ID056 – BUILDING SENTENCES AND PARAGRAPHS

FINAL TASK
GENERAL INFORMATION:

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

 Type of font: Arial.

 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 a 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 a bibliography in the Study Guide.

It is very important to read the assessment criteria, which can be found in the Study
Guide. This final task for Unit 3 will evaluate the conditions of presentation presented
below, the assessment criteria and, especially, the accomplishment of the objectives of
this unit:

 Effectively build sentences and paragraphs.

 Linking paragraphs by using signaling words correctly.
 Using English punctuation features effectively.

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 to.

 Student’s first name initial and the first surname.
 The unit’s name initials.

For example, following the data below:

 Student: Samuel López

 Group: 2013-06
 Unit: Introduction to Academic Writing (IAW)
 The correct file name would be: 2013-06SLópez_IAW

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 Tasks:
You are going to build a short essay on methods for teaching prepositions in English.
Read the instructions and complete the tasks below.

Instructions
Compare two methods for teaching prepositions and explain which one is more
successful.

TASK 1:

Put the following sentences in the correct order to create the introduction to your
essay1:

A. Such language differences make the teaching of this area very difficult.

B. Another method takes a cognitive linguistics approach, in which prepositions

are studied in relation to spatial relationships.

C. Using prepositions correctly in English is very difficult if English is not a person’s

first language.

D. The essay which follows gives a brief history of prepositional theory and
compares the traditional and cognitive linguistics approaches, arguing that a
cognitive linguistics approach helps students to understand the concepts
underlying prepositions, and so is more effective in helping students to use
prepositions correctly.

E. Prepositions are small connecting words that do not necessarily exist in other
languages or may not have exactly the same meanings.

F. One popular teaching method relies on students learning combinations of

nouns and prepositions.

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Adapted from Miller & Warner (2014) — The University of Adelaide

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TASK 2:

Read articles Prepositions from the Perspective of Cognitive Study and Applying the
Cognitive Linguistics approach to teaching English prepositions ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘at’ in the
Indonesian EFL classroom (see attachments 1 and 2).

Now, write the main body to your essay. Add two more paragraphs by arguing that
the cognitive linguistics approach is more effective than traditional approaches. Do not
copy and paste text directly from your sources; write in your own words.

Bear in mind the techniques that you studied in this unit: types of sentences, sentence
length, characteristics of a paragraph, signaling words, punctuation, etc.

You will build the conclusion to your essay in the following task.

Note: You might want to complete Task 3 in advance to have a better idea of
what should be argued in this task.

Length: 300-350 words.

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TASK 3:

Finally, put the following sentences in the correct order to create the conclusion to your
essay2:

A. Spatial relationships, however, may differ from one language to another, and so
this method is not completely effective.

B. By studying spatial relationships, students appear to remember prepositions

more accurately than they do using the traditional memorization method.

C. Nevertheless, the cognitive linguistics approach appears to be useful for many

students and it is recommended that researchers study this approach further to
see whether it is applicable for students with different language backgrounds
and at different levels of language study.

D. This essay has argued that a cognitive linguistics perspective is more effective
than simple memorization in helping students to remember noun and
preposition combinations.

2
Adapted from Miller & Warner (2014) — The University of Adelaide