If the amount of new stuff I learnt from the new book “Academic Vocabulary in Use” by Michael McCarthy and Felicity O’Dell is anything to go by (a book for students from “good Intermediate level”, not for teachers!), the answer about whether I should be teaching English for Academic Purposes is a resounding “No!”, although several things make me feel better about that:
- I detest universities as institutions and don’t want to work in one anyway
- I studied Physics, so the longest thing I ever had to write was 1500 words and no one expected me to have basic human communication skills, yet alone a grasp of academic prose
- With authors like those, I was hardly going to know everything they know
- Ditto with the Cambridge International Corpus, and anyway the whole idea of a corpus is that it is supposed to give counter-intuitive results
With those provisos to make you feel better about your results, without any further ado here is the “Should you be teaching EAP?” quiz.
Answer the questions below to see whether you should be getting into or out of the world of EAP. My own score was very nearly zero (which is why I picked them, but the first question is an easy one to get you started), so good luck. Answers in the comments section. Only the answers from the book are acceptable, so if there are several possible answers you will need to think of all of them before turning to the answer key. One point per answer, total possible score is 38.
The “Should you be teaching EAP?” quiz
Collocations
1. Pick out the two collocations that are not given in the book “Academic Vocabulary in Use” and so are presumably not common in academic English
“gently fondle”, “intermittent contact”, “animated debate”, “excess energy”, “recent phenomenon”, “conflicting role”, “efficient way”, “conflicting role”, “break off contact”, “with the fashion sense of a physics grad”, “differentiate the elements”, “emerging phenomena”, “strengthened roles”, “important difference”, “major point”, “enormous amount” and “widespread assumption” are common collocations in academic English
British and American Academic English
2. List 20 verbs that always take -ise (and therefore never –ize) in both British and American English.
3. Give four words that are spelt with ae in British English but e in Am Eng
4. And two with oe/e
5. How many words can you think of with a -our spelling in British English but a -or spelling in American English? (you only get points if your answer includes the one word that from the book that I didn’t know)
6. How many words can you think of with an -re spelling in British English but a –er spelling in American English? (you only get points if your answer includes the one word that from the book that I didn’t know)
7. Can you explain when we use the spellings “humor”, “honor” and “glamor” in British English?
8. Can you explain when we use the spelling “meter” in British English?
9. What’s the difference between the British and American meanings of (exam) rubric?
The original meanings of words
10. Sophomore comes from the Greek for…
11. What did the “hyper” in hyperrealism originally mean?
12. What did the “quasi-” in quasigovernmental originally mean?
13. What did the “-ant” in “coolant” and “accelerant” originally mean?
14. What did the “-cy” in “accuracy” and “literacy” originally mean?
15. What two meanings does “-ism” have?
16. What did the “-ics” in “genetics” and “electronics” originally mean?
Abbreviations
17. What does e.g. stand for?
18. What does “i.e.” stand for?
19. What does “et al” stand for?
20. What does “ibid.” stand for?
21. What does “cf.” stand for?
22. What does “q.v.” stand for?
23. What does “LLB” stand for?
24. What does “FRS” stand for?
25. What does “CUNY” stand for?
26. What does “FAAFP” stand for?
27. What does “MRCS” stand for?
28. What does “AMA” stand for?
29. What does “ACA” stand for?
30. What does “FASB” stand for?
31. What does “AICPA” stand for?
Formal and informal English
32. What are more formal versions of recap, be based on, deal with, promise, write about, almost
33. What’s a formal way of saying ‘although’?
34. What’s a more informal way of saying ‘nevertheless’?
Misc
35. Why do the words “discipline”, “underline”, “solid”, “generate”, “turn”, “confirm”, “identify”, “character”, “pose”, “nature” and “focus” all appear in the same section of a book on academic English?
36. Rewrite the sentence ‘Radiation was accidentally released over a 24-hour period, damaging a wide area for a long time’ in a more academic manner and identify the general feature of academic grammar that it illustrates.
37. Rewrite the sentence “Marx’s contribution is very significant” in a more academic manner and identify the general aspect of academic English grammar that this illustrates.
38. What other expression does the book give instead of “mind map”?