Assignment - CATFR
FINAL TASK FOR UNIT 6:
CHARACTERISTICS OF ACADEMIC TEXTS
AND FORMAL REQUIREMENTS
GENERAL INFORMATION:
This unit assignment consists of doing the tasks presented below. This assignment
must be done individually. It must be submitted according to the official submission
procedure described in the web page where this file was downloaded. Assignments
send directly to the tutor by email will not be corrected. The work must fulfil the
following conditions:
- Length: between 3 and 5 pages (without including cover, index or appendices
–if there are any–). Any assignment that exceeds or does not reach the length
will be considered failed.
- Type of font: Arial or Times New Roman.
- 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 this 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 bibliographical in the Study
Guide.
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.
*Student’s name initial and the surname.
*The unit’s name initial.
For example, following the data below:
Student: Samuel López
Group: 2013-06
Unit: Characteristics of academic texts and formal requirements
The correct files name would be: 2013-06SLópez_CATFR
In addition to this, it is very important to read the assessment criteria, which can be
found in the Study Guide.
1
Assignment - CATFR
Assignment:
The assignment of this unit consists of answering 3 activities related to the topics of the
unit: academic texts, the formal quotation and the improvement of the reading capacity.
Most of the questions require a direct answer, so we suggest you to write “Answer” in
bold before the answers.
TASK 1: THE ACADEMIC TEXT
Read the following text and answer the three questions below. Each answer cannot
exceed 30 words. Check the contents in 1.2 General features of academic texts and
1.3 Examples of academic texts and their characteristics:
Stephen Pit Corder is considered one of founding figures of Applied Linguistics
and Second Language Acquisition. This book presents the investigations of his
last fifteen years. It is divided in twelve chapters that treat two basic ideas. On
one hand, it treats the error analysis methods and its relation to language
teaching (the importance of the students’ errors, idiosyncratic dialects and error
analysis, students’ language description, etc.). On the other hand, the work is
focused on theoretical aspects, especially those centred on language
acquisition and the interlanguage. To sum up, this work gives a general
overlook on how the field has changed these years and the advances of other
fields of investigation.
Comment on: CORDER, S.P. (1981) Error analysis and interlanguage. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
1. What is the aim of the message?
2. At what kind of receiver it is addressed?
3. Is this text adequate for an academic context? Why?
TASK 2: QUOTING
Correct the following bibliographical references in order to follow the rules presented in
the unit.
Unamuno, V. Lengua, escuela y diversidad sociocultural. Hacia una educación
lingüística crítica. Barcelona: Graó. 2003)
Consejo de Europa (2000): Marco europeo de referencia para el aprendizaje, la
enseñanza y la evaluación de lenguas modernas. INSTITUTO CERVANTES,
2001, Madrid.
MARTÍN PERIS. (1993): El perfil del profesor de español como lengua
extranjera: necesidades y tendencias, en Miquel, L. y Sans, N. (Ed.): Didáctica
del español como lengua extranjera, Madrid, Expolingua, pp. 167-179.
2
Assignment - CATFR
TASK 3: THE IMPORTANCE OF READING
Read the following text and answer the questions below:
From the edge to the centre of the galaxy
The works of the Dutch linguist Abram de Swaan, later completed by Louis-
Jean Calvet, suggest a global linguistic system named “gravitational” or
“galactic”, a functioning model whose centre is the English language. This
system is not a surprise: it is the historical consequence of the logic of powers,
wars, invasions, migrations, colonial domination, etc. More recently, it is also
consequence of economic powers and, above everything, ideologies: in this
sense, the conquest of the mind is more decisive than the conquest of
territories.
There is a basis of around 6000 languages, 90% of these languages are
spoken by 5% of the global population, and they are called peripheral
languages. 500 are spoken by less than 100 people. In some countries can
coexist several hundreds of languages; Papua New Guinea has the record, 850
languages, followed by Indonesia (670), Nigeria (410) and India (380). In order
to not be completely isolated, a peripheral language community connects to the
adjacent community through bilingual speakers, but this is unusual. Generally,
the members of these groups communicate through a common language which
belongs to a superior level –like Quechua in South America, and even Wolof,
Lingala and Bambara in Africa– and is considered a central language.
There are approximately one hundred central languages, which has from one to
a dozen peripheral languages gravitating around. They are official or national
languages; they are the language of administration and justice, the most used in
written and electronic communication. All European languages are central for
regional languages and a “minority” in a national territory: it happens to the
Dutch with the Frisian; to the Finnish with the Sami; to the Danish with the
Faroese; to the English with the Cornish (a Celtic language), Scottish, Welsh
and Irish; to the French with Alsatian, Basque, Britton, Corse and Occitan.
However, some of these languages, all of them central in a State, are more
central than others because they are at the centre of a constellation that gathers
other “foreign” languages. They are called supercentral languages. Abram de
Swaan has identified twelve supercentral languages: German, Arab, Chinese,
English, Sapnish, French, Hindi, Japanese, Malay, Portuguese, Russian and
Swahili. Louis Jean-Calvet considers that German and Japanese -more than
100 million speakers each- are not supercentral, since they do not have a
significant number of languages in their orbit. Supercentral languages are used
to communicate in a regional or international space, sometimes as a result of
colonization (English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese).
3
Assignment - CATFR
Nevertheless, if a Russian person and a Chinese person meet, there are few
possibilities of knowing the other language. Then, –unless they both cooperate
in Cuba and know Spanish– they are going to use the language that connects
the supercentral languages: English, the hypercentral language. Then, we can
see that, from the less spoken Amerindian language to the English language,
there are multiple chains of bilingual or multilingual speakers that guarantee the
communication of the periphery to the center.
CASSEN B.(2005): “The Illusion of the International English, Understanding
Each other” en Le Monde diplomatique (Trans. Marcel Colet).
1. Explain the intention of the message (30 word maximum):
2. Complete the following sentences:
a) The gravitational model is a linguistic system whose centre is
________.
b) ________ has the record of languages with_________
languages.
c) The conquest of the mind is ____________.
3. Define in 30 words:
a) Central language:
b) Supercentral language:
c) Hypercentral language:
4. Read the text again and mark in yellow the most relevant idea of each
paragraph. Then, summarise the main idea in only one line:
Paragraphs Idea principal
First paragraph
Second paragraph
Third paragraph
Fourth paragraph
Fifth paragraph
4
Assignment - CATFR
5. Complete the table with the facts presented by the author and his opinions on it:
Paragraphs Facts presented Opinion
First paragraph
Second paragraph
Third paragraph
Fourth paragraph
Fifth paragraph
6. Make a conceptual scheme of the main and secondary ideas of the text:
7. Mark with a cross the correct option and justify your answer in 30
words::
a) What is the function of the text?
_ Criticise
_ Describe
_ Defend an idea
b) What is the writer attitude?
_ Neutral
_ Critical
_ Informative
c) What is the tone used?
_ Formal
_ Informal
_ Colloquial
5
Assignment - CATFR
