Language activity

Task 6. The words in the table are commonly linked to academic study. Use your dictionary to complete the table.

VERB	NOUN	ADJECTIVE
claim		–
	definition	–
evaluate
	investigation
research
–	evidence
	hypothesis
		theoretical

Task 7. Choose the correct part of speech from the words in italics for sentences 1-6.

1. When giving a presentation of your research, it is important to define/ definition key terms.

2. An effective essay is not just descriptive but also evaluation/ evaluative.

3. It’s important to investigate/ investigation the causes of inequality.

4. It’s now evidence/ evident that stress contributes to disease.

5. Most scientific research begins with a hypothesize/ hypothesis.

6. There is no theory/ theoretical model to explain the impact of inflation on economic growth.

Task 8. Choose words from the table in Task 6 to complete the sentences 1-5.

1. In academic discussions, it is important to … arguments for their strengths and weaknesses.

2. It would be difficult to design a scientific experiment to test the … that multiple time dimensions exist.

3. To date there is no … to support this theory.

4. After lengthy …, they were still unable to identify the source of the leak.

5. There is no general agreement on a standard … of the term “intelligence”.

Task 9. Read these descriptions of their research by academics and then answer the questions. Use a dictionary for any unknown words.

• Dr Janeja (in a lecture): “We wanted to see if we could explain the fact that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.”

• Dr Finstein (in an introduction to an article): “Our research questioned the notion that larger mammals only appeared long after the dinosaurs had died out.”

• Prof. Li (in a lecture): “We carefully restricted our sample to people born within ten kilometers of the lake”.

• Prof. Simons (in a lecture): “We wanted to build on existing research and offer new insights into the effects of stress.”

• Dr Andreas (in a conference presentation): “We really wanted to put into practice some of the research on e-learning to improve our present system.”

• Prof. Horza (in an article): “We were hoping to instigate a new type of investigation.”

• Dr Tadeus (in a conference presentation): “We had no detailed plan at the outset; things developed as we went along.”

1. Whose team took a deliberate decision to do something?

2. Whose team wanted to further the understanding of something?

3. Whose team did not have a strategy for their research?

4. Who wanted to start something that had not existed before?

5. Whose team was interested in the application of something?

6. Whose purpose was to establish a reason for something?

7. Whose research challenged an existing idea?