| 1. a kind of 2. as far as the economy is concerned 3. to put it another way 4. and so forth 5. in some respects 6. apart from 7. namely 8. utterly 9. in conclusion 10. the first task | a) … facing the new management will be to reassure staff that jobs will not be lost. b) … the second half of the book is not as good as the first half. c) The country is moving in the right direction… d) … the ending, this is a really interesting film. e) You will also need money for notebooks, pencils, pens … f) Education, it is said, is … continuing dialogue. g) The activity on a site is the amount of bandwidth used, or …, the amount of data that has been transferred. h) In the last section, we also suggest other topics that need to be researched, and emphasize the importance of teamwork. i) I read the book you lent me, but I'm afraid to say I found it ….. incomprehensible/ j) For some companies, the IT assets, … hardware and software, account for the largest proportion of money spent. |
| Exercise 8. Complete the text using one suitable word in each gap. |
Early Experiments in Town Planning
As far as Britain is a) … the first modern examples of town planning were the "garden cities", b) … as Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City, built in
the early 1900s. A garden city was a c) … of idealized community planned around large open spaces, public buildings, and d) … forth. Letchworth,
e) … example, had no public house, f) … a bar selling alcohol, and included for the first time the idea of a "green belt", that is to an g) … area of countryside surrounding the town. In some h) …, Letchworth was ahead of its time,
the building plan also avoided the cutting down of trees, and the town was i) …
a garden, as there were green spaces and trees everywhere, j) … from
the attractions of the site, there was also innovative design, as many of the houses were designed to be cheap, used modern building techniques such k) … prefabrication, and had front and back gardens, l) … luxury for many slum dwellers from London.
TEXT 5
| Exercise 1. Read the text below and say if you have ever used hedging words in your writing and what the purpose of it was. |
In academic writing, claims are often couched in cautious or tentative language. This is known as "hedging". Compare these two sentences:
Water shortages trigger conflict between nations.
Water shortages may trigger conflict between nations.
The first sentence indicates a high level of certainty; indeed, the claim, or assertion, is presented as a fact. The second sentence, on the other hand, is more tentative, suggesting that conflict will occur in certain circumstances or under certain conditions, but not necessarily in every case.
As the example above illustrates, the use of hedging enables the writer to make claims that are proportionate to the evidence available at the time of writing. In other words, hedging language helps to make statements as accurate as possible. Since there is a wide range of hedging words and phrases, it is important to choose one that reflects the strength of the supporting evidence. The use of the word "probably" in the sentence below indicates that the evidence is fairly strong. In the second sentence, the more tentative word "could" was selected, indicating that the evidence is weak.
The fire was probably caused by a fault in the engine temperature gauge.
The fire could have been caused by a fault in the engine temperature gauge.
Paying due attention to accuracy helps to avoid, or at least reduce, criticism of your work. Hedging is also used to mitigate criticism of other authors' work, as in the examples below:
Johnson (2007) appears to ignore the adverse psychological side-effects of this approach.
The risks of the new vaccine may have been overstated.
Hedging language
A wide range of words and phrases can be used in hedging:
| Modal auxiliary verbs: | can, could, may, might, should, would. |
| Other modal verbs: | appear, look, seem, tend. |
| Probability adjectives: | likely, possible, probable, unlikely. |
| Probability adverbs: | perhaps, possibly, probably, presumably. |
| Frequency adverbs: | generally, usually, often, occasionally, seldom. |
|
| Exercise 2. Rewrite the sentence given in a more tentative way using the word in the box. You can change the grammar of your sentence but should not change the form of the word in the box. |
| 1. Clearly then, the best way to achieve fluency in a language is to pick it up subconsciously. | EVIDENCE |
| 2. The overall standard of English in Hong Kong has clearly declined in recent years. | SEEMS |
| 3. The air quality has definitely deteriorated. | PROBABILITY |
| 4. Teachers who are strict get the best feedback. | TEND |
| 5. MBA holders get higher salaries. | TENDENCY |
| 6. Those who practice yoga do not suffer from back pain. | RARELY |
| 7. 17th century towns were badly sanitized and full of hazards. | EVIDENCE |
| 8. Students who adopt a systematic approach to learning will achieve higher grades. | LIKELIHOOD |
| 9. The winter months are always accompanied by plummeting temperatures. | USUALLY |