cent/modern/contemporary/latest years. 2 Operate/Push/Vibrate/EfTect the machinery carefully. 3 The company offers a group/collection/duster/range of word processing packages. 4 The company's motto reflects/conveys/infers/proves the owners' policy. 5 One of the company's major concerns/troubles/cares/ bothers is to make the prod¬ uct sell in lots of markets. 6 All files are confined/stocked/reserved/stored in cabinets. 7 The company's personnel is highly/considerably/vastly/ supremely trained. 8 Please keep/hold/take/carry in mind that you must answer all questions. 9 This machinery is rather elderly/unfashionable/aged/ outdated. 10 Following his advice will do you a lot of advantage/good/ gain/benefit. 11 Replace the underlined parts of the sentences with one of the fixed phrases below: • in the long run • in fact • in spite of • in brief • in light of • in private • in person • in writing • in any event • in case 1 Personally, I believe that what someone does behind closed doors is really none of my business. 2 Anyway, the talk on the importance of further space exploration proved quite interest¬ ing. 66
3 Because of the latest survey results, we've decided to fund the upcoming program. 4 Initially, recycling seemed quite bothersome, but eventually everybody got used to do¬ ing it. 5 To put it in as few words as possible, I've decided to resign my position as head of re¬ search. 6 Before I agree to anything, I want to see the contract in black and white. Listening &Speaking Listening Extract One a. You will hear five people talking about technological devices that they use in their work. Before you listen, go through the list of jobs in Task 1 and think of the kinds of devices these professionals might use in the course of their work. b. Now listen to the recoding and complete tasks below. Task 1 For questions 1-5, choose from the list (A-H) the person who is speaking A a pilot В a nurse C a flying instructor 1 □ D a police officer 2D E a secretary 3 □ F a doctor 4D G a businessman 5 □ H a research student Task 2 For questions 6-10, choose from the list (A-H) the comment each speaker makes about us¬ ing the device in the course of their work. A I use it as an organizational tool. 6D В C It effectively replaces my vision. I can recreate conditions which exist in a real life situation. 7D D E It allows me to retain contact with friends and family. It performs complicated surgical operations. 8D F It can conduct advanced statistical calculations. 9D G H I can use my expertise to offer practical help at a distance. It removes the need for administrative staff. 10 □ c. Is there a device you use daily to help you work / study? What is it? What does it do, and what difference does it make to your work? Tell your partner. 67
Extract Two a. You will listen to a talk about energy conservation. Before you listen, discuss the following: 1 Why is it important not to waste energy? Think about a) cost, b) the environ¬ ment. 2 What ways are there to conserve energy at home? 3 Look at the questions in Ex.lb. What kind of information is missing from each gap? b. Now listen to the recording. For questions 1-8, complete the sentences. Lighting constitutes (1 ) of electricity bills. If you replace your 100-watt bulbs with 75-watt bulbs, you will (2 ) Employ a (3 ) to maintain your heating system. To increase the efficiency of your heating system, you should check that air filters are not dirty or (4 ) Installing a low-flow shower head in your bathroom reduces water usage by (5 ) In the kitchen choose to use (6 ) as larger ones take longer to heat up. It’s a good idea to (7 ) food items in your refrigerator and always to keep them in the same place. Keep your freezer (8 ) of food as it works more efficiently this way. c. Apart from conserving energy, what other things can we do every day to help the environment? Extract Three a You will hear a radio news report about “Google”, a popular Internet search engine. Before you listen, look at questions 1-8 and in pairs try to predict what kind of information might be needed to complete the gaps. b. Now listen to the report. For questions 1-8, complete the sentences below: Even the computer giant Microsoft is (1) of Google’s suc¬ cess. Two students from Stanford University (2) Google. 68
For its success, Google relied on word of mouth, which is one of the oldest methods of (3) a product. Google is now the official (4) engine for the world’s top service provider, America Online. The reporter mentions a professor, working in the (5) who was not engaged in serious research but just browsing the Internet. Like some other well-known brand names, it is now often spelt without a (6) letter. The reporter says that browsing the Internet is like (7) the covers of old books. “Google is a variant spelling of “googol”, a tern invented by a mathematician’s (8) more than sixty years ago. c. Have you ever used Google? What do you think of it? Tell your partner. d. What other famous and very successful products do you know ? Why do you think they’re successful? Discuss it in pairs. Speaking 1 Discuss the following questions together: 1 Do you believe that technology is improving our lives? 2 How do you think technology will advance over the next fifty years? 3 What do you think of computers in schools? 4 Do you feel that mobile phones are necessary? 2 a. Complete the questionnaire according to your beliefs about the future. For each statement, evaluate its likelihood by writing a number in the space next to it (0 = highly unlikely, 10 - bound to happen). Life in 2050 EDUCATION 1 Teachers will be replaced by computers. 2 The playground will be used less and less as computers provide playtime for pupils. 3 Each pupil / student will have all the books he/she needs stored on a palmtop computer. 69
WORK 4 People will work from home and submit their work in electronic form through the In¬ ternet. 5 Manual work will be carried out by robots under human supervision. 6 Employees will be closely monitored and evaluated by computerized managers. HOME 7 All housework, including cooking, will be done by robots. 8 All homes will be solar-powered. HEALTH 9 People will live on average of 125 years. 10 All surgery will be bloodless. 11 The cure for cancer will have been discovered. b. Compare your answers with those of your partner. Which points do you agree on / disagree about? c What will the following things be like in 2050? In pairs, think of your own predic¬ tions and discuss them. □ entertainment □ food □ transport □ the environment 3 Career Success a. Think of your future career and look at the following factors which may be im¬ portant for career success. Tick a maximum of three in each group which you con¬ sider absolutely necessary. background • social background • financial background • influential acquaintances • well-rounded education • relevant experience • qualifications • supportive family • experience of other cultures people’s skills • positive image • popularity among colleagues • sensitivity to others’ feelings • team spirit • competitive spirit • ability to delegate • willingness to compromise 70
• having contact with superiors other personal qualities • ability to seize opportunities • ambition • determination • flexibility • powers of intuition • persistence • enjoy challenges • attractive appearance • charisma • self-motivation • natural talent • ruthlessness • foresight b. Read the short biography of Steve Jobs below. Which of the qualities in Ex. 3a did he have? Which didn’t he have? Steven Paul Jobs was bom in California, USA, on 24 February, 1955. In the 1974 he dropped out of college to work as a video game designer. His aim was to save enough mon¬ ey to go to India and experience Buddhism. Back in the US in the autumn of 1974, Jobs went into business with his high-school friend Stephen Wozniak. Jobs understood that computers would appeal to a broad audience. Although he had long, unkempt hair and dressed casually, he managed to obtain finance for his first marketable computer, the Apple II, in 1977. Apple Inc. was formed and met with immediate success. Seven years later, Jobs introduced the Macintosh computer in a brilliantly choreo¬ graphed demonstration that he gave himself. However, the sales of the first Macs were dis¬ appointing. This led to tensions in the company, and in 1985 he resigned. In 1986, Jobs bought Pixar Animation Studios. Over the following decade he built Pixar into a large corporation that, among other achievements, produced the first full-length film to be completely computer-animated, Toy Story, in 1995. In late 1996, Apple, saddled by huge financial losses and on the verge of collapse, asked Jobs to come back. He accepted, and quickly engineered an award-winning advertising campaign that urged customers to “think different’ and buy Macintoshes. In 1998, he intro¬ duces the iMac, an egg-shaped computer that offered high-speed processing at a reasonable price. It was an instant success. Steve Jobs had saved his company and, in the process, re¬ established himself as a master high-technology marketer. c. Which of the qualities from Ex. 3a do you believe you have? Tell your partner. 71
Use of English Future Forms Grammar Reference (p. 121) 1 Look at the sentences 1-11. Which talks about: a an offer? b an on-the-spot decision? c an intention? d a plan for which arrangements have been made? e a prediction based on evidence? f a personal belief about the future? g a time-tabled arrangement? h an assumption about the present? i something that will happen very soon? j something completed in the future? к an action that will be in progress at a certain point in the future? 1 What time does your plane leave? 2 I’ll carry those bags for you. 3 It’s clouding over. I think it’s going to rain. 4 1 think 1’11 order a pizza. 5 I’ll have finished by 6 o’clock. 6 I’m leaving in May. 7 This time tomorrow I’ll be driving to Nottingham. 8 I think the Rovers will lose tomorrow. 9 She’s about to go out. 10 No point in calling her now; she’ll be sleeping. 11 I’m going to move house in May. 72
2 Complete each of the following sentences with a short phrase using the most appropriate future form. 1 If you want something from the supermarket, tell Anna. to go shopping. 2 Unless we do something to persuade him to stay, resign from the chair. 3 One can never be sure, but I think Alex .. in the end. 4 He has already signed a contract with another company. in December. 5 The last bus went by half an hour ago, but don’t worry, in my car. 6 The train , so we still have a couple of hours to wait. 7 Look at the way he’s climbing up and dawn that tree if he’s not careful. 8 I’d love to come to your party, but on a business trip on Friday. 3 Complete each of the following sentences with a short phrase using the most appropri¬ ate future form. 1 Do you know if Terry at the party on Saturday? 2 I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard there a gen¬ eral strike next Wednesday. 3 Sally said the food was so bad, she to that res¬ taurant ever again. 4 Jean and I lunch tomorrow if you want to join us. 5 Sarah can’t make it until around 9, she Late tonight at the office. 6 This time next week I on a beach in the Baha¬ mas. 7 I’m tired, 1 think to bed. 8 By June, 1 enough money to go on holiday. 73
4 Underline the phrases which imply future in sentences 1 to 4. 1 Mark is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. 2 You are to remain in this room until your name is called over the intercom. 3 Works on the stadium are due to start in July. 4 Unless he works very hard, he is bound to fail the exam. 5 Complete the conversations. Use the correct form of the words in the box. be / about / make be/ due / open be/ on the point of / call hope / find hope / have intend / finish intend / pay not be / come— not be / due / arrive not plan / go A: You’ve got school tomorrow so you (0) are not to come home any later than ten. B: Oh, all right. A: I hear you’re expecting a baby. Congratulations! B: Thank you. My husband (1) a girl this time but I don’t mind as long as it’s healthy. And now there’s another baby on the way, we’re moving into a bigger house. A: That’s a big decision. Have you seen anywhere you like? B: Yes. In fact, we (2) an offer for a house near where we live now. A: We’ve been waiting for ages. What time is the bus supposed to be here? B: I’m afraid it (3) for another twenty minutes. A: I’m so cold I (4) a taxi. What do you think? В: I don’t mind. But now (5) you ? I don’t have that much money with me. A: What’s happening with the new hospital? B: Well, they say it (6) next month but I don’t think that’s likely. 74
A: I think you’re right. I’m sure everyone (7) projects like these on time but they never do. A: What are you going to do next year when you finish college? B: Well, I (8) a job. I (9) to university for at least another year. Writing In this module you will be given the tasks of academic writing for you to get ready to deal with scientific sources and to help you to write a research paper in your major. To collect infor¬ mation for your research paper experienced researchers know that a better strategy is to take notes that combine summary and paraphrase with direct quotation. By doing so, they make sure they understand both the material and its relevance to their research. This in turn makes it possi¬ ble for them to synthesize their sources by combining borrowed material with their own ideas in an original and coherent piece of writing. There are four ways to use information from outside sources - summarizing, paraphrasing, quoting, and synthesizing. Taking Your Notes (1) Writing a Summary A summary is a brief restatement in your own words of the main ideas of a passage, article, or book. When you write a summary, you condense the writer’s ideas into a few concise sentenc¬ es, taking care not to misprint his or her views. You do not, however, include your own inter¬ pretations or opinions of the writer’s ideas. A summary is always much shorter than the original because it omits the examples, analogies, and rhetorical strategies that writers use to add emphasis and interest. Here are some steps in writing a summary 1 Skim the text, noting in your mind the subheadings. If there are no subheadings, try to di¬ vide the text into sections. (It can comprise one or more paragraphs). 2 Determine what type of text you are dealing with, that is the genre of the source text (e.g., a research paper) or perhaps the organization (problem-solution or generic -specific). This can help you to identify important information and focus your reading strategies. 3 Read the text, highlighting important information or taking notes. 4 Write a one -sentence restatement of the main idea. This is your thesis statement. 5 Draft your summary, beginning with this sentence. Use your own words, not the words or phrasing of the source. Include quotation marks where necessary; if you do not do so, you will be committing plagiarism. ( Plagiarism is best defined as a deliberate conscious copy¬ ing from the work of others). 6 Try to write a one-sentence summary of each section. This is your topic sentence. 7 Write down the key support points for the main topic, but include minor details only if necessary. 75
8 Revise your summary, making sure that it accurately reflects the source and that you have not included any of your own ideas or opinions. 9 Add transitions where necessary. 10 Conclude with a “summing up” sentence by stating what can be learned from reading the text. But do not express your opinion or your evaluation of the source. 11 Add appropriate documentation for all direct quotations, opinions, judgment, and insights of others to identify the source you have summarized. The Process of Summarizing 1. After reading the passage, delete all sentences that are merely elaborations of topic sentenc¬ es. These are usually definitions, reasons, results, examples, and elaborations. 2. From what remains delete all unnecessary clauses and phrases. 3. From what remains delete all extraneous lexis (usually adverbs and adjectives). 4. Replace, as far as possible, the remaining words with the student’s own expressions. 5. Count the number of words and, if it is around the required number, rewrite a “fair “copy.( if it is still far too long, steps one to four are repeated) How to Write a Good Summary There are three keys to writing a good summary: 1. Use your own words and your own sentence structure. 2 Remember that a summary is much shorter than a paraphrase. Include only the main points, leaving out most details. 3 Do not change the meaning of the original. Before summarizing or paraphrasing, you will have to annotate a text. Annotating a text involves underlining, writing symbols, taking notes in the margins as you read. The follow¬ ing are popular techniques to use: Write questions you have about the text. Make connections to your own knowledge and life experience. Summarize main ideas in only a few words. Use symbols to save space. Number the steps in a process, supporting details or examples, key points, and so on. Practice Task One The article” Selling Cities: Promoting New Images for Meeting Tourism” by Badley, Hall and Harrison, 2002. has been annotated using above listed techniques. Pay atten¬ tion to the margins and the parts that have been underlined. Do you agree with the left¬ handed notes? 76
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 И Meetings tourism, which we define as travel associated with attendance at corporate or association meetings, confer¬ ences. conventions or congresses or public trade exhibitions, has emerged as a significant subsection of the tourist indus¬ try both in the terms of volume of travel and expenditure generated. Meetings tourism may not be such a well known term, so I should include the definition along with something about its importance “Meetings” demonstrate enormous variety, ranging from small business meetings of a few participants to large conventions of, for example, professional associations which might at¬ tract in excess of 20,000 delegates. The range of locations within which these meetings take place is also broad, including such sites as hotels, universities, sports venues, and specially built convention centers. The meetings tourism market has been vigorously pursued bv many former industrial cities in Europe and the U.S, as part of their strategies of post-industrial urban regeneration. This market offers a number of obvious attractions to such cities, not least the rapidity of its growth during the 1970s and 1980s, the very period during which many cities were suffering contractions in their industrial base. Figures for the U.S.A, suggest the business conference industry almost doubled during the 1980s. The growth is particularly marked for international confer¬ ences. which bring the greatest financial returns for host cit- ies. In many European cities the economic contributions of busi¬ ness tourism outweigh those from leisure tourism bv two to three times. Why is meetings tourism important? This seems like good support for the idea of why meetings tourism is important - even more than regular tourism making it both a seemingly appropriate and rewarding sector for former manufacturing cities to pursue. Meetings tourists are high spending and hence the market is able to generate high levels of investment in cities and re¬ gions. This explains the impact of the spending by meet¬ ings tourists. Although the myth of the bottomless expense account is somewhat exaggerated, meetings tourists are major users of the entertainment and accommodation facilities of the locations they visit It has been estimated, for example, that the International Ro¬ tary Meeting at the International Convention Center in Bir¬ mingham, U.K,, attracted 23,000 delegates resulting in spending of almost $40 million in the city during the meet¬ ing. spending of almost $40 million in the city during the meeting, much of which remained in the local market. The specific example of how much meetings tourists spend is helpful. 77
12 The potential for direct and indirect iob creation associ¬ ated with meetings tourism has been recognized as high. Here is a specific exam¬ ple of what the money generated by meetings tourism can do for a city 13 A study of the potential job creation effects of a convention center in Birmingham, U.K., was crucial to the decision by the local authority to pursue the development. 14 The study estimated that while only 125 jobs would be created directly in the center itself, almost 2,000 indirect jobs would result from its development. 15 Success in this market also brings a number of nonfinancial rewards associated with image and profile enhancement, the improvement to decaying districts and city center landscapes and the generation of civic pride among residents. This is another example of the impact of meet¬ ings tourism money 16 The zeal with which some cities have developed facilities to attract meetings tourists during the 1980s suggests that it was seen as something of a panacea (a remedy or solution for all problems) for the problems that had come to affect them. 17 However, the pursuit of the meetings tourist market certainly incurs costs, for example, the long-term financial burden on local authorities both to cover the costs of construction and to service the typical year-on-year financial deficits of such facilities. 18 It also brings with it potential problems, such as a vulnera¬ bility to cut back during recession and the fact that at nation¬ al levels, and sometimes regional levels, the competition be- tween cities for meetings often results in enough profits to just cover expenses. 19 Despite potential risks, many city governments see meetings tourism as a good way to make the transition into a post¬ industrial economy. It’s good to highlight the potential negative side of meetings tourism to provide a somewhat balanced discussion. More on the potential drawbacks. Overall it seems that meetings tourism is a good market for cities to pursue. This conclusion is important. (Adapted from Bradley, Hall, and Harrison, 2002) Here is a draft summary in response to the questions and the notes taken in the process of working at this text. Draft Summary 1 Meetings tourism is travel associated with attendance at corporate or association meetings, conferences, conventions, or congresses or public or trade exhibitions.2 It has become a significant subsection of the tourist industry both in terms of the number of tourists and the money they spend. 78
3 The meetings tourism market has been vigorously pursued by many for¬ mer industrial cities that are aiming for urban regeneration.4 The meet¬ ings tourism market offers attractions to such cities, especially its growth during the 1970s and 1980s, when many cities were suffering from eco¬ nomic problems with their industrial base. 5 The expansion in meetings tourism is especially outstanding for international conferences, which get the highest economic reward for entertaining cities. 6 In many European cities the economic profits of business tourism are two to three times greater than those from leisure tourism. 7 Because meetings tourists spend a lot of money, cities have funds to heavily invest in themselves. 8 Meetings tourism has the potential for di¬ rect and indirect job creation. 9 One study estimated that jobs can be cre¬ ated directly indirectly from its development.10 Apart from generating funds, meetings tourism can also improve image and profile enhancement, improve decaying districts and city center landscapes, and generate civic pride among residents. 11 However, the meetings tourist market certainly takes some risk be¬ cause cities have to pay for the construction and upkeep of facilities, a weak economy, and competition from other cities. 12 For example, there may not be a profit. 13 Many city governments see meetings tourism as a good way to make the transition into a post-industrial economy. This is perhaps a reasonable beginning. The writer has retained the important parts of the text. Most of the sentences are short, as we would expect in a summary. However, this summary has three weaknesses. 1. It is probably a bit too long. The original contains 560 words, and the summary contains 335. It could be condensedfurther without any loss of meaning. 2. For the most part too much of the text is written in the words of the original, although no whole sections were borrowed. It may very well be an example of plagiarism - work copied from a source without proper attribution. Notice that sentence 1 in the summary is very close to the first highlighted part of the original, sentences 2 and 3 use many of the same expressions as in the original, and so on. 3. The draft does not display a high level of understanding of the source passage. While it does show that the writer can pull out important in¬ formation, it does not convince the reader that the summary writer understands the information and how it is interrelated. Overall, although this summary is a reasonable draft, it needs more work before it can be submitted as a written assignment. Now, let us consider how this summary could be improved. One obvious approach would be to par¬ aphrase the original. A paraphrase is a restatement (in your own words) of the ideas of the original. The most common strategy used to accomplish this involves replacing words in the source with synonyms and perhaps changing the grammar. Look again at sentence 4. 79
4. The meetings tourism market has been vigorously pursued by many former industrial cities in Europe and the U.S. as part of their strate¬ gies of post-industrial urban regeneration. A full paraphrase of this could be: Many cities in the U.S. and Europe that once relied on heavy industry are now trying to revitalize themselves by developing a meetings tourism in¬ dustry. Note here that the language has been completely changed, although the sense of the original is fully maintained. A paraphrase approach to summarizing can be successful, but if you feel that your paraphrasing ability is not so strong, you can from time to time copy some material and place it in quotation marks; however, a better but more difficult strategy would be to carefully consider the elements you have identified as important, put the original away, and write down what you have understood. This may allow you to condense the ideas in the source even further. Most summaries have a sentence near the beginning that contains two elements: the source and the main idea. According to Bradley et al., (2002) meeting tourism can have an enormous effect on the economy of a city. Young and Song’s 2004paper on fluoridation discusses (main idea) Bernstein (2004) states that (main idea) claims reports In Tyson’s article “Mapping Dark Material with Gravitational Lenses, ” (main idea) There is a range of reporting verbs that you may use when referring to your source material. describe recommend claim assume propose theorize support examine 80
Try to avoid using ‘mention ’in summaries because mention is used for information that was most likely given without detail or support. In a longer summary, you may want to remind your reader what you are summarizing. The author goes on to say that The article further states that (Author’s name here) also maintains\argues that (Author’s name here)concludes that In the second half of the paper, (author's name here) presents When you do mention the author in the middle and\or the end of the summary, be sure to use the surname only. Bradley et al. also believe that Some of the following sentence connectors may be useful in introducing additional information. additionally, also, further, in addition to, furthermore, moreover. Here is the second draft of the summary of the “Selling Cities” passage. You would improve it a little by adding reminder phrases. Think where you would insert them. (1) According to Bradley et al., meeting tourism refers to “travel associ¬ ated with attendance at a corporate or association meeting, conference, convention, or exhibition, or congress or public or trade exhibitions. ” (2) The meeting tourism market has become increasingly important to cit¬ ies that once depended on heavy industry for their economic strength. (3) Interest in meting tourism has grown for three main reasons. (4) First, the average meetings tourist spends two to three times more money than the typical leisure tourist does. (5) If city hosts a “mega’ meeting of tens of thousands of participants , the financial reward can be considerable. (6) Second, meetings tourism can create jobs in a local economy. (7) For ex¬ ample , the meeting facilities require workers, while other jobs may be created in hotels, restaurants, and other entertainment facilities. (8) Fi¬ nally, meetings tourism may lead to cities receiving a “facelift” with land¬ scapes being improved and city centers being revitalized, which may in turn improve civic pride. (9) City improvements may also encourage meetings tourists to return to a host city at a future date for business, pleasure, or even a change in residence. (10) Despite these important advantages, investment in meetings tourism is not risk-free. ( 11) Investment in facilities may impose a long-term fi¬ nancial burden on cities that must face competition from many other cities in the market. (12) Thus, cities may invest heavily in meetings facilities, but may not reap the expected benefit. (13) Despite the potential con¬ cerns, a good meetings tourism strategy has the potential to revive an ail¬ 81
ing post-industrial city. (14) As a result, this industry will likely continue to grow. Task Two Read “Reducing Air Pollution” and try to determine the text-type. Then read the summaries that follow. Decide which of the summaries you like best. Write one or two sentences after each summary explaining what you like or dislike about each. Finally, discuss each of the summaries with a partner. Reducing Air Pollution in Urban Areas: The Role of Urban Planners By Yasufumi Iseki Recently, increasingly significant problems regarding energy use have emerged. Enormous amounts of pollutants are being emitted from power plants, factories, and automobiles, which are worsening the condition of the Earth. This environmental degradation is a clear result of acid rain, increased levels of carbon dioxide (CO 2) in the atmosphere, and other forms of air pollution. Acid rain and air pollution, for instance, are devastating forests, crops, and lakes over wide areas of Europe and North America. In fact, in Europe nearly50 million hectares have been identified as damaged, representing 35% of the total forested area. In the United States, approximately 1,000 acidified and 3,000 marginally acidic lakes have been reported. Since the midcentury, CO 2 levels in the atmosphere have increased by 13%, setting the stage for global warming. As atmospheric temperatures rise, grain output may significantly decrease, making it more difficult for farmers to keep pace with the growth of population. In urban areas, air pollution is taking a toll on buildings and human health. To reduce the amount of environmental damage in cities specifically, developed countries have devised technology to control the harmful emissions. However, as these countries already have an abundance of vehicles that continues to grow in number, the efficacy of these measures is dimin¬ ished. Since cars and other vehicles create more air pollution than any other human activity, the most effective means to reduce pollution is to decrease the number of vehicles. A major shift away from automobile usage in urban areas may be possible with the aid of urban planning. Summaries 1. According to Yasufumi Iseki, air pollution can be controlled through effective urban planning. 2. Yasufumi Iseki in “Reducing Air Pollution in Urban Areas: The Role of Urban Planners ” states that pollutants are worsening the condition of the Earth as a result of acid rain, increased level of CO 2, and other forms of pollution. In fact, 35% of the total forested area in Europe has been damaged, and in the United States, approximately, 1,000 acidified lakes and 3,000marginally acid lakes have been reported. Since the midcentury CO 2 levels have increased by 13%. Cars and other vehicles create more pollution than any other activity; thus, decreasing the number of vehicles is the most effective way to reduce pollution. This may be pos¬ sible with urban planning 3. Yasufumi Iseki in “Reducing Air Pollution Urban Areas: The Role of Urban Planners” states that because cars and other vehicles are the 82
greatest single source of air pollution, a reduction in the number of vehi¬ cles in urban areas would be an effective approach to improving the ur¬ ban environment. This reduction could be achieved through urban plan¬ ning. 4. Yasufumi Iseki in ‘‘Reducing Air Pollution Urban Areas: The Role of Urban Planners ” claims that urban planning can play a role in improving air quality in urban areas by prompting a shift away from heavy vehicle use. This will be difficult to achieve because of the overabundance of ve¬ hicles in developed countries. Task Tree Compare the following three passages. The first is an original source, the second is an unacceptable summary and the third is acceptable summary. Original source: Sudo, Phil, “Freedom of Hate Speech?” Scholastic Update 124. 14, 1992 Today, the First Amendment faces challenges from groups who seek to limit expressions of racism and bigotry. A growing number of legislatures have passed rules against “hate speech” - speech that is offensive on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orienta¬ tion. The rules are intended to promote respect for all people and protect the targets of hurt¬ ful words, gestures or actions. Legal experts fear these rules may wind up diminishing the rights of all citizens. “The bed¬ rock principle of our society is that government may never suppress free speech simply be¬ cause it goes against what the community would like to hear”, says Nadine Strossen, presi¬ dent of the American Civil Liberties Union and professor of constitutional law at New York University Law School. In recent years, for example, the courts have upheld the right of neo-Nazis to march in Jewish neighborhoods; protected cross-burning as a form of free ex¬ pression; and allowed protesters to bum the American Flag. The offensive, ugly, distasteful, or repugnant nature of expression is not reason enough to ban it, courts have said. But advocates of limits on hate speech note that certain kinds of expression fall outside of First Amendment protection. Courts have ruled that “fighting words”-words intended to provoke immediate violence-and speech that creates a clear and present danger are not pro¬ tected forms of expression. As the classic argument goes, freedom of speech does not give you the right ro yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Unacceptable Summary: Today, the First Amendment faces challenges from lots of people. Some of these people are legal experts who want to let Nazis march in Jewish neighborhoods. Other people have the sense to re¬ alize that some kinds of speech outside of First Amendment protection be¬ cause they create and present danger (Sudol7). The unacceptable summary above uses words and phrases from the original without placing them in quotation marks. This use constitutes plagiarism. In addition, the summary expresses its writer’s opinion (“Other people have the sense to realize...”). Compare the unacceptable summary with the acceptable summary. Notice that the acceptable sum¬ mary presents an accurate, objective overview of the original without using its exact language or phrasing. (The one distinctive phrase borrowed from the source is placed within quotation marks.) Acceptable Summary: The right to freedom of speech, guaranteed by the First Amendment, is becoming more difficult to defend. Some people think 83
that stronger laws against the use of “hate speech” weaken the First Amendment. But others argue that some kinds of speech remain exempt from this protection (Sudo 17) Task Four Summarize a scientific text from the journal “ Scientific American”. Follow all the steps that have been discussed in the process of summarizing. As Earth Warms, the Hottest Issue Is Energy By Kenneth Chang Published: November 4, 2009 Suppose that over the next decade or two the forecasts of global warming start to come true. Color has drained from New England’s autumns as maple trees die, and the Baltimore oriole can no longer be found south of Buffalo. The Dust Bowl has returned to the Great Plains, and Arctic ice is melting into open water. Upheavals in weather, the environment and life are accelerating around the world. Then what? If global warming occurs as predicted, there will be no easy way to turn the Earth’s thermostat back down. The best that most scientists would hope for would be to slow and then halt the warm¬ ing, and that would require a top-to-bottom revamping of the world’s energy systems, shifting from fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas to alternatives that in large part do not exist. “We have to face the fact this is an enormous challenge,” said Dr.Martin I. Hoffert, a professor of physics at New York University. But interviews with scientists, environment advocates and industry representatives show that there is no consensus in how to meet that challenge. Some look to the traditional renewable energy sources: solar and wind. Others believe use of fossil fuels will continue, but that carbon dioxide can be captured and then stored underground. The nuclear power industry hopes concern over global warming may help spur a revival. In an article in the journal Science last November, Dr. Hoffert and 17 other experts looked at al¬ ternatives to fossil fuels and found all to have “severe deficiencies in their ability to stabilize global climate” The heart of the problem is carbon dioxide, the main byproduct from the burning of fossil fuels. When the atmosphere is rich in carbon dioxide, heat is trapped, producing a greenhouse effect. Most scientists believe the billions of tons of carbon dioxide released since the start of the Industrial Revolution are in part to blame for the one-degree rise in global temperatures over the past century. Carbon Dioxide concentrations are now 30 percent higher than preindustrial levels. With rising standards in developing nations, emissions of carbon dioxide are increasing, and the pace of warm¬ ing is expected to speed up, too. The scientists believe that technological decisions are possible. Dr. Hoffert said the country needed to embark on an energy research program on the scale of the Manhattan Project that built atomic bomb during World War II or the Apollo program that put men on the moon.“ We should be prepared to invest several hundred billion dollars in the next 10 to 15 years,” he said. But to even have a hope of finding a solution, the effort must begin now, the scientists said. A new technology usually takes several decades to develop the underlying science, build pilot projects and then begin commercial deployment. The authors of the Science paper expect that a diversity of energy sources will be needed, and they call for intensive research on radical ideas like vast solar arrays orbiting Earth that can collect sunlight and beam the energy down. “Many concepts will fail, and staying will require leadership,” they wrote. “Stabilizing climate is not easy.” 84
(2) Writing a Paraphrase A summary conveys just the essence of a source; a paraphrase gives a detailed restatement of all a source’s important ideas. It not only indicates the source’s key points, but it also reflects its order, tone, and emphasis. Consequently, a paraphrase can be as long as the source. Like a summary, a paraphrase should present the source’s ideas, not your own opinions or interpretations of those ide¬ as. The purpose of a paraphrase is to restate a source’s ideas in order to clarify its meaning. You use a paraphrase only when you want to present a comprehensive explanation of a source to readers. In other cases you should summarize - not paraphrase - extremely long passages or entire books or articles. A comparison of a summary and a paraphrase of the passage discussed in the previous sec¬ tion appears below. Summary The right to freedom of speech, guaranteed by the first Amendment, is becoming more difficult to defend. Some people feel that stronger laws against “hate speech ” weaken the First Amendment. But others argue that some kinds of speech remain exempt from this protection (Sudo 17). Paraphrase Many groups want to limit the right of free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution. They do this to protect certain groups of people from “hate speech ”. Women, people of color, and gay men and lesbians, for example, may find that hate speech is used to intimidate them. Legal schools are afraid that even though the rules against hate speech are well intentioned, such rules undermine our freedom of speech. As Nadine Strossen, president of the American Civil Liberties Union, says, “The bedrock principle of our society is that government may never sup¬ press free speech simply because it goes against what the community would like to hear ” (Sudo 17). People who support speech codes point out, however, that certain types of speech are not pro¬ tected by the First Amendment - for example, words that create a “clear and present danger” or that would lead directly to violence (Sudo 17). Before you begin to draft your paraphrase, carefully read the original. Because a paraphrase re¬ states the exact points of the source, you may wish to outline the source before you start to write. Next, draft your paraphrase, following the order, tone, and emphasis of the original. Make cer¬ tain you use your own words, except when you want to quote to give readers a sense of the origi¬ nal. Tf you do include quotations, circle the quotation marks so you will not forget to include them when you revise your paraphrase. Try not to look at the source when you write- use the language and syntax that come naturally to you - and avoid duplicating the wording or sentence structure of the original. Once you finish writing a draft of your paraphrase, revise it carefully, making sure that it is accu¬ rate and complete and that you have not used the language, phrasing, or sentence patterns of the source. Make certain you have covered all important points and included quotation marks where they are required. As you revise, add transitions where necessary to make your paraphrase clear and coherent. Remember to document all quotations from your source as well as the entire para¬ phrase. Checklist: Writing a Paraphrase • Reread your source until you understand it. • Draft your paraphrase, following the order, tone, and emphasis of the original. 85
• Revise your paraphrase, making sure it reflects the order and emphasis of the original. Be sure you do not use the words of phrasing of the original without quoting them. • Add transitions where necessary • Add appropriate documentation. Task Five Following are an original passage, an unacceptable paraphrase, and an acceptable para¬ phrase. Original Source: Turkle, Sherry, The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984 When you play a video game, you enter into the world of the programmers who made it. You have to do more than identify with a character on a screen. You must act for it. Identification through action has a special kind of hold. Like playing a sport, it puts people into a highly focused and highly charged state of mind. For many people, what is being pursued in the video game is not just a score, but an altered state. The pilot of a race car does not dare to take his attention off the road. The imperative of total concentration is part of the high. Video games demand this same level of attention. They can give people the feeling of being close to the edge because, as in a dangerous situation, there is no time for rest and the consequences of wandering attention feel dire. With pinball, a false move can be recuperated. The machine can be shaken, the ball repositioned. In a video game, the program has no tolerance for error, no margin of safety. Players experience their every movement as instantly trans¬ lated into game action. The game is relentless in its demand that all other time stop and in its de¬ mand that the player take full responsibility for every act, a point that players often sum up by the phrase "One false move and you're dead" Unacceptable Paraphrase: Playing a video game, you enter into a new world - one the programmer of the game made. You can’t just play a vid¬ eo game; you have to identify with it. Your mind goes to a new level, and you are put into a highly focused state of mind. Just as you would if you were driving a race car or piloting a plane, you must not let your mind wander. Video games demand complete attention. But the sense that at any time you could make one false move and lose is their attraction- at least for me. That is why I like video games more than pinball. Pinball is just too easy. You can always recover. By shaking the machine or quickly operating the flippers, you can save the ball. Video games, however, are not so easy to control. Usually, one slip means that you lose. The unacceptable paraphrase above does little more than echo the phrasing and syntax of the original, borrowing words and expressions without enclosing them in quotations marks. This consti¬ tutes plagiarism. In addition, the paraphrase digresses into a discussion of the writer’s own views about the relative merits of pinball and video games. Although the acceptable paraphrase below follows the order and emphasis of the original - and even quotes a key phrase - its wording and sentence structure are very different from those of the source. It conveys the key ideas of the source and maintains an objective tone. 86
Acceptable Paraphrase: The programmer defines the reality of the video game. The game forces a player to merge with the character who is part of the game. The character becomes an extension of the player, who determines how he or she will think and act. Like sports, video games put a player into a very intense “altered state ” of mind that is the most important part of activity (Turkle 83). The total involvement they demand is what attracts many people to video games. These games can stimulate the thrill of participating in a danger¬ ous activity without any of the risks. There is no time for rest and no op¬ portunity to correct errors of judgment. Unlike video games, pinball games are forgiving. A player can - within certain limits - manipulate a pinball game to correct minor mistakes. With video games, however, eve¬ ry move has immediate consequences. The game forces a player to adapt to its rules and to act carefully. One mistake can cause the death of the character on the screen and the end of the game (Turkle 83-84). How to Write a Good Paraphrase There are three keys to writing a good paraphrase: 1. Use your own words and your own sentence structure. 2. Make your paraphrase approximately the same length as the original. 3. Do not change the meaning of the original. Integrating Your Notes into Your Writing Summaries, paraphrases, and quotations cannot simply be dropped into your paper. You must weave them smoothly into your discussion, adding analysis or explanation to show why you are us¬ ing each source’s words or ideas. As you integrate borrowed material into your paper, be sure to differentiate your ideas from those of your sources. (1) Integrating Quotations Quotations should be smoothly worked into your sentences and introduced by identifying tags (quotation marks). They should never be awkwardly dropped into the paper, leaving the exact re¬ lationship between the quotation and the point you are making unclear, as in the following example. Unacceptable; For the Amish, the public school system represents a problem. “A serious problem confronting Amish society from the viewpoint of the Amish themselves is the threat of absorption into mass society through the values promoted in the public school system ” (Hostetler 193). Instead, use a brief introductory remark to provide a context for each quotation, quoting only those words you need to make your point. Acceptable: For the Amish, the public school system is a problem because it represents “the threat of absorption into mass society ” (Hostetler 193). Whenever possible, use a running acknowledgment to introduce the source of the quotation into the text. Running acknowledgements are particularly helpful when you are using several sources in the same section of your paper. 87
Running Acknowledgment: As John Hostetler points out, the public school system repre¬ sents” the threat of absorption into mass society” (193) NOTE: Whenever you use a quotation by an expert to support your opinion, you can lend authority to your statement by establishing his or her expertise in the running acknowledgment (According to John A. Hostetler, a noted authority on Amish life...). Trying to integrate quotations seamlessly into your writing can create problems. Solutions for some of these problems are discussed below. Substitutions or Additions within Quotations When you have to change or add a word to make a quotation fit your paper, acknowledge your changes by enclosing them in brackets (not parentheses). Original Quotation: “Immediately after her wedding, she and her husbandfollowed tradition and went to visit almost everyone who attended the wedding” (Hostetler 122). Quotation Revised: Nowhere is the Amish dedication to tradition more obvious than in the events surrounding marriage. Right after the wedding celebration the Amish bride and groom “follow tradition and go to visit almost everyone who has attended the wedding” (Hostetler 122). Quotation Revised: “Immediately after her wedding, Sarah and her husbandfollowed tradition and went to visit almost everyone who attended the wedding” (Hostetler 122) Omissions within Quotations: When you delete unnecessary or irrelevant words, substitute an ellipsis (three spaced periods) for the deleted words. Original: “Not only have the Amish built and stuffed their own elementary and vocational schools, but they have gradually organized on local, state and national levels to cope with the task of edu¬ cating their children” (Hostetler 206). Quotation Revised to Eliminate Unnecessary Words: “Not only have the Amish built and stuffed their own elementary and vocational schools, but they have gradually organized ...to cope with the task of educating their children ” (Hostetler 206). NOTE: When you omit a word or a phrase at the beginning of a quoted passage, do not use an ellip¬ sis to indicate the omission. Be sure you do not misrepresent quoted material when you shorten it. The material you delete should not change the meaning of the passage you are using. For example, do not say, “the Amish have managed to maintain ... their culture” when the original quotation is “the Amish have managed to maintain parts of their culture.” Plagiarism It is important to learn how to use information from outside sources without committing plagia¬ rism. Plagiarism is wrongly using someone else’s words or ideas, and it is a serious offense. There are two kinds of plagiarism. 1 When you use information from an outside source without citing the source (telling where you got the information), you are guilty of plagiarism. 2 Even when you cite your source, if your paraphrase is too similar to the original, you are guilty of plagiarism. In general, you must provide documentation for all direct quotations, opinions, judgments, and insights of others that you summarize or paraphrase. You must also document information that is not well known, is open to dispute, or is not commonly accepted. Finally, document tables, graphs, charts and statistics taken from a source. 88
Common knowledge, facts that are widely available in encyclopedias, textbooks, newspapers, and magazines, need not be documented. Information that is in dispute, however, or that one par¬ ticular person has discovered or theorized about, must be acknowledged. Revising to Eliminate Plagiarism (1) Enclose Borrowed Words in Quotation Marks Original: Historically, only a handful of families have dominated the fireworks industry in the West. Details such as chemical recipes and mixing procedures were cloaked in secrecy and passed down from one generation to the next.... One effect of familial secretiveness is that, un¬ til recent decades, basic pyrotechnic research was rarely performed, and even when it was, the results were not generally reported in scientific journals. (Conkling, John A. “Pyrotechnics.” Scientific American July 1990; 96) Plagiarism: John A. Conkling points out that until recently, little scien¬ tific research was done on the chemical properties of fireworks, and when it was, the results were not generally reported in scientific jour¬ nals. (96) Even though the student writer documented the source of his infor¬ mation, he did not acknowledge that he borrowed the source’s exact words .To correct this problem, the student should use quotation marks to acknowledge his borrowing or should paraphrase the source’s words. Correct (borrowed words in quotation marks): John A. Conkling points out that until recently, little scientific research was done on the chemical properties of fireworks, and when it was, “the results were generally not reported in scientific journals. ” (96). Correct (paraphrase): John A. Conkling points out that research con¬ ducted on the chemical composition of fireworks was seldom reported in the scientific literature. (96). (2) Document Statistics Obtained from a Source Original: From the time they male drivers between sixteen and twenty- four started to drive, 187 if these drivers ( almost two-thirds) reported one or more accidents, with an average of 1.6 per involved driver. Fea¬ tures of 303 accidents are tabulated in Table 2. Almost half of all first accidents occurred before the legal driving age of 18, and the median age of all accidents was 19. (Schuman, Stanley, et al. “Young Male Drivers: Accidents and Violations.” JAMA 50 1983:1027) Plagiarism: By and large male drivers between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four accounted for the majority of accidents. Of 303 accidents recorded in Michigan, almost one-half took place before the drivers were legally allowed to drive at eighteen. The student who used this information incorrectly assumed statistics are common knowledge. But statistics are usually the result of original research, and therefore they deserve acknowledgment. (Besides, readers may need to locate the source of the statistics in order to assess their reliability.) For these reasons, you should always document statistics. 89
Correct: According to one study, male drivers between the ages of six¬ teen and twenty-four accounted for the majority of accidents. Of 303 ac¬ cidents recorded, almost one half took place before the drivers were le¬ gally allowed to drive at eighteen. (Schuman et al., 1027) (3) Do not Imitate a Source’s Syntax and Phrasing Original: Let’s be clear: this wish for politically correct casting goes only one way, the way designed to redress the injuries of centuries. When Pat Carroll, who is a woman, plays Falstaff, who is not, casting is considered a stroke of brilliance. When Josette Simon, who is black, plays Maggie in “After the Fall”, a role Arthur Miller patterned after Marilyn Monroe and which has traditionally been played not by white women, but by blonde white women, it is hailed as a breakthrough. But when the pendulum moves the other way, the actors’ union balks. (Quindlen, Anna. “Error, Stage Left.’’New York Times 12 Aug. 1990, sec. 1:21) Plagiarism: Let us be honest, The desire for politically appropriate casting goes in only one direction, the direction intended to make up for the damage done over hundreds of years. When Pat Carroll, a female, is cast as Falstaff, a male, the decision is an inspires one. When Josette Miller based on Merulyn Monroe and which has usually been played by a woman who is not only white but also blonde, it is considered a major advance. But when the shoe is on the other foot, the actors’ union resists. (Quindlen 21) Although this student documents the passage and does not use the exact words of her source, she closely imitates the original’s syntax and phrasing. In fact, all she has done is substitute synonyms for the author’s words. The student could have avoided plagiarism by changing the syntax as well as the individual words of the original. Correct (paraphrase in student’s own words; one distinctive phrase placed in quotation marks): According to Anna Quindlen, the actors’ union supports "politically correct casting” (21) only when it means casting a woman or a minority group member in a role created for a male or a Caucasian. Thus, it is acceptable for actress Pat Carroll to play Falstaff or for black actress Josette Simon to play Marilyn Monroe; in fact, casting decisions such as these are praised. But when it comes to casting a Caucasian in a role in¬ tended for an African-American, Asian, or Hispanic, the union objects (21). Practice Task Six This student paragraph uses material from three sources, but its author has neglected to cite them. After reading the paragraph and the three sources that follow it, identify material that has been quoted directly from a source. Compare the wording to the original for accuracy 90
and insert quotation marks where necessary, being sure the quoted passages fit smoothly into the paragraph. Next, paraphrase any passages the student did not need to quote, and docu¬ ment each piece of information that requires it. Student Paragraph Oral history became a legitimate field of study in 1948, when the Oral History Research Office was established by Allan Nevins. Like record¬ ings ofpresidents ’fireside chats and declarations of war, oral history is both oral and historical. But it is more: oral history is the creation of new historical documentation, not the recording or preserving of docu¬ mentation that already exists. Oral history also tends to be more sponta¬ neous and personal and less formal than ordinary tape recordings. Nervins ’s purpose was to collect and prepare materials to help future historians to better understand the past. Oral history has enormous po¬ tential to do just this because it draws on people’s memories of their own lives and deeds and of their associations with particular people, pe¬ riods, or events. The result, when it is recorded and transcribed, is a valuable new source. Source 1 When Allan Nevins set up the Oral History Research Office in 1948, he looked upon it as an organ¬ ization that in a systematic way could obtain from the lips and papers of living Americans who had led significant lives a full record of their participation in the political, economic, and cultural affairs of the nation. His purpose was to prepare such material for the use of future historians. It was his conviction that the individual played an important role in history and that an individual’s autobiog¬ raphy might in the future serve as a key to an understanding of contemporary historical movements. (Excerpted from Benison, Saul. “Reflections on Oral History.” The American Archivist 28.1 {Janu¬ ary 1965}:71) Source 2 Typically, an oral history project comprises an organized series of interviews with selected individ¬ uals or groups in order to create new source materials from the reminiscences of their own life and acts or from their association with a particular person, period, or events. These recollections are recorded on tape and transcribed on a typewriter into sheets of transcript... Such oral history may be distinguished from more conventional tape recordings of speeches, lectures, symposia, etc., by the fact that the former creates new sources through the more spontaneous, personal, multitopical , extended narrative, while the latter utilizes sources in a more formal mode for a specific occasion. (Excerpted from Rumics, Elizabeth. “Oral History: Defining the Term.” Wilson Library Bulletin 40 {1966}: 602) Source 3 Oral history, as a term came to be used, is the creation of new historical documentation, not the re¬ cording or preserving of documentation - even oral documentation - that already exists. Its purpose is not, like that of the National Voice Library at Michigan State University, to preserve the record¬ ings of fireside chats or presidential declarations of war or James Whitcomb Riley reciting “Little Orphan Annie.” These are surely oral and just as surely the stuff of history; but they are not oral his¬ tory. For this there must be the creation of a new historical document by means of a personal inter¬ view. (Excerpted from Hoyle Norman “Oral History.’’Library Trends {July 1972} :61) 91
Task Seven Assume that in preparation for a paper on the effects of the rise of the suburbs, you read the following passage from the book Great Expectations: America and the Baby Boom Generation by London Y.Jones. Reread the passage, and then write a brief summary. Next, paraphrase one paragraph, quoting only those words and phrases you consider especially distinctive. As an internal migration, the settling of the suburbs was phenomenal. In the twenty years from 1950 to 1970, the population of the suburbs doubled from 36million to 72 million. No less than 83 percent of the total population growth in the United States during the 1950s was in the suburbs, which were growing fifteen times faster than any other segment of the country. As people packed and moved, the national mobility rate leaped by 50 percent. The only other comparable influx was the wave of European immigrants to the United States around the turn of the century. But as For¬ tune pointed out, more people moved to the suburbs every year than had ever arrived on Ellis Is¬ land. By now, bulldozers were churning up dust storms as they cleared the land for housing develop¬ ments. More than a million acres of farmland were plowed under every year during the 1950s. Mil¬ lions of apartment-dwelling parents with two children were suddenly realizing that two children could be doubled up in a spare bedroom, but a third child cried loudly for something more. The proportion of new houses with three or more bedrooms, in fact, rose from one-third in 1947 to three-quarters in 1954. The necessary ‘Lebensraum’ could only be found in the suburbs. There was a housing shortage, but young couples armed with VA and FHA loans built their dream homes with easy credit and free spending habits that were unthinkable to the baby boom grandparents, who shook their heads with the Depression still fresh in their memories. Of the 13 million homes built in the decade before 1958, 11 million of them — or 85 percent - were built in the suburbs. Home own¬ ership rose 50 percent by 1940 and 1950, and another 50 percent by 1960. By then, one-fourth of all housing in the United States had been built in the fifties. For the first time, more Americans owned homes than rented them. We were becoming a land of gigantic nurseries. The biggest were built by Abraham Levitt, the son of poor Russian-Jewish immigrants, who had originally built houses for the Navy during the war. The first of three East Coast Levittowns went up on the potato field of Long Island. Exactly $7900 - or$60 a month and no money down - bought you a Monopoly-board bungalow with four rooms, attic, washing machine, outdoor barbecue, and a television set built into the wall. The 17, 447 units eventually became home to 82,000people, many of whom were pregnant or wanted to be. In a typical story on the suburb explosion, one magazine breathlessly described a volleyball game of nine couples in which no less than five of the women were expecting. Task Eight Read the text, annotate it (writing down some notes on the margins) and paraphrase it follow¬ ing all the steps that have been discussed. Avoid plagiarism. Capacitors Could Replace Batteries “Who killed the electric car?’ a documentary film asked this year. One major culprit is basic chemistry; batteries are lousy at storing and releasing an electric charge. But the electric car may get a second lease on life because of recent advances in an alternative technology- a type of electricity sponge called an ultracapacitor. Unlike batteries, which work through relatively slow chemical reactions, ultracapacitors store elec¬ tricity on the surface of an electrode; thus they can be recharged almost instantly. The downside is 92
that ultracapacitors hold only a fraction as much energy as a comparable-size battery. In February, researchers led by MIT engineer Joel Schindall unveiled an ultracapacitor whose plates are covered with a dense carpet of straw-shaped carbon molecules, or carbon nanotubes. The nanotubes drasti¬ cally increase the surface area of the ultracapacitor electrode, allowing it to hold 20 times as much energy. Devices based on this breakthrough could reach consumers in less than five years, Schindall estimates. Eric Smalley, Discover, 2010 p. 63 (2) Synthesizing Ideas A synthesis combines ideas from two or more sources, along with your own ideas, to express an original view of a subject. (In this sense, an entire research paper is a synthesis.) You begin your synthesis by comparing your sources and determining how they are alike and different, where they agree and disagree, and whether they reach the same conclusions. As you identify connections be¬ tween the ideas of one source and the ideas of another or between a source’s ideas and your own, you develop an original perspective on your subject. In this view, summarized in a thesis statement (in the case of an essay) or in a topic sentence (in the case of a paragraph), that becomes the main focus of your synthesis. As you write your synthesis, make your points one at a time, and use information from your sources to support your statements. This information can be summarized, paraphrased, or quoted. Make certain that you use running acknowledgments as well as the transitional words and phrases that your readers will need to follow your discussion. Finally, remember that your ideas, not those of your sources, should be central to your discussion. Following is a synthesis written by a student as part of a research paper. Computers have already changed our lives. They carry out (at incredible speed) many of every¬ day tasks that make our life possible. For example, computer billing, with all its faults, makes mod¬ ern business possible, and without computers we would not have access to the telephone services or television reception that we take for granted. But computers are more than fast calculators. Accord¬ ing to one computer expert, they are well on their way to learning, creating and some day even thinking (Raphael 21). Another computer expert, Douglas Hofstadter, agrees, saying that someday a computer will have both “will... and consciousness ” (423). It seems likely, then, that as a result of the computer, our culture will change profoundly (Turkle 15). 93
Module Four WRITING IN THE SCIENCES Constructing a Research Paper The basic principles of good writing apply just as well to the sciences as they do to the humanities and the social sciences. A science paper should be written in a clear and concise style, its para¬ graphs should be coherent, and its ideas should be well organized. We focus here on the features of science writing that distinguish it from other, no-scientific genres. Since some of these features may vary from subject to subject, we focus on those principles and conventions that are common to most areas of science. Understanding how the distinctive features of science writing reflect the activities and goals of science will help you become a more proficient writer of scientific prose. Writing in the natural and applied sciences relies on empirical data - information derived from observations or experiments. Although science writing is usually concerned with accurately reporting observa¬ tions and experimental data, it may also be persuasive. Basic to research in the natural and applied sciences is the scientific method, a process by which scientists gather and interpret information Audience All writers should be aware of their audience. But science writers need to pay particularly close at¬ tention to audience because readers of science-related writing can have very different levels of knowledge. The key question to ask is always, Am I writing for fellow scientists or for a general audience? What your readers know or do not know will have a significant effect on both substance and style. Titles Titles in science papers can be either full sentences or fragments though usually they are fragments: Experiments with a compact mirror cell A full- sentence title is good at highlighting one central result: The resulting additional mirror cell of relatively small volume is called a compact mirror cell As this example illustrates, titles in the sciences can be long. Do your best to make sure that every word counts. Be concrete, but avoid excessive detail. Some titles are farmed as questions identify¬ ing what the authors aim to discover. Headings Headings in science papers emphasize the systematic nature of scientific enquiry. They also provide an excellent organization tool, often relieving you of the need to create smooth transitions between the main parts of your paper. Take advantage of them! Description of “SibScan ” installation In some scientific genres, the sections and heading names are predetermined. For example, research paper as well as lab reports are typically divided into the following section: Abstract, Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion. The list may vary slightly according to the discipline, the course, or 94
the journal. For complicated experiments, you may subdivide sections into subsections, each with its own subheadings. Headings are not always obligatory. In a shorter paper, use them only if you find that they actually help you to better organize the material. Jargon The word jargon generally refers to language that is unrecognizable to most people, either because it is deliberately obscure and needlessly difficult, or because it forms part of the technical terminol¬ ogy common to a discipline. The first type of jargon should be avoided whatever discipline you are writing in. It can sound pretentious, and it obscures meaning. The second type of jargon does not carry the same negative connotation. In the sciences, and sometimes in other disciplines as well, this technical language can be indispensable. From Fig. 8 it can be seen that with approaching to the bubble volatile concentration in the melt reduces. Thus, diffusive boundary layer arises around the bubble, where nucleation is suppressed. As a result of strong dependency of nucleation frequency from volatile concentration, bubble nu¬ cleation takes place mainly outside this boundary layer. The intended audience for this paper consists of fellow physicists. The writer can thus count on the readers to know what each of the technical terms means. He does not use jargon here to make the writing sound sophisticated; outside of the scientific terms, the language is simple. The main func¬ tion of such jargon is compression. The dictionary definition of each of these terms is two or three lines long. If the paper had provided definitions, it would have been considerably longer, and the flow of the argument would have suffered. Science writing commonly relies on a further form of compression: replacing frequently used terms consisting of more than one word with an abbreviation, typically formed from the term's initial let¬ ters. The convention is to specify the abbreviation in parentheses immediately after the first use of the term. If you are writing about science for non-scientists, you can still rely on jargon to achieve compres¬ sion, but you should at least let your reader know what any uncommon term means the first time around. Try to avoid abbreviations, however, unless they are commonly used (e.g., AIDS for Ac¬ quired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). Sometimes you may think jargon is necessary in your science writing when it is not. Always ask if there is a simpler, more transparent way of making a point. At the same time, train yourself to read critically the language in published scientific work. If some of the sentences leave you confused, then the science may be intrinsically difficult, the writing may be weak, the ideas themselves may be confused, or the writer may be trying to gloss over something. Developing your critical reading skills will help you to grow as a writer. Passive versus Active Voice In humanities and many social science papers, students should try to use active voice whenever pos¬ sible. But historically the sciences have encouraged the use of passive voice. There's a reason for this tradition. Passive voice helps emphasize the objectivity of the sciences: The element radon was discovered in 1900. This stress on objectivity makes especially good sense in the context of a lab report: after all, the experiment is not about you but about what you did. 95
Nevertheless, in the past several years there has been a movement in the sciences away from the passive voice. One reason for this is a philosophical shift in our thinking about science: we are more ready to acknowledge the role of the observer or investigator in the shaping of knowledge. In fact, many journals editors have responded to a growing demand for greater transparency in science by requiring that published scientific papers clearly identify the role and the source of funding of each contributor. Active voice does a much better job of emphasizing agency—the idea that every action has an actor. The other good reason behind this growing preference for active voice is stylistic: of¬ ten passive voice is simply more awkward, less direct, and less clear. Learn some simple sentence patterns that will help your writing benefit fully from the directness of active voice. For example, refer to figures, tables, and equations at the beginning of the sentence rather than at the end. Figure 1 illustrates the quadratic relationship between distance and velocity. Do the same with words and phrases such as "results," "studies", and "evidence": Experimental evidence shows that the typical dose-response curve has an inverted J-shape. If you are referring to a technique or procedure, you can also achieve greater directness by making it the subject of your sentence: PCR analysis produced clones of the toxin В DNA originally isolated in cultures of C. difficile from hospital patients. And even though your course instructor may dissuade you from using "I" or "we," do not shy away from placing other scientists in the subject position: Peto provided a detailed description of the logrank test in his 1977 article on the use of survival analysis in long-term randomized trials. Note that even the use of the first-person pronouns, "I" and "we," is becoming more acceptable in scientific discourse, though generally still not as acceptable as active voice. When "I" or "we" is not allowed, the passive voice is sometimes unavoidable. Several journals now permit first-person ac¬ tive constructions even in the Methods section. Tense The two most common tenses in science papers are present and past. Future and present perfect rank a distant third and fourth. Use present tense when you are making assertions about nature or about concepts. The motion of the electron changes slightly in the presence of an external electromagnetic wave. Use past tense when you are describing what you or someone else did or asserted. The measurements were carried out with a digital voltmeter Solartron. Use future tense when you lay out your plan in a proposal. Note that the use of first-person singular is often appropriate in a proposal. I will continue my research trying to investigate another sample. Use present perfect when you are describing what you have done repeatedly in the past continuing up to the present. 96
Our experiment has demonstrated the dependence of the value of quantum corrections of the tem¬ perature, by calcidating the difference between the recent experimental curves. The use of past tense in describing someone else's work is one key difference between science and the humanities. In the humanities, when we are describing what a writer, an artist, or a scholar as¬ serted, we think of ourselves as engaging in a conversation that takes place in the eternal present: Shakespeare compares the poet's lover to a summer's day. The one exception would be when the emphasis is on history, in which case the past tense is called for: Shakespeare wrote many of his tragedies during a period of great political instability. The sciences see the contribution of any individual as adding progressively to an ordered sequence of investigations. The past tense helps convey a sense of this temporal progression. Assignments that are common in (but not limited to) scientific disciplines are the abstract, the liter¬ ature survey, the laboratory report, the annotated bibliography and the research paper (RP) . Abstract Most scientific articles begin with abstracts, highly condensed summaries that serve as guides for readers. Abstract writing is a highly specialized form of academic writing. It requires a clear and concise writing style that conveys complicated information in a limited amount of space. Abstracts serve three specific purposes. The first, and the most important, is to help the reader de¬ cide whether to read the entire article. By writing an academic abstract, you are trying to be as clear and informative as possible, so that the reader knows what to expect in the content of the paper Ab¬ stracts also summarize the findings of the paper. Reading an abstract should give the reader a clear indication of the importance of your research. Positioned at the beginning of the text, abstracts in¬ troduce readers to the content of your article. Finally, academic search engines use the content of abstracts to find relevant articles. It is essential to use key words specific to your discipline, so that scholars can find your article when looking for research in your field. In addition, many scientific indexes provide abstracts of articles so researchers can determine whether an article is of use to them. Abstracts reach a more broad audience than almost any other form of academic writing. Approxi¬ mately 10 to 500 times more people will read an abstract than the associated article or attend a presentation. Abstracts of research articles are usually one well-developed paragraph, although some cases require multiple paragraphs. Most abstracts range from 100 to 300 words or approxi¬ mately 3 to 5% of the word count of the associated text. Most journals give clear guidance for ab¬ stract length. An indicative abstract gives a general sense of the content of an article, helping readers decide whether they want to read it in full. An informative abstract includes enough detail so that readers can obtain essential information without reading the article itself. (Some scientific informative ab¬ stracts, called structured abstracts, include internal headings) 97
There are two main approaches to writing RP Abstracts. One is called the result -driven Abstract, because it concentrates on the research findings and what might be concluded from them. The other approach is to offer an RP summary Abstract in which you provide one-or two-sentence synopses of each of the four section (Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion). Most RP Abstracts should aim to be informative rather than indicative (i.e., they should include the main findings).Typically, an informative abstract answers these questions in about 100-250 words: Why did you do this study or project? What did you do and how ? What did you find? What do your findings mean? If the paper is about a new method or equipment the last two questions might be changed to What are the advantages (of the method or equipment)? How well does it work? Here are some other points to keep in mind about abstracts • An abstract will nearly always be read along with the title, so do not repeat or rephrase the ti¬ tle. However, it will likely be read without the rest of the document, so make it complete enough to stand on its own. • Your readers expect you to summarize your conclusions as well as your purpose, methods, and main findings. Emphasize the different points in proportion to the emphasis they receive in the body of the document. • Do not refer in the abstract to information that is not in the document. • You may want to avoid using I or we, but choose active verbs instead of passive when possible (The study tested rather than it was tested by the study). • Avoid, if possible, trade names, acronyms, abbreviations, or symbols. You would need to ex¬ plain them, and that takes too much room. • Use the most important terms and concepts from the document. Include the ones that will at¬ tract people to read your piece. (Indexers of published articles “mine” abstracts for keywords.) Abstracts for conferences serve slightly different purposes than those for written articles. An indi¬ vidual reading an abstract in a conference booklet is deciding whether or not to attend your presen¬ tation or reading. In a sea of academic ideas, your abstract should give prospective attendees an ac¬ curate idea of the content of your presentation. After the fact, your abstract may be the only docu¬ ment of your research to an attendee of your presentation. Individuals will often consult conference proceedings months or years after the fact, as they recall a short presentation only now relating to their current research. A complete conference abstract allows researchers to refresh their memories about your findings. Conferences usually involve the presentation of new and in-progress research. Additionally, many conferences require abstracts monthly before the actual presentation. As such, abstracts for confer¬ ences are often written before the research is complete. This can complicate writing an abstract for a conference presentation. As much as possible, a conference abstract should be written as though the 98
presentation or associated paper is completed. Your intended audience is composed of individuals hoping to get an accurate idea of the ideas that will be covered during your presentation. The at¬ mosphere at most academic conferences is generally less formal than that in the academic publish¬ ing industry, but it is important to maintain most of the conventions of professional communication. Conference abstracts should adhere to the format guidelines set out by the organizers. In some cas¬ es, authors are given more space than should be needed for an abstract (for example, a whole page of single spaced text). Authors should only use the amount of space needed to convey the key com¬ ponents of a presentation. Filling up the extra space with unnecessary details will only bore the reader. Leaving that blank space provides the attendee an opportunity to write his or her own notes regarding your presentation. Here is a short abstract from the “Rapid Communications” section of the journal Physical Review. Nuclear-Structure Correction to the Lamb Shift K. Pachucki.; D. Leibfried; and T. W. Hansch This paper estimates the second-order nuclear structure correction to the energy of hydrogen-like systems and corrects previous results. Both deuterium and hydrogen are considered. In the case of deuterium the correction is proportional to the nuclear polarizability and amounts to about -19 kHz for the IS state. For hydrogen the resulting energy shift is about -60 Hz. Literature Survey The literature surveys are common in the sciences, most often appearing as a section of a proposal or as a part of a research paper. Unlike an abstract, which summarizes a single source, a literature survey summarizes a number of studies and sometimes compares and contrasts them. By doing so, the literature survey provides a theoretical context for the paper’s discussion. Ultrastructural studies of micro- and macrogametes have included relatively few of the numerous Eimerian species. Major early studies include the fol¬ lowing (hosts are listed in parentheses): micro- and macrogametes of E, performans (rabbits), E, stiedae (rabbits), E, bovis (cattle), and E, auburnensis (cattle) (Hammond et al., 1967; Scholtyseck et al., 1966), macrogametogenesis in E, maqna (rabbits) and E^ intestinalis (rabbits) (Kheysin, 1965), macrogametogony of E, tenella (chickens) (McLaren, 1969), and the microgametocytes and macrogametes of E, neischulzi (rats) (Colley, 1967). More recent in¬ vestigations have included macrogametogony of E, acervulina (chickens) (Pitillo and Ball, 1984). 99
Laboratory Report A laboratory report is the most common assignment for students taking courses in the sciences. It is divided into sections that reflect the stages of the scientific method, and it generally conforms to the specifications for the laboratory report. Not every section will be necessary for every experiment, and some experiments may call for additional components, such as an abstract or reference list. In addition lab experiments may include tables, charts, graphs, and illustrations. The exact format of a student lab report is usually defined by the specific course’s lab manual. A lab report is an explana¬ tion of a process. Because its purpose is to enable readers to understand a complex series of tasks, it must present stages clearly and completely, in exact chronological order, and illustrate the purpose of each step. In addition, a lab report must provide description of the equipment used in an experi¬ ment. Typical Components • Title Page • Abstract • Introduction • Methods and Materials (or Equipment) • Experimental Procedure • Results • Discussion • Conclusion • References • Appendices • Further Reading 1. The Title Page needs to contain the name of the experiment, the names of lab partners, and the date. Titles should be straightforward, informative, and less than ten words (i.e. Not "Lab #4" but "Lab #4: Sample Analysis using the Debye-Sherrer Method"). 2. The Abstract summarizes four essential aspects of the report: the purpose of the experiment (sometimes expressed as the purpose of the report), key findings, significance and major conclu¬ sions. The abstract often also includes a brief reference to a theory or methodology. The infor¬ mation should clearly enable readers to decide whether they need to read your whole report. The abstract should be one paragraph of 100-200 words. 100
The Abstract Musi have: 1. Purpose 2. Key result(s) 3. Most significant point of discussion 4. Major conclusion May Include: 1. Brief method 2. Brief theory Restrictions: 1. ONE page 2. 200 words MAX. Sample Abstract This experiment examined the effect of line orientation and arrowhead angle on a subject's ability to perceive line length, thereby testing the Miiller-Lyer illusion. The Miiller-Lyer illusion is the classic visual illustration of the effect of the surrounding on the perceived length of a line. The test was to determine the point of subjective equality by having subjects adjust line segments to equal the length of a standard line. Twenty-three subjects were tested in a repeated measures design with four different arrowhead angles and four line orientations. The experiment tests each condition in six randomized trials. The lines to be adjusted were tipped with outward pointing arrows of varying degrees ofpointedness, whereas the standard lines had inward pointing arrows of the same degree. Results showed that line lengths were overestimated in all cases. The size of error increased with decreasing arrowhead angles. For line orientation, overestimation was greatest when the lines were horizontal. This last is contrary to our expectations. Further, the two factors functioned inde¬ pendently in their effects on subjects' point of subjective equality. These results have important im¬ plications for human factors design applications such as graphical display interfaces. 3. The introduction is more narrowly focused than the abstract. It states the objective of the exper¬ iment and provides the reader with background to the experiment. State the topic of your report clearly and concisely, in one or two sentences: The Introduction Must Have: 1. Purpose of the experiment 2. Important background and/or theory May include: 1. Description of specialized equipment 2. Justification of experiment's importance 101
Example: The purpose of this experiment was to identify the specific element in a metal powder sample by determining its crystal structure and atomic radius. These were determined using the Debye-Sherrer (powder camera) method of X-ray diffraction. A good introduction also provides whatever background theory, previous research, or formulas the reader needs to know. Usually, an instructor does not want you to repeat the lab manual, but to show your own comprehension of the problem. For example, the introduction that followed the ex¬ ample above might describe the Debye-Sherrer method, and explain that from the diffraction angles the crystal structure can be found by applying Bragg's law. If the amount of introductory material seems to be a lot, consider adding subheadings such as: Theoretical Principles or Background. 4. Methods and Materials (or Equipment) can usually be a simple list, but make sure it is accurate and complete. In some cases, you can simply direct the reader to a lab manual or standard proce¬ dure: "Equipment was set up as in ('IIE 276 manual. " 5. Experimental Procedure describes the process in chronological order. Using clear paragraph structure, explain all steps in the order they actually happened, not as they were supposed to hap¬ pen. If you've done it right, another researcher should be able to duplicate your experiment. 6. Results are usually dominated by calculations, tables and figures; however, you still need to state all significant results explicitly in verbal form, for example: Results 1. Number and Title tables and graphs 2. Use a sentence or two to draw attention to key points in tables or graphs 3. Provide sample calculation only 4. State key result in sentence form Using the calculated lattice parameter gives, then, R = 0.1244nm. Graphics need to be clear, easily read, and well labeled (e.g. Figure 1: Input Frequency and Ca¬ pacitor Value). An important strategy for making your results effective is to draw the reader's atten¬ tion to them with a sentence or two, so the reader has a focus when reading the graph. In most cases, providing a sample calculation is sufficient in the report. Leave the remainder in an appendix. Likewise, your raw data can be placed in an appendix. Refer to appendices as necessary, pointing out trends and identifying special features. 7. Discussion is the most important part of your report, because here, you show that you understand the experiment beyond the simple level of completing it. Explain. Analyze. Interpret. Some people like to think of this as the "subjective" part of the report. By that, they mean this is what is not readily observable. This part of the lab focuses on a question of understanding "What is the signifi¬ cance or meaning of the results?" To answer this question, use both aspects of discussion: Analysis Interpretation What do the results indicate clearly? What have you found? What is the significance of the results? What ambiguities exist? What questions might we 102
Analysis Interpretation Explain what you know with certainty based on your results and draw conclu¬ sions: raise? Find logical explanations for problems in the data: Since none of the samples reacted to the silver foil test, therefore sulfide, ifpresent at all, does not exceed a concentration of approximately 0.025 g/l. It is therefore un¬ likely that the water main pipe break was the result of sulfide-induced corrosion. Although the water samples were received on 14 August 2000, testing could not be started until 10 September 2000. It is normally desir¬ ably to test as quickly as possible after sam¬ pling in order to avoid potential sample con¬ tamination. The effect of the delay is unknown. More particularly, focus your discussion with strategies like these: Compare expected results with those obtained. If there were differences, how can you account for them? Be specific; /^/' example, the instruments could not measure precisely, the sample was not pure or was contaminated, or calculated values did not take account of friction. Explain your results in terms of theoretical issues. Often undergraduate labs are intended to illustrate important physical laws, such as Kirchhoffs voltage law, or the Muller-Lyer illusion. Usually you will have discussed these in the introduction. In this section move from the results to the theory. How well has the theory been illustrated? Relate results to your experimental objective(s). If you set out to identify an unknown metal by finding its lattice parameter and its atomic structure, you'd better know the metal and its attributes. Compare your results to similar investigations. In some cases, it is legitimate to compare outcomes with classmates, not to change your answer, but to look for any anomalies between the groups and discuss those. Analyze the strengths and limitations of your experimental design. This is particularly useful if you designed the thing you're testing (e.g. a circuit). 8. The Conclusion can be very short in most undergraduate laboratories. Simply state what you know now for sure, as a result of the lab: Conclusion Must do: 1. State what's known 103
2. Justify statement Might do: 1. State significance 2. Suggest further research Example: The Debye-Sherrer method identified the sample material as nickel due to the measured crystal structure (fee) and atomic radius (approximately 0.124nm). Notice that, after the material is identified in the example above, the writer provides a justification. We know it is nickel because of its structure and size. This makes a sound and sufficient conclu¬ sion. Generally, this is enough; however, the conclusion might also be a place to discuss weakness¬ es of experimental design, what future work needs to be done to extend your conclusions or what the implications of your conclusion are. 9. References include your lab manual and any outside reading you have done. 10. Appendices typically include such elements as raw data, calculations, graphs pictures or tables that have not been included in the report itself. Each kind of item should be contained in a separate appendix. Make sure you refer to each appendix at least once in your report. Laboratory Report: Chemistry Purpose In this section you describe the goal of the experiment, presenting the hypothesis you tested or examined. The purpose of this lab experiment is to determine the iron content of an unknown mixture. Equipment In this section you list the equipment you used in the experiment. Often this section identifies and explains your methodology. Equipment includes two 60 ml beakers, a graduated cylinder, Procedure In this section you describe the steps of the experiment in the order in which they occur, usually numbering the steps. 1) A KMNO 4 solution was prepared by dissolving 2) Two samples of. were weighed. 3) Each sample was dissolved in 4j The mixture was heated to 80 degrees C until 5) The procedure was repeated twice. Results In this section you present the results- observations, measurements, or equa¬ tions - that you obtained from your experiments. Percentage of iron: 1st run=12.51 ml Conclusion or Discussion of Results In this section you explain or justify them in terms of the initial questions asked in the Purpose section. Calculation for % of iron 104
Annotated Bibliography An annotated bibliography gives an account of the research that has been done on a given topic. Like any bibliography, an annotated bibliography is an alphabetical list of research sources. In addi¬ tion to bibliographic data, an annotated bibliography provides a concise summary of each source and some assessment of its value or relevance. Depending on your assignment, an annotated bibli¬ ography may be one stage in a larger research project, or it may be an independent project standing on its own. Selecting the sources: The quality and usefulness of your bibliography will depend on your selection of sources. Define the scope of your research carefully so that you can make good judgments about what to include and exclude: • What problem am I investigating? What question(s) am I trying to pursue? If your bibliog¬ raphy is part of a research project, this project will probably be governed by a research ques¬ tion. If your bibliography is an independent project on a general topic, try formulating your topic as a question or a series of questions in order to define your search more precisely. • What kind of material am I looking for? (academic books and journal articles? government reports or policy statements? articles from the popular press? primary historical sources? etc.) • Am I finding essential studies on my topic? (Read footnotes in useful articles carefully to see what sources they use and why. Keep an eye out for studies that are referred to by sever¬ al of your sources.) Summarizing the argument of a source: An annotation briefly restates the main argument of a source. An annotation of an academic source, for example, typically identifies its thesis (or research question, or hypothesis), its major methods of investigation, and its main conclusions. Keep in mind that identifying the argument of a source is a different task than describing or listing its contents. The following reading strategies can help you identify the argument of your source: • Identify the author's thesis (central claim or purpose) or research question. Both the introduc¬ tion and the conclusion can help you with this task. • Look for repetition of key terms or ideas. Follow them through the text and see what the au¬ thor does with them. • Notice whether and how a theory is used to interpret evidence or data. Identify the method used to investigate the problem/s addressed in the text. • Notice how the text is laid out and organized. What are the main divisions or sections? What is emphasized? Why? Accounting for why will help you to move beyond listing contents and to¬ ward giving an account of the argument. Look also for paragraphs that summarize the argu¬ ment. 105
Assessing the relevance and value of sources: Your annotation should now go on to briefly assess the value of the source to an investigation of your research question or problem. If your bibliography is part of a research project, briefly identify how you intend to use the source and why. If your bibliography is an independent project, try to as¬ sess the source's contribution to the research on your topic. Research Paper The purpose of this textbook is to prepare you for and help you with writing your own Research Paper (RP). Before we get to this, we need to narrow the ground somewhat. This narrowing is necessary because there are many types of research publications that appear in journals, not all of them we have the space to deal with in this book. The main focus of this unit will be on standard empirical research papers. In such papers Introduction-Methods-Results-Discussion pattern or some variant of it is used. Research Papers (RP) authors need to establish that the research ques¬ tions are sufficiently interesting for publication. They need to demonstrate that they are familiar with relevant literature so as to show that the research questions have not been answered yet.They need to compete against other RPs for acceptance and recognition. Parts of the Research Paper Title Abstract Introduction Methods Results Discussion Acknowledgements References Introduction (I) The main purpose of the Introduction is to provide the rationale for the paper, moving from general discussion of the topic to the particular question or hypothesis being investigated A secondary purpose is to attract interest in the topic- and hence readers. Methods (M) The Methods section describes, in various degrees of detail, methodology, materials (or subjects), the apparatus used, definitions employed, and the statistical procedures used. This is the narrowest part of the RP and, in fact, is often the section that researchers write first. 106
Results (R) In the Results section, the findings are described, accompanied by variable amounts of commentary. This section should simply report the data that has been collected; that is, it should focus on simply describing the actual results .The result sections may, or may not, have subsections. Some subsections may simply reflect the different stages or parts of the investigation. Discussion (D) The Discussion section offers an increasingly generalized account of what has been learned in the study. This is usually done through a series of’’points”, at least some of which refer back to statements made in the Introduction. Overall, if Results deal with facts, then Discussions deal with points', facts are descriptive, while points are interpretive. Effective discussion sections are similar to effective lectures, which as Ol¬ sen and Huckin (1990) note, are based on points rather than on facts. As a result of these different purposes, the four sections have taken on different linguistic character¬ istics. Some of them are summarized in Table 1. Introduction Methods Results Discussion Present tense high low low high Past tense mid high high mid Passive voice low high variable variable Citations high low variable high Qualifications mid low mid high Commentary high low variable high Because writing in the sciences focuses on the experiment itself, not on those conducting the exper¬ iment, writers often use the passive voice. For example, in a lab report you would say, “The mix¬ ture was heated for forty-five minutes” rather than “I heated the mixture for forty-five minutes.’’Another stylistic convention to remember concerns verb tense: a conclusion or a statement of generally accepted fact should be in the present tense (“Objects in motion tend to stay in mo¬ tion”); a summary of a study, however, should be in the past tense (Watson and Crick discovered the structure of DNA). Finally, note that direct quotations are seldom used in scientific papers. 107
There are three major patterns in tense choice in writing a RP. Pattern / -reference to single studies - past (active or passive), - researcher activity as agent. Jones investigated the causes of this phenomenon. Pattern II - reference to areas of inquiry - present perfect (active or passive), - researcher activity not as agent. There have been several investigations into the causes of Pattern III - reference to state of current knowledge - present (active or passive), - no reference to researcher activity. Conductivity appears to have a complex set of causes Titles There are certain requirements for good RP titles The following three are suggested (John M. Swales 2007) 1. The title should indicate the topic of the study. 2. The title should indicate the scope of the study (i.e., neither overstating nor understating its sig¬ nificance). 3. The title should be self-explanatory to readers in the chosen area. Acknowledgments Acknowledgments have become an integral part of most RPs. They occur either at the bottom of the first page, following the Discussion, or sometimes at the end of RP. Acknowledgments provide an opportunity for you to show that you are a member of a community and have benefited from that membership. They allow you to “repay your debts” (Giannoni 2002).There is a list of common el¬ ements in Acknowledgments. 1. Financial support Support for this work was provided by (sponsor) 108
This research was partially supported by.... 2. Thanks We would like to thank A, В ,and C, for their help We are also grateful to D for.... We believe that, if permitted, Acknowledgments should be written in the first person - using / for a single author and we for coauthors. Mentions of other matters, such as permissions or sources of materials, may also occur. Because you are writing to inform or to persuade other scientists, you should write clearly and con¬ cisely. Remember to use technical terms only when they are necessary to convey your meaning (Kirszner and Mandell, 2000). Too many terms can make your paper difficult to understand - even for scientists familiar with your discipline. Often a scientific paper will include a glossary that lists and defines terms that may be unfamiliar to readers. Tables and Illustrations are an important part of most scientific papers. Be careful to place tables as close to your discussion of them as possible and to number and label any type of illustration or dia¬ gram so you can refer to it in your text. Remember that different scientific journals follow different conventions of style and use different paper formats and documentation styles. For instance, physicists use the format of the American Institute of Physics, and mathematicians use the format of the American Mathematical Society. Use of English Article Uses in Science Writing Three of the most common words in the English language are also three of the most difficult to use. We are referring to the articles a, an, and the. We will not attempt here to give you every rule of article use in English, but we will provide you with a quick review of some basic rules to guide you in your choice of a, an, the, and 0 (ho article needed) while writing any type of assignments in sci¬ ences (an abstract, a literature survey, a laboratory report or RP). 1. Countability Before deciding if you should use an article, you should determine whether the noun in question is countable or uncountable and whether it is generic ( representative or symbolic) or specific (actual). Let us first take a look at specific nouns and countability. 109
Determining whether a noun is countable may not be as it seems. First, you cannot tell whether a noun is countable simply by looking at it. Money, for example, can be counted; however, the noun money itself is uncountable. Second, a noun that is countable in one language may not be countable in another and vice versa. Information, for example, is uncountable in English but countable on most of its European equivalents. The following nouns are usually uncountable in English. Names for languages-Chinese, Korean, French, Arabic.... Names for solids-coal, steel, marble, Names for liquids-water, nitric acid, oil, Names for powders-salt, sugar, sand,.... Names for gases-oxygen, hydrogen, methane, Third, although you may have learned that nouns are either countable or uncountable, this is not the whole story. There are quite a number of nouns that can be either. These can be referred to as dou¬ ble nouns. The following table lists some double nouns. Table 1 Uncountable Countable analysis (in general) an analysis (a particular one) calculation (in general) a calculation ( a particular one) diamond (the hard substance) a diamond (a precious stone) iron (the substance) an iron (a device for ironing) science a science (a particular one) grain (in general), i.e., cereal a grain (a particular one), i.e. a grain of salt An important group of nouns in this category refers to concepts that can be measured or quantified. Examples of these are temperature, pressure, voltage, growth, density, and velocity. A thermometer measures temperature. A temperature of over 120 degrees C was recorded. Fourth, some nouns that are almost always uncountable in everyday English may have countable uses in technical English. Steel is critical for the construction of skyscrapers. 110
The use of a light-weight sleel would improve fuel efficiency. There are at least two possible explanations for the difference. One is that the second sentence in¬ volves a highly specialized use of the term that would most likely only be used by experts in the field who may find it necessary to make such fine distinctions. Another reason may be that it is simply more efficient to talk of steels rather than different types of sleel. Finally, some nouns in English are perhaps in the process of shifting from uncountable to counta¬ ble. For instance, although work has long been an uncountable noun, it is not unusual to hear stu¬ dents say that they have “a lot of homeworks to do”, so it may someday become countable. 2. The Indefinite Article and 0 A(n) is typically used with the first mention of a singular countable noun, but not always. There are a number of linguistic contexts that require the use of the, and we will analyze them further.(See section 3). Usually, no article (0) is necessary for the first mention of a plural or an uncountable noun where none of the special conditions for definite article use apply (See section 3) 3. The Definite Article The use of the definite article is far more problematic than the use of the indefinite, because the def¬ inite article is used in a number of different ways The most important of these, however, is to spec¬ ify a particular noun, to make clear that reference is being made to a particular singular or plural noun. The definite article should be used in the following contexts. Second mention (either explicit or implicit) a. The surface is covered by a thin oxide film. The film protects the surface from corrosion. b. A very lightweight car was developed, but the vehicle performed poorly in crash tests. c. A new computer was purchased to complete the process, but the hard drive was damaged. Superlatives or ordinals a. The most- controlled therapy yielded the best results. b. The first studies were conducted in early 1993. c. The last security conference was termed a success. Specifiers (e.g. ,same, sole, only, chief,principal....) a. The same subjects were retested at two-week intervals. b. The only research previously done in this area yielded mixed results. c. The principal causes of the disaster have yet to be discovered. Ill
Shared knowledge or unique reference. a. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. b. The oxygen balance in the atmosphere is maintained by photosynthesis. c. The stars are fueled by fusion reactions. Of-phrases or other forms of postmodification (but not with first mention of partitive of-phrases such as a molecule of oxygen, a layer of silicon, or a piece of information) (A partitive phrase is a construction which denotes part of a whole.) a. The behavior of this species varies. b. The price of gold fluctuates. c. The results of the investigation snqtq inconclusive. Partitive of-phrases with plurals a. None of the projects was satisfactory. b. Some of the subjects had adverse reactions. c. All of the questionnaires were returned. Names of theories, effects, devices, scales, and so on modified by a proper name used as an adjec¬ tive. a. the Doppler effect b. the Heisenberg uncertainty principle c. the Hubble telescope d. the Kelvin scale Note, however, that when a proper name is used in thepossessive form, no article is used. a. Coulomb’s law b. Einstein’s theory of relativity c. Broca’s area d. Wegener’s hypothesis 112
4. Generics So far, we have only discussed article use for specific nouns. Generic nouns, however, are equally important. Generic nouns are as important as specific nouns for academic writing because 1. they more frequently occur in highly formal English; 2. they are more likely to occur in introductions and conclusions, because they are closely associated with generalizations (often of an abstract nature); 3. they are often associated (when they occur) with initial (and topic) sentences in para¬ graphs; and 4. they tend to occur in the subject position in sentences (either as the subject or follow¬ ing q/-phrases). Generic versus Specific Nouns A generic noun or noun phrase can represent an entire class or can be one representative of a class of objects, people, quantities, or ideas. A generic noun is like an archetype in that it manifests what is typical for the class. For this reason, generics are used in formal definitions Compare the specific and generic noun phrases in Table 2 Table 2 Specific Generic The solar car engineered at the University of Michigan won the race. A solar car would certainly result in a cleaner atmosphere. The computer crashed in the middle of the program. The computer has replaced the typewriter. The trees in this region have suffered from the drought. Trees are valuable in maintaining air quality. Add some water to the solution. Water is essential for all living beings. 113
The specific noun phrases refer to something real. The generic noun phrases, on the other hand, re¬ fer to either an entire class or a representative of the class. You may have noticed in the table that there are different types of generic noun phrase. Abstract versus Concrete Generics Generics can generally be divided into two different types: the abstract generic and the concrete ge¬ neric. An abstract generic refers to an entire class of objects, while the concrete generic refers to a representative of a class. Look at the examples in Table 3. Abstract generics require the, while con¬ crete generics use either a (with a singular countable noun) or 0 (for plural countable and uncount¬ able nouns). Table 3 Abstract Generic: The entire Class Concrete Generic: A representative of the Class The wasp can detect unique volatile com¬ pounds over great distances. A wasp can be trained to detect adores. The laser has a great many uses in medicine. A laser can be used by a surgeon to make very clean cuts. The computer has been invaluable in scientific advancement. Computers are playing a growing role in all aspects of university life. Concrete is relatively cheap. In each of the examples in Table 3, a generalization is being made. The abstract generics refer to the entire class. Singular concrete generics, on the other hand, refer to a generalized instance of the class. Finally, plural concrete generics and uncountable generics do not allow for such a clear dis¬ tinction between class and representative. They can, however, be used when referring to a general¬ ized instance. Choosing a Proper Generic Form Given that there are many possible generic forms, how do you know which one to use? There is a tendency in academic writing to use the abstract generic (the +a singular noun) more often than the concrete. Even so, generic use will often depend on your field of study and on the type of noun you are using. In the sciences and engineering, plural concrete generic reference and 0 concrete generics are common in many contexts. Hence, we see lasers, quantum wells, bonds, atoms, combustion, cataly¬ sis, ionization, and so on. The abstract generic is mainly used with instruments and devices. 114
The optical scanner is in widespread use. Generic noun phrases do not follow the same rules for article use as specific nouns do. It is possible to shift from 0 to a with generics and vice versa. However, it is not possible to shift from 0 to the or from a to the Tasks 1 Mark the following nouns as either countable (C) or uncountable (U). commodity money complication problem computer progress device proposal discrepancy research energy research project equipment researcher fracture society information theory knowledge traffic machinery vegetation model work 2 Read this passage on writing and fill in the blanks with either a, an, the, or 0. writing is complex sociocognitive process involving construction of recorded messages on paper or some other material and, more re¬ cently, on computer screen. skills needed to write range from making appropriate graphic marks, though utilizing resources of chosen language, to anticipating reactions of intended readers. writing as composing needs to be distinguished from simpler task of copying. writing is slower than other skills of listen¬ ing, reading, and speaking. It is further slowed by pro¬ cesses of thinking, rereading what has been written, and revising. writing is not natural ability like speaking but has to be acquired through years of training or schooling. Alt- 115
hough writing systems have been in existence for about 5000 years, even today, only minority of world’s population knows how to write. 3 Read this passage and fill in the blanks with either a, an, the, or 0. Much has been learned about brain in last 150 years. brain, most complicated organ of body, contains ten billion nerve cells and is divided into two cerebral hemispheres—one on right and one on left. Interestingly, left hemisphere controls movements on right side of body, while right hemisphere controls movements on left. researchers also know that specific abilities and behaviors are localized; in other words, they are controlled by specific areas of brain. language, it seems, is highly localized in left hemisphere. In 1860s Dr. Paul Broca discovered that damage to front left part of brain resulted in telegraphic speech similar to that of young children. Soon thereafter, Karl Wernicke found that damage to back left part of brain resulted in speech with little semantic meaning. These two regions in brain are now referred to as Broca's area and Wernicke's area. Although there is some debate surrounding specialization of brain, researchers generally agree that speech is controlled by left side. There is no debate that in great majority of cases, injuries to left side nearly always have impact on speech. 4 Read the article. Insert a, an,or the where necessary. If no article is needed, leave a blank. July Breaks Worldwide Temperature Record WASHINGTON - July was (1) the world’s warmest month on record, and 2008 is on track to be¬ come (2) planet’s hottest known year, data reported Monday shows. (3) temperatures in each of the past 15 months have broken global highs for that month. But July was distinctive in another way: Its average of 61.7 degrees Fahrenheit was more than half a degree higher than that of July 2007, the planet’s previous warmest month, according to the Nation¬ al Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina. Scientists say the increase, 0.6 degrees, is un¬ usually large. “It would be hard to ignore that something’s going on - and that something is global warming,” vice President Jason said Monday in announcing the data. Jason has held (4) series of news conferences to focus (5) attention on (6) global warming, one of his pet causes. And the weather is working in his favor. (7) heat wave slammed North Texas with 29 consecutive days of triple-digit tem¬ peratures in July and August. (8) heat is blamed for 126 deaths in the state. 116
Heat in (9) Middle East has killed 52 people and sickened hundreds, according to the As¬ sociated Press. Even Egyptians, used to toiling in the desert, have taken to working at night to avoid 100-degree day-time heat that has persisted for three weeks. Temperatures have hit 122 degrees in Kuwait, where pools have equipment to refrigerate the water. Temperatures soared to 100 in Paris on Monday, and even higher elsewhere in France. Locals and (10) tourists splashed in fountains near the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. Some scientists suspect that the new records are due partly to the El Nino weather phenomenon and partly to global warming. But a few say the higher temperatures are part of the normal climate cy¬ cle. Most scientists agree that global warming, the gradual rise in worldwide temperature over the past century, is caused by so called greenhouse gases. These gases are emmited by (11) cars, factories, and power plants. This rise into (12) atmosphere and trap heat. Some climate experts predict that continued global warming could bring more floods, more droughts and higher sea levels that would inundate coastal areas. But scientists caution that it is impossible to link global warming to any given weather event. Jason has long been one of the most prominent voices calling for action against global warming. He was the primary supporter in the White House of an international treaty to slow global warming that was written in December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan. That treaty has been greeted with skepticism in the Senate, which must ratify if for (13) United States to take part. Copyright 2008, USA Today, Reprinted with permission. 5 Read the following composition about genetic engineering and the environment. It con¬ tains twelve errors in the use of articles. Find and correct the errors. Some of the er¬ rors are made more than once. Genetic Engineering and the Environment People say we are now able to perform genetic engineering. I am against this for several reasons. First, it is dangerous to tamper with the nature because we don’t know what will happen. We could upset the balance of the nature. For example, people are against the mosquito because it carries a malaria. Suppose we change the DNA of the mosquito so that it will die off. That will stop a malar¬ ia, but it will upset the balance of the nature because certain other species depend on the mosquito. If we destroy it, these other species won’t be able to survive. This will have serious effect on envi¬ ronment. Second, genetic engineering will take away people’s control over their own lives. Suppose scientists develop the capability to isolate gene for violent behavior and they eliminate this gene from future generations. This may eliminate violence, but I believe that behavior is matter of choice, and this type of genetic engineering will eliminate choice. It will make people behave as someone else has determined, not as they have determined, and it will take away an individual responsibility. Third, genetic engineering will remove chance from our lives. Part of what makes the life interest¬ ing is unpredictability. We never know exactly how someone, or something, is going to turn out. 117
It’s fun to see what happens. As far as I am concerned, we should leave genetic engineering to Creator. 6 Read the article. Insert a, an, or the where necessary. If no article is needed, leave a blank. Anti-Repulsion Discovered Normally, atoms that repel each other will fly apart, just as (0) like poles of two magnets facing each other will. But this year physicists forced (1) atoms to be bound by their mutual repulsion. Andrew Daley, (2) physicist at (3) University of Innsbruck in Austria, and his colleagues provoked this bond by pumping (4) ultracool, high-density collection of rubidium atoms - known as (5) Bose-Einstein condensate—into (6) 3-D “cage” of (7) laser light, known as (8) optical lattice. (9) lattice confines (10) atoms in discrete energy bands, much the way atoms are trapped in (11) crystal. Because of how (12) quantum mechanics works, gaps between (13) bands are forbidden zones, requiring (14) ener¬ gy values that atom in (15) lattice can attain. By calibrating (16) fre¬ quency of (17) laser light, Daley and his crew created conditions such that (18) the energy (19) pair of repelling atoms would gain by separating would land them within (20) verboten region. With nowhere to go, (21) atoms must stay together. “It’s like two people who hate each other, but hate each other so much that they can’t separate,” says coresearcher Adrian Kantian. These love-hate configurations of atoms could be used to test (22) quantum computers and (23) model high-temperature superconductors, materials that transmit (24) electricity with (25) near-perfect efficiency. Alex Stone “Discover” 2008, p. 55. 118
Grammar Page Grammar Reference Module - One Live & Learn Relative Clauses Relative clauses are introduced with either a relative pronoun or a relative adverb. Relative Pronouns We use: i. who(m)/that to refer to people. ii. which/that to refer to things. iii. whose with people, animals and objects to show possession (instead of a possessive adjec¬ tive). • Who, which, and that can be omitted when they are the object of the relative clause. That is the film (that) I was telling you about. • Whom can be used instead of who when it is the object of the relative clause. Whom is al¬ ways used instead of who or that after a preposition. She's someone with whom I used to work. • Who, which, or that is not omitted when it is the subject of a relative clause. The play which won the Tony Award was a musical. • Whose is never omitted. This is Bruce Weber whose photographs you must have seen. Relative adverbs We use: i. when/that to refer to a time (and can be omitted). Thatwas the year (when/that) my son was born. ii. where to refer to a place. The flat where I live is on the top floor. iii. why to give a reason, usually after the word reason (why can be omitted). The reason (why) she quit her Job is only to be guessed. Identifying and Non-Identifying Relative Clauses An identifying relative clause gives necessary information essential to the meaning of the main sentence. It is not put between commas and is introduced with who, with, that, whose, where, when, or the reason (why). Any student svho is caught cheating will be expelled A non-identifying relative clause gives extra information and is not essential to the meaning of the main sentence. It is put between commas and is introduced with who, whom, which, whose, where, or when. A student, who was caught cheating, was expelled 119
Module-Two A Job Well Done Conditionals and Wishes Mixed Conditionals • In mixed conditional sentences the //clause and the main clause refer to different times. • The most common mixed conditional is one where a past event has an effect on the pre¬ sent. The if clause refers to the past (third conditional) and the main clause refers to the present or future (second conditional): if+ past perfect + would/ could/might: If I had gone to university, I might have a belter job now. If she had remembered to buy a tick¬ et, she would be coming with us to the game tonight. • The if clause can also refer to the present or future (second conditional) and the main clause to the past (third conditional): if+ past simple + would/could/might have + past participle: If she were sensible, she wouldn’t have left her job. (= She isn’t sensible so she left her job.) If you had a car, I would have asked you to give me a lift. (= You don’t have a car so I didn’t ask you to give me a lift. I wish, if only • To express dissatisfaction with a present situation, we use I wish I past simple: I wish I was/were rich. (But I’m not.) I wish I didn’t have to go to work. (But I have to.) • To express regret about the past, we use I wish + past perfect: I wish I had known you were coming. (But I didn’t know.) • To express dissatisfaction and annoyance about something that we would like to be differ¬ ent but that probably won’t happen or that we can’t control, we use I wish + would + in¬ finitive without to: I wish my parents wouldn ’t treat me like a child. (But they do and I can’t change them.) • To talk about something we are unable to do, we use I wish + could + infinitive without to: I wish I could remember his name. (But I can’t.) • If only can replace I wish. It is usually more emphatic: If only you had told me the truth! If only they would turn the music down, we could get some sleep. We use hope to talk about events that are possible and wish to talk about events that are unlikely or impossible: I hope you enjoyed the film. (It’s possible you enjoyed it.) I wish you had enjoyed the film. (But I know you didn’t.) I hope he’ll attend the meeting. (He may attend.) I wish he would attend the meeting. (I don’t think he will attend.) Other ways to express hypothetical meaning • We use it’s time (+for someone) + for-infinitive to say that we think an action should happen. We can also use it’s time + past simple/continuous: It’s ten о ’clock. It’s time for us to leave. /It’s time we left. /It’s time we were leaving. • We use it’s high time + past simple/continuous to say that we think it is urgent that 120
an action should happen: It’s high time they started studying harder. • We use would rather + subject + past simple/continuous to say what someone would like someone else to do in the present or future: I’d rather you didn’t go out alone. • We use would rather + subject + past perfect to express dissatisfaction with what someone did in the past: I’d rather you hadn’t gone without me. • We use as if/though + present tense for something we think is true: She’s looking at him as though she knows him. (Perhaps she does know him.) • We use as if/though + past simple/past perfect when we think something is not like¬ ly to be true: She’s looking at him as if she knew him. (She doesn’t know him.) She looked as though she’d seen a ghost! (But she hadn’t.) Module-Three Technological Changes in the World Future Forms Future Simple We use the future simple (will + bare infinitive) for: • decisions made at the moment of speaking. This room's a mess. I'll tidy it later. • predictions about the future, based on what we think, believe or imagine, using the verbs think, believe, expect etc, the expressions be sure, be afraid etc, and the adverbs proba¬ bly, certainly, perhaps etc. She will probably accept the job offer. • promises, threats, warnings, requests, hopes and offers Will you lend me some money till next weekend? • actions, events, situations which will definitely happen in the future and which we can’t control. Our oldest son will be thirty next May. Be going to We use be going to: • for plans, intentions or ambitions for the future. He's going to be a veterinarian when he grad¬ uates. • actions we have already decided to do in the near future. We are going to buy that cmtique mirror we saw. • predictions based on what we can see or what we know, especially when there is evidence that something will happen. He feels very guilty; he's going to tell her the truth. The time expressions we use with the future simple and be going to are; tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, tonight, soon, next week/month/year/summer etc, in a week/month, etc 121
Future Continuous We use the future continuous (will be + verb -ing): • for actions which will be in progress at a stated future time. I am going to Cuba. This time next week I'll be travelling to Havanna. • for actions which will definitely happen in the future as the result of a routine or arrange¬ ment. I will be driving to the countryside at the weekend • when we ask politely about someone's plans/intentions for the near future. Will you be needing an extra pillow, madam? Future Perfect —> will have + past participle ’ We use the future perfect for actions that will have finished before a stated time in the fu¬ ture. I will have prepared supper by 7:00pm. The time expressions we use with the future perfect are: before, by the time, until/till, (only in negative sentences) Future Perfect Continuous -> will have been + verb + -ing > We use the future perfect continuous to emphasize the duration of an action up to a cer¬ tain time in the future. The future perfect continuous is used with: by... for. By the end of September, she will have been living in Tunisia for three years. Other ways of talking about the future • We use be + to - infinitive to talk about formal plans or arrangements, instructions and prohibitions: The Queen is to arrive at J0.00 to begin the ceremony. You are to be there no later than eight о ’clock. • We use be due + to-infinitive to talk about events that we expect to take place at a fixed time, e. g. with timetables: The bus is due to arrive any minute. • We use be (just) about + to - infinitive or be on the point of + -ing form to talk about events that we expect will happen very soon: We re (just) about to leave. I think he’s on the point of asking her to marry him. • Some verbs refer to the future: plan/ hope/ intend + to - infinitive: The company plans to build a new supermarket. I hope to study law next year. 122
Extensive Activities Additional Texts for Discussion (can be recommended as home-reading texts with further discussion) ALEXANDER CALANDRA Alexander Calandra is a professor of physics at Washington University in St. Luois, Mussoury. In the following essay he shares an experience with a college student who refused to give the expected answer to a question on a physics examination. Instead, the student insisted on giving a number of answers other than the conventional one. Angels on a Pin Some time ago I received a call from a colleague who asked if I would be the referee on the grading of an examination question. He was about to give a student a zero for his answer to a physics ques¬ tion, while the student claimed he should receive a perfect score and would if the system were not set up against the student: The instructor and the student agreed to submit this to an impartial arbi¬ ter, and I was selected. I went to my colleague's office and read the examination question: "Show how it is possible to de¬ termine the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer." The student had answered: "Take a barometer to the top of the building, attach a long rope to it, lower the barometer to the street and then bring it up, measuring the length of the rope. The length of the rope is the height of the building." I pointed out that the student really had a strong case for full credit since he had answered the ques¬ tion completely and correctly. On the other hand, if full credit were given, it could well contribute to a high grade for the student in his physics course. A high grade is supposed to certify competence in physics, but the answer did not confirm this. I suggested that the student have another try at an¬ swering the question. I was not surprised that my colleague agreed, but I was surprised that the stu¬ dent did. I gave the student six minutes to answer the question with the warning that the answer should show some knowledge of physics At the end of five minutes, he had not written anything. T asked if he wished to give up, but he said no. He had many answers to this problem; he was just thinking of the best one. I excused myself for interrupting him and asked him to please go on. In the next minute he dashed off his answer which read: "Take the barometer to the top of the building and lean over the edge of the roof. Drop that barome¬ ter, timing its fall with a stopwatch. Then using the formula S = Aat2, calculate the height of the building”. At this point I asked my colleague if he would give up. He conceded, and I gave the student almost full credit. In leaving my colleague's office, I recalled that the student had said he had many other answers to the problem, so I asked him what they were. "Oh yes," said the student. "There are a great many ways of getting the height of a tall building with the aid of a barometer. For example, you could take the barometer out on a sunny day and measure the height of the barometer, the length of its shadow and the length of the shadow of the building, and by the use of a simple proportion, deter¬ mine the height of the building." "Fine," I asked. "And the others?" 123
"Yes," said the student. "There is a very basic measurement method that you will like. In this meth¬ od you take the barometer and begin to walk up the stairs. As you climb the stairs, you mark off the length of the barometer along the wall. You then count the number of marks, and this will give you the height of the building in barometer units. A very direct method." "Of course, if you want a more sophisticated method, you can tie the barometer to the end of a string, swing it as a pendulum, and determine the value of 'g' at the street level and at the top of the building. From the difference between the two values of ’g', the height of the building can, in prin¬ ciple, be calculated." Finally he concluded, there are many other ways of solving the problem. "Probably the best," he said, "is to take the barometer to the basement and knock on the superintendent's door. When the superintendent answers, you speak to him as follows: "Mr. Superintendent, here I have a fine ba¬ rometer. If you tell me the height of this building, I will give you this barometer." At this point I asked the student if he really did not know the conventional answer to this question. He admitted that he did, but said that he was fed up with high school and college instructors trying to teach him how to think, using the "scientific method," and to explore the deep inner logic of the subject in a pedantic way, as is often done in the new mathematics, rather than teaching him the structure of the subject. With this in mind, he decided to revive scholasticism as an academic lark to challenge the Sputnik-panicked classrooms of America. Questions for Discussion 1. What does the essay illustrate? 2. What was the examination question supposed to test? Was it a “bad” question in that it failed to get the expected response? Can you restate the question so that it will elicit the ex¬ pected answer? 3. The student says that the answer he gives in the paragraph close to the end is probably the best one. Why does he say this? What motivated him to avoid the conventional answer? Do you agree with his position? 4. Why do you think Professor Calandra did not give the student full credit for his answer at the beginning? Do you agree with the professor’s judgment? 5. How would you characterize all of the student’s answers? What qualities did they possess? 6. The conventional answer to the physics question is never given. Is it important for the reader to know it? Do you think author Calandra leaves it out on purpose? If so, why? Exploring Ideas 1. During the Middle Ages, scholastic philosophers would debate questions dealing with theo¬ logical minutiae that seem pointless to the modern reader. One such question was how many angels could dance on the head of a pin, hence the source of the title of the essay. With this in mind, to what extent does the title contribute to the overall effect of the essay? 2. Keeping in mind the scholasticism of the Middle Ages, what did the student have in mind when he decided to revive it as an “academic lark” as mentioned in the last sentence of the essay? 3. The student mentioned in the essay is obviously not a conventional thinker in many respects. Do you admire him for taking that approach to problem solving? Have you ever exercised this type of approach to a problem? What role should imaginative thinkers play in a society? 4. What is the basic purpose of tests and examinations? How can one tell the difference be¬ tween a good and a bad examination? 124
JOSEPH EPSTEIN Born in 1937, Joseph Epstein is a professor of English al Northwestern University in Evanston, Illi¬ nois. He is also the editor of'J\\e American Scholar, a quarterly journal of essays published by the Phi Beta Kappa society. The essay below is taken from Ambition. The Secret Passion, published in 1980. The Virtues of Ambition Ambition is one of those Rorschach words: define it and you instantly reveal a great deal about yourself. Even that most neutral of works, Webster’s, in its Seventh New Collegiate Edition, gives itself away, defining ambition first and foremost as «an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power». Ar¬ dent immediately assumes a heat incommensurate with good sense and stability, and rank, fame, and power have come under fairly heavy attack for at least a century. One can, after all, be ambi¬ tious for the public good, for the alleviation of suffering, for the enlightenment of mankind, though there are some who say that these are precisely the ambitious people most to be distrusted. Surely ambition is behind dreams of glory, of wealth, of love, of distinction, of accomplishment, of pleasure, of goodness. What life does with our dreams and expectations cannot, of course, be pre¬ dicted. Some dreams, begun in selflessness, end in rancor; other dreams, begun in selfishness, end in large-heartedness. The unpredictability of the outcome of dreams is no reason to cease dreaming. To be sure, ambition, the sheer thing unalloyed by some larger purpose than merely clambering up, is never a pretty prospect to ponder. As drunks have done to alcohol, the single-minded have done to ambition — given it a bad name. Like a taste for alcohol, too, ambition does not always allow for easy satiation. Some people cannot handle it; it has brought grief to others, and not merely the am¬ bitious alone. Still, none of this seems sufficient cause for driving ambition under the counter. What is the worst that can be said — that has been said — about ambition? Here is a (surely) partial list: To begin with, it, ambition, is often antisocial, and indeed is now out-moded, belonging to an age when individualism was more valued and useful than it is today. The person strongly imbued with ambition ignores the collectivity; socially detached, he is on his own and out for his own. Individu¬ ality and ambition are firmly linked. The ambitious individual, far from identifying himself and his fortunes with the group, wishes to rise above it. The ambitious man or woman sees the world as a battle; rivalrousness is his or her principal emotion: the world has limited prizes to offer, and he or she is determined to get his or hers. Ambition is, moreover, jesuitical; it can argue those possessed by it into believing that what they want for themselves is good for everyone — that the satisfaction of their own desires is best for the commonweal. The truly ambitious believe that it is a dog-eat-dog world, and they are distinguished by wanting to be the dogs that do the eating. From here it is but a short hop to believe that those who have achieved the common goals of ambi¬ tion — money, fame, power — have achieved them through corruption of a greater or lesser degree, mostly a greater. Thus, all politicians in high places, thought to be ambitious, are understood to be, ipso facto, without moral scruples. How could they have such scruples — a weighty burden in a high climb — and still have risen as they have? If ambition is to be well regarded, the rewards of ambition — wealth, distinction, control over one’s destiny — must be deemed worthy of the sacrifices made on ambition’s behalf. If the tradition of ambition is to have vitality, it must be widely shared; and it especially must be esteemed by people who are themselves admired, the educated not least among them. The educated not least because, nowadays more than ever before, it is they who have usurped the platforms of public discussion and 125
wield the power of the spoken and written word in newspapers, in magazines, on television. In an odd way, it is the educated who have claimed to have given up on ambition as an ideal. What is odd is that they have perhaps most benefited from ambition — if not always their own then that of their parents and grandparents. There is a heavy note of hypocrisy in this; a case of closing the bam door after the horses have escaped — with the educated themselves astride them. Certainly people do not seem less interested in success and its accoutrements now than formerly. Summer homes, European travel, BMWs — the locations, place names and name brands may change, but such items do not seem less in demand today than a decade or two years ago. What has happened is that people cannot own up to their dreams, as easily and openly as once they could, lest they be thought pushing, acquisitive, vulgar. Instead we are treated to fine Pharisaical spectacles, which now more than ever seem in ample supply: the revolutionary lawyer quartered in the $250,000 Manhattan condominium; the critic of American materialism with a Southampton summer home; the publisher of radical books who takes his meals in three-star restaurants; the journalist ad¬ vocating participatory democracy in all phases of life, whose own children are enrolled in private schools. For such people and many more perhaps not so egregious, the proper formulation is, «Suc¬ ceed at all costs but refrain from appearing ambitious». The attacks on ambition are many and come from various angles; its public defenders are few and unimpressive, where they are not extremely unattractive. As a result, the support for ambition as a healthy impulse, a quality to be admired and inculcated in die young, is probably lower than it has ever been in the United States. This does not mean that ambition is at an end, that people no longer feel its stirrings and promptings, but only that, no longer openly honored; it is less often openly pro¬ fessed. Consequences follow from this, of course, some of which are that ambition is driven under¬ ground, or made sly, or perverse. It can also be forced into vulgarity, as witness the blatant pratings of its contemporary promoters. Such, then, is the way things stand: on the left angry critics, on the right obtuse supporters, and in the middle, as usual, the majority of earnest people trying to get on in life. Many people are naturally distrustful of ambition, feeling that it represents something intractable in human nature. Thus, John Dean entitled his book about his involvement in the Watergate affair dur¬ ing the Nixon administration Blind Ambition, as if ambition were to blame for his ignoble actions, and not the constellation of qualities that make up his rather shabby character. Ambition, it must once again be underscored, is morally a two-sided street. Place next to John Dean Andrew Carne¬ gie, who, among other philanthropic acts, bought the library of Lord Acton, at a time when Acton was in financial distress, and assigned its custodianship to Acton, who never was told who his bene¬ factor was. Need much more be said on the subject than that, important though ambition is, there are some things that one must not sacrifice to it? But going at things the other way, sacrificing ambition so as to guard against its potential excesses, is to go at things wrongly. To discourage ambition is to discourage dreams of grandeur and great¬ ness. All men and women are bom, live, suffer, and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about. It may seem an exaggeration to say that ambition is the linchpin of society, holding many of its dis¬ parate elements together, but it is not an exaggeration by much. Remove ambition and the essential elements of society seem to fly apart. Ambition, as opposed to mere fantasizing about desires, im¬ plies work and discipline to achieve goals, personal and social, of a kind society cannot survive without. Ambition is intimately connected with family, for men and women not only work partly for their families; husbands and wives are often ambitious for each other, but harbor some of their most ardent ambitions for their children. Yet to have a family nowadays — with birth control readi¬ ly available, and inflation a good economic argument against having children — is nearly an ex¬ pression of ambition in itself. Finally, though ambition was once the domain chiefly of monarchs 126
and aristocrats, it has, in more recent times, increasingly become the domain of the middle classes. Ambition and futurity—a sense of building for tomorrow — are inextricable. Working, saving, planning — these, the daily aspects of ambition — have always been the distinguishing marks of a rising middle class. The attack against ambition is not incidentally an attack on the middle class and what it stands for. Like it or not, the middle class has done much of society’s work in America; and it, the middle class, has from the beginning run on ambition. It is not difficult to imagine a world shorn of ambition. It would probably be a kinder world: with¬ out demands, without abrasions, without disappointments. People would have time for reflection. Such work as they did would not be for themselves but for the collectivity. Competition would nev¬ er enter in. Conflict would be eliminated, tension become a thing of the past. The stress of creation would be at an end. Art would no longer be troubling, but purely celebratory in its functions. The family would become superfluous as a social unit, with all its former power for bringing about neu¬ rosis drained away. Longevity would be increased, for fewer people would die of heart attack or stroke caused by tumultuous endeavor. Anxiety would be extinct. Time would stretch on and on, with ambition long departed from the human heart. Ah, how unrelievedly boring life would be! There is a strong view that holds that success is a myth, and ambition therefore a sham. Does this mean that success does not really exist? That achievement is at bottom empty? That the efforts of men and women are of no significance alongside the force of movements and events? Now not all success, obviously, is worth esteeming, nor all ambition worth cultivating. Which are and which are not is something one soon enough learns on one’s own. But even the most cynical secretly admit that success exists; that achievement counts for a great deal; and that the true myth is that the ac¬ tions of men and women are useless. To believe otherwise is to take on a point of view that is likely to be deranging. It is, in its implications, to remove all motive for competence, interest in attain¬ ment, and regard for posterity. We do not choose to be bom. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth or the immediate circumstances of our up-bringing . We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time or conditions of our death. But within all this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we shall live: courageously or in cowardice, honorably or dis¬ honorably, with purpose or in drift. We decide what is important and what is trivial in life. We de¬ cide that what makes us significant is either what we do or what we refuse to do. But no matter how indifferent the universe may be to our choices and decisions, these choices and decisions are ours to make. We decide. We choose. And as we decide and choose, so are our lives formed. In the end, forming our own destiny is what ambition is about. Questions for Discussion 1. According to the author, what are some of the negative aspects of ambition? 2. What can cause ambition to be well-regarded? 3. What has caused ambition to the less admired in the United States in recent years? 4. The author states that “ambition...is morally a two-sided street.” What does he mean? 5. To a great extent the author believes that “ambition is the linchpin of society.” How does he support that belief9 6. What would characterize a world without ambition according to Epstein? 7. Does the author believe that the quality of life would be improved without ambition? Ex¬ plain. 127
Exploring Ideas 1. The concluding statement of the essay observes that “forming our own destiny is what ambi¬ tion is about.” Do you agree or disagree? Give your reasons. 2. Do you think that people are hypocritical about ambition? If so, in what ways? 3. Do you agree with the author that ambition holds society together? 4. How does ambition manifest itself in your society? How does it compare with some of Ep¬ stein’s observations vis-a-vis American society? 5. Discuss or debate the following statements found in the essay. (a) “Surely ambition is behind dreams of glory, of wealth, of love, of distinction, of ac¬ complishment, of pleasure, of goodness.” (b) “Individuality and ambition are firmly linked.” (c) “To discourage ambition is to discourage dreams of grandeur and greatness.” (d) “Ambition, as opposed to mere fantasizing about desires, implies work and discipline to achieve goals, personal and social, of a kind society cannot survive without.” W. FURNESS THOMPSON (1907-1979) W. Furness Thompson served for many years as director of research for Smith, Kline, and French Laboratories. In his administrative position, Thompson gained invaluable insights into the nature of scientific work and of scientists themselves. He was the author of numerous articles in leading American periodicals. He died on April 29, 1979, in Villanova, Pennsylvania. Why Don’t the Scientists Admit They’re Human? Did you ever read a scientific paper that begins, “For no good reason at all I had a hunch that. ..” or ”1 was just fooling around one day when . . .”? No sir! Seldom does a trace of anything haphazard, anything human, appear in published reports of research experiments. The scientific paper will more likely begin: “In view of recent evidence concerning the Glockenspiel theory, it seemed ad¬ visable to conduct. ...” And the report will go on to describe a carefully thought-out experiment that followed not only a logical but also a chronological order. This was done, this resulted, therefore these conclusions were suggested. Scientific tradition demands that scientific papers follow that formal progression: method first, results second, conclusion third. The rules permit no hint that, as often happens, the method was really made up as the scientist went along, or that accidental results determined the method, or that the scientist reached certain conclusions before the results were all in, or that he started out with certain conclusions, or that he started doing a different experiment. Much scientific writing not only misrepresents the workings of science but also does a disservice to scientists themselves. By writing reports that make scientific investigations sound as unvarying and predictable as a pavan, scientists tend to promulgate the curious notion that science is infallible. That many of them are unconscious of the effect they create does not alter the image in the popular 128
mind. We hear time and again of the superiority of the “scientific method.” In fact, the word “unsci¬ entific” has almost become a synonym for “untrue.” Yet the final evaluation of any set of data is an individual, subjective judgment; and all human judgment is liable to error. Thoughtful scientists re¬ alize all this; but you wouldn’t gather so from reading most scientific literature. A pompous, stilted style too often seizes the pen of the experimenter the moment he starts putting words on paper. Words direct our lives, after all. And if the words in which we read the scientist’s own unfolding story of his science are all cold and calculated, empty of foible or failing, above even mention of mistake, how are we to divine that in the vast majority of moments when he is not writing, the sci¬ entist is a genial, sensible, rather humble man? By what occult power are we to recognize that his “objective evaluations” in the scientific journals are actually not magnificent infallibilities but for¬ tunate conclusions of persistently pursued hunches, exhaustively explored intuitions, and unex¬ pected observations? Editors of scientific publications are not without their reasons for the current style of scientific writ¬ ing. Their journals aren’t rich. Paper and printing are expensive. Therefore, it is expedient to con¬ dense articles as much as possible. Under pressure of tradition, the condensation process removes the human elements first. And few scientific writers rebel against the tradition. Even courageous men do not go out of their way to publicize their deviations from accepted procedures. Then, too, there is an apparent objectivity and humility attached to the third person, passive voice writing technique adopted in the preparation of most scientific papers. So, bit by bit, the true face of science becomes hidden behind what seems to the outsider to be a smug all-knowing mask. Is it any wonder that in the popular literature the scientist often appears as a hybrid superman-spoiled child9 No small contribution to modem culture could be the simple introduction, into the earliest stage of our public-school science courses, of a natural style of writing about laboratory experiments as they really happen. This is something that could be done immediately with the opening of classes this fall. It requires no preparation except a psychological acknowledgment of the obvious fact that the present form of reporting experiments is a mental straitjacket whose very appearance is calculated to repel the imaginative young minds science so sorely needs. Dare the local schoolteacher depart from the stereotype imposed by tradition? I think he should. It would be foolish to expect every scientist to become a composite of, say, Pasteur and Hemingway. But the teacher could point out that a writing tradition which removes a portion of humanity is also liable to remove a portion of truth. He could encourage his students to report facts as they see them, including facts that convention might regard as “unscientific” and, therefore, out of place in a writ¬ ten report. The giants of science could serve as guides. Let me quote from the article in the June, 1929, issue of the British Journal of Experimental Pathology! in which Sir Alexander Fleming, the English bacteriologist, announced the discovery of penicillin: While working with staphylococcus variants (types of bacteria) a number of culture plates were set aside on the laboratory bench and examined from time to time. In the examination, these plates were necessarily exposed to the air and they became contaminated with various microorganisms. It was noticed that around a large colony of the contaminated mold the staphylococcus colonies be¬ came transparent and were obviously undergoing lysis (dissolution). This paragraph is far from a literary masterpiece, but it does illustrate a straightforwardness which is infrequently present in scientific writing. Did Fleming report anything that happened according to plan? Not unless necessary exposure to air is counted as planning. The whole business was an acci¬ dent, and Fleming said so. Fleming did not discover penicillin because he was hunting for it. He made the discovery because he was curious about something he saw. He saw the germs on his plates being killed by an air-borne mold. What was the mold and how did it kill? 129
This penicillin episode is an instractive example of how wrong the popular conception of “scientific method” can be. Even after he isolated penicillin Fleming was unable to make more than a meager quantity of it that was useful. Ten years were to pass before the antibiotic was mass-manufactured, and then the job could not be done in the discoverer’s native England. Penicillin did not become a practical reality until Dr. Alfred Newton Richards, Chairman of the National Research Council’s Committee on Medical Research in this country, persuaded United States manufacturers to go into speculative development of the drag. Our firm—Smith, Kline, and French —was one of the companies Richards approached. We were interested. We thought a mushroom outfit might be a good place to grow the mold. I was sent to talk to the mushroom man. As I explained the process of growing molds and extracting penicillin, he paled. He got rid of me as fast as he could. Much later, I found out that mushroom growers plan their science on the principle that all molds are evil and should be destroyed. Only those mushroom men who ignored their own traditional “method” were able to benefit the world, and incidentally, become rich themselves, by growing penicillin. Science, in practice, depends far less on the experiments it prepares than on the preparedness of the minds of the men who watch the experiments. Sir Tsaac Newton supposedly discovered gravity through the fall of an apple. Apples had been falling in many places for centuries and thousands of people had seen them fall. But Newton for years had been curious about the cause of the orbital mo¬ tion of the moon and the planets. What kept them in place? Why didn’t they fall out of the sky? The fact that the apple fell down toward the earth and not up into the tree answered the question he had been asking himself about those larger fruits of the heavens, the moon and the planets. How many men would have considered the possibility of an apple falling up into the tree? Newton did because he was not trying to predict anything. He was just wondering. His mind was ready for the unpredictable. Unpredictability is part of the essential nature of research. If you don’t have un¬ predictable things, you don’t have research. Scientists tend to forget this when writing their cut and dried reports for the technical journals, but history is fdled with examples of it. In 1925 William Mason, a mechanical engineer, hit upon the idea of heating wood until it exploded and then using the fibers to make a good inexpensive paper. He was in a factory drying some of the fibers when a friend asked him to lunch. After turning off the steam valve that regulated the heat, Mason left the place. He had a leisurely lunch followed by a few extra cups of coffee. When he re¬ turned to the factory he discovered to his horror that the valve he thought he had closed was defec¬ tive—the heat had remained on all the time he was away. The wood fibers weren’t merely dry; they were baked! Mason’s first reaction was to throw the fibers away. Before he did so, however, he took a long close look at them. He found a smooth sheet not of paper but of a new very special kind of grainless wood. Another man made a valuable discovery because he forgot to wash his hands. He knocked off work in a laboratory to eat a roast beef sandwich, took one bite and gagged. The sandwich was sickening- ly sweet! In reaching for a glass of water, he noticed his hands were dirty. Could the dirt have any¬ thing to do with the unexpected sweetness of that sandwich? He examined the stuff he had been handling in the laboratory before lunch and thereby discovered saccharin. Serendipity is the high- sounding name for this kind of happy accident. In talking to some scientists, particularly younger ones, you might gather the impression that they find the “scientific method” a substitute for imaginative thought. I’ve attended research conferences where a scientist has been asked what he thinks about the advisability of continuing a certain exper¬ iment. The scientist has frowned, looked at the graphs, and said “the data are still inconclusive.” “We know that,” the men from the budget office have said, “but what do you think? Is it worth while going on? What do you think we might expect?” The scientist has been shocked at having even been asked to speculate. 130
What this amounts to, of course, is that the scientist has become the victim of his own propaganda. He has put up the infallible objective front so consistently that he not only believes it himself, but has convinced industrial and business management that it is true. If experiments are planned and carried out according to plan as faithfully as the reports in the science journals indicate, then it is perfectly logical for management to expect research to produce results measurable in dollars and cents. It is entirely reasonable for auditors to believe that scientists who know exactly where they are going and how they will get there should not be distracted by the necessity of keeping one eye on the cash register while the other eye is on the microscope. Nor, if regularity and conformity to a standard pattern are as desirable to the scientist as the writing of his papers would appear to reflect, is management to be blamed for discriminating against the “odd balls” among researchers in favor of more conventional thinkers who “work well with the team .” All of us who actually have to do with research know that the “odd ball” often is a more valuable scientist than his well adjusted colleague. “Odd ball” may be too strong a phrase. I’m not talking about the man who is extremely unusual—who wears a Napoleon hat. No, I mean the man who doesn't conform, who doesn’t always think the way most of us are thinking, who doesn’t always act the way most of us are acting. 1 can remember an extremely valuable senior scientist of ours who made many important contribu¬ tions to our research program but who apparently did very little work, and who took privileges which were quite conspicuous. He was a flower fancier. He spent so much time growing flowers in his laboratory that it began to look like the beginning of a small greenhouse. We were worried about the effect of this man on the morale of those who worked with and for him. But when we looked into the situation we found that our fears were groundless. He was not resented. The others around him realized that if they were contributing as much as he, they too could grow flowers in the lab or design Rube Goldberg apparatus. At least a large part of the nonscientist’s hostility to or fear of the scientist rises from the stereo¬ typed idea of the scientist as a man, the myth that the scientist himself perpetuates. This imaginary person does not quite belong to the same species as other human beings; he lives in a different world; he thinks in a different way. Actually, the scientist thinks in much the same way that the rest of us do. The problems he encoun¬ ters in his work are different from our problems, but his method of arriving at solutions is much the same as ours. The scientist is not necessarily smarter or more creative than the nonscientist. The psychological process of creativity—whether a man is creating a new vaccine, a novel, a painting, or a piece of sculpture—is much the same for everybody. If the scientist, in writing about his work, will present himself as a fellow fallible human, he will lead us all to be receptive of his accomplishments, tolerant of his failures, and far less likely to de¬ mand of him more than he can possibly give. Questions for Discussion 1. In paragraph 6, the author states that “a writing tradition which removes a portion of human¬ ity is also liable to remove a portion of truth.” Does this statement givie the central idea of the essay? 2. According to the author, how does scientific writing do a disservice to scientists themselves? 3. What does the author mean in paragraph 3 when he observes: “Words direct our lives...?” 4. “So, bit by bit, the true face of science becomes hidden behind what seems to the outsider to be a smug all-knowing mask.” (Paragraph 4) How is this accomplished according to the au¬ thor? 131
5. What is the procedure for the preparation of scientific papers? 6. What role does the preparedness of the minds of scientists play in making experiments? 7. In what way has the scientist become a victim of his own propaganda? 8. How does the author compare the scientist with the nonscientist regarding the process of creative thinking? Exploring Ideas 1. Do you think that scientists should make a real effort to make their writings intelligible to all educated persons? 2. To what extent have you felt that scientists do “not quite belong to the same species as other human beings?” 3. In paragraph 5, the author uses the expression, “mental straitjacket.” How do you interpret the expression9 Do you think that it applies only to scientific thinking? 4. Should all writing include the “human” quality? Explain your answer. 5. Basically, the author has not admitted the need for two kinds of writing—one done for sci¬ ence, the other for the general public. Does this limit the effectiveness of the essay? Should he have recognized that the purposes and methods of scientific writing are different from those of a general nature? Why or why not? 132
Texts for Translating into Russian or Summarizing and \ or Paraphrasing Cosmic Collision Brings Dark Matter Into View A violent collision between a pair of massive galaxy clusters 3 billion light-years from Earth has turned up the most direct evidence yet of dark matter, the invisible substance thought to make up 80 percent of the matter in the universe. To catch dark matter in action, astrophysicists at Stanford University’s Kavli Institute and the universities of Arizona and Florida compared X-ray images of visible matter in the clusters with a map of the total mass, which they obtained by measuring the degree to which light from distant galaxies was bent as it passed by, a phenomenon known as gravi¬ tational lensing. When the researchers compared the two images, “the two didn’t line up,” says Kavli Institute astro¬ physicist Marusa Bradac. “This tells us there must be something there, and that it is dark matter.” Because dark matter doesn’t interact with regular matter, or with itself, it passes right through eve¬ rything. So when the two galaxy clusters smashed together at a staggering 10 million miles per hour, visible matter slowed down in the crush of the collision, but dark matter flew through unfet¬ tered. “The visible matter created a kind of traffic jam in the middle, whereas dark matter has its own highway,” Bradac says. The different locations of the two kinds of matter are seen in the im¬ age, where red represents visible matter and blue represents the dark stuff. If dark matter exists, it should be present on Earth too. “There are dark matter particles around me and you right now,” says Bradac. The next big step for physicists is to detect it in a terrestrial labor¬ atory. That effort got a major boost two months after the Kavli crew announced its discovery, when the most sensitive—and recently upgraded—dark matter detector in the world went online. The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS), buried half a mile deep in an old Minnesota iron mine to shield it from cosmic rays, searches for collisions between dark-matter particles called WIMPS and ordinary atoms in 19 hockey-puck-size hunks of germanium. The apparatus is tuned to spot heat energy deposited by these rare impacts, known as scattering events, so the temperature of the in¬ strument’s underground silicon and germanium detectors is held at a chilly -459.58 degrees Fahren¬ heit, just above absolute zero. Physicists could detect dark matter in the next five years, says Bradac, assuming it has the proper¬ ties scientists expect. CDMS physicist Dan Akerib of Case Western Reserve University is wagering that it does. “If WIMPS are just around the corner, we might be able to see something,” he says. “I’m betting 10 years of my life that they are.” Alex Stone, “Discover ”, 2009, p. 25. Quantum Teleportation Leaps Toward Reality It’s not exactly “Beam me up, Scotty,” but for the first time scientists have teleported information between light and atoms, hastening the long-awaited advent of ultrafast quantum computers and un¬ breakable encryption schemes. Quantum teleportation is the process of making a subatomic parti¬ cle’s physical state vanish from one place and appear in another, a little like Captain Kirk’s trans¬ porter. What makes this possible is a bizarre phenomenon known as entanglement, in which a pair of particles have complementary characteristics, such as two electrons spinning in opposite direc¬ tions. The irreducible uncertainty of quantum mechanics makes it impossible to predict the state of a given electron, but because the two particles are entangled, measuring the state of one automati¬ cally determines the state of the other, regardless of how far apart they are. 133
In order to teleport a state between light and atoms, Eugene Polzik and his colleagues at the Niels Bohr Institute in Copenhagen, in collaboration with Ignacio Cirac of the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Germany, entangled a light beam with a magnetized gas of cesium atoms. The researchers then encoded the state they wanted to teleport into the light beam with laser pulses. By separating the entangled quantum information from the light beam and uncovering the laser mes¬ sage, the team was able to teleport the complementary state to the atoms at a distance of half a yard. “For the first time," Polzik says, quantum teleportation “has been achieved between light—the car¬ rier of information—and atoms ” This was also the first time that it was done with a macroscopic atomic object acting as the target. Scientists had previously teleported states only between pairs of photons or pairs of atoms. But a practical quantum computer, Polzik notes, requires the transfer of information between a data stream, such as light, and a stored quantum state, such as the atoms in a hard drive. Curt Suplee, “Discover”, 2009, p.35. Alien Planets Get Smaller, Fatter, Faster, and Hotter This year ushered in at least two dozen more planets outside our own solar system, including some of the oddest ones yet. In January astronomers introduced the least massive extrasolar planet yet discovered. Weighing in at just 5.5 times the Earth’s mass, planet OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb, most likely an ice-covered ball of rock, circles a cool red dwarf star some 21,000 light-years away. In September another extrasolar planet rewrote the record books. HAT-P-1 is about 1.5 times the width of Jupiter, yet remarkably, only half Jupiter’s mass. Less dense than cork, it would float in water. In October astronomers revealed the fastest known planet, named SWEEPS-10, with a “year” just 10 hours long and a surface temperature of perhaps 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit. If its home star were any hotter, the planet might have simply boiled away. Stephen Ornes, “Discover ”, 2006, p. 48 Light Moves in Reverse Physicists at the University of Rochester have coaxed light into traveling backward—and, weird¬ ly enough, to do so faster than light itself. In a clever tabletop experiment, the researchers sent a pulse of light through a single optical fiber doped with erbium, a metal that alters the speed at which light waves move through the fiber. Just as one light pulse enters, a second pulse appears at the opposite end, as if by magic. This second pulse then splits in two, with half propagating backward and the other half exiting the fiber. The overall effect is that “the pulse appears to leave before it enters,” says physicist Robert Boyd, who designed the experiment. No physical laws are violated because the information in the pulse never breaks the light-speed barrier. In recent years physicists have also learned to slow light or to ramp it up past the usual speed of 186,282 miles per second. Replacing electrical switches with optical buffers that control the speed of light could lead to more efficient high-speed telecommunication networks. Alex Stone , “Discover ”, 2007, p.61 134
Renegade Planet Pair Defy Explanation A pair of celestial objects found circling one another 450 light-years from Earth have fed a grow¬ ing debate over the dividing line between planets and stars. With roughly 7 and 14 times the mass of Jupiter, respectively, these bodies seem too small to be stars. Yet they have no parent sun to orbit as planets do. Instead, they travel by themselves through our galaxy. “They really are something in between planets and stars,” says University of Toronto astrophysicist Ray Jayawardhana, who dis¬ covered the pair. This is the first known example of a gravitationally bound pair of planetary mass objects, and as¬ tronomers can’t agree on a name for them. Some refer to them as isolated giants or sub-brown dwarfs. Jayawardhana calls them planemos (for “planetary mass objects”). Astronomers also cannot agree on how they were made. One theory suggests that the planemos were violently ejected from a dense collapsing cloud of dust and gas, but that process would almost surely have separated the pair, Jayawardhana says. Perhaps they formed like binary stars, which grow from a gas cloud that splits in two while collapsing. But Jayawardhana asks, “How do you make such a small clump of gas collapse on itself?” Whatever their origin, the planemos are sur¬ rounded by disks of rocky debris, suggesting that they each may be at the center of a whole minia¬ ture system of planets circling planets. Stephen Ornes, “Discover 2009, p. 63 The Limited Appeal of Nuclear Energy After 20 years of stagnation, nuclear energy again finds favor in the eyes of many energy plan¬ ners. In contrast with electricity generated from coal or natural gas, nuclear power contributes little to greenhouse gas emissions and could therefore help in the effort to reduce global warming. The establishment of a tax on carbon emissions, which has been widely proposed as an incentive to move away from fossil-fuel use, would make nuclear energy even more attractive. Such arguments may ultimately prove compelling to industrial nations—but to assume that the developing nations will follow suit is to ignore some important realities. Moreover, motivation to shift to nuclear energy may be lacking. Concerns about greenhouse gas emissions simply do not have a high priority now in developing nations. Neither the Kyoto Protocol nor any other international agreement constrains those emissions for them. Their financial authori¬ ties cannot easily justify subsidizing nuclear energy at the expense of more pressing needs in health, education and poverty reduction. Nor is the need for energy a sufficient compulsion. Most of the anticipated growth in nuclear energy in the developing world is commonly ascribed to China and India. In recent years, they have be¬ come prime markets for nuclear technology imports because their indigenous programs have been at best qualified successes. Yet those countries, and indeed the rest of the developing world, have abundant nonnuclear energy alternatives, too. Cleaner coal-burning technologies would reduce emissions not only of greenhouse gases but also of soot and other by-products that cause local and regional pollution—and they could prove to be easier or less expensive to implement. Many devel¬ oping nations have underexploited their hydroelectric power options: worldwide only around 32 percent of the economical hydroelectric potential has been tapped so far. Other renewable energy sources, particularly biofuels for transportation, also have good prospects. 135
The greatest objection to the spread of nuclear technology and power reactors to developing coun¬ tries, however, is that it will increase the risks of nuclear weapons proliferation. The temptation for developing countries to go nuclear is particularly common when the political regime is not demo¬ cratic, as happened previously in South Africa, Brazil, Argentina and Iran. Nuclear energy may well play a larger role in the future of the U.S. and other industrial nations. The rest of the world, however, will most probably look elsewhere for the clean energy it needs. Jose Goldemberg, Scientific American, 2010, July,p. 38-40. Broadband Room Service By light Encoded light transmissions can provide the wireless devices in a room with multimedia Web ser¬ vices such as videoconferencing, movies on demand and more By Mohsen Kavehrad Electronics engineers have long dreamed of ubiquitous connectivity—wireless data delivery for everyone and everything, everywhere, all the time. And they have made sisfroant strides toward their goal: more than two billion people today have cell phones, and hundreds of millions send and receive messages andfi les via laptops, handhelds and other digital devices using Wi-Fi, the radio¬ frequency based wireless local-area network (“hot spot”) technology. In addition, more and more Wi-Fi users enjoy the convenience of employing wireless mobile devic¬ es anywhere indoors. At the same time, manufacturers are installing wireless communications capa¬ bilities in traditionally stationary electronic devices and appliances to enable consumers to com¬ municate with them remotely. Increasingly, these users also want to access broadband services without thefixed wire links they typically must have to receive them. But because of the limited availability of radio bandwidth in desired frequency ranges, Wi-Fi suffers from insuficient tran s- mission speed and channel capacity, which slows the wireless access of Web-based multimedia ser¬ vices such as Internet browsing and video conferencing, as well as television and movies on de¬ mand. And even the new higher-speed, wide-area radio systems, such as WiMAX, are not well suit¬ ed to wireless broadband communications inside structures because they can handle only a few us¬ ers in a confined space and, more important, cannot provide secure communications. An intriguing alternative is optical wireless technology. Rather than transmitting radio waves, opti¬ cal wireless local-area networks send data in coded beams of white or infrared light—the latter be¬ ing the same invisible wavelengths found in TV remote controls. Optical systems can connect wire¬ less digital devices to a data port in a room, which in turn can be hooked into whatever high-speed broadband data network serves the house or building. This fast-developing technology offers sever¬ al benefits: its focused, interference-free cells (or basic service areas) afford almost limitless band¬ width for multiple users. It also provides near-total security because, unlike radio waves, light does not pass through walls. And optical wireless is especially appropriate for large business spaces with many high-bandwidth users in close proximity, such as a factorfioor or an office with many reconfigurable cubicles. Data via Light You may have heard of the “last mile” problem—the high cost of delivering broadband services from the nation’s high-speed data infrastructure to fixed users. Optical wireless technology, in con¬ trast, addresses the “last few feet” problem—the difficulty of sending broadband traffic from the terminus of the hardwired information backbone to wireless devices indoors. 136
Researchers have investigated the concept of indoor optical communications since the early 1980s, when engineers at IBM Zurich built the first working system. The technology languished for a dec¬ ade because the Internet was still in its infancy and demand for wireless broadband systems did not yet exist. With the astounding growth of the Web in recent years, however, all that has changed. Engineers describe infrared and white light-emitting diode (LED) wireless local-area networks as “optical” systems because they transmit data via invisible and visible light waves (or photons) ra¬ ther than longer radio waves or microwaves. Current optical wireless systems use very low intensity infrared radiation—the “optical” segment of the electromagnetic spectrum with wavelengths longer than those of visible light but shorter than those of radio waves—which people cannot sense. When infrared light is emitted at higher intensities, we feel it as heat. Optical links operate best when the transmitter aims directly at the receiver, as they do in the famil¬ iar point-and-shoot systems of TV remotes and digital cameras. But this arrangement would be im¬ practical when connecting up an entire office or providing network access in a public place such as an airport or a restaurant. To get full coverage in a room, optical networks disperse their data- containing beams throughout the space. Encoded infrared beams can bounce off all the surfaces— the walls, the desk, the coffee machine, even occupants’ faces. The resultiflgcfens scatter around the interior, so receivers can point in any direction. Although some commercially available infrared networking products already use this method, the ricocheting beams create something akin to echoes, which complicates the signal receiver technology’s determination of whether it is captur¬ ing accurate data. The echoes can lead to loss of data and can significantly limit the network’s data- transmission speed. Mohsen Kavehrad, Scientific American, 2010, November, p. 82-84. Laser-Emitting Chips Promise Ultrafast Computers Nothing is faster than light. So for decades engineers have tried to accelerate the pace of conven¬ tional, electricity-based chips by melding them with laser-based signal processors (like those used to send Internet data blazing through fiber-optical cables) In September researchers from Intel Corp, and the University of California at Santa Barbara announced they had found a promising way to achieve that long-sought goal. The corporate and university teams set out to develop a hybrid design that could handle both elec¬ tricity and light. They bonded a thin layer of indium phosphide, a compound that acts as a medium for the laser, onto silicon sheets by exposing both materials to a blast of hot, electrically charged oxygen atoms; the indium phosphide was spiked with aluminum gallium indium arsenide to give it added speed. A microlayer of oxides then formed on the two surfaces, gluing them together. “We can make thousands of lasers with just one bond, as opposed to bonding each laser individually,” says John Bowers of UC Santa Barbara, coinventor of the new device. When energized by electrical current, the bonded layer produces light that travels through channels in the silicon to a “modulator” that flickers the light tens of billions of times per second - more than 100 times as fast as current silicon chips. What wonders will such power bring? For one thing, Bowers and his team say, by the end of the decade their new chips cold make it possible to down¬ load a feature-length movie in just a few seconds. Curt Suplee, Discover, 2009, p. 76 137
Tapescripts Module One Live & Learn Extract One p. 14 Bob: Tim, you’re a storyteller and you teach other people to tell stories. Personally, I simply wouldn’t know where to begin. Where do you find the inspiration? How does it work? Tim: Well, Bob. I teach many kinds of improvisation to storytellers, and in it lies the source of eve¬ ryone’s creativity. Most people who consider themselves uncreative or have problems with it, suffer from too much self-control over their thoughts or behavior when trying to create. Often this is through a fear that they won’t come up to scratch, won’t be ‘professional’, or the feeling that they are not trying hard enough or giving their best. Unfortunately, this attitude tends to prevent the play¬ ful freedom that gets the creative juices really flowing. There’s nothing wrong with trying to im¬ prove, perfect and present something really well-crafted. But that stage should come after the free Play. Bob: But that’s not actually as easy as it sounds, is it? Tim: Well, no, but I think the main block to performing in public, be it giving a speech or telling a story, is simply fear of embarrassment - of getting the story wrong, or telling it badly. But if the telling of the story is at a playfully changing or experimental stage, then how can you get it wrong? Play has no right or wrong. What is more everyone loves play, even crusty old adults who thought they’d forgotten about it, so it will usually improve the enjoyment of the telling session, not damage it, if done with an open attitude. The excitement of uncertainty for the teller can be a pleasure rather than a panic, and if the teller enjoys it then so will the audience. Extract Two p. 14 Presenter: Glen, you found out some surprising things in the course of your study into truancy in schools. Glen Hall: That’s right. My study showed that ninety percent of the three hundred students sur¬ veyed actually admitted to playing truant. We also discovered that truancy has little to do with a pu¬ pil’s race, sex or economic class, none of which surprised me, I might add. What did interest me, however, was that it also showed that many students are actively deciding what classes they want to attend or don’t want to attend. We concluded that the consumer society in which we live is to blame in that it has trained young people to exercise their freedom to choose based on their personal tastes and preferences. Presenter: And is there nothing that can be done about high truancy rates? Glen Hall: Basically, what the survey seems to be telling us is that today’s students are more so¬ phisticated than those of past generations and that when you take away their right and, worse, their desire to make own decisions, you are depriving them of the opportunity to learn a very important life-skill. We believe that involving students in curriculum development will make them more will¬ ing to take part in their own education. So I don’t believe it’s controversial to say that now is the time for educators to allow students to make decisions about their education. 138
Module Two A Job Well Done Extract One p. 41 Ruth: Investors in People, or IIP as we call it, is about investing in staff training and development. To participate, employers have to meet our principles of good practice for training and develop¬ ment, and provide staff with regular briefings, frequent feedback and review meetings about their performance. Interviewer: Yes, but you’ve come in for a lot of criticism, haven’t you? Lots of people are saying that there aren’t enough controls on HP-accredited companies and the whole thing is beginning to lose credibility. Ruth: Well, it may be true that some companies simply want to have the IIP badge on their letter¬ head because it’s a nice status symbol and are not really interested in the principles of the standard, but this is hard to do. It’s not just about a company telling us they are open with staff - they have to show us. Interviewer: Our investigator has personally looked into IIP in various companies and I can tell you it’s not working. A significant number of IIP companies didn’t care about their staff. They fol¬ lowed the procedures - induction, appraisals, meetings - but only as a matter of routine to keep the standard. Ruth: There is a procedure by which staff can report their bosses to their IIP authority - and they can do this without giving their names. Interviewer: You know, Ruth, the most employees, speaking out against their employer would be like renouncing surveillance cameras in the world of Big Brother. It’s a risk not worth taking. Extract Two p. 42 Presenter: Good afternoon listeners and welcome to today’s edition of Youthful Voices. Today in the studio I have two people with two very opposing views on the issue of employment for students. First, let me welcome Jane Hanes, spokesperson for Students at Work. Jane thanks for coming. Jane: My pleasure. Presenter: And sitting to Jane’s left, Neil Watts, president of the NUS, the National Union of Stu¬ dents. Nice to have you here today, Neil. Neil: Thanks for having me, Sandra. Presenter: So Jane, let’s begin with you telling us a bit about how you got involved with students at work. Jane: Well, I actually first heard of Students at Work about ten years ago when I was in my first year at university. I was there on a scholarship, but the money didn’t seem to go very far and I was finding it nearly impossible to make ends meet. It wasn’t long before 1 realized I’d have to either get a job or drop out of schools. Little did I know that getting a job would be so difficult. After about two weeks of answering ads and getting nowhere, a friend told me about Students at Work. At that time, there were set up in a cubbyhole of an office in central London. I went down and with¬ in an hour I’d been sent to a major hotel where I’d been interviewed and hired by the manager there. The money wasn’t great and the hours were long but it did provide me with a means to continue my education and .... 139
Neil: Sorry, Jane, but if I could just interrupt for a moment. It’s all well and good that you found a way to support yourself, and it does certainly do you proud that you managed to combine university and a job, but the big question is ‘Why did you have to?’ Don’t you think that in this day and age, the government could allot enough money to students so they could spend their time doing what they’re supposed to be doing, that is studying, instead of exhausting themselves with boring, repeti¬ tive that.... Jane: Hang on Neil. No job is menial. And hard work never killed anybody that I know of. Doing what I, and hordes of students did, and do, makes you a stronger person. Neil: I’m sure it does, but managing to get through the incredible workload that we students face nowadays is a character builder in itself. Are you aware of the number of students that fail each year because they’ve been deprived of study time? They’ve been out working all night and next day they can barely keep eyes open in class. Jane: Are you sure it’s the work that’s keeping them up and not the all-night clubbing, Neil? (hu¬ morously) Neil: Clubbing, what clubbing? Almost 50% of the people in my residence can scarcely afford to buy the necessary books. The chance of them having enough money to splurge on a night out is ba¬ sically nil. Not that they would even if their budget stretched that far. These people are dedicated students. Most of them would be on the honors list if they didn’t have to be out working half the time and the government offered some kind of assistance or ... Jane: Forget about the government then. We ... you ... students in general have to look out for our¬ selves and we at Students at Work are here to help you do just that. I’m not saying it’s easy attend¬ ing uni full-time and holding down a job but it’s something that has to be done and I think it’s time we all stopped whining about it and just got on with it. Neil: Well, the members of the NUS aren’t willing to take such a passive stance. We want our rights and one of those is that we receive some kind of backing from those in Parliament. Let them pay a percentage of our tuition or something. Students are one of this country’s greatest resources and if it wants to reap the rewards, it has to be willing to make a bit of an investment. Jane: I’m afraid you’re not facing reality, Neil. The government isn’t budging on this issue. Re¬ member, too, that work is an integral part of life. It doesn’t matter what age you are, you ... Presenter: I’m terribly sorry, but I’m going to have cut this discussion short for lack of time. Per¬ haps you could both come back another day so we could ... Module Three Technological Changes in the World Extract One p. 67 1. It sounds corny, but my computer is my best friend. I use it to do about 70% of the research that my assignments require, then I type everything up on the word processor. Last year, when I went to Stockholm for the semester, I communicated with my supervisor here by email, and of course I exchange daily emails with my parents and my brother in Ireland ... I've only recently discovered computers, but I don't know how I did anything without one before ... Did I mention computer games? Great fun, and cheaper than going out... Have you played "Return of the Jedi"? 2. What telemedicine does is it gives people who live in remote areas immediate access to medical attention ... We're talking about approximately 2,500 people who live in small vil¬ lages in the north-east, who would normally have to travel an average of 70 miles to get to a 140
GP. How it works is there's a video link and a nurse at the other end, and I'm here, in Inver¬ ness, conducting the examination, making the diagnosis and prescribing the treatment in each case. It's a combination of advanced computing and state-of-the-art telecommunica¬ tions and, in my view, it's probably the most successful human-centered application of mod¬ em technology. 3. It's called a heat-seeking device, it works through a special camera which is mounted on the belly of the helicopter and can be controlled either by the helicopter crew or by an officer monitoring the activity from the ground ... What it does is it follows a suspect in places where visual contact is impossible - like, for example, if he tries to hide inside a building or under a car ... Yes, it gives us a very distinct advantage in a pursuit. Criminals can run, but they can't hide. 4. I have a secretary to type all my memos and letters and stuff, and she generally helps with the running of the office ... But I'm out of the office a lot of the time, and she's not always available to give me information because she has to attend meetings and seminars for me. So they got me this little gadget, it's called a palmtop computer, very small, very light, fits in your pocket... It remembers things for me, and it's got every telephone number and address I'll ever need to use ... You wouldn't have caught me near one of those things up till about a year ago, but I have to admit it's made a difference ... 5. This booth is a flight simulator ... you basically step in, strap yourself in the seat, and you're in control of an Airbus A300 ... All the controls are there, the booth is the exact size of an A300 cockpit, and there are four curvilinear screens which serve as the cockpit's windows... The trainee pilot gets in, and I can control flight conditions from this console here ... I can change the weather, the visibility, I can even cause the aircraft to have a malfunction to see how well the trainee has done his homework on situations of high alarm ... It's a great toy, and an integral part of pilot training ... a little steep, perhaps... This one will set you back about four hundred thousand ... Extract Two p. 68 The first thing we can do is to look at our homes and identify the main areas for improvement. For example, did you know that 5-10% of your electricity bill goes into your light bulbs? Although more expensive to buy, energy-efficient light bulbs operate at a far lower power rating than standard bulbs and last many times longer. For those who can’t afford the initial expense, just replacing a 100- watt bulb with a 75 -watt bulb will conserve energy. It goes without saying that you should turn lights off when they are not in use - but also be aware that there may be places, like hallways, where you don’t need as much light as you are using. And don’t forget to dust your lamps and bulbs as dust absorbs light you could be making use of. Moving on to larger energy consumers, your heating system needs to be looked at regularly by a trained technician to keep it running efficiently and safely. A regular tune-up will help you save on heating costs and extend the life of your system. You can help your heater or furnace to work more efficiently by checking the air filters once a month and cleaning them or replacing them if they’re dirty, and by checking they aren’t blocked by furniture Water is another valuable resource, and you can save gallons in your household by making a few simple alterations. Installing a low flow shower head in your shower can cut your water usage by two thirds. For best efficiency, try to get one with a shut-off valve, as this allows you to turn off the water while soaping up, then turn it back on instantly without having to readjust the temperature. Moving into the kitchen. Here you can make major energy savings simply by choosing the right pan for the job. Use the smallest pan you need for the dish you are making, since smaller pans take less energy to heat up. Then, put the pan on the burner that fits it best. If the burner is wider than the 141
pan, you are wasting heat. Cover your pots when you can, as this allows the food to cook faster, and use the lowest possible heat setting to keep it boiling, steaming or simmering. If you have an elec¬ tric cooker, turn the burner off before you finish cooking and make use of the heat from the burner as it cools. Refrigerators and freezers are among the largest energy users in people’ s homes, so by following these tips you can feel truly virtuous about the amount of energy you save. Keep fridge and freezer doors closed as much as possible. Think about what you want before you open the door and start letting cold air out. Better yet, label items and keep them in the same place so that it’s easier to find them. Allow food to cool before placing it in the fridge and remember that your freezer works more efficiently when full than when nearly empty. Of course this is just the tip of the iceberg, and there are numerous other ways in which you can ... Extract Three p. 68 Presenter: Internet browsing is not conceivable without search engines - the various web pages which help us find our way around the stupendous amount of cyber-locations in the world wide web. And, since the early nineties, hundreds of search engines have come and gone. One, however, has achieved a kind of success that even New-Tech giants Microsoft are envious of: its name has become synonymous with the verb "search". Anna Mills has the report. Woman: He may seem the most powerful man on the planet, but Bill Gates has not yet managed the ultimate achievement in the New Technology industry: turning a product into a common word. The first such honor is falling to Google, the Internet search engine devised by two Stanford PhD nerds, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The success of Google has come about through the most timeless form of marketing: word of mouth. The site has for some time been the default tool for millions of people looking for anything they want to find online, from obscure quotations to brass lamps. And there are increasing signs that the business is growing a commercial sharpness to match the blade it uses to cut through Internet junk. Last week, Google secured a place as the Internet search engine for America Online, the world's largest service provider, capping its stealthy rise to the top. But its success stretches far beyond the world of the Internet. In these dog days of the long universi¬ ty summer break, I was up in the nearly deserted university library when I heard one professor say to another, “Me, I’m just googling around”. I knew what he meant. It wasn’t that he was totally idle, but he wasn’t following leads from one source to another, happily wandering through the archive, not knowing quite what he would find next. Google - the search engine favoured by most academics - seems destined to be one of those proprietory labels that becomes a word, a brand (like Hoover) that loses its initial capital letter. And the paper-based metaphor that electronic catalogues use, as if you were fingering the spines at some antiquarian bookstall. “Googling” is a different king of sampling, coming across relevant findings amongst an impossibly huge amount of information. The company name is a corruption of "googol", spelt g- double o-g-o-1, the word apparently coined by the nine-year-old nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner to refer to the number rep¬ resented by one followed by 100 zeros, back in the 1940s. Little did he know that in the early 21st century, the use of the term would become so commonplace amongst academics and laymen alike. 142
Appendix One Writing Up a Small Research Project Experimental investigation of coherent structure dynamics in swirling jets and flames Abstract The present work investigates dynamics of large-scale vortices in a strongly swirling jet and lifted flame of rich propane-air and methane-air mixtures. A stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry system was used for the high speed measurements of velocity fields with acquisition rate close to 770 Hz. The sequences of velocity fields were processed by proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) and dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) tech¬ niques. By analyzing results of the decompositions it was concluded that the combustion did not fundamentally af¬ fect the type of large-scale vortices core both in the non¬ reacting and reacting jets. In order to force formation of ring-like vortices in the flows, strong perturbations with an axisymmetric instability mode were superimposed to the bulk velocity of the jets. According to POD and DMD data for the forced flows, procession of the vortex core was substantially suppressed in the reacting cases, while it was still significant in the non-reacting case. Contents: 1. Introduction 2. Methods and Experimental Setup 3. Results and Discussion 4. Conclusion 5. Acknowledgments 4. References 143
1. Introduction Swirling jet flows are widespread in a number of industrial devices: open burners, combustion chambers, and mixers, among others (Gupta et al. 1984). From a practical point of view, the im¬ posed swirl can essentially enhance mixing processes in devices that utilize jet flow configurations. In combustion chambers, flow swirling provides a good stabilization and ignition behavior of the flames along with a compact combustion zone (Syred et. Al. 1971, Gupta et al. 1984, Huang and Yang, 2009). This is usually achieved through formation of a central recirculation zone (RZ) that supplies the fresh mixture at the flame root by heat and active chemical species from the hot prod¬ ucts. It is also noteworthy, that low-swirling flames, characterized by a region of axial velocity stagnation instead of a reverse flow, also manifest a wide range of stable turbulent combustion as in the case of a strong swirl (Cheng 2006, Legrand et al. 2010, Alekseenko et al. 2011). Thus, flow swirling can provide stable, lean combustion regimes of premixed flames at a wide range of flow rates and can be used to reduce NOx formation (see Dunn-Rankin, 2008). However, practical im¬ plementation of this lean combustion technology is hindered by the flames being prone to combus¬ tion instabilities, resulting in thermo-acoustic resonance and blow-off phenomena (Lieuwen et al. 2001, Weigand et al. 2006, Meier et al. 2007). On the other hand, such structures may be beneficial to combustion efficiency by promoting flame stabilisation through enhanced turbulent mixing (see Anacleto et al. 2003, Boxx et al. 2010, Stohr et al. 2011). In this context, the swirl application can be considered as an efficient way to passively control the flow structure of jets and flames. Howev¬ er, even with nonreacting swirling jets, substantially different flow regimes can be observed, de¬ pending on the swirl rate and the manner in which the swirl is applied (e g., Billant et al. 1998, Liang and Maxworthy 2005). A further increase in the swirl rate leads to a breakdown of the swirl¬ ing jets' vortex core, which has been observed in different states: spiral (rarely double helices), bubble, and conical, where the latter two can be either symmetric or asymmetric (Billant et al. 1998, Brucker and Althaus 1991, 1995, Brticker 1993, Alekseenko et al. 2007, among others). Asymmetric breakdowns are usually characterized by a quasi-periodic precession of the swirling jet vortex core. Based on the literature, the flow structure of strongly swirling jets with bubble-type VB and precession of the vortex core manifests some common features, even for rather different nozzle geometries. Recent studies by Ruith et al. (2003) and by Liang and Maxworthy (2005) indi¬ cate that precession of the vortex core in a strongly swirling jet is the result of global helical insta¬ bility mode |m| = 1 growth in an absolutely unstable jet flow with an initially axisymmetric RZ, while the RZ appears near the nozzle exit when the swirling jet column becomes centrifugally un¬ stable after sudden expansion of the flow. As Liang and Maxworthy (2008) have shown, the shear between the rotating jet and the ambient fluid seems to play a secondary role in this case. In an ex¬ perimental study of a non-reacting swirling free jet at a low Reynolds number (Re = 1,000) and various swirl rates by particle image velocimetry (PIV), Liang and Maxworthy (2005) showed that when the RZ appeared, a helical mode |m| = 1 first dominated the inner shear layer between the central RZ and the mean flow and then affected the outer shear layer between the jet and the ambi¬ ent fluid. Consequently, two co-rotating, counter-winding spirals were shed in the outer and inner mixing layers of the strongly swirling jet with the bubble-type VB. One inner secondary vortex (ISV) was located inside the RZ, while the other one was outside (viz., outer secondary vortex, ISV) in the outer mixing layer. Instead of phase-averaging measurements, Legrand et al. (2010) used correlation coefficients of proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) of PIV velocity fields to reconstruct a phase portrait of a quasi-periodic precessing vortex core (PVC) and coherent helical vortices in the outer and inner mixing layer of the swirling jet. Obviously, the presence of combus¬ tion makes the structure of a swirling jet more complex because of gas expansion and buoyancy effects (Mourtazin and Cohen 2007), combustion-induced VB phenomena (e.g., Konle et al. 2008), etc. Although the precessing vortex occasionally led to local extinctions of the flame, it was con¬ cluded that it played a substantial role in stabilisation of the swirling flame via enlarging the flame surface and promoting auto-ignition events. However, in combustion chambers, a coupling of pres¬ sure and heat release fluctuations provided by a non-linear process of turbulent combustion in swirling flames can also result in a harmful phenomenon, viz., thermoacoustic resonance (Lieuwen 144
et al. 2001, Meier et al. 2007). Thus, significant efforts have been made to avoid this adverse effect. The fact that the presence of premixed combustion significantly affects the development of insta¬ bilities in the swirling shear layer of the jet and stability of the whole flow to global modes due to significant modification of the flow pattern (e.g., see PIV data in Legrand et al. 2010, Alekseenko et al. 2011) makes this non-linear problem strongly dependent on combustion regime and flow ge¬ ometry. Thus, the present work is devoted to a simplified objective: studying the fuel-rich pre¬ mixed swirling lifted flame. According to our previous study (Alekseenko et al. 2012), the presence of a combustion domain at a certain stabilisation height in this regime did not fundamentally affect coherent structures in the flow near the burner nozzle exit. Thus, in the present work strong pertur¬ bations were applied to the flow bulk velocity in order to force formation of ring-like vortices up¬ stream of the combustion domain and to investigate the effect on the combustion process. 2. Methods and Experimental Setup The measurements were performed in an atmospheric combustion rig consisted of a burner nozzle, air fan, flow seeding device, premixing section, forcing chamber and section for air and fuel (pro¬ pane or methane) flow rate control (see Fig. 1). The burner represented a nozzle with a swirler mounted inside (see details in Alekseenko et al 2012) The swirl rate based on geometry of the swirler corresponded to S = 1.0. During the PIV study, the Reair number (based on the nozzle exit diameter d, flowrate and viscosity of the air) was 4,400. The nozzle produced a strongly swirling jet flow with a pronounced VB and bubble-type RZ. For the reacting flows, the equivalence ratio Ф of the air-fuel mixture issued from the burner was 2.5, which was above the rich flammability limit both for propane and methane. These parameters corresponded to a strongly swirling lifted flame with a flow structure resembling that of the non-reacting flow (see below). Specifically, in both the nonreacting and reacting cases, a precession of the vortex core was observed, and the coherent vor¬ tex structures were similar to the helical vortices reported by Cala et al. (2006). To promote mixing upstream of the lifted flame by forcing rol-up of ring-like vortices, a high-amplitude periodic exci¬ tation was applied to the flow using the forcing chamber (design of the chamber was similar to that by Broze and Hussain 1996). The chamber included four loud speakers connected to an amplifier, function generator and electric power meter and was separated from the nozzle by a pipe (0.8 meter long) with a damper. Flame Pulsed laser CM catT Gas Air 145
According to Iudiciani and Duwig (2011), the frequency of the forcing can be in a range of values that are smaller than the precession frequency. In the present study, the normalised (by noz¬ zle exit diameter d and bulk velocity U0 of the mixture) forcing frequency, i.e., the Strouhal num¬ ber St, was selected to be 0.52, which was below the precession frequency (St = 0.74 for the non¬ reacting jet and S = 0.83 and 1 for the propane-air and methane-air flames, respectively). To char¬ acterize amplitude of the forcing, a root-mean-square value of the axial velocity fluctuations at the nozzle exit without swirler was measured. The value was below 4% of U0 for the unforced flow and was equal to 30% during the forcing. For the instantaneous velocity measurements, a stereo¬ scopic PIV system consisted of a double-cavity Pegasus PIV Nd:YLF pulsed laser, two PCO 1200HS CMOS cameras and a synchronising processor was used. The acquisition rate of the sys¬ tem was almost 770 Hz. The laser sheet formed by the system of lenses had a minimal thickness of 0.8 mm in the measurement section. To provide PIV measurements, the main flow from the nozzle was seeded with TiO2 particles with an average diameter of 1 pm. The ambient air was seeded us¬ ing a fog generator. The cameras were equipped with narrow-bandwidth optical filters that allowed the emission of the laser (537 nm) and suppressed the radiation of the flame. The system was oper¬ ated by a computer with "ActualFlow" software. A multi-level target with three levels of calibra¬ tion markers (±2 mm) was used for stereo calibration. A DMD approach was utilized in the present study to analyze the dominant frequencies and dy¬ namics both for reacting and non-reacting flows. The aim of the DMD method is the extraction of dynamic information, e.g. temporal evolution of spatial coherent structures, contained in time- resolved PIV velocity fields (snapshot sequence). A temporal sequence of N time-resolved PIV ve¬ locity fields with constant time interval , consisting of column vectors u„ can be written as: = {ul,u2,u3,...,un}.Decomposition of data ensemble into finite series of complex Fourier harmonics or products of spatial complex basis functions with time- dependent complex coefficients bn (amplitudes): Equation 1 can be done by finding global Eigen modes of linear mapping matrix A: Equation 2 According to Schmid (2010), following the idea underlying the Amoldi method, low¬ dimensional approximation of A can be written as: Equation 3 and 4 where .S' is a low-dimensional companion matrix of A, r is the residual vector and e is the (N-l )th unit vector. The least-squares problem for (minimization of ||r||) low-dimensional matrix 5 can easi¬ ly be solved using QR -decomposition: Equation 5 Due to the eigenvalues of S approximate some of the eigenvalues of A, it is necessary to solve a corresponding eigenproblem of S: Equation 6 The spatial DMD modes can be calculated by projecting the velocity data VAn-l onto the associat¬ ed eigenvector yi: Equation 7 In general, the eigenvalues and the eigenvectors are comnplex numbers. Frequency CD and growth rate CD, of a corresponding DMD mode are obtained by logarithmic mapping: 146
Equation 8 In general, the dynamic modes are non-orthogonal. They can be sorted by frequency, mode L2- norm (energy) or growth rate. To truncate modes with very little energy, which are generally asso¬ ciated with noise, we can project dynamic modes Фк onto the POD basis, estimate a coherence measure by finding the norm of the resulting vector. Since a steady turbulent flows were investigat¬ ed in the present study, DMD modes with a fast decay rate were excluded from the analysis. Thereby the application of DMD to the ensembles of high-repetition PIV data provided a set of ei¬ genvalues (spectrum) and the corresponding eigenvectors (DMD modes), which contains valuable information about dynamic processes in the original data sequences, allowed to estimate dominant frequencies of velocity pulsations in the turbulent flows and to analyze structure of the associated vortices. Temporal evolution and interaction of large-scale coherent structures was analyzed from a low-dimensional model (1) based on the dominant dynamic modes and the mean velocity field. 3. Results and Discussion Previously, by low-repetition PIV measurements and CH* chemiluminescence imaging Alekseenko et al. (2012) observed that when the forcing was applied to the propane-air lifted flame overall combustion rate increased near onset of the flame. Moreover, for the forcing with a relative¬ ly high magnitude (same as in the present study), a dramatic suppression of the vortex core preces¬ sion took place in the region of the reverse flow. Besides, the suppression was not significant for the non-reacting flow. The present study compliments to the previous work by reporting dynamics of coherent structures for the same flow cases and also for the methane-air lifted flame. This work compares the spatial distributions of the mean velocity for the unforced strongly swirling non¬ reacting jet, lifted propane-air and methane-air flames, respectively. The length of the vectors cor¬ responds to the magnitude of the in-plane components (viz., radial and axial components) of U, while the colour scale corresponds to the magnitude of the three components. In all flow cases, a bubble-type vortex breakdown took place and the main flow issued from the nozzle as an annular jet with a certain opening angle. Thus, the inner and outer mixing layers were formed by the annu¬ larjet. The inner layer was between the main flow and recirculation zone (RZ) and the outer layer provided mixing between the rich mixture, issued from the nozzle, with the ambient air. As ob¬ served in this work, the presence of combustion resulted in a dramatic increase of velocity magni¬ tude above the combustion domain due to thermal expansion of the fluid. Combustion also in¬ creased the intensity of the reverse flow inside the RZ and, consequently, provided a greater width of the main annular flow. The radial component of TKE demonstrates high values of the radial ve¬ locity fluctuations near the bottom stagnation point of RZ in all cases (the same behaviour was ob¬ served for the azimuthal component of TKE). This feature corresponds to a precession of the vor¬ tex core in this region when wriggling reverse flow faced the main flow issuing from the nozzle. In contrast to the nonreacting flow, another local maximum near the upper stagnation point of RZ was typical for the reacting cases. This work also compares the POD and DMD spectra for the unforced non-reacting jet flow and shows the most powerful modes. DMD spectrum corresponds to L2-norm of the spatial DMD function, depending on imaginary part of CDiAk. Only one half of the spectra is depicted, because it was symmetric about the frequency GDiAk = 0, since the decomposed data were real. Negative GDiAk corresponded to DMD mode with the same real part, but negative imaginary part of the mode for — CDiAk. All distributions of the imaginary and real parts of фк, were normalized by (||фк||/2)л°5 in order to allow comparison to the normal POD modes. Both for POD and DMD of the 147
data for the non-reacting jet, two the most powerful modes were observed. As can be seen from their spatial distributions, these modes were rather similar for the both decompositions. According to POD spectrum, the coherent structures in the first two modes contained 26% of the total kinetic energy of the fluctuations, and their dynamics was determined by the precession of the vortex core at the frequency of 245 Hz (St = 0.74). Similar POD modes were found in the previous study (Alekseenko et al. 2012), where they were concluded to be associated with formation of the secondary helical vortices (one was in the outer mixing layer and another one in the inner layer). It can be seen in Fig. This work compares POD and DMD modes for the unforced propane-air lifted flame. Three modes were the most coherent and corresponded to more than 30% of the squared velocity fluctuations. Very similar three POD modes were also observed the previous study by a low- repetition PIV sys¬ tem in Alekseenko et al. (2012). The first two POD and DMD modes were analogous to these for the non-reacting case and were associated with the precession of the vortex core (at 275 Hz, St = 0.83) and with two secondary helices (see Fig. 2 b). The third POD mode seemed to resemble a similarity to the rotation around the jet axis and, according to DMD data, corresponded to the flow pulsations in the outer mixing layer at about 9 Hz. Obtained data show the same type of data for the case of methane-air flame. There are only few distinctions from the case of propane: the precession frequency became even greater, viz., 327 Hz (St = 1), but according to DMD spectrum, magnitude of these periodic fluctuations was significantly smaller than in the two previous unforced cases. Be¬ sides it is noteworthy, that as magnitudes of the fluctuations at 9 and 327 Hz became comparable the corresponding coherent structures were "mixed" in the first POD modes. This work also in¬ cludes the mean velocity field and radial component of TKE in the forced flows. Both in the non¬ reacting and reacting cases, application of the forcing resulted in a monotonous decrease of the re¬ circulation zone longitudinal size, while the lateral size was almost unchanged. A significant modi¬ fication in distributions of the radial component of TKE by the forcing can be outlined by compar¬ ing of (v2). Magnitude of (v2) was significantly decreased around the jet axis, near the nozzle (r/d< 0.5 and z/d< 0.5) when the forcing was applied. Similar changes were detected in the distribu¬ tions of the azimuthal TKE component (not shown in the paper). This indirectly indicates that the precession of the flow inside the recirculation zone was weakened when the strong forcing was ap¬ plied. It is noteworthy that the effects were the most pronounced for the propane-air flame. This work also includes spectra of the decompositions and the most powerful modes for the non¬ reacting forced flow. The first two POD modes agree well with the rotation symmetry around the jet axis. These modes almost coincide respectively with real and imaginary part of DMD mode for the forcing frequency 170 Hz. Thus, POD modes were associated with a periodic formation of ring¬ like vortices in the inner and outer mixing layers due to the strong forcing. Remarkable, that DMD was efficient to detect the weak precession of the vortex core and secondary helices at 260 Hz. Fi¬ nally, this work shows spectra of POD and DMD and the most coherent modes for the forced react¬ ing cases. Both for the propane-air and methane-air flame, the flow dynamics was mainly defined by the formation of the forced ring-like vortices. Thus, precession of the vortex core was signifi¬ cantly suppressed when the vortices interacted with the flame. The main differences between the 148
cases of fuel is that POD spectrum indicates that in the case of propane, the forced ring-like coher¬ ent structures corresponded to about 30% of the total squared velocity fluctuations, versus 16% for the case of methane. 4. Conclusions The high-repetition stereoscopic PIV measurements were carried out for the strongly swirling non¬ reacting jet and lifted flame of rich propane-air and methane-air mixtures. Statistical analysis tools POD and DMD were utilized to reveal coherent structures in the flows and to detect their charac¬ teristic frequencies. In the non-reacting and reacting strongly swirling flows, a pronounced bubble¬ type breakdown of the vortex core took place. Thus, inner and outer shear layers were formed: one was between the annular jet and the recirculation zone (RZ), and another one was between the jet and the ambient air. Based on results of the decompositions, it was concluded that the dynamics of the flows was governed by precession of the vortex core with formation of secondary coherent structures. One vortex was in the outer mixing layer, and another one was in the inner layer. Since the strong periodic precession of the vortex core determined the velocity pulsations in the investi¬ gated domain of the flows, the first two POD modes were in a comparatively good agreement with DMD modes corresponded to the frequency of the precession. Also, the third POD mode for the propane-air flame quite satisfactory coincided with the DMD mode corresponded to low-frequency oscillations of the flow in the outer mixing layer. Since, according to DMD, magnitudes of these oscillations and precession of the vortex core in the case of methane were comparative, POD was not efficient to distinguish these processes. Strong axisymmetric perturbations were also imposed on the bulk velocity of the flows (at a frequency of St = 0.52, which was below that of the preces¬ sion frequency) to force formation of ring-like vortices in the mixing layers of the non-reacting and reacting jets. Both POD and DMD modes in the reacting cases demonstrated that the flow dynam¬ ics was determined mainly by formation of ring-like vortices both in the outer and inner mixing layers. Thus, the high-amplitude forcing for the lifted strongly swirling flames led to a suppression of the vortex core precession. For the non-reacting flow under the strong forcing, ring-like vortices were also observed to dominate flow dynamics; however, precession of the vortex core was still rather strong. 5. References Alekseenko, S.V., Kuibin, P.A. and Okulov, V.L. (2007) Theory of concentrated vortices: An Introduction. Springer. Alekseenko, S.V., Dulin, V.M., Kozorezov, Yu.S. andMarkovich, D.M. (2008) Effect of ax¬ isymmetric forcing on structure of a swirling turbulent jet, Int. J. Heat and Fluid Flow, 29, 1699- 1715. Anacleto, P.M., Fernandes, E.C., Heitor, M.V. and Shtork, S.I. (2003) Swirl flow structure and flame characteristics in a model lean premixed combustor. Combust. Sci. Technol., 175, 1369- 1388. Bellows, B.D., Bobba, M.K., Forte, A., Seitzman, J.M. and Lieuwen T. (2007) Flame transfer function saturation mechanisms in a swirl-stabilized combustor. Proc. Combust. Inst., 31, 3181- 3188. Boxx, I., Stohr, M., Carter, C., Meier, W. (2010) Temporally resolved planar measurements of transient phenomena in a partially premixed swirl flame in a gas turbine model combustor. Com¬ bust. Flame, 157, 1510-1525. Billant, P., Chomaz, J.-M. and Huerre P. (1998) Experimental study of vortex breakdown in swirling jets. J. Fluid Meeh., 376, 183-219. 149
Brucker, Ch. and Althaus, W. (1992) Study of vortexbreakdown by particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) Part I: Bubble-type vortex breakdown. Exp. Fluids, 13, 339-349. Cala, C.E., Fernandes, E.C., Heitor, M.V. and Shtork, S.I. (2006) Coherent structures in un¬ steady swirling jet flow. Exp. Fluids, 40, 267-276. Cheng, R.K. (2006) Low Swirl Combustion. In The Gas Turbine Handbook, DOE, Washington. Dunn-Rankin, D. (2008) Lean combustion. Technology and Control. Academic Press, Elsevier. Gallaire, F., Rott, S. and Chomaz, J.-M. (2004) Experimental study of a free and forced swirling jet. Phys. Fluids, 16, 2907-2917. Holmes, P., Lumley, J.L. and Berkooz, G. (1996) Turbulence, Coherent Structures, Dynamical Systems and Symmetry. Cambridge University Press Khalil, S., Hourigan, K. and Thompsonc, M.C. (2006)Response of unconfined vortex break¬ down to axial pulsing. Phys. Fluid, 18, 038102 Konle, M., Kiesewetter, F. and Sattelmayer, T. (2008) Simultaneous high repetition rate PIV- LIF-measurements of CIVB driven flashback. Exp. Fluids, 44, 529-538. Legrand, M., Nogueira, J., Lecuona, A, Nauri, S. and Rodriguez, P.A. (2010) Atmospheric low swirl burner flow characterization with Stereo-PIV. Exp. Fluids, 48, 901-913. Liang, H. and Maxworthy, T. (2008) Experimental investigations of a swirling jet in both sta¬ tionary and rotating surroundings. Exp. Fluids, 45, 283-293. Meier, W., Weigand, P., Duan, X.R. and Giezendanner-Thoben, R. (2007) Detailed characteri¬ zation of the dynamics of thermoacoustic pulsations in a lean premixed swirl flame. Combust. Flame, 150, 2-26. Oberleithner, K, Sieber, M., Nayeri, C. N., Paschereit, C.O., Petz, C., Hege, H.-С., Noack, B.R. and Wygnanski, I. (2011) Three-dimensional coherentstructures in a swirling jet undergoing vortex breakdown: stability analysis and empirical mode construction. J. Fluid Meeh., 679,383-414. Palies, P., Durox, D., Schuller, T. and Candel S. (2010) The combined dynamics of swirler and turbulent premixed swirling flames. Combust. Flame, 157, 1698-1717. Ruith, M.R., Chen, P., Meiburg, E. and Maxworthy T. (2003) Three-dimensional vortex break¬ down in swirling jets and wakes: direct numerical simulation. J. Fluid Meeh., 486,331-378 Schmid, P.J. (2010) Dynamic mode decomposition of numerical and experimental data. J. Fluid Meeh,. 656, 5-28. Schneider, C., Dreizler, A. and Janicka J. (2005) Fluid dynamical analysis of atmospheric react¬ ing and isothermal swirling flows. Flow, Turb. and Combust., 74, 103- Stohr, M., Sadanandan, R., Meier, W. (2011) Phase-resolved characterization of vortex-flame interaction in a turbulent swirl flame. Exp. Fluids, 51,1153-1167. Syred, N. (2006) A review of oscillation mechanismsand the role of the precessing vortex core (PVC) in swirl combustion systems. Prog. Energy Combust. Sci.,32, 93-161. Thumuluru, S.K. and Lieuwen, T. (2009) Characterization of acoustically forced swirl flame dynamics. Proc, Combust. Inst., 32, 2893-2900 150
Weigand, P., Meier, W., Duan, X.R., Strieker, W. and Aigner M. (2006) Investigations of swirl flames in a gas turbine model combustor I. Flow field, structures, temperature, and species distri¬ butions. Combust Flame, 144, 205-224. Westerweel, J. and Scarano, F. (2005) Universal outlier detection for PIV data. Exp. Fluids, 39, 1096-1100. Student’s Project of the Physics Department, 2013 151
Appendix Two Academic English and Latin Phrases Nearly all academic languages make occasional use of foreign phrases and expressions, either to add technical precision or to add “color” to the text. English is no exception. Although in many fields the use of expressions or words from French or German may be declining in academic English, the tradition of incorporating bits of Latin remains surprisingly strong. For that reason, this appendix (appendix is a Latin word!) deals only with Latin. We include this appendix pri¬ marily to help you negotiate Latin expressions in your reading. You should consider the prefer¬ ences of your field when deciding whether to use such expressions in your own writing. Did you know that per in percent or kilometers per hour is a Latin preposition that originally meant through or by? Per is also used in the Latin expression per se meaning through or of itself and hence “intrinsically.” Although education conveys important economic benefits, it is also valuable per se. As this example shows, Latin expressions are often set apart from the English language text by italics. Did you know that all the following abbreviations derive from Latin? How many do you know? How many can you give the full form for? 1. e.g. 6. P.S. 2. i.e. 7. etc. 3.N.B. 8. A.D 4. a.m. 9. CV 5. p.m. We have divided this appendix into three sections. 1. Expressions Referring to Textual Matters There are quite a number of these, which we display in Table 1. Table 1 Common Latin Expressions Expression Full Form Literal Meaning Modern Use cf. confer compare compare eg- exempli gratia free example for example et al. et alii and others and other authors 152
etc, et cetera and other things and others errata errata errors list of typographical mistakes ibid. ibidem in the same place the same as the previ¬ ous reference i.e. id est that is that is to say infra infra below see below loc. cit. loco citato in the place cited in the place cited N.B. riota berie note well take note op, cit. opere citato in the work cited in the work cited passim passim here and there the point is made in several places RS. post scriptum after writing something added after the signature sic sic thus the error is in the orig¬ inal quote supra supra above see above viz. videlicet obviously namely 2. Latin Expressions Starting with a Preposition a fortiori with even stronger reason a posteriori reasoning based on past experience, or from effects to causes a priori deductive reasoning, or from causes to effects an initio from the beginning ad hoc improvised, for a specific occasion, not based on regular principles (e.g., an ad hoc solution) ad infinitum to infinity, so for forever or without end 153
ad lib at will, so to speak off the top of the head ante meridiem before noon, typically abbreviated A.M. antebellum before the war, usually before the American Civil War circa (c. or ca.) about, approximately, usually used with dates (e.g., c. 500 A.D.) de facto from, the fact, so existing fact, not by right (e.g., in a de facto government) from the law, so existing by right after the fact, so retrospectively in the memory of a person de jure from the law, so existing by right ex post facto after the fact, so retrospectively in memoriam in the memory of a person in situ tirety in its original or appointed place (e.g., research conducted in situ) in its en- in toto in its entirety in vitro in a glass (e.g., experiments conducted in vitro) in vivo in life, experiments conducted on living organisms inter alia among other things per capita per head, so a per capita income of $20,000 per diem per day, so expenses allowed each day post meridiem after noon, usually abbreviated P.M. postmortem after death, an examination into the cause of death pro rata in proportion (e.g., pro rata payment for working part-time) sine die without a day, with no time fixed for the next meeting sine qua non without which not, hence an essential precondition for something 3. Other Expressions Anno Domini (A.D.) in the year of the Lord, or the number of years after the beginning of Christi¬ anity bona fide in good faith (e.g. a bona fide effort to solve a problem) caveat a caution or warning (e.g. Caveat emptor, “Let the buyer beware”) ce teris paribus other things being equal (used by economists) curriculum vitae summary of one’s education and academic accomplishments ego literally “I”, the consciousness or projection of oneself 154
locus classicus the standard or most authoritative source of an idea or reference quid pro quo something for something, to give or ask for something in return for a favor or service status qou things as they are, the normal or standard situation sin generis unique viva (voce) an oral examination There are further uses of Latin that this appendix does not cover. Most obviously, it does not deal with the technical details of Latin names in the life sciences. However, we observe, in pass¬ ing, that Latin names do not take generic articles (see Appendix One). Compare the following: The Common Loon breeds in the northern part of Michigan. Gavia immer breeds in the northern part of Michigan. Finally, this appendix does not address the widespread use of Latin in British and American law. 155
Appendix Three Writing E-Mail Writing e-mail messages is probably the most common writing task for any graduate student. E-mail has replaced phone calls, face-to- face interactions, and many forms of written messag¬ es; it has become part of the fabric of academic communication. Given the important role of e- mail, in this appendix we offer some general suggestion for e-mail communications with peo¬ ple you do not know well or to people of higher status, such as advisors or instructors. Messag¬ es to friends are your own personal business. 1. Respond to All Personal Messages Promptly It is important to let the sender know that you have received an e- mail message sent to you. If you have nothing to reply or you are not sure how to reply, at least acknowledge the message. Here are two examples. Ijust read your question about the manuscript. I'll get back to you ASAP. I've read your message about applying for a fellowship. Thanks very much for the suggestion. Iam thinking about it and will get back to you later. (Do you know what the acronym ASAP means? FYI? BTW? If not, see the short list of com¬ mon acronyms at the end of this appendix.) 2. Be Careful about Forwarding Personal Messages Remember that personal e-mail messages have been sent to you— with you as all or part of the intended audience. Before forwarding a message to somebody else, ask yourself whether the sender would approve. If in doubt, do not. 3. Check That it is OK to Send an Attachment Attachments are a very efficient means to exchange files that contain your homework or a man¬ uscript. However, you should send them only if you’ve prearranged this with the receiver, espe¬ cially since many people still prefer to read and comment on printed material. Also keep in mind that sending an attachment means you’re asking them to do a bit of extra work, namely, the printing of the file. If you do have the OK to send an attachment, make sure the files aren’t too large or too many in number. Finally, when you do send an attachment, always include a message. We usu¬ ally accept homework via attachment, but if it is early in the term and a student sends an attach¬ ment with no message identifying himself or herself, we will not open it. 4. Check Outgoing Messages before Posting Them Once an e-mail message is sent, it is gone. You cannot get it back. Therefore, read through all the messages you write before sending them. If you think the tone is wrong (too critical, too di¬ rect, too apologetic, too weak, etc.), cancel the message and start again. You do not want a writ¬ ten record of a message that reflects poorly on you. Suppose your advisor sends you this message: Please have a look at the Mills et al. paper in the latest issue of JACL. I suspect it may be relevant to your project. What do you think? 156
Why might you decide to reject the following replies? (Remember that positioning also applies to e-mail—you want to present yourself as a credible graduate student/junior member of the club.) a. I am sorry to bother you. I have read the Mills paper, but I cannot understand it. Could you please help me by letting me know what you had in mind? b. I spent three hours in the library reading and rereading the Mills paper that you told me to read. Since it deals with wheat and my project concerns com, I don't really see how it relates. c. Thanks for the excellent suggestion to read the paper by Mills et al. I just fin¬ ished reading it and it was great. You always have such great ideas. I think I need to rethink the direction of my project before I go any farther with it. I know that you are really busy these days, but I would like to see you tomorrow to talk about how you think I can incorporate some parts of the paper into my work. Tf you are unsure why you might want to reject these replies, please see the end of this appendix. 5. Use the Subject Line to Clearly Indicate the Topic Especially in sequences of e-mail messages, subject lines help receivers to recognize the topic (rather than making them search their memories). They also help to make the messages concise and precise. In the following message, notice how the student uses the subject line to avoid re¬ peating herself. Subject: Guest Speaker for ED 817 "Tnt. & Comp Ed" To: SungjoonCho From: Bob Wakefield How would you like to be one? Professor Walsh is looking for someone to spend an hour with our tiny seminar (about 8 people), and I suggested you. The class meets on Tuesdays from 4-7. Let me know if you’re interested! Bob We offer one note of caution, however: if your reader does not look at the heading, he or she will definitely be confused. 6. Do Not Overuse Conversational Openings and Closings As we can see from the examples already given, e-mail language is a hybrid of speech and writ¬ ing. Because of its speech elements, many international students tend to use conversational open¬ 157
ings and closings from (phone) conversations. We often see messages that open and close like this: Hi Chris! How are you? This is Fatima from your 321 class. Can I change our appointment to Friday at 9:30? I have a test on Wednesday. Have a good day. Got to run. Bye, bye. Fatima. Some recipients (like Chris) encourage students to adopt a more conversational style. However, it is very easy to misinterpret this informality or friendliness as “unbusinesslike” and perhaps somewhat naive. Notice, too, that in many cases e-mail allows you to avoid the problem of determining how to address someone. You do not have to choose among such greetings as the following. Dear Dr. Smith, Dr. Roger Smith, Dear Roger Smith, I’m afraid I will be ten minutes late for our appointment. Dear Roger, Dear Advisor, 7. Express "Business" Requests Politely E-mail language is typically informal. In many ways, this feature is very helpful for nonnative speakers. It helps to build relationships. It also allows people to use the system quickly and without worrying too much about typos, imperfect sentences, and so on. There is, however, one situation where this infonnality can be very problematic. When a student sends a request to a faculty or an administrator, informal language may be too direct and thus insufficiently polite. Two examples follow. The first might be considered only a little offensive, the second rather more so. Of course, giving offense was not the intention of either writer. Subject: Pages To: Joan Robinson From: Keiko Ichiko Dear Professor Robinson, Finally, I have something for you to read. I will leave the draft of my paper in your mailbox soon, so please pick it up when you stop by. Keiko 158
This first message is problematic for two reasons. First, there is the vagueness of soon. (How many times will Professor Robinson have to check her mailbox before she finds Keiko’s pages?) Second, the end of the message is completely unnecessary. Here is a simple “repair.” Dear Professor Robinson, Finally, I have something for you to read. I will put the draft of my paper in your mailbox by noon to¬ morrow. Here is the second example. Subject: Paper To: Henry Rabkin From: Kumar Bhatia I am currently working on a paper (approx 8/9 pages). I should be done on Mon. evening. Coidd you please go through it & give your comments by Wednesday? Kumar Studies of politeness suggest three elements for polite requests. 1. Do not impose 2. Give options 3. Make the receiver feel good Notice how Kumar breaks all three rules. Here is what he might have written instead. I am currently working on a paper (approx 8/9 pag¬ es). I should be done on Mon. evening. If you are not too busy, I would appreciate any comments you might have to make before I submit it. Unfortunate¬ ly, it is due on Wed., so there isn't much time. If you can help, I’ll bring you my draft as soon as it's done. If you can't, that's quite OK too. This draft looks better in terms of the three elements, but what do you think of this message9 Ask your instructor how he or she might react. 8. Keep Your Messages as Brief as Possible We would suggest that you don’t burden your readers with messages that are very long (more than one screen’s worth of text) or include information that is really unnecessary. If, for exam¬ 159
pie, you need to cancel an appointment or miss class because you are ill, there is no need to de¬ scribe the illness. A simple statement that you are ill and unable to get to class or an appoint¬ ment is fine. In other situations, such as if you need to ask for an extension on a homework as¬ signment, some explanation may be necessary. 9. Learn Common Abbreviations Many terms and expressions are expressed as acronyms or as abbreviations in e-mail. For ex¬ ample, among those abbreviations we have used in this appendix are ASAP and Mon. Notice others as they scroll across your screen. 10. Do Not Worry Too Much about Capitalization Some people relax or even completely abandon the normal rules for capitalization. Here is an extreme example. here's what i know about the next tesol conference, it's in atlanta from march 16 to 20—the hq hotel is the hilton. You might not want to go this far. At the other extreme, don’t write your messages in all capital letters. MOST PEOPLE FIND MESSAGES IN ALL CAPS rather threatening and imposing. It seems very much like shouting. If you need to add emphasis, however, you can use uppercase, instead of underlining. 11. Use Deletions Carefully It is becoming usual to leave out certain articles and pronouns and various other bits and pieces of English grammar in e-mail. Standard English I got your message about the manuscript. I will return it along with my comments to your mailbox on Friday. Message with Deletions Got your message about the manuscript. Will return it along with comments to your mailbox Friday. Unless your English grammar is very strong, we recommend that you do not use these dele¬ tions. You may teach yourself bad habits. 12. Avoid Conventions for Communicating Emotions (emoticons) E-mail is a written medium but has many of the characteristics of speech. In speech, we can use voice inflection and gestures to communicate what we are feeling. Some e-mail users adopt special symbols to communicate their state of mind::-) = happy, л0л = worried,:-( = unhappy. These devic¬ es are fine to use in e-mail for friends. They also seem more widely used by undergraduates than by graduates. We advise against using them in “business” messages. 160
A Final Word In this appendix, we have provided some suggestions for using e-mail. We hope in this way to in¬ crease your confidence. We do not want in any way to make you anxious about this means of com¬ munication. Many nonnative speakers find e-mail to be an ideal way to improve their English, and therefore they participate in various e-mail groups and chat rooms. If you have the time to use e- mail to improve your English fluency, we strongly recommend it. Some Common Acronyms AKA = also known as IMHO = in my humble opinion ASAP = as soon as possible IMO = in my opinion BTW = by the way LOL =laughing out loud FYI = for your information WRT = with respect to CIS = Consumer Information Service (of CompuServe) manual RTDM = Read the forgotten PITA = Pain in the acronym BFN = Bye, for now TSR = Terminate-and-stay-resident program OTOH = On the other hand FWIW = For what it’s worth RSN = Real soon now OIC = Oh, I see! IMCO = In my considered opinion G,D,&R = Grinning, ducking, and running OOTB= Out of the box 161
Bibliography 1. Azar Betty Schrampfer Basic English Grammar. Englewood Cliffs, N. J. 1984 2. Beresford, Michael. Modern English. A User’s Guide to Grammar and Style. Duchworth. London, 1997 3. Evans Virginia. Successful Writing. Express Publishing, 1998 4. Heffernan James A.W. Writing - College Workbook. New York. London, 1982 5. Goshgarian Gary. Exploring Language. New York, Boston, 2001 6. Gear Jolene. Cambridge Preparation for the TOEFL Test. Cambridge University Press, 1993 7. Glendinning Helen and Mantell Helen. Write Ideas. Longman, 1985 8. Ingram Beverly and King Carol. Writing as Composing. Cambridge University Press, 1994 9. Kirszner and Mandell. The Holt Handbook. Philadelphia College, USA, 1999 10. Orr Janet К Growing Up with English. United States Department of State. Washington, D.C., 1999 11. Raimes Ann. Techniques in Teaching Writing. Oxford University Press. 1983 12. Shertzer Margaret. The Elements of Grammar. Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1986 13. Strunk William Jr. et al. The Elements of Style. A Pearson Education Company, 1972 14. Swales John M. et al. Academic Writing for Graduate Students. The University of Michi¬ gan Press, 2004 15. Hacker Diana. A Writer’s Reference -4th Edition, 1999 16. Curry Dean. Mind Speaks to Mind. Selected American Essays for Advanced Students of English as a Foreign Language, Washington, D. C. 20547, 1998 17. Swales John M., Leak Christine B. Academic Writing for Graduate Students. Essential Tasks and Skills. Second Edition, The University of Michigan Press, 2004 18. K. Andrew, Laura Monahon English. North Star: Reading and Writing, High Intermedi¬ ate, Second Edition, Longman, 2004 19. Evans Virginia, Edwards Lynda, Dooley Jenny. Upstream Cl, Advanced, Express Pub¬ lishing, 2008 20. Stephens Mary. Proficiency Writing, Longman, 2000 21. Parker Yana. The Damn Good Resume Guide, A Crash Course in Resume Writing, Ten Speed Press, 1996 22. Powell Debra, Walker Elaine, Elsworth Steve. Grammar Practice for Upper Intermediate Students, Longman, 2008 162
23. Erben Tony. CALLing All Foreign Language Teachers: Computer-Assisted Learning in the Classroom, Eye On Education, 2007 24. Williams Ivar. English for Science and Engineering, Thomson, 2007 25. Reinhart Susan M. Giving Academic Presentations, The University of Michigan Press, 2002 26. Numrich Carol. Raise the Issues: an Integrated Approach in Critical Thinking, Long¬ man,2002 27. Jones Leo, Alexander Richard. New International Business English, Cambridge Universi¬ ty Press, 2001 Acknowledgements 1. Badley, Hall, Harrison. Selling cities: Promoting New Images for Meeting Tourism, [2002]: 32 2. Benison S. Reflections on Oral History, The American archivist 28. 1 [January 1965]: 71. 3. Conkilng J. N. Pyrotechnics, Scientific American [July 1990]: 96. 4. Discover: Science, Technology and The Future, Jan. 2007, Jul.2008, Nov.2009,Dec.2010 5. Norman H. Oral History, Library Trends [July 1972] :61. 6. Pachucki K., Leibfried D, Hansh T. W. Nuclear Structure Correction to the Lamb Shift, Scientific American, Aug., 2006, p. 106 7. Ruminics E. Oral History. Defining the Term, Wilson Library Bulletin 40 [1966] : 602. 8. Schulman S. Young Male Drivers: Accidents and Violations, Jama50 [1983]: 1027 9. Scientific American, Jul. 2010, Nov. 2010, Aug.2006, Nov.2008 10. SudoP. Freedom of Hate Speech?, Scholastic Update [14, 1992]: 124 11. Turkle S. The Second Self: Computers and the Human Spirit, New York: Simon & Schus¬ ter, 1984. 12. Webster’s New World Dictionary and Thesaurus, Hungry Minds, 2002 13. Yasufumi I. Reducing Air Pollution in Urban Areas: The Role of Urban Planners, Scho¬ lastic Update, [1992]: 174 163
Teacher’s Book Module One Live and Learn Reading -One 1 b. Answer Key 1 A The writer implies that he did not work as hard as the PhD student suggested that he would need to and still got a First. 2 D 3 C 4 В 5 C 6 C 7 В 2 Answer Key crucial - key bewildered-mystified search quickly -flick through absorbed-immersed rejecting - discarding understanding of-feel for general - broad discussion- debate 3 Suggested Answer Key being cut off from civilization - in the context of this article, the phrase means having so much coursework that your life consists of nothing but study. You don’t go out with your friends, watch little or no TV, and just spend time at home or in the university library prepar¬ ing for exams. pull down monuments - this means arguing against theories or beliefs that are already well- established with the public. In the context of this article, it relates to well-established academ¬ ic theories or beliefs. I plucked out what was needed - this means taking out exactly what is important. In the con¬ text of this article, this means taking out the information that the author felt would help him the most in preparing for the exams. drag out the detail - this means dredging up things from memory. In the context of this arti¬ cle, this means the author recalling from his memory information that was essential to him passing the exams. 164
Reading - Two 3 Answer Key 1. В 2. C 3. D 4. В 5. A Language Focus 1. a. Answer Key 1. assessment 2. debate 3. seminary 4. lecture 5. assignment 6. copying 7. excerpt 8. prospectus b Answer Key 2. assignment is the odd-one-out because all the others are places where learning takes place 3. students' lounge is the odd-one-out because all the others are connected to libraries and their services 4. experiment is the odd-one-out because all the others are methods of study whereas an experiment is a scientific test 5. application is the odd-one-out because all the others are ways to test knowledge 6. attend is the odd-one-out because all the others are ways to prepare for an examination or to refresh your knowledge in a subject 7. catch up is the odd-one-out because all the others are ways of reading 8. quote is the odd-one-out because all the others describe stealing someone else's words or ideas 165
9. workshop is the odd-one-out because all the others are parts of a book 10. distinction is the odd-one-out because all the others are qualifications awarded to students 2 a. Suggested Answer Key 1 cramming, highlighting, note-taking, summarizing 2 highlighting, summarizing 3 revising, proof-reading, editing 4 highlighting, summarizing 5 note-taking 6 note-taking , proof - reading 7 revising, editing 8 summarizing 9 proof-reading 10 highlighting 3 a. Answer Key 1 dissertation 2 undergraduate 3 residence 4 lecturers 5 association 6 theatre 7 adviser b. Answer Key 1 dismissed (as nonsense) 2 attracted (a lot of interest) 3 advent (of new technology) 4 demanding (task) 5 housed (in the old building) 4 a. Answer Key Ask the Ss to work in pairs to match the adjectives to the nouns to form collocations. Give Ss about 5 minutes to complete this exercise. Conduct class feedback. 166
first class/Master's - degree higher/first-rate - education correspondence/refresher - course compulsory/formal - schooling post graduate/2-year - diploma long-distance/accelerated - learning tuition/registration - fees school-leaving/medical - certificate b. Answer Key 1 long-distance 2 compulsory/ formal 3 school leaving 4 tuition / registration 5 master’s 6 higher / first- rate 7 refresher 8 postgraduate 5 Answer Key 1. get, have (good marks) 2. sit, have, do (an exam) 3. do (one’s homework) 4. sit (for one’s finals) 5. get (expelled, suspended) 6. have (an Easter break) 7. do (biology project) 8. do (extracurricular activities) Listening and Speaking 2 Extract One 1 C 167
2 А Extract Two 3 С 4 A Use of English 1 Answer Key 2 who, which 3 who, where 4 (that), who 5 (that), whose 6 which, who 7 who, which 8 (that), which 9 whose, where 10 whom, which, where 2 Answer Key 2 Property prices are rising, which means many young couples cannot afford to buy their own home. 3 Some of the teachers who want a pay rise may organize a strike. 4 Alex has just married a teacher who lectures in politics. 5 Jenny, who has no brothers or sisters, was spoilt by her parents when she was a child. 6 Damascus, which is a fascinating city, is the oldest capital in the world. 7 I gave Mark, who is a writer, a paperweight as a birthday present. 8 Pam read a novel in which the main character was shipwrecked on a desert island. 9 David went to Prague, where he attended a conference. 10 Harry, who is an engineer, has a wife who has just given birth to twins. 168
3 Answer Key 1 who are 2 that 3 who 4 which 5 who is 6 that 7 that 8 who is 9 that is 10 that 5 Answer Key 1 is 2 who 3 that 4 - 5 which 6 which 7 - Module - Two A Job Well Done Reading One 2 Answer Key 1 В 2 E 3 C 4 G 5 F 6 A 169
3 Vocabulary Practice Answer Key a. Draw Ss’ attention to the highlighted words in the text. Tell them to define each word in the text. Tell them to define each word in the correct context. Ss may use a dictionary readily -willingly pilot - try out/test devised - designed/created core -central commitments - obligations adamant - unsusceptible to persuasion stifle - prevent morale - confidence and cheerfulness incentive - encouragement/motivation backlog - accumulation of things waiting to be done ploy - trick b. Tell Ss they will match words/phrases from A to words/phrases in В to form colloca¬ tions. on the verge of - on the point of or just about to (leave her job) taking its toll - having a bad effect on/causing suffering (the journey to work was hav¬ ing a bad effect on her health) raised concerns - the staff expressed their worries about... came up with suggestions - thought of and expressed some new ideas meet their targets - as long as staff do all the work they are supposed to do at short notice - with little advance warning, only a short time beforehand Text Analysis 1 Suggested Answer Key 1 We have changed our attitude from one where we simply dismissed such suggestions out of hand, to one where we are willing to find ways of making things work. 2 I don’t respond well to/cope well with situations like that. 3 Merton has been used by the government as an example of a council whose policies work well. 4 This point is strongly reinforced by the results of a recent survey. 5 People who still have their doubts would suspect that this is a trick by the manage¬ ment. 170
Reading Two 1 Answer Key b. C 2 Answer Key 1 C 2 A 3 В 4 A 5 A 6 В 7 D Vocabulary Practice 3 Answer Key Appearance emergence cultivating - nurturing appreciate value change - shift magical - mystical unstable - volatile prepare groom unique - distinctive hurdles - obstacles positive -constructive 4 Suggested Answer Key a chosen few - an elite group ‘‘Only a chosen few are granted membership of this club." exercise leadership - use leadership "In order to exercise leadership, you have to win the respect of your peers. " 171
Actively seek out - make a determined effort to find "We have to actively seek out new ways of producing energy." Leadership potential - the necessary ability to become a leader "Leadership potential is the basic qualification for the job. " Fundamental difference - basic difference “The fundamental difference between our company and yours is that ours is more forward¬ thinking. " Key dimensions - important factors “The two key dimensions in this business are accuracy and speed." A formula for success - combination of things that lead to a positive outcome. “His own formula for success was a mixture of academic brilliance and strong business skills. ” Competent leadership - people capable of being leaders. "Any successful organization demands competent leadership." System of action - method “Each system of action has its drawbacks." Organizational structure - arrangement “The organizational structure of a company depends on what kind of business it is involved in." delegating responsibility - give someone the responsibility to act on your behalf. "Delegating responsibility to individual staff members is the job of the managing director." Create coalitions - bring together people to work towards a common goal. 172
“The aim was to create a coalition of countries in order to control the dumping of nuclear waste." Language Focus 1 Answer Key refuse collector business executive computer programmer graphic designer assembly-line worker talent scout plastic surgeon famous scientist dental hygienist civil servant general practitioner sound technician Creative: graphic designer, sound technician, talent scout, famous scientist Manual: refuse collector, assembly- line worker Blue-collar: refuse collector, assembly-line worker White-collar: computer programmer, business executive, civil servant, plastic surgeon, den¬ tal hygienist Administrative: civil servant, business executive. 3 Suggested Answer Key 1 go on strike 2 laid off 3 bonuses 4 wages 5 recruits 6 department 7 overtime 8 references 4 Answer Key 1 job 2 vocation 3 works 4 project 5 board 6 grant 7 vacancies 8 dismissed 173
5 a. Answer key 1 deal in - to be involved in the buying or selling of a particular type of goods as a busi¬ ness. 2 offers ... services - does a particular kind of job for someone. 3 attracts business - finds customers 4 specializes - concentrates on a particular kind of work. 5 supplies - provides 6 Answer Key WORK - mate, load, place, shop, bench, station, horse, (day) JOB - satisfaction, title, description, market, hunter, centre, prospects, (seeker) 1 job title 4 workstation 2 job description 5 workhorse 3 workload 6 workbench 7 Answer Key 1 C 2 F 3 G 4 A 5 H 6 В 7 D 8 E 2 managerial post 3 severance pay 4 steady job 5 Christmas bonus 6 weekly schedule 7 stage manager 8 irregular hours 174
8 b. Suggested Answer Key Name of business: Shore to Shore Line of business: travel Target market: professional thirty something and over-forties, trend followers Location: central Type of premises: privately owned 9 Answer Key • the whizz - someone who is very quick at solving problems, especially mechani- cal/technical/mathematical ones. • the perfectionist - someone who always wants to get a job exactly right, even though it may take an extremely long time. • the paper-shuffler - someone who goes to great trouble to look busy but is probably not very productive. • the gossip - someone who likes to tell stories and spread rumors about colleagues. • the stirrer - someone who likes to cause trouble for others. • the workaholic - someone who works long hours and doesn't seem to have a life outside the office. • the slave driver - a manager/supervisor who makes inferiors work unnecessarily hard. • the techno-freak - someone who has an unusual interest in the workings of office machin¬ ery, computers, etc. • the yes-man - someone (especially in middle management) who cannot say no to superiors and lacks the courage to challenge decisions/regulations. 10 Answer Key 1 verge 2 seeking 3 dole 4 recruiting 5 off 6 demand 7 benefits 8 behalf 9 department 10 offer 12 Answer Key 1. themselves 2. at 3. ever 175
4. if/whether 8. is 12. than 5. break 9. makes 13. the 6. much 10. After 14. that 7. What 11. how 15. able Phrasal Verbs Answer Key Work - out, off, around, into Get - into, ahead, around, up, out, down 2 work off 3 work into 4 get around 5 worked ... up Listening Extract-One 1 C 2 A Extract-Two 1. В 2. C 3. A 4. В 5. D 6. C Use of English 176
1 Answer Key 1. wouldn’t have 2. were 3. wouldn’t have had 4. ‘d taken out 5. wouldn’t be sitting 6. ‘d set off 7. ‘dbe 8. ‘dtold 9. ‘d have set 10. ‘d begun 11. wouldn’t weigh 12. ‘d (also) be 2 Answer Key 1. ‘d started 2. could study 3. hadn’t done 4. lived 5. would stop 6. were 3 Answer Key 1. only he had called 2. I hadn’t left 3. you would stop criticizing 4. we could afford 5. only we had 6. I had finished 4 Answer Key 1. were 6. 2. didn’t go 7. 3. ‘s 8. 4. hadn’t said 9. 5. told 10. ‘d won didn’t leave, learnt grew booked went Word Formation 1 Answer Key 1. productive 2. rarely о Э. 4. improvement ensure 177
5. 6. 7. poorly discussion isolation 8. 9. 10. indispensable applications solutions 2 Answer Key 1. to 2. at 3. on 4. to 5. on Module - Three Technological Changes in the World Reading One 1 b. Answer Key • Alan Turing: British mathematician regarded as the father of Al. • The Turing Test: a computer that is able to hold a five-minute conversation with humans and fool 30 per cent into believing they were dealing with another human. • Herbert Simon: predicted in 1957 that a computer would make a mathematical discovery. • AM: a computer that made a mathematical discovery. • Christian Goldbach: an 18th century Prussian mathematician who had originally made the discovery. • Deep Blue: an IBM computer that beat a human at chess. c. Answer Key 1. В 2. В 3. A 4. C 5. D 6. В 7. C Vocabulary Practice 2 Answer Key 178
time limit - deadline imitate - mimic disputes - feuds groups - camps publicity - hype trick - fool achieved - pulled off creates in the mind - conjures up 3 Suggested Answer Key Earning its keep — benefiting us. Got Al out of the door -put artificial intelligence into practice. Working away from the mainstream — carrying out research in specialized areas. AM had been pipped to this discovery - AM had been beaten to it; someone got there first. Caused a stir- created publicity; generated a lot of interest. Reading Two 1 b. Answer Key 1. В 6. C 11. A 2. c 7. D 12. D 3. D 8. A 13. A 4. C 9. C 14. В 5. В 10. В 15. c Vocabulary Practice 2 Answer Key A 'think tank' is probably a term used for someone who is employed by a company to consider various problems and work out ways of solving them. Toiling over something for hours gives us the impression that someone spent a great deal of time working on a tiring or unpleasant task. I think that the word 'woes' in this instance refers to the troubles that people often face regarding technology. I would imagine that the word 'scapegoat' is used to describe how we can blame technology to cover our own incompetence, even when it's not to blame. When you are 'indignant' you feel shocked and angry. It is used in the article to show how Bums felt at the employees' complete lack of skill when trying to explain their computer problems. 179
To 'ascribe' technology rage to fear, may mean that you consider that to be the thing that caused it. The phrase 'both come into play' probably means that both fear of the unknown and fear of being thought a fool begins to have an effect when people are faced with technology. The 'unveiling' of the 2 million dollar financial management system, could possibly be describing the first time it was introduced to the public. I think the expression 'wreaked chaos' is used to describe the amount of damage the financial management system caused. In the article 'warranted' seems to refer to whether the assumption that IT people hold a secret store of knowledge that businesspeople can't access, is deserved or not. If something requires a 'tremendous' amount of focus, it implies that they need a great deal of it. 3 Answer Key 1 “The people who run”- it must refer to the people who are using the particular kind of technology. 2 I think the expression "My computer crashed ” is the modem excuse we now use for not having done our homework. Before computers were invented, we would make the excuse that the dog ate it. 3 I believe that the writer wants to point out that a lot of office workers have doubt as to whether or not computers are totally worthwhile. 4 I suppose this expresses the idea that, network managers react badly to criticism of the systems they install because they are as proud and sensitive about their work as a parent is about their offspring. 5 What I realize from this is, that techies and non-techies are constantly blaming each other over technology. The techies introduce new technology, which the non-techies find diffi¬ cult to understand or are not prepared to learn. This in turn leads to animosity and frustra¬ tion between them. Language Focus a Answer Key 1. text messages 2. modem 3. endoscopic surgery 4. scanners 5. assembly lines 6. satellites 7. solar 180
b. Answer Key 1. communications 2. information technology 3. medical 4. electronics 5. industrial 6. space/communications 7. energy 2 Answer Key Ignition C jet engine A expansion port PC monitor PC clutch C landing gears A tail wings A graphic card PC hard drive PC steering wheel C cockpit A gearstick C brakes C fuselage A central processor unit PC accelerator C a. Suggested Answer Key Terminal: • The patient has a terminal illness. • Linda spends eight hours a day at her computer terminal. Hack: • The guide hacked a path through the jungle with a machete. • Someone hacked into the computer’s mainframe and deleted all the files. Load: • The removal men loaded all the furniture onto the back of the van. • You can load the data onto the computer for processing. Navigator: • The navigator worked out a flight path that would bypass the storm. • A navigator is a piece of software that allows you to browse the Internet. 181
Update: • The director updated his management team on the recent developments. • If we don’t update our navigator, we won’t be able to serf the net. Web: • I was put off renting the room by the spider’s web in the comer. • Not everyone has access to the worldwide web. Wallpaper: • Sheila changes the wallpaper in her living room every two years. • Malcolm chose a picture of his children for the wallpaper on his desktop. Mouse: • The cat chased the mouse under the bed. • If your mouse doesn't move smoothly, it probably needs cleaning. Wizard: • Harry Potter is a young wizard who gets involved in many exciting adventures. • A wizard is a program that helps you to install hardware or software. 4 Answer Key 2 unemployment 3 space junk 4 consumer society 5 fast food 6 urban sprawl 7 impersonal service 8 GM foods 9 biological weapons 10 stressful lifestyle 11 extreme weather changes 12 nuclear power 5 a. Answer Key technological -warfare/era automated - factory/appliances new age - philosophy/travelers scientific - inquiry/j oumal high-tech - gadgetry/industry 182
experimental - stage/research space - exploration/station digital - voice discs/camera b. Answer Key 1. space station 2. scientific journal 3. experimental stage 4. technological warfare 5. digital versatile discs 6. new age philosophy 6 a. Answer Key incoming data main components establish a connection high-speed connection internal components outgoing data unsaved data additional data hardware components 1. establish a connection 2. unsaved data 3. main components 4. hardware components 5. incoming data b. Suggested Answer Key • The program keeps crashing because it needs some additional data in order to know which web page to connect to. • The problem with laptop computers is that it's harder to attach additional components to because they don't have enough ports. • The CPU and some other internal components had burnt, and the computer was useless. • A secure connection means that no-one can snoop into your incoming or outgoing data. • To watch videos or listen to music on the Internet you need a fairly high-speed connection. 7 Answer Key Computer: mouse mat, silicon chips, floppy drive 183
Mobile phones: call recognition, itemised bill, battery charger Space travel: space station, on-board computers, mission control 1. mouse mat 2. silicon chip 3. floppy drive 4. call recognition 5. itemised bill 6. battery charger 7. space station 8. on-board computers 9. mission control 8 Answer Key 1. boards 2. devices 3. gadget 4. desktop 5. application 6. supply 7. Text 8. signal 9 Answer Key do 4 make 7 have 10 make make 5 make 8 have 11 do have 6 do 9 hold 12 hold 1 He is doing experimental work in the field of genetics. 2 He has made major advances in the field of robotics. 3 The space shuttle had a successful mission. 4 Scientists have made an important discovery in their search for a cure for AIDS. 5 The politician made an important observation on the state of the economy. 6 He is well-known for doing ground-breaking research in the field of cloning. 7 Adrian had a life-changing experience when travelling around India. 8 The police have evidence of his involvement in the crime. 9 Students are holding a demonstration in the city centre today. 184
10 Paul's made a change for the better and left his old job. 11 They're doing a scientific project on the environment. 12 An international conference is being held on poverty in developing countries. 10 Answer Key 1. recent 2. operate 3. range 4. reflects 5. concerns 6. stored 7. highly 8. keep 9. outdated 10. good 11 a. Answer Key 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. in private in any event in the light of in the long run in brief 6. in writing Listening Extract One Task 1, Task 2 1. H 2. F 3. D 4. G 5. C 6. D 7. G 8. В 9. A 10. C 185
Extract Two b. Answer Key 1. 5-10% 2. conserve energy 3. trained technician 4. blocked by furniture 5. two thirds (2/3) 6. smaller pans 7. label 8. full Extract Three 1 Answer Key 1 envious 2 devised 3 marketing 4 search 5 university library 6 capital 7 fingering 8 nephew Use of English 1 Suggested Answer Key a 2 b 4 c 6 d 11 e 3 f 8 g 1 h 10 i 9 j 5 к 7 186
2 Answer Key 1 She’s about 2 he’s going 3 will agree to it 4 He starts 5 I’ll take you 6 leaves at 4 7 He’s going to fall 8 I’m going 3 Answer Key 1 Will be/is going to be 2 Is going to be 3 Will never go 4 Are having 5 Is staying on/working 6 Will be (lying) (sunbathing) 7 I’ll go 8 Will have (saved) (put aside) 4 Answer Key 1 on the verge of 2 until your name is 3 are due to 4 he is bound to 5 Answer Key 1 hopes/’s hoping to have 2 ‘re about to make 3 isn’t due to arrive 4 ‘m on the point of calling 5 do (you) intend / are (you) intending to pay 6 ‘s due to open 7 intends to finish 8 hope/ ‘m hoping to find 9 don’t plan/ ‘m not planning to go 187
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