ENGAGE

Activity 2. FORMAL VS. INFORMAL LANGUAGE.

Directions: In most of your subjects, you are required to use academic form of writing.
Work on the following activities to learn more about formal and informal language.
2.A. Read the following sentence from a student’s essay:

Articles on women's sports were placed on the left page and often at the bottom,
which is a place skipped by many readers.

Which two sentences below express the same idea using more formal
language? Put a check mark before the number.

1. Articles on women’s sports were placed on the left page, often at the bottom,
which is an area often overlooked by readers.
2. Articles on women’s sports were placed on the left page, often at the bottom,
which is an area most readers jump over.
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3. Articles on women’s sports were placed on the left page, often at the bottom,
which is a less prominent position.

2.B. Directions: Match the informal vocabulary in column A with column B.

Write the answer of your choice before each number in column A.
A B
1. look at a. somewhat, fairly, quite
2. go over b. consider, monitor, analyze
3. show c. commence, initiate, undertake
4. begin d. satisfactory, favorable, positive
5. good e. a great deal of, many
6. a lot of f. confirm, determine, verify
7. a bit g. solve, repair, amend
8. fix h. demonstrate, indicate, illustrate
9. make sure i. revise, review

ADVANCE

Activity: OBJECTIVITY

Directions: Another aspect of writing objectively is to avoid emotive language. Read

the passage below from a student's essay on media and the representation of women's
sport. Underline the three emotive language used in the text.

...Mikosa found similar results in her study for Women sport Australia, where she found
that journalists discussed the female athletes' "elegance" or referred to women as
"blonde girl(s)" and a journalist even wrote about one athlete's "domestic routine of
cooking" (1998). With this in mind, I was absolutely appalled to hear an Australian
television commentator’s reference to the women's Dutch hockey team when they won
a bronze medal on the 29/9/2000. When the team stood on the dais to receive their
medal, the male commentator’s sole comment was "Ahh look at the pretty little Dutch
girls", without any mention whatsoever of their athleticism or sporting ability. It was a
sad moment for Australian commentating and strengthens the arguments of Philips
and Mikoza regarding the language the media uses to portray sports women and
women's sport alike.

PRACTICE HYGIENE PROTOCOLS AT ALL TIMES

REFINE

Activity: IMPERSONAL LANGUAGE

Directions: These are some ways of limiting the use of ‘I’ and ‘we’ in academic
writing. Match the statements below which use ‘I’ and ‘we’ with the most appropriate
option from the box.

A standard graphical representation was

used The question of…

A. A survey of the literature revealed that…
B

1. I surveyed the literature and discovered...

2. We used a standard graphical representation to...

3. We researched the question of...

PRACTICE HYGIENE PROTOCOLS AT ALL TIMES

PRACTICE HYGIENE PROTOCOLS AT ALL TIMES