Academic Keywords

Since one of my lovely graduate diploma students confessed to being a crossword addict, I thought I'd play with some software called Hot Potatoes to create a crossword made up of words and definitions from page 179 of The Study Skills Handbook : Third Edition by Stella Cottrell.

You can try the crossword out here or on Moodle under the heading "self-study materials". Let me know what you think...

Another week, another set of reading links

A hectic week means that it's Wednesday night and I've only just leafed through last weekend's papers. Here are some links to articles you might find interesting, courtesy of the Guardian, Observer, and New York Times.

Handcuffed, a midwife is led into court. Her crime? Championing home births.

Japan goes from Dynamic to Disheartened

Lara Stone and Georgia Jagger make gap teeth the new face of fashion

Mama Grizzlies lead the Republican hunt for America's angry voters

No country for poor people?

Polls show a nation split as French protest spreads

More suggested reading

I've picked a few stories from the Guardian and New Scientist which might be of interest. From The Guardian:

The big story in economics this week relates to the spending cuts currently being introduced by the Chancellor, George Osborne. You can read about his programme here, and some hostile reaction to it here. Across the Channel in France there are reports of Panic-buying at Petrol Pumps, and much further afield in Mexico, a 20-year-old student has been given a surprisingly high-status job.

Meanwhile, in the New Scientist, this story about company logos and neuroscience might be interesting. There are also stories about how technology can aid research, and how nature can hamper technology designed to save it.

Recording and Learning Vocabulary

Some important considerations when recording and learning new vocabulary:

1. Is it useful? Consider field and register - the Academic Word List Highlighter may help you here.

2. What does it mean? A good dictionary will help you. Try Cambridge's free online dictionaries. There's no problem with using translation to understand basic meaning, but you will still need to consider all the other points here.

3. How can you remember it? This article by Scott Thornbury may be useful.

4. What type of word is it? (adjective, verb, noun, adverb - context and a dictionary will help. If it's a noun, is it countable or uncountable, singular of plural?).

5. How can you use it? Look at the context in which you found it, think about collocation (search The Oxford Collocations Dictionary for help) , and the patterns that it may be used in. Cambridge's free online dictionaries list possible patterns of use under each definition.

6. Does it belong to a FAMILY of words? Finding the word "unilaterally", for example, can open your eyes to "lateral" and "unilateral".

7. Is there anything IRREGULAR about this word / phrase? What do you need to remember about it? Is it a noun with an irregular plural form (e.g. children, people), is it an intransitive verb (if you don't know what "intransitive" mean, check the glossary of the Internet Grammar of English).

8. Can you pronounce it? Again, a good dictionary will give you a phonemic transcription of a word's pronunciation, and online dictionary sites like Cambridge's have sound clips of how to pronounce each word (with British and American variations provided).

Graduate Diploma : Suggested Reading Resources

The Economist and Financial Times websites are good sources of texts for students to use for reading diaries. Articles you might find interesting from the Economist website right now are:

• The Dark Side of Light - on obesity
• A Growing Appetite - on the ambitions of a food company in China
• From Hoarding to Hiring - on how countries can generate employment
• Google's Robocars - on a plan to develop computer-driven vehicles

Reading lists from the university module directory are also a good indicator of the types of texts students need to deal with in their postgraduate studies.

Compared vs Comparing

In class today we discussed the possible differences between COMPARED and COMPARING, and we came up with the following distinction:

ACTIVE
- Comparing China with the UK, Cheng and YeHui drew up a long list of differences.
- Comparing the shoes in his huge collection, Alexandre spent two hours deciding what to wear.
- Tengiz walked through campus happily singing Kazakh folk songs.

PASSIVE
- Compared to London, Colchester is small.
- Compared to Mark, Sultan is intelligent, charming, and handsome.
- Compared to his childhood ambition of becoming a cosmonaut, Azer’s goal of being elected president of Azerbaijan seems quite reasonable.
- Compared to Hitler, my father was not strict.
- Tengiz walked through campus, followed by an angry crowd of students.

If you fancy trying Google Fight by yourself, you can follow this link. Alternatively, for more serious language exploration, have a look at this website devoted to the Academic Word List.

New Graduate Diploma Group

Today was the first EAP reading & writing session with Graduate Diploma Economics and History students (except without the History student). The following 9 sentences summarise what we found out about each other. Are they all logical?

1. According to Azer, Tengiz is the best at maths in this room because he spent more time as an undergraduate studying maths.

2. Azer claims that he speaks the most languages in this room: four.

3. Chen believes that the strongest ‘man’ in this room might be Mark, because he is the tallest and heaviest person present.

4. After reading each student’s writing from week one, Mark concluded that Azer is the most ambitious individual on the Graduate Diploma course. He came to this conclusion because Azer’s childhood dream was to become a cosmonaut.

5. After interviewing each member of the group, Juelma concluded that the most romantic is Chen, because he likes listening to romantic songs every day, and often watches romantic films.

6. Juelma also claims that the best cook in the room is Azer because he likes cooking every day.

7. Tengiz claims that the most adventurous person in the group is Chen, because he has visited more countries than his classmates / peers.

8. According to Tengiz, the most creative person in the group is Azer. Tengiz came to this conclusion because Azer likes to experiment when cooking.

9. Mark believes that Juelma is the fittest person in the group, because she has never smoked a cigarette.

We also discussed some pattern grammar and collocations issues, including the possible differences between a strong man and a strong woman. Opinions on this are welcome...