About writing

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 460.

Task 6

Task5

Task 4

Task 3

Task 2

Task 1

Discuss the following sentences with a partner and decide which are acceptable definitions. Try to work out why the other definitions are not acceptable.

a) A capital city is like London.

b) A man is an animal with eight fingers and two thumbs.

c) Biochemistry is the study of biochemistry.

d) Socialism is what they have in the USSR.

e) Rust is a reddish brown coating formed on iron by the action of water and air.

Defining concrete terms is usually relatively easy. Such terms as 'copper', 'thermometer', etc. can usually be defined in the following way:

concept class special feature(s)

form of

…… is a species of ...... which ...................

(etc.)

device

This definition structure is known as a formal definition.

These formal definitions have their parts mixed up. See if you can rewrite them correctly. Check your rewritten sentences with one or two other students.

Another definition structure, the naming definition, has the same parts but in a different order:

class special feature(s) concept

who called

........... which ......................... is known as ..........

(etc.)

e.g. A person who studies living organisms is called a biologist.

A book which has soft covers and is relatively cheap is known as a paperback.

Many definitions can be written both ways.

Not all the formal definitions in Task 2 can be rewritten as naming definitions. Rewrite those that can and suggest reasons why the remainder would make unsatisfactory naming definitions.

Think of three ordinary subjects that you use or see every day. For each of them write both kinds of definition. Test them out on another student by blanking out the 'concept' word(s) and seeing whether she or he knows what you have defined.

e.g. A writing instrument which contains a lead and can be erased by a
rubber is called a ... (pencil)

In academic writing we tend to draw on other people's definitions of particular terms in order to help establish our own definition. When we follow this procedure we are obliged to make clear to the reader how we are using another writer's definition, i.e. do we accept it / accept part of it / reject it etc.?

Read the following passage, which has been taken from an article called 'How animals learn:

psychology vs ethology'. Then:

a) using information from the text, write a formal definition of a 'conditioned reflex';

b) using information from the text, write a definition of 'learning';

c) compare your definitions with those of another student.

Until recently, learning was almost exclusively the prerogative of ex­perimental psychologists, follow­ing the tradition established by I.P. Pavlov and his famous dogs. Pavlov found that dogs salivated when they heard a bell that signal­led the arrival of food. Such a response was called a conditioned reflex and was supposed to demon­strate that the dog had in some way associated the bell with the food. Decades of subsequent research were based on the principle that all learning was a matter of forming associations between one stimulus and another, or between a stimulus and a response, under the influence of a "reinforcer" - reward or punishment. The animals that were studied were readily available and easy to handle in the lab - usually rats and pigeons. (New Scientist)

Defining abstract concepts (words such as 'truth', 'beauty' and 'justice') is harder than defining concrete objects. Often such concepts cannot be adequately defined in a simple, one-sentence definition.

What do you understand by the term 'social responsibility'? What does it involve? How do we recognize it? Who should be socially responsible?

Discuss these questions about social responsibility with some other students, then write your own definition of the term 'social responsibility' as you think it would be meant in a statement like:

Scientists, above all, should be socially responsible.

We have seen that to define something we need to name it, classify it, and state its most important (i.e. defining) characteristics. Because definitions are used to explain words we need, they are almost always only part of a text and not a whole text. We find definitions inside most serious writing, usually when something is being introduced for the first time.

Task 7