FINAL TASK FOR UNIT 6:

CHARACTERISTICS OF ACADEMIC TEXTS

AND FORMAL REQUIREMENTS

GENERAL INFORMATION:

This unit assignment consists of doing the tasks presented below. This assignment must be done
individually. It must be submitted according to the official submission procedure described in
the web page where this file was downloaded. Assignments send directly to the tutor by email
will not be corrected. The work must fulfil the following conditions:

- Length: between 3 and 5 pages (without including cover, index or appendices –if there
are any–). Any assignment that exceeds or does not reach the length will be considered
failed.
- Type of font: Arial or Times New Roman.
- Size: 11.
- Line height: 1.5.
- Alignment: Justified.
- Margins: 2.5 above and down, left and right 3 (usual default configuration).

The assignment has to be done in this Word document. Please, do not write the answers in
bold, in order to simplify the distinction between them and the activities’ statements. On the
other hand, the assignment must still fulfil the rules of presentation and edition, and follow the
rubric for quoting and making bibliographical in the Study Guide.

The tasks which do not fulfil the terms of submission will not be corrected.
The file name has to include the following data:
*Number of the group the student belongs.
*Student’s name initial and the surname.
*The unit’s name initial.
For example, following the data below:
Student: Samuel López
Group: 2013-06
Unit: Characteristics of academic texts and formal requirements
The correct files name would be: 2013-06SLópez_CATFR

In addition to this, it is very important to read the assessment criteria, which can be found in
the Study Guide.

Assignment:
The assignment of this unit consists of answering 3 activities related to the topics of the unit:
academic texts, the formal quotation and the improvement of the reading capacity. Most of the
questions require a direct answer, so we suggest you to write “Answer” in bold before the
answers.

TASK 1: THE ACADEMIC TEXT

Read the following text and answer the three questions below. Each answer cannot exceed 30
words. Check the contents in 1.2 General features of academic texts and 1.3 Examples of
academic texts and their characteristics:
Stephen Pit Corder is considered one of founding figures of Applied Linguistics and
Second Language Acquisition. This book presents the investigations of his last fifteen
years. It is divided in twelve chapters that treat two basic ideas. On one hand, it treats
the error analysis methods and its relation to language teaching (the importance of the
students’ errors, idiosyncratic dialects and error analysis, students’ language description,
etc.). On the other hand, the work is focused on theoretical aspects, especially those
centred on language acquisition and the interlanguage. To sum up, this work gives a
general overlook on how the field has changed these years and the advances of other
fields of investigation.
Comment on: CORDER, S.P. (1981) Error analysis and interlanguage. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

1. What is the aim of the message?

2. At what kind of receiver it is addressed?
3. Is this text adequate for an academic context? Why?

TASK 2: QUOTING

Correct the following bibliographical references in order to follow the rules presented in the
unit.
Unamuno, V. Lengua, escuela y diversidad sociocultural. Hacia una educación
lingüística crítica. Barcelona: Graó. 2003)
Consejo de Europa (2000): Marco europeo de referencia para el aprendizaje, la
enseñanza y la evaluación de lenguas modernas. INSTITUTO CERVANTES, 2001,
Madrid.
MARTÍN PERIS. (1993): El perfil del profesor de español como lengua extranjera:
necesidades y tendencias, en Miquel, L. y Sans, N. (Ed.): Didáctica del español como
lengua extranjera, Madrid, Expolingua, pp. 167-179.

TASK 3: THE IMPORTANCE OF READING

Read the following text and answer the questions below:

From the edge to the centre of the galaxy

 The works of the Dutch linguist Abram de Swaan, later completed by Louis-Jean
Calvet, suggest a global linguistic system named “gravitational” or “galactic”, a
functioning model whose centre is the English language. This system is not a surprise: it
is the historical consequence of the logic of powers, wars, invasions, migrations,
colonial domination, etc. More recently, it is also consequence of economic powers and,
above everything, ideologies: in this sense, the conquest of the mind is more decisive
than the conquest of territories.
There is a basis of around 6000 languages, 90% of these languages are spoken by 5% of
the global population, and they are called peripheral languages. 500 are spoken by less
than 100 people. In some countries can coexist several hundreds of languages; Papua
New Guinea has the record, 850 languages, followed by Indonesia (670), Nigeria (410)
and India (380). In order to not be completely isolated, a peripheral language
community connects to the adjacent community through bilingual speakers, but this is
unusual. Generally, the members of these groups communicate through a common
language which belongs to a superior level –like Quechua in South America, and even
Wolof, Lingala and Bambara in Africa– and is considered a central language.
There are approximately one hundred central languages, which has from one to a dozen
peripheral languages gravitating around. They are official or national languages; they
are the language of administration and justice, the most used in written and electronic
communication. All European languages are central for regional languages and a
“minority” in a national territory: it happens to the Dutch with the Frisian; to the Finnish
with the Sami; to the Danish with the Faroese; to the English with the Cornish (a Celtic
language), Scottish, Welsh and Irish; to the French with Alsatian, Basque, Britton,
Corse and Occitan.
However, some of these languages, all of them central in a State, are more central than
others because they are at the centre of a constellation that gathers other “foreign”
languages. They are called supercentral languages. Abram de Swaan has identified
twelve supercentral languages: German, Arab, Chinese, English, Sapnish, French,
Hindi, Japanese, Malay, Portuguese, Russian and Swahili. Louis Jean-Calvet considers
that German and Japanese -more than 100 million speakers each- are not supercentral,
since they do not have a significant number of languages in their orbit. Supercentral
languages are used to communicate in a regional or international space, sometimes as a
result of colonization (English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese).

Nevertheless, if a Russian person and a Chinese person meet, there are few possibilities
of knowing the other language. Then, –unless they both cooperate in Cuba and know
Spanish– they are going to use the language that connects the supercentral languages:
English, the hypercentral language. Then, we can see that, from the less spoken
Amerindian language to the English language, there are multiple chains of bilingual or
multilingual speakers that guarantee the communication of the periphery to the center.
CASSEN B.(2005): “The Illusion of the International English, Understanding Each
other” en Le Monde diplomatique (Trans. Marcel Colet).

1. Explain the intention of the message (30 word maximum):

2. Complete the following sentences:
 a) The gravitational model is a linguistic system whose centre is
________.
b) ________ has the record of languages with_________ languages.
c) The conquest of the mind is ____________.
3. Define in 30 words:
a) Central language:
b) Supercentral language:
c) Hypercentral language:
4. Read the text again and mark in yellow the most relevant idea of each paragraph. Then,
summarise the main idea in only one line:

Paragraphs Idea principal

First paragraph

Second paragraph

Third paragraph

Fourth paragraph

Fifth paragraph

5. Complete the table with the facts presented by the author and his opinions on it:

Paragraphs Facts presented Opinion

First paragraph

Second paragraph

Third paragraph

Fourth paragraph

Fifth paragraph
6. Make a conceptual scheme of the main and secondary ideas of the text:

7. Mark with a cross the correct option and justify your answer in 30 words::

a) What is the function of the text?

_ Criticise
_ Describe
_ Defend an idea

b) What is the writer attitude?

_ Neutral
_ Critical
_ Informative

c) What is the tone used?

_ Formal
_ Informal
_ Colloquial