TD DE MODULE D’ANGLAIS SCIENTIFIQUE
TD-1
Formality exercises
Exercise 1
Identify the informal expressions in the following sentences. Rewrite the following sentences, replacing the informal expressions with a more formal equivalent.
1. With women especially, there is a lot of social pressure to conform to a certain physical shape.
2. Significantly, even at this late date, Lautrec was considered a bit conservative by his peers.
3. It focused on a subject that a lot of the bourgeois and upper-class exhibition-going public regarded as anti-social and anti-establishment.
4. Later Florey got together with Paul Fildes in an experimental study of the use of curare to relieve the intractable muscular spasms which occur in fully developed infection with tetanus or lockjaw.
5. When a patient is admitted to a psychiatric inpatient unit, the clinical team should avoid the temptation to start specific treatments immediately.
6. Therefore after six months the dieter is behaving according to all twenty-six goals and she has achieved a big reduction in sugar intake.
7. Modern houses have so many labour-saving things that it is difficult for the person at home to have adequate exercise by doing chores, cooking, and looking after a family.
8. Simply making the effort to reclaim this wasted stuff for fertilizer would have a positive effect on greenhouse releases.
9. It is difficult to imagine exactly what is meant by saying that such a classification is natural as any collection of things could be classified in this way.
10. Unfortunately, since there are so many possible explanations, the correct one is most difficult to find out.
11. These exercises can easily be incorporated into an exercise routine, with each exercise done again a number of times.
12. Fleming did well in isolating a streptococcus from the cerebrospinal fluid of the patient.
13. Effective vaccines prevent such hazards, but only if a social organisation makes sure that all potential mothers are vaccinated in good time.
EXERCISE 2
Rewrite the following sentences, replacing the informal abbreviated form with a more formal equivalent.
1. The radical restructuring of British politics after 1931 does't lie in the events of 13-28 August, but in the changing attitudes within the National Government.
2. This isn't easy to do since most historians persist in speaking of The National Government as if the same sort of government ruled from 1931 to 1940.
3. The first National Government wasn't intended to be a coalition government in the normal sense of the term.
4. These aren't at all original or exotic but are based on the ordinary things that most people tend to eat.
EXERCISE 3
Avoiding two word verbs
There is often a choice in English between a two word verb and a single verb - bring up/raise, set up/establish.
Rewrite the following sentences, replacing the informal two-word verb with a more formal equivalent.
1. A primary education system was set up throughout Ireland as early as 1831
2. This will cut down the amount of drug required and so the cost of treatment.
3. The material amenities of life have gone up in Western society.
4. The press reflected the living culture of the people; it could influence opinion and reinforce existing attitudes but it did not come up with new forms of entertainment.
5. Thus, he should have looked into how the patient has coped previously.
6. The aggregate of outstanding balances went up and down quite violently.
7. In 1947 the Treasury brought up the question of excluding South Africa (and India) from the sterling area.
8. Dieters often feel that they should totally get rid of high-fat and high-sugar foods.
9. Thus when a Gallic bishop in 576 converted the local Jewish community to Christianity, those who turned down baptism were expelled from the city.
10. Western scholars gradually turned out a corpus of translations from the Arabic and studies of Islam.
11. Ms Tucker, Lord White's 29-year-old companion, has since taken her statement back.
12. Discussion of the outcome of experiments that have used this method will be put off until Chapter 7.
13. They did not easily accept or put up with differences in others.
14. My high-school friend signed up for three years with the army so he could put away enough money to go to university and study law.
15. The solitary feeding of insectivores in forests was therefore put down to a foraging strategy involving the pursuit of cryptic and easily disturbed prey by singletons.
16. In style, the turn toward abstraction and simplification came about earliest with Anquetin and Bernard and next with van Gogh.
17. For Klein that cloudless day never arrived, but he never gave up his hope for a just world.
18. Eventually the Irish party was forced to go back to Westminster.
19. The court thinks it just and equitable to give back the property.
20. The English liked coal fires even though they do not always give off much heat.
21. The story told by German propaganda, however, gave away nothing of the mounting hopelessness of the 6th Army's position.
22. These exercises can easily be incorporated into an exercise routine, with each done again a number of times.
23. Marx took as one of his main tasks the understanding of how this system came into being and this was in order to find out why this system had such power.
24. This was before he had read the guidelines on how to carry out the research.
25. Still, the pressure to do well as an individual made most women believe that the problems they encountered were probably of their own making.
TD-2
Objectivity Exercises :
EXERCISE 1
Read the text on and rewrite it in a more academic style.
Most people take drug overdoses because they find that it's difficult to sort out their problems clearly. That's why you should treat your patients in a clear way. That means you should treat your patients in a way that helps them to tell the difference between their problems and find ways to deal with them.
EXERCISE 2
Rewrite the following paragraphs in a more academic style.
1-I would call Wagner a subjective artist. What I mean is that his art had its source in his personality; his work was virtually independent, I always feel, of the epoch in which he lived.
2- On the other hand, I always consider Bach an objective artist. You can see that he worked only with the forms and ideas that his time proffered him. I do not think he felt any inner compulsion to open out new paths.
TD-3
Complexity Exercises :
EXERCISE 1
Rewrite these sentences. Instead of using 'people', 'somebody', or 'they', write a passive sentence with an appropriate verb form.
Example: We can solve the problem. The problem can be solved.
- Someone had reported the theft to the police.
- Someone has given £1,000 to the charity.
- Someone will demonstrate the program to the students.
- Someone explained the procedure to me.
- People are destroying large areas of forest every day.
- Somebody has bought the land next to the university.
- I hope they will have completed all the marking by tomorrow.
- They should have finished the library by the time you arrive.
- People expect better results soon.
- Students should send their complaints to the head of department.
- They had to postpone the lecture because of illness.
- An electrical fault could have caused the fire.
- They are going to hold next year's conference in Birmingham.
- Everyone knows this fact very well.
- They opened the new lecture theatre only last month.
- You must write the answers on the examination paper in black ink.
- They are now manufacturing this type of computer in Korea.
- Someone should investigate the problem.
EXERCISE 2
Rewrite the underlined parts of these sentences. Instead of using 'people', 'somebody', or 'they', write a passive sentence with an appropriate verb form.
Example: We can solve the problem. The problem can be solved.
- Prices are stable and we maintain them in this way over generations.
- We define tropical forests here as 'evergreen or partly evergreen forests'.
- Scientists distinguish methane because it has a large number of significant sources.
- They reformed the old dilator procedure in 1852.
- In 1916 the government passed the Disease Regulations.
- It was only in the 1930s, in Oxford, that researchers isolated and crystallised lysozyme.
- The recent local crime surveys replicate these findings.
- Everybody eventually generally accepted the date 753 BC.
- We next consider a range of rival theories.
- The rules require the subject to answer if the statement is true or false.
- The examiners should conduct the examination in the greatest possible privacy.
- We will confine the discussion to general principles of treatment.
- The researchers transcribed many genes and synthesise many proteins.
- A further class of solutions in which they separate the main equation in yet another way has been given by Yurtse.
EXERCISE 3
Formal written English uses nouns more than verbs.
Rewrite the underlined parts of the following sentences using a noun-based phrase instead of the "wh" clause.
e.g. Many futile attempts have been made to teach animals to speak how humans speak.
Many futile attempts have been made to teach animals to speak in human fashion.
- It is essential to discuss how much cultural and biological evolution can be explained by similar principles.
- Many factors must be considered in explaining how fast the population has grown in the developing countries.
- Classes differ greatly in how membership is established and how fast membership changes.
- There are advantages and declines in labour productivity and both are related to how much the population density is increasing.
- Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, asked them how much the full internationalisation of civil aviation was possible.
- It follows that the key issue is how much there was a significant Soviet threat to those supplies.
- But even in this he is a failure as he can't remember a word, nor does he know why he is going to be executed.
- I cannot avoid the feeling why we were disenchanted was simply because of the kinds of problems we were given.
- On the surface, why women and domestic architecture were associated were obvious.
- Menzel (1973) has shown that non-speaking chimpanzees can convey where food is to one another.
- It is easiest to list foods and drinks according to where they are stored.
- How much precaution is taken is regularly reviewed in the light of the patient's progress.
- The week following admission appears to be when the risk is greatest.
- It is important to remember that whatever type of subsequent care is to occur, the period after discharge may be when things are particularly difficult.
- When the riots occurred, 36 per cent of the workforce in Handsworth was out of work.
- These star charts were provided to enable the deceased to tell what time it is and what day it is.
- After leaving the town, Tom Owen could at first find nowhere for his family to rest at all.
- When I was fifteen or sixteen none of my peers were interested in such matters.
- How long the prisoner stays in prison is determined by someone who has not heard any representations by or on behalf of the prisoner on grounds which the prisoner does not know.
- How big this group is varies in different centres.
EXERCISE 4
Relative Clauses
Rewrite the following sentences using the relative pronoun given.
Example
Q: There are several factors. These factors help to prolong this period to perhaps three or four times that in the male. (which)
A: There are several factors which help to prolong this period to perhaps three or four times that in the male.
- The only really important biography was that of George V by Harold Nicolson. It had been published in 1952. (which)
- The National Government decided to appeal to the country as a National Government, and the second National Government was a very different animal. The second National Government followed the election. (which)
- It was this government. This government ruled Britain until May 1940. (which)
- The participants approved a comprehensive statement. This statement pointed out that global warming is occurring at a time when many of the world's life-support systems are already stressed by the growth of population. (which)
- We have now learned something: This harmony could be interrupted by the actions of nations very distant from our shores. (that)
- Mostafa Tolba pointed something out: Global warming and climate change present a window of opportunity for both the industrialized and the developing countries to address.
- This is something: The industrialized countries need to show the required resolve to help the developing countries adopt a development strategy away from dependence on fossil fuel. (where)
- Action should be conditioned to a definite scientific proof. This perhaps will never be attained or might be reached only when it becomes too late adequately to tackle the problem. (which)
- There is no reason for something: Action should be conditioned to a definite scientific proof, which perhaps will never be attained. (why)
- A group in Palawan, the Filipino island with the country's most extensive rainforests, has taken on the wealthy logger. The logger's concession covers 61 per cent of Palawan's forests. (whose)
- In the Indian community, a person .... This person accumulates. This person evidently lacks social relations with others. (who, who)
TD-4
Hedging
- Identify the hedging expressions in the following sentences.
- There is no difficulty in explaining how a structure such as an eye or a feather contributes to survival and reproduction; the difficulty is in thinking of a series of steps by which it could have arisen.
- For example, it is possible to see that in January this person weighed 60.8 kg for eight days,
- For example, it may be necessary for the spider to leave the branch on which it is standing, climb up the stem, and walk out along another branch.
- Escherichia coli , when found in conjunction with urethritis, often indicate infection higher in the uro-genital tract.
- There is experimental work to show that a week or ten days may not be long enough and a fortnight to three weeks is probably the best theoretical period.
- Conceivably, different forms, changing at different rates and showing contrasting combinations of characteristics, were present in different areas.
- One possibility is that generalized latent inhibition is likely to be weaker than that produced by pre-exposure to the CS itself and thus is more likely to be susceptible to the effect of the long interval.
- For our present purpose, it is useful to distinguish two kinds of chemical reaction, according to whether the reaction releases energy or requires it.
- It appears to establish three categories: the first contains wordings generally agreed to be acceptable, the second wordings which appear to have been at some time problematic but are now acceptable, and the third wordings which remain inadmissible.
TD-5
Spoken to written
Re-write the following sentences in a more typically written style
"Because the jobs are even more complex, programs to train people will take longer."
"I handed my essay in late because my kids got sick."
- Course creator: GUESMI BOUBAKEUR