CAES9920 Academic English for Business and Economics
Lesson goals
Identify and better understand the linguistic features of academic writing
Provide feedback and receive feedback in relation to these features
Confirm your understanding of APA style. citation/referencing and plagiarism by completing a quiz
Provide and receive feedback on your group social media essays and an exemplar social media essay
Acquire a better understanding of ESG and the assessment 1 task
Lesson focus:
Language features of academic writing
Remember the diagnostic quiz in Week 1?
Task 1: Read the following excerpt and determine where the excerpt could have been taken from. The choices are ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLE or WEBSITE BLOG. Afterwards, provide at least two pieces of linguistic evidence from the excerpt to support your answer.
Task 1: Read the following excerpt and determine where the excerpt could have been taken from. The choices are ACADEMIC JOURNAL ARTICLE or WEBSITE BLOG. Afterwards, provide at least two pieces of linguistic evidence from the excerpt to support your answer.
The text was taken from an academic article because
• The noun phrases in this text are longer and contain more information, e.g. “apriori ideas … the corporate context”.
• No pronouns are used in this text, which is generally true of academic texts
• Use of passive voice to focus on an idea rather than indicating the subject of the action or the idea, e.g. “should be managed”, “reported in studies”, “it is of particular importance”
• Use of hedging to maintain a cautious tone, e.g. “there does not appear to be”
Basic features of academic texts
v relatively complex (and longer) sentences
v relatively complex noun phrases
v vocabulary suitable for an educated audience
v citations and references (UPDATED NES = within 10 years)
In contrast:
o NO rhetorical questions, e.g. Why should companies care about social responsibility?
o (usually) NO explicit mentioning of the reader (e.g. You should consider…)
o NO contracted forms (don’t, won’t, that’s why)
o NO colloquial / metaphorical expressions
Identifying common academic linguistic features
You will receive the Academic Linguistic Features document. In groups, find examples from the journal article
Audience, purpose, context
1. Who is the audience of an academic text? What do THEY expect?
2. What are the purpose(s) of writing an academic text? What linguistic features are used to achieve such purpose(s)?
3. What is so special about the context of academic writing? What linguistic features are considered appropriate in this particular context?
Working on your group social media diagnostic essay
Group writing task:
Is social media beneficial to company performance?
Write 800-1,000 words.
Suggested structure: 5 paras, i.e. Intro, 3 body paragraphs and Concl
Complete essay by Monday, 10th Feb
Email it to me when done and mention the names of group members
You will also practise giving feedback to each other (peer review)
Importance of feedback
Comments are so vague that it’s not helpful
• We will implement a researched feedback model in this course, which has been found to increase the quantity, relevance, and specificity of feedback (Min, 2005)
My classmate’s writing is worse than mine
• Evidence showing that some improvement in writing occurred among more advanced proficiency students, although not as much as less proficient students as a result of giving feedback (Lundstrom & Baker, 2009)
I’m always giving a lot of feedback but receive so few comments from others
• Benefits to giving feedback: reviewers develop knowledge of writing criteria to help themselves monitor their own writing (Cho & Cho, 2011)
• Rotating groupmates and other classmates will help elicit more feedback
• Availability of the teacher to provide feedback to texts that have already been self-evaluated or peer evaluated
What feedback would you give to this paragraph?
CSR has many parts. The parts are social, economical, and cultural. Pat (2005) said there is definitely no relationship between CSR and company performance. Wong (2007) also thinks this. Other research has also been done. For example, Johnson (2008) collected data and analyzed it using the micro-macro correlation social model. The financial doom and gloom of 2008 was a result of a lack of CSR.
What feedback would you give to this paragraph?
CSR has many parts. The parts are social, economical, and cultural. Pat (2005) said there is definitely no relationship between CSR and company performance. Wong (2007) also thinks this. Other research has also been done. For example, Johnson (2008) collected data and analyzed it using the micro-macro correlation social model. The financial doom and gloom of 2008 was a result of a lack of CSR.