Academic Language and Style - PRACTICE

Task 1 In the following sentences, underline examples of bad style and rewrite them in a more
suitable way.
(a) What was the biggest thing that made Enron collapse?
(b) Unfortunately, think there!s a good chance of inflation increasing"
(c) #ots of people think that the economy is getting worse"
(d) $ few years ago the price of property in %apan went down a lot"
(e) &ou cannot always trust the numbers in that report"
(f) 'adly, the (ussian inflation led to po)erty, social unrest and so on"
(g) They sacked the boss for cooking the books"
(h) These days lots of people don!t ha)e *obs"
Task + Effecti)e writing normally uses a mi,ture of long and short sentences. Rewrite the following
paragraph so that instead of six short sentences there are two long and two short sentences.
Worldwide, enrolments in higher education are increasing" n de)eloped countries o)er half of all
young people enter college" 'imilar trends are seen in -hina and 'outh $merica" This growth has put
financial strain on state uni)ersity systems" .any countries are asking students and parents to
contribute" This leads to a debate about whether students or society benefit from tertiary education"
Task / Effecti)e writing normally uses a mi,ture of long and short sentences. The following sentence
is too long. Divide it into shorter ones.
-hina is one de)eloping country (but not the only one) which has imposed fees on students since
1001, but the results ha)e been surprising2 enrolments, especially in the most e,pensi)e uni)ersities,
ha)e continued to rise steeply, growing +33 per cent o)erall between 1001 and +3314 it seems in this
case that higher fees attract rather than discourage students, who see them as a sign of a good
education, and compete more fiercely for places, leading to the result that a good college can cost
56,333 per year for fees and maintenance"
Task 7 (ewrite the following sentences by using hedging language"
(a) 8ri)ate companies are more efficient than state9owned businesses"
(b) Workers prefer pay cuts to redundancy"
(c) :lder students perform better at uni)ersity than younger ones"
(d) Word9of9mouth is the best kind of ad)ertising"
(e) ntroducing new models of products helps to increase sales"
(f) ntroducing new models of products helps to increase sales"
(g) ;lobal warming will cause the sea le)el to rise"
(h) .ost shopping will be done on the nternet in ten years! time"
Task 6 Rewrite the following text in a more cautious style.
:ne way to confront the threat of global warming is for go)ernments to encourage <green! industries
with subsidies" =y encouraging in)estment in wind or solar power, not only will carbon emissions be
reduced, but more *obs will be created" Therefore, two problems will be sol)ed at the same time2
unemployment and -:+ production" t is calculated that spending on en)ironmental technology will
grow by 6 per cent a year until +3+3" =y then, hundreds of millions of people worldwide will be
working in recycling and carbon9neutral energy pro*ects, and the danger of global warming will be
significantly reduced"
'ource2 =ailey, '" (+311) Academic Writing for International tudents of !usiness" >ew &ork2
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