The “Should you be teaching EAP?” quiz
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”?
June 27th, 2008 at 12:24 pm
The “Should you be teaching EAP” Quiz Answer Key
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
“gently fondle” and “with the fashion sense of a physic grad”
British and American Academic English
2. List 20 verbs that always take -ise (and therefore never –ize) in both British and American English.
advertise, advise, apprise, arise, comprise, compromise, despise, devise, disguise, enfranchise, enterprise, excise, exercise, improvise, incise, premise, revise, supervise, surmise, surprise
3. Give four words that are spelt with ae in British English but e in Am Eng
anaesthetic, gynaecology, haemorrhage, orthopaedic
4. And two with oe/e
manoeuvre, oesophagus
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)
endeavour/endeavor
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)
lustre, luster
7. Can you explain when we use the spellings “humor”, “honor” and “glamor” in British English?
In “humorous”, “honorary”, and “glamorous”
8. Can you explain when we use the spelling “meter” in British English?
For a measuring device
9. What’s the difference between the British and American meanings of (exam) rubric?
The Am meaning is “guidelines which tells how an assignment will be graded”, but the Br meaning is “instructions… how a task must be done”
The original meanings of words
10. Sophomore comes from the Greek for…
sophos (wise) and moros (dull)
11. What did the “hyper” in hyperrealism originally mean?
“having too much” (rather than “very” as I thought)
12. What did the “quasi-” in quasigovernmental originally mean?
“almost, not quite” (rather than “kind of”)
13. What did the “-ant” in “coolant” and “accelerant” originally mean?
“having an effect”
14. What did the “-cy” in “accuracy” and “literacy” originally mean?
“state or quality”
15. What two meanings does “-ism” have?
“belief” or “behaviour”
16. What did the “-ics” in “genetics” and “electronics” originally mean?
“study of”
Abbreviations
17. What does e.g. stand for?
“exempli gratia”
18. What does “i.e.” stand for?
“id est”
19. What does “et al” stand for?
“et alii”
20. What does “ibid.” stand for?
“ibidem”
21. What does “cf.” stand for?
“confer”
22. What does “q.v.” stand for?
“quod vide”
23. What does “LLB” stand for?
Bachelor of Laws
24. What does “FRS” stand for?
Fellow of the Royal Society
25. What does “CUNY” stand for?
City University of New York
26. What does “FAAFP” stand for?
Fellow of the American Academy of Family Practioners
27. What does “MRCS” stand for?
Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons
28. What does “AMA” stand for?
Australian Medical Association
29. What does “ACA” stand for?
Association of Consulting Actuaries
30. What does “FASB” stand for?
Financial Accounting Standards Board
31. What does “AICPA” stand for?
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
Formal and informal English
32. What are more formal versions of recap, be based on, deal with, promise, write about, almost
recapitulate, rest on, treat, undertaking, write of, virtually,
33. What’s a formal way of saying ‘although’?
albeit
34. What’s a more informal way of saying ‘nevertheless’?
“Having said that”
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?
They all have different meanings in general and 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.
“Academic language puts a lot of information into noun phrases rather than spreading it out over a whole sentence. For example, instead of saying ‘Radiation was accidentally released over a 24-hour period, damaging a wide area for a long time’, an academic might say ‘The accidental release of radiation over a 24-hour period caused widespread long-term damage.’
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.
“a feature of academic writing is that it often uses an adjective + noun phrase to suggest importance of some kind instead of just using an adjective, e.g. ‘Marx’s contribution is of particular significance’ instead of ‘Marx’s contribution is very significant’”
38. What other expression does the book give instead of “mind map”?
“word bubble”
Other things I learnt from Academic Vocabulary in Use (or maybe knew but had never really thought about and so had a “naruhodo” moment anyway)
arch-rebel, auto-rotate, co-edit, contra-revolutionary, e literate, eco-disaster, intra-generational, intramuscular, macro-scale, monocentric, hook-like, dustproof are words
“Ultimately”, “merely”, “hardly ever” and “essentially” are common Academic English adverbs
There are actually quite a lot of phrasal verbs in even written Academic English, e.g. put forward, carry out, make up, be made of, point out, set out, go into, go through, go on to, work on, set up, go against, write up, (although it doesn’t say when the non-phrasal verb equivalents it gives are more common)
“exceeding” is formal and “in excess of” is mainly used in official and legal writing
“If a metaphor is used so often that the original force of the comparison is lost then it may be called an idiom”
“elucidate” is an idiom related to light
“opposed to” is an idiom referring to war and conflict
And things the book says that I think I disagree with
utilise is a more formal way to say “use something effectively” (surely it just means “use”??)
You can say “in the last analysis” as well as “in the final analysis”
“premise” is a verb
“Six from twenty-eight leaves twenty-two” is standard British academic English
Ditto for “the root of sixteen is four”
The opposite of “somewhat” is “considerably”
“a couple of” and “no fewer than” (meaning an unexpectedly large number) are key academic quantifying expressions
“increasingly small” is a recommended written phrase
September 1st, 2008 at 4:59 am
Alex - This is a very practical, detailed, and illuminating list. As somebody who has to teach Academic Writing, I appreciate this “greatest hits” list.
Thanks!