Written Discursive Practices III- Language and Grammar III Academic Vocabulary Alicia de Paz 15

Academic Vocabulary: Complementary Readings

1) Ronowicz, E. and Yallop, C.(eds), British Shibboleths, One Language, Different Cultures, The Continuum
International Publishing Group Ltd in O’Dell, F and Broadhead, A., (2008) Objective, CAE, Cambridge, CUP
Close Encounters of the British Kind
An underlying principle of cultural behaviour which is
closely reflected in the language is the need to avoid face-
to-face conflict. Even though the British may appear
unpleasantly blunt when compared with some Asian
cultures, they are on the whole concerned to offer a way
out whenever a potential conflict between individuals
occurs. This may be compared with public confrontations
in large committees or parliament where much more
confrontation goes on. Some cultures are, by way of
contrast to the British, much less concerned to avoid
conflict in private or personal encounters.
Perhaps there is a principle of 'aggression
management’ here: every culture has developed some
ways of letting off steam, has some areas in which people
are allowed to express their true feelings.
The immediate linguistic consequence of open conflict-
avoidance is that you need to know what to do and what
to say, for example, when someone takes a position in a
queue in front of you, accidentally stands on your toe in a
bus or disagrees with you in a public gathering. ln the
public gathering, depending on the nature of the meeting,
the British reaction may be to confront disagreement
openly and respond vigorously. ln the other more
personal situations, the same individual may work hard at
taking a middle route between doing nothing and
engaging in open conflict. In doing so, he or she will
expect a similar cooperative response from the other
person, such as an apology like, 'Oh, sony l didn't realise
…’. ln other cultures, behaviour might well be the opposite
– a great effort to reduce conflict in a public meeting and
robust responses in the private situations. Wthin our own
cultures, we understand the conventions and know when
people are being normally polite or normally outspoken.
The difficulties come when we make errors in an
unfamiliar environment.

a \/Vhat differences are there in the Way many British people handle potential personal conflict and public confrontations? Would
you say this is the same or different in your country?
b \/Vhich phrase in the text means expressing anger?
c When might a British person say, ‘Oh, sorry I didn’t realise ...’?

Discuss these questions in small groups.

a What are the dangers of making general statements about the characteristics of certain nationalities?
b What generalisations are made about your national characteristics? Do you agree with them?

Look at these examples of collocations from the reading text.

an underlying principle (adjective and noun collocation) closely reflected (adverb and verb collocation)
unpleasantly blunt (adverb and adjective collocation)
Go through the text and highlight some more collocations to remember.
2) Beatty, K. (2003) Teaching and Researching Computer-assisted Language Learning, Essex, Pearson Education Limited
3.5 Science Fiction and CALL
Science fiction has long been a rich ground for speculation about the use of the computers and, in many ways, serves to
offer idealized visions of learning without concern for the constraints of technology that lag behind imagination. Many
concepts that first appeared in science fiction have inspired developments in computing.
Author William Gibson created the metaphor cyberspace in his 1984 science fiction novel Neuromancer: Cyberspace retains
its original (although poetic) definition as ‘a consensual hallucination’ and ‘a graphic representation of data (i.e. hypertext,
hypermedia and multimedia)’ (Gibson, l984: 51). The basic idea is that when interactions take place online, such as within
a simulated environment (see Section 2.3.5), they are taking place within cyberspace.
The sense of cyberspace as a meeting place has been developed in other novels by Gibson (1986, 1988, 1996) and Neal
Stephenson (1995, 2000). In their virtual venues, simulated worlds are created and machines given avatars, or online
personalities that might be based on human forms, fanciful animals or even machines. In the novel Snowcrash, based on
ideas of the fall of a modern Tower of Babel, a vast information/ library database is given the appearance of a rumpled,
friendly but almost infinitely knowledgeable librarian (Stephenson, 2000). Humans in the novel project them-selves, or
artistic interpretations of themselves, and interact as they would in the real world.
The use of human-like avatars is not far-fetched; the technology, although sometimes clumsy to manipulate with a
keyboard or mouse, is already in place and widely used in gaming situations. The applications to CALL, however, have not
been widely exploited.
Conceptual ideas along with electronic networks featuring services such as the World Wide Web (WWW) and physical
collections of data in CD-ROMs, has fostered the growth of multimedia as new learning resources, particularly for language
learning. The principal qualities of multimedia that have made it useful are the types of information (text, images, sound,
animation, video) that can be stored and, more importantly, the useful ways that multimedia can be used to search
Written Discursive Practices III- Language and Grammar III
information, electronically developing Dr Johnson’s second quality of knowledge after actually knowing a thing itself:
knowing where to find it (Boswell, 1791). The contrary argument is that the extensiveness of data available on media such
as the WWW has made searching more, not less, difficult.
3) ‘How to improve your memory’ © Mind Tools Ltd, 1995-2007 retrieved from MindTools.com
‘How to Improve Your Memory’
Introduction
Learning Foreign Languages
Foreign languages are the ideal subject area for the use
of memory techniques: the process of learning words is
essentially a matter of association – associating what is
initially a meaningless collection of syllables with a
word in a language that we understand.
Traditionally this association has been carried out by
repetition – saying the word in one’s own language and
the foreign language time and time and time again.
The whole tedious way of acquiring vocabulary can be
eliminated by three good techniques.
1 The Linkword Technique
The Linkword Technique uses images to link a word in
one language with another word in another language.
For example, if an English person wanted to learn the
French word for carpet – tapis , he might imagine an
oriental carpet where a tap is the central design. Tap
is has the same spelling as tapis so he will remember
the French for carpet.
The technique was formalised by Dr Gruneborg.
Linkword books have been produced in many language
pairs to help students acquire the basic vocabulary
needed to get by in a language (usually about 1,000
words). lt is claimed that by using this technique the
basic vocabulary can be acquired in just l0 hours.
2 The Town Language Mnemonic
The fundamental principle rests on the fact that the
basic vocabulary of a language relates to everyday
things: things that are typically found in a small town,
city or village.The basis of the technique is that the
student should choose a town that he or she is very
familiar with, and should use objects within that place
as the cues to recall the images that link to foreign
words.
Adjectives in the park
Adjectives should be associated with a garden or park
within the town: words such as green, smelly, bright,
small, cold, etc. can be easily related to objects in a
park. Perhaps there is a pond there, a small wood,
perhaps people with different characteristics are
walking around.
Verbs in the sports centre
Verbs can most easily be associated with a sports centre
or playing field. This allows us all the associations of
lifting, running, walking, hitting, eating, swimming,
diving, etc.
Would you use the technique you read about? Why?/Why not?
Academic Vocabulary Alicia de Paz 16
in O’Dell, F and Broadhead, A., (2008) Objective, CAE, Cambridge, CUP
Remembering genders
In a language where gender is important, a very
elegant method of remembering this is to divide your
town into two main zones where the gender is only
masculine and feminine, or three where there is a
neutral gender.This division can be by busy roads,
rivers, etc.To fix the gender of a noun, simply associate
its image with a place in the correct part of town.This
makes remembering genders so easy!
Many languages, many towns
Another elegant spin-off of the technique comes when
learning several languages: normally this can cause
confusion.With the town mnemonic, all you need do is
choose a different city, town or village for each language
to be learned. Ideally this might be in the relevant
country; however; practically it might just be a local
town with a slight flavour of the relevant country, or
twinned with it.
3 The Hundred Most Common Words
Tony Buzan, in his book Using your Memory, points out
that just 100 words comprise 50% of all words used in
conversation in a language.
Learning this core 100 words gets you a long way
towards learning to speak in that language, albeit at a
basic level. It is argued that if you start learning a
foreign language by learning the words which occur
most frequently, then your learning will be effective.
However critics of this method point out that these
words alone would not allow a speaker to make
sentences as the words are mainly articles, adverbs and
prepositions. In order to communicate we need a range
of different types of words so that we can make
sentences. On the other hand, there is a lot to be said
for learning useful words rather than the specialised
words for some particular bird or scientific process.
The first 20 basic words
The first 20 out of a list of 100 basic words used in
conversation are shown below.
1. a, an 2. after 3. again
4. all 5. almost 6. also
7. always 8. and 9. because
10. before 11. big l2. but
13. (I) can 14. (I) come 15. either/or
16. (I) find 17 first 18. for
19. friend 20. from
Written Discursive Practices III- Language and Grammar III Academic Vocabulary Alicia de Paz 17

Now read the tips below on how to improve your memory. Then with a partner discuss which recommendations you
think are the most effective and why.
a Make sure you are alert and attentive before trying to memorise anything.
b Understand the material rather than merely memorising, if it is the type that requires deeper comprehension.
c Look for larger patterns or ideas, and organise pieces of information into meaningful groups.
d Link the new bits of knowledge with what you already know. Place what you learn into context with the rest
of your knowledge, looking for relationships between the ideas.
e Engage your visual and auditory senses by using drawings, charts or music to aid memory.
f Use mnemonics – devices such as formulae or rhymes that serve as memory aids. For example, use the
acronym “HOMES” to memorise the Great Lakes in North America (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie and
Superior).
g Repeat and review what you have learned as many times as you can. Apply it or use it in conversation, as
continual practice is the key to remembering things in the long term.
Which of the techniques would you like to try out?

4)
O’Dell, F and Broadhead, A., (2008) Objective, CAE, Cambridge, CUP
Written Discursive Practices III- Language and Grammar III Academic Vocabulary Alicia de Paz 18

5) ‘Evolutionary factors of language' retrieved from http://www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/monkey/the/ linguistics/LECTURE4/ 4evo.htm

in O’Dell, F and Broadhead, A., (2008) Objective, CAE, Cambridge, CUP
‘Evolutionary Factors of Language' (extract from a lecture)
Now let’s turn to the biological constraints.
lf we assume that all humans are able to speak a language, a number of biological facts fall into place,
suggesting that the human body is partially adapted to the production of language.
Human teeth are different to those of other animals – being even and forming an unbroken barrier, they
are upright, do not slant outwards and the top and bottom set meet This is not necessary for eating. Yet evenly-
spaced equal-sized teeth which touch are useful for the articulation of the sounds /s/, /f /, /v/, /∫ / and /Ѳ/ as well
as several others.
Human lips have well-developed muscles which are more intricately interlaced than those of other
primates. The mouth is small and can be opened and closed rapidly, allowing the sounds /p/ and /b/ to be made.
The human tongue is thick, muscular and mobile. This means that the size of the mouth cavity can be
varied, allowing a range of vowel sounds to be produced.
The human larynx is simpler in structure than that of other primates; air can move freely past and then
out of the mouth without being hindered by other appendages. The ‘streamlining’ of the larynx may be a sign
of adaptation to speech – however, a disadvantage of this is that we cannot breathe while we eat, unlike
monkeys. If food becomes trapped in our windpipe we could choke to death.
Our breathing is well adapted to speech; during speech we are able to alter our breathing rhythm without
noticing discomfort.
Humans have a prolonged childhood compared to other animals – if factors like size, lifespan and gestation
are taken into account, compared to other animals humans appear to be born prematurely; for humans to
conform to the general trend, they would have to have an 18-month gestation period. Thus, with other factors
taken into account, the human gestation period is only half as long as the gestation period of other animals.
This means that less information is inherited genetically. In effect, the genes are given more opportunity to ask
the questions and the environment provides the answers. Perhaps humans are biologically disposed towards
language, but they need the environment to make use of the structure of their brains.

6) Emmott, C. (1994) Frames of Reference:Contextual Monitoring and the Interpretation of Narrative Discourse
in Coulthard, M., (1994) Advances in Written Text Analysis, London, Routledge
CONTEXTUAL MONITORING BY THE BLIND
Written Discursive Practices III- Language and Grammar III Academic Vocabulary Alicia de Paz 19

We have seen that (as in example 1) a text will not normally mention in every sentence every character who is present in a fictional
context. The reader must therefore build a mental model of the context which can be used to fill the gaps. The reader can be
likened in this respect to a blind person. Blind people do not have information about their surroundings available constantly through
the eyes. They receive only intermittent signalling of the context through the non-visual senses. This means that those around
the blind person are only ‘in focus’ when speaking, moving audibly, touching, etc. The rest of the time the participants are covert
rather than overt. The blind must compensate for this shortfall by mentally monitoring the context. This is achieved by priming
contextual information into a frame.
Blind people will often be in the position where they address what, from the evidence of their senses at any one point in time,
might as well be an empty room. Although a blind person can enquire who is around them, it would be socially unacceptable for
them to keep asking. The blind person can, nevertheless, work on the assumption that whoever has been in the room is still
present unless there has been any evidence to the contrary.
There will of course be occasions when the blind person is unaware of others coming and going either because they make no
noise or because, in a crowded room, there is too much other noise. As a result a blind person may, for example, address
someone who was in the room but has left. This indicates that the blind person is working with a mental model of the context
which may or may not match the real context. It provides evidence that the human mind works by monitoring and making
assumptions rather than by continually checking the context.

7) Yule, G. (2006) The Study of Language, Cambridge: CUP

The genetic source
We can think of the human baby in its first few years as a living example of some of these physical changes taking
place. At birth, the baby’s brain is only a quarter of its eventual weight and the larynx is much higher in the throat, allowing
babies, like chimpanzees, to breathe and drink at the same time. in a relatively short period of time, the larynx descends,
the brain develops, the child assumes an upright posture and starts walking and talking.
This almost automatic set of developments and the complexity of the young child’s language have led some scholars
to look for something more powerful than small physical adaptations of the species over time as the source of language.
Even children who are born deaf (and do not develop speech) become fluent sign language users, given appropriate
circumstances, very early in life. This seems to indicate that human offspring are born with a special capacity for language.
It is innate, no other creature seems to have it, and it isn’t tied to a specific variety of language. Is it possible that this
language capacity is genetically hard-wired in the newborn human?
As a solution to the puzzle of the origins of language, this innateness hypothesis would seem to point to something
in human genetics, possibly a crucial mutation, as the source. This would not have been a gradual change, but something
that happened rather quickly. We are not sure when this proposed genetic change might have taken place or how it might
relate to the physical adaptations described earlier. However, as we consider this hypothesis, we find our speculations
about the origins of language moving away from fossil evidence or the physical source of basic human sounds toward
analogies with how computers work (e.g. being pre-programmed or hard-wired) and concepts taken from the study of
genetics. The investigation of the origins of language then turns into a search for the `special language gene’ that only
humans possess.
If we are indeed the only creatures with this special capacity for language, then will it be completely impossible for
any other creature to produce or understand language? We’ll try to answer that question in chapter 2.

8) Jones, L. (1991) Cambridge Advanced English, Cambridge: CUP

GESTURES
A gesture is any action that sends a visual signal to an onlooker. To become a gesture, an act has to be seen by someone
else and has to communicate some piece of information to them. It can do this either because the gesturer deliberately
sets out to send a signal – as when he waves his hand – or it can do it only incidentally – as when he sneezes. The hand-
wave is a Primary Gesture, because it has no other existence or function. It is a piece of communication from start to
finish. The sneeze, by contrast, is a secondary, or Incidental Gesture. Its primary function is mechanical and is concerned
with the sneezer’s personal breathing problem. In its secondary role, however, it cannot help but transmit a message to
his companions, warning them that he may have caught a cold.
Most people tend to limit their use of the term ‘gesture’ to the primary form – the hand-wave type – but this misses
an important point. What matters with gesturing is not what signals we think we are sending out, but what signals are
being received. The observers of our acts will make no distinction between our intentional Primary Gestures and our
unintentional, incidental ones. In some ways, our Incidental Gestures are the more illuminating of the two, if only for the
very fact that we do not think of them as gestures, and therefore do not censor and manipulate them so strictly. This is
why it is preferable to use the term ‘gesture’ in its wider meaning as an ‘observed action’.
Written Discursive Practices III- Language and Grammar III Academic Vocabulary Alicia de Paz 20

A convenient way to distinguish between Incidental and Primary Gestures is to ask the question: Would I do it if I
were completely alone? If the answer is No, then it is a Primary Gesture. We do not wave, wink or point when we are by
ourselves; not, that is, unless we have reached the unusual condition of talking animatedly to ourselves.

SYMBOLIC GESTURES
A Symbolic Gesture indicates an abstract quality that has no simple equivalent in the world of objects and movements.
How, for instance, would you make a silent sign for stupidity? You might launch into a full-blooded Theatrical Mime
of a drooling village idiot. But total idiocy is not a precise way of indicating the momentary stupidity of a healthy adult.
Instead, you might tap your forefinger against your temple, but this also lacks accuracy, since you might do precisely the
same thing when indicating that someone is brainy. All the tap does is to point to the brain. To make the meaning more
clear, you might instead twist your forefinger against your temple, indicating ‘a screw loose’. Alternatively, you might
rotate your forefinger close to your temple, signalling that the brain is going round and round and is not stable.
Many people would understand these temple-forefinger actions, but others would not. They would have their own
local, stupidity gestures, which we in our turn would find confusing, such as tapping the elbow of the raised forearm,
flapping the hand up and down in front of half-closed eyes, rotating a raised hand, or laying one forefinger flat across the
forehead.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that some stupidity signals mean totally different things in different
countries. To take one example, in Saudi Arabia stupidity can be signalled by touching the lower eyelid with the tip of the
forefinger. But this same action, in various other countries, can mean disbelief, approval, agreement, mistrust, scepticism,
alertness, secrecy, craftiness, danger or criminality. The reason for this apparent chaos of meanings is simple enough. By
pointing to the eye, the gesturer is doing no more than stress the symbolic importance of the eye as a seeing organ.
Beyond that, the action says nothing, so that the message can become either: ‘Yes, I see’, or ‘I can’t believe my eyes’, or
‘Keep a sharp look-out’, or ‘I like what I see’, or almost any other seeing signal you care to imagine. In such a case it is
essential to know the precise ‘seeing’ property being represented by the symbolism of the gesture in any particular culture.
So we are faced with two basic problems where Symbolic Gestures are concerned: either one meaning may be signalled
by different actions, or several meanings may be signalled by the same action, as we move from culture to culture. The
only solution is to approach each culture with an open mind and learn their Symbolic Gestures as one would their
vocabulary.
(from Manwatching by Desmond Morris)

1. What do a sneeze and a wave of the hand have in common?

2. What kind of gesture is a yawn?
3. What kind of gesture is a raised fist?
4. Write down three more examples of incidental gestures.
5. Write down three more examples of primary gestures.
6. Why is the phrase ‘unusual condition’ used at the end of the first section?
7. How many different signs does the writer describe for stupidity?
8. What is the ‘local gesture’ for stupidity in your country?
9. How many different meanings does the writer describe for the gesture of touching the lower eyelid with the
tip of the forefinger?
10. What is the meaning of touching the lower eyelid in your country?
11. How does the writer suggest one should learn the gestures of different cultures?