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vocabulary for writing at university

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The Student Phrase Book
Vocabulary for Writing at University
Second Edition

Jeanne Godfrey
© Jeanne Godfrey, under exclusive licence to Macmillan Education Limited 2020
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this
publication may be made without written permission.
No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted
save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence
permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency,
Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS.
Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication
may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
The author has asserted their rights to be identified as the author of this
work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This edition published 2020 by
RED GLOBE PRESS
Previous edition published under the imprint PALGRAVE
Red Globe Press in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Education Limited,
registered in England, company number 01755588, of 4 Crinan Street,
London, N1 9XW.
Red Globe Press® is a registered trademark in the United States, the United
Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-352-00833-3 paperback
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing
processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the
country of origin.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Contents
Introductionix

Topic, aim and argument 1

1 Topic 1
2 Aim and scope 8
3 Proposition, argument and premise 17

Definitions and classification 25

4 Brief definitions 25
5 Classification and characteristics 31

Methodology, method and findings 41

6 Methodology, model and method  41
7 Data, findings, problems and anomalies 49

Amount, level and proportion 54

8 Amount, level, proportion and distribution 54
9 Adequate and inadequate amounts 63

Context, norms, risk and threat  68

10 Context, occurrence, norms and deviation 68
11 Advantage, disadvantage, risk and threat 73

Communication, understanding and position 78

12 Communication, expression and portrayal 78
13 Knowledge, understanding and ways of thinking 85
14 Position, point of view, impartiality and bias 92

 v
Time, change and movement  102
15 Time, sequence, duration and frequency 102
16 Change, movement, trend and tendency 111

Encouragement, allowance and prevention 120

17 Encouragement and improvement, discouragement and deterioration 120
18 Allowance, prevention, exclusion and elimination 127

Origin, cause, effect and connections 132

19 Origin, cause and effect 132
20 Connection, compatibility, reciprocity and lack of relationship 138

Comparison, similarity and difference 145

21 Comparison, similarity, convergence, equivalence and balance  145
22 Difference, differentiation and diversity 154

Analysis of evidence and arguments  159

23 Analysis of evidence and identification of argument flaws 159
24 Grouping of authors’ ideas and identification of common themes 167

Evaluation of evidence and arguments  171

25 Authors’ evaluations of each other 171
26 Your positive evaluation of evidence and arguments  176
27 Your negative evaluation of evidence and arguments 184
28 Your agreement, disagreement and counterarguments 191

Importance and impact 195

29 Linking evidence to theory and practice  195
30 Importance, significance and dominance  199
31 Influence and impact  205

vi Contents
Conclusions, clarification and future action 211
32 Conclusions, implications and new ideas  211
33 Qualifying conclusions and degrees of certainty  219
34 Summary, clarification and restatement of position 224
35 Recommendations, solutions and future action 229

Appendices235
Latin abbreviations and phrases 235
Word class: a brief explanation 238
Word table 241

Index 251

Contents vii
Introduction

Why and how you should use The Student Phrase Book
To write successfully at university you need to communicate your ideas, arguments and research clearly
and effectively; using words and phrases imprecisely or incorrectly will lessen the clarity and credibility of
your work.
As examples of unclear writing, below are five essay sentences in which the writers have used either the
wrong word, the wrong word form, or the wrong word before or after the key word.

Essay sentences Corrections

As Collins (1994 p. 2) cites, ‘good ethics is synonymous with good management’. states
By 2050 the US population will be generally 390 million (Statista 2019). approximately
This essay examines the government’s rational for reintroducing capital punishment. rationale
DNA differentiates from RNA in that it is a double helix as opposed to a single- differs
chained structure.
Durrett (2019) gives a detailed account for probability theory, including many account of
useful examples.

Why you might use a word
incorrectly or imprecisely
• You don’t know enough words.
• You can’t learn new words using a
dictionary because you don’t know
the words to look them up.
How The Student Phrase Book can help you
• This book gives you around 2,000 key academic words, with
definitions and important word information given for over
1,000 of these. The words presented are appropriate
for formal and clear writing at university level.
• The words are presented within 35 common assignment
writing functions or contexts, and are listed under these
sections in the word table at the back of the book. This
means that you can start by looking up what you want to
do and then find the words you need to do it.

 ix
Why you might use a word
incorrectly or imprecisely
• When trying to use your own words, • Using a thesaurus often leads to word mistakes because
you choose an incorrect synonym
from a thesaurus.
• You partially understand a word
when you read it but need a fuller
understanding to use it precisely
in your writing.
• You get the main word right but
make a mistake with the words that
come before or after it.
• You sometimes confuse words that
look similar but have different
meanings, or confuse words that
have a similar but not the same
meaning.
• When you check your writing you
sometimes don’t spot your mistakes.
x Introduction
How The Student Phrase Book can help you
words rarely have exact, appropriate synonyms. The first part
of each section, ‘Words in action’, presents different word
choices in the context of real example sentences, e.g.:
Vaccines imitate / mimic / emulate the natural infection,
tricking the immune system into producing antibodies.
• The second part of each section, ‘Information to help you
use these words correctly’, gives you clear, simple
definitions.
There is also an alphabetical word index at the end of the
book, which you can use to find the definitions and other
important information about words you come across in
your reading.
• The ‘Information’ part of each section also tells you what
words are commonly used with the key word, e.g.:
Widespread (s1.2)
A widespread occurrence // phenomenon // assumption
// belief // (mis)conception.
Stance (s14.2)
A tough // firm // ethical // moral stance on X.
• The ‘Information’ part of each section also gives you useful
information about the difference between commonly
confused words, e.g.:
collate and compile (s6.2)
methodology and method (s6.2)
• The third part of each section, ‘Nearly but not quite right’,
gives you ten incorrect sentences containing common
errors, followed by the corrected sentences. You can use
these sentences to test your vocabulary knowledge,
improve your proofreading skills and to avoid making simi-
lar mistakes yourself.
To sum up, you can use The Student Phrase Book to:
●● find and use new words while you are preparing and writing assignments
●● check words you already partially know
●● check words you come across in your reading
●● develop your word knowledge and ability to use words correctly and precisely.
While helping you do the above, The Student Phrase Book also gives you:
●● an introduction to each section containing useful tips on key aspects of assignment writing
●● examples of good academic writing style
●● examples of how to incorporate and reference source material
●● real topics, issues and sources from a range of academic disciplines.

How The Student Phrase Book is structured

The book is divided into 14 main themes, such as ‘Topic, aim and argument’ and is then further divided
into 35 sections. Each section is divided into three parts.
Words in action
The first part of each section presents words within sentences from real academic writing. The key words
or phrases are underlined, with gaps in underlining to indicate different word groups.
●● words with similar meanings are separated by /
●● words that have different meanings are separated by //
●● round brackets () indicate either an optional word or a source reference.
Example sentences:
s25.1
●● Lupton (1998) challenges / questions Fox’s suggestion that doctors are no longer seen as the authori-
ties on medical issues.
s26.1
●● The first // next // penultimate // final step in the process was to …

s27.1
●● A (common) criticism of Dawkins’ position is that he overstates the role religion plays in human
conflict.

Introduction xi
Information to help you use these words correctly
This part of each section gives you short, simple definitions, concentrating on the words and word forms
(noun, adjective, verb, adverb) most useful for academic writing. Other useful information includes
common word combinations and the differences between commonly confused words.
Three symbols are used in the ‘Information to help you use these words correctly’ sections:

Words that are always or often used with the key word

Commonly confused words

Other important points to note

An asterisk * indicates that the word is given in its common British spelling but that there is also an
alternative British spelling (-ize, -ization) and/or a US spelling (-ize, -ization).

Nearly but not quite right

This final part of each section gives you ten incorrect and corrected sentences from real student
assignments. The incorrect sentences contain mistakes, either because the wrong word is used, the right
word is used but in the wrong way or form, or the wrong words are used before or after the key word.
You can compare the incorrect and correct sentences or try to correct the sentences in the left-hand
column before looking at the correct versions.

How The Student Phrase Book acknowledges source material

Source material used in The Student Phrase Book is acknowledged using a form of the Harvard referencing
system. Whenever a source used in an example sentence has more than two authors, et al. is used. Note
that in your own assignments you should list all the authors the first time you cite a source and only
use et al. for subsequent citations of the same source.

xii Introduction
Topic, aim and argument

1 Topic
The first few lines of your assignment should tell your reader why your topic, issue or question is important
and interesting. If you are doing higher level undergraduate or postgraduate work, you might also want
to tell your reader briefly why your research question is important; perhaps your investigation is needed
because of the lack of existing knowledge in the field. Whatever your level of study, don’t start discussing
your issue in detail – leave this until the main body of your text.

1.1 Words in action

Introducing your topic and establishing its importance
▸▸ Annual general meetings are a crucial / a vital / an essential / a key / a fundamental part of / aspect of /
element in corporate govenance.
▸▸ There is an urgent / a pressing need for more accessible mental health care for the elderly in Poland.
▸▸ Ethical issues are // have become // are becoming central to documentary filmmaking.
▸▸ International migration has emerged // is emerging as an important aspect of globalisation.
▸▸ A main consideration in government housing policy is neighbourhood dynamics.
▸▸ Obesity is now one of the leading causes of // the leading cause of preventable deaths in the US.
▸▸ Anti-viral drugs are now the most widely used therapeutic medicines.
▸▸ The study of cosmic reionisation has acquired / gained significance over / in the last few years.
▸▸ Recent medical advances have heightened public interest in human cloning.
▸▸ The fact that education is a key factor in / plays a key role in economic recovery is often // sometimes
overlooked.

1
▸▸ The concept of / idea of renewable energy is not as recent as is often thought.
▸▸ Blogs are relatively recent phenomena. / Blogging is a relatively recent phenomenon.
▸▸ Recent developments in ‘invisible technology’ have made its use in daily life more feasible.

Emphasising debate and controversy in relation to your topic

▸▸ One of the most widely publicised debates in Greek higher education is the level of student fees.
▸▸ There is widespread debate about / on the potential benefits of ID cards.
▸▸ Recent medical advances have increased people’s fears about the amount of // the level of debate on
human cloning.
▸▸ The question of whether to legalise all drugs is regularly debated in the media.
▸▸ The main / most important / most significant // most interesting political issue // question is election
reform.
▸▸ Issues around intellectual property and open source software are becoming increasingly important //
visible.
▸▸ The growth of private schools in France is // has been (very) contentious / controversial.
▸▸ The controversy over global warming has received a great deal of attention in the media.
▸▸ The question of whether to introduce ID cards is becoming increasingly complex // difficult //
problematic.
▸▸ Banks are finding it increasingly difficult to justify risk-taking practices to their European customers.
▸▸ Animal experimentation is an extremely emotive issue.

Highlighting a lack of research or discussion in relation to your topic

▸▸ Perhaps surprisingly, there has so far been little research on // debate about // discussion about //
attention given to the issue of ethnicity.
▸▸ There are insufficient studies / There is insufficient research on ethnic identity in adolescent girls.
▸▸ Previous research has // Previous studies have tended to focus on the ethnicity rather than the age of
offenders.

2 Topic, aim and argument

1.2 Information to help you use these words correctly
Words you probably already use correctly: central, complex, development, essential, fundamental, heighten,
overlook, pressing, problematic, publicise∗.
Words defined in other sections: insufficient s9.
∗
The US spelling is -ize.

acquire v v – To get, come to have, or develop.

acquisition n To acquire skill / expertise / a reputation / significance / importance.
aspect n (1) A particular quality, part or feature of something.
(2) Something’s appearance.
E.g. The premises have a run-down aspect.
Aspect and element
There is overlap but aspect is usually used for qualities or viewpoints, while
element is often used for concrete activities or parts of things.
E.g. This report looks at the legal elements ✘ aspects ✓ of the case.
We discuss the six key elements ✓ aspects ✘ needed to complete a project.

Political campaigning is an important aspect of environmentalism.

attention n Notice or consideration taken of someone or something.

Cloning has attracted / received a great deal of // received little attention.

concept n An abstract idea or plan.

The concept of personalised drugs is new to science.

Infinity is a complex mathematical concept.

1 Topic 3
consideration n n – (1) An issue, idea or action that needs thinking about.
consider v (2) Care and respect for others.
(3) In law or business, something of agreed financial value.

To take X into consideration. The proposal is under careful consideration.

Considerable (adj) means ‘large’ and considerably (adv) means ‘much/a lot’.
E.g. There are a considerable number of points the report does not examine.
controversy n n – Public disagreement or debate in which different people or groups hold
controversial adj opposing views.

 here is a great deal of controversy surrounding / concerning / over the use of

T
methadone.
Changes to drug laws often cause / attract / create controversy.
crucial adj adj – Something necessary in order for something else to happen. Similar to
crucially adv essential.

Sharing information is crucial in / to solving the problem.

A crucial factor // aspect // component // element // ingredient // issue //
question // role.

4 Topic, aim and argument

debate n / v n – (1) A formal or informal discussion about a particular issue.
debatable adj (2) A formal event where people with different views try to persuade the
debatably adv majority or audience that theirs is the correct one.
adj – Open to challenge and/or debate. Similar to arguable.
adv – It may be challenged and/or debated. Similar to arguably.
 – There is ongoing debate over / about / on pension schemes. A subject of
n
heated debate.
v – The projected rate of climate change is hotly debated.
Debate and discussion
Discussion is a much more general term. A discussion can end in either
agreement or disagreement on the issue.
Debate and argue
Use debate as a noun to refer to an issue, and the verb argue to propose a
position or viewpoint.
E.g. There is much academic debate over whether string theory is useful. ✓
I will argue that string theory is not useful. ✓
I will debate that string theory is not useful. ✘
element n One part of something that has multiple parts.
emerging adj adj – In the process of coming into existence and/or becoming noticeable.
emerge v
emotive adj Of a topic or issue, causing a strong emotional response.
Emotive and emotional
Emotional is a more general word describing personal feelings about life
experiences.
E.g. Funerals are usually emotive ✘ / emotional ✓ events.

1 Topic 5
factor n / v n – One of several things that causes or influences something else.
v – To include or exclude something as relevant when making a decision.
n – Age was a key factor in the types of responses given in the survey.
A(n) major / important // deciding / determining // causal // contributing
factor.
v – We should factor gender in to // out of our datasets.
issue n / v n – Something argued about that affects a lot of people. Usually used in a
political or social context.
v – To give out or to circulate.
phenomenon n Something that exists, usually used to refer to something interesting, unique or
difficult to understand.
Phenomenon is the singular form.
E.g. Social networking is a recent phenomenon.
Phenomena is the plural form.
E.g. Supernatural phenomena are difficult to define.
widespread adj Something specific that exists or happens (e.g. a belief, poverty, disease) over a
large area.
Widespread use of // support for // acceptance of // criticism of //
condemnation of // concern about // assumption that // belief that //
rejection of // speculation // consultation // concern // ignorance //
misunderstanding // corruption // disease // deprivation // suffering //
poverty // unemployment.
A widespread occurrence // phenomenon // assumption // belief // (mis)
conception // debate // problem.
 idespread can be used to describe a debate or problem but not a question or
W
issue.
E.g. It is a widespread question. ✘
Wide spread and spread wide are both incorrect.

6 Topic, aim and argument

1.3 Nearly but not quite right
The sentences on the left contain the types of mistakes people make when trying to use words from this
section. The correct versions are given on the right.

Incorrect
1 Genetically modified organisms and
drug development are two key factors in
biotechnology.
2 The question of whether to legalise drugs is
widespread across EU member states.
3 Issues have been raised on the reclassification
of cannabis.
4 Cloning acquired a very small consideration
until the birth of Dolly the sheep.
5 Recreational drug use continues to be a
controversy in the UK.
6 The last decade has seen a rapid growth of the The last decade has seen a rapid growth in the
biotechnology industry.
7 This type of software program is a recent
phenomena in information technology.
8 This is a questionable issue.
9 The use of pesticides forms an issue in the
local community.
10 There is a growing concern in immigration in
Europe.
Correct
Genetically modified organisms and drug
development are two key aspects of / areas in
biotechnology.
The question of whether to legalise drugs is a
common one across EU member states.
Questions have been raised over the
reclassification of cannabis.
Cloning received very little consideration /
attention until the birth of Dolly the sheep.
Recreational drug use continues to be a
controversial issue / topic in the UK.
biotechnology industry.
This type of software program is a recent
phenomenon in information technology.
This is a controversial / contentious / debatable
issue.
The use of pesticides is an issue in the local
community.
There is a growing concern about immigration in
Europe.

1 Topic 7
2 Aim and scope
At the start of your essay or report you should state your aim and scope. In your aims be clear about
whether you are going to analyse, examine, provide data, evaluate, discuss, make recommendations and
so on, or do several of these things in sequence. If you are writing a discursive essay you will usually also
need to state what it is you will attempt to show or argue. Describing this is often referred to as your
proposition or thesis statement. You will find words and phrases for doing this in section 3.
Note that the use of I is increasingly acceptable in academic writing when stating your aim, scope and
argument, although you should check this with your tutor.

2.1 Words in action

Stating your aim
▸▸ The principal / primary purpose / objective / aim / goal of this report is to identify and describe what
measures / steps need to be taken to resolve this issue.
▸▸ This report aims // attempts to establish the most likely causes of low job satisfaction.
▸▸ This study focuses on / centres on / is concerned with investigating the specific causes of relative
poverty in the US.
▸▸ I will outline the criticisms of Maslow’s model and then elaborate on / expand on the particular claim
that it is ethnocentric.
▸▸ This report gives a brief overview of current research on nuclear transfer and then discusses problems
with this technique.
▸▸ This short essay reviews the literature on academic vocabulary acquisition studies.
▸▸ I will discuss two different aspects of business ethics; as an area of study and as a social practice.
▸▸ I give a short descriptive account of the 2008 financial collapse followed by an exploratory discussion of
possible causes.
▸▸ This article gives a critical account of current thinking on evolutionary theory.
▸▸ I will examine / investigate / look at / address the question of / issue of whether computer games are a
factor in youth violence.
▸▸ I aim to determine / ascertain the main causes of the sharp increase in rates of bowel cancer in the US
over the last decade.
▸▸ In this review we will contextualise // enumerate and then assess / appraise the different mechanisms
for somatic cell nuclear transfer.

8 Topic, aim and argument