VV064 Week 4
Reading – Facts vs. Opinions
1) You will be working with the following advertisement.
a) Skim through the text. What does the text advertise?
b) Read it in a more detail and write down the features of the program.
c) Go through the text once more and focus on the language of the advertisement. You
might want to pay attention to the grammatical person or to repetition.
The freedom to write and think is for all of us. Now, there is a new word processor that’s just
right for us, too. It’s called MacWrite® II, and it’s made by Claris. MacWrite II makes it possible to
share your ideas and thoughts with other computers and word processors. You’ll be free to open
documents from over 50 word processors, on all kinds of computers, with all kinds of speech, and
work on them without reformatting.
But there’s more you can do. (The feature is called XTND.) You can import graphics, not only
from Macs, but many computers, guaranteed. And you can scale and crop them, one and all, in your
MacWrite® II document. In short, MacWrite® II with XTND is a powerful word processor that lets you
freely exchange text and graphics. You’ll find also that your MacWrite® II lets you change fonts,
styles, sizes and colors, as well as text with its find/change feature. And you can create custom styles
and save them as stationery - with all formats preset. You’ll share your reports and letters quickly.
But what good is freedom of expression if you find your editing to be a hassle? That’s why
the page layout and editing is fully WYSIWYG: the thoughts you see are the thoughts you get. This
WYSIWYG feature, by the way, is found only with MacWrite® II. It’s another way Claris simplifies
word processing for you, whether you’re 52, 22, or 72.
Called upon daily MacWrite® II smooths your writing assignments and other chores. There’s
MacWrite II spell checking, for example, and foreign dictionary programs that are optional, and a
host of other features that come standard. (Like a thesaurus, and a mail merge feature you’ll discover
saves lots of time.)
What it adds up to, you’ll find is a simple and powerful tool designed for people. All the
people. It is for writers, and it is for business people. And it is for those of us in between. The
freedom to write is liberating. Now technology is, too.
(adapted from Jones, Leo. New Cambridge Advanced English. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.)
Identifying fact and opinion
1) Read texts 1-3. Find one or more examples of the following material in each text.
a. A fact based on reliable evidence
b. The author’s opinion
(adapted from De Chazal, Edward and Sam McCarter. Oxford EAP: A Course in English for Academic Purposes. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012.)
Text 1:
Are vegetarians more healthy or less? The answer depends first on the degree of
vegetarianism. Vegans, who eat no animal products, are at risk of Vitamin B-12 deficiency.
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Supplements are essential during pregnancy and for infants of vegans. Vegans lack the best dietary
sources of calcium – milk, yogurt, and cheese.
Lacto-ovo-vegetarians have no absolute nutritional risk. They miss the best absorbed form of
iron in the diet, haem iron, but may largely compensate because ascorbic acid enhances the
absorption of non—haem iron. […]
On the whole vegetarians appear to have lower risk of obesity, coronary heart disease [7],
hypertension, and possibly some cancers.
References
[7]. Thorogood, M., Mann, J.I., Appleby, P., & McPherson, K. (1994). Risk of death from cancer and ischaemic
heart disease in meat and non-meat eaters. British Medical Journal, 308, 1667-71.
Source: Truswell, A. S. (2003), p. 039. ABC of Nutrition (4th ed.). London: BMJ Books.
Text 2:
Vegetarian diets have also been promoted for their apparent cardioprotective effect.
Vegetarians are indeed at lower risk of CHD than meat eaters, but it has not been established which
attributes of the vegetarian diet might be protective since there are many aspects other than the
avoidance of meat that characterizes these diets. One study suggests that the lower rates might be
due to the relatively low intake of saturated fatty acids rather than meat avoidance.
Source: Truswell, A. S. & Mann, J. (Eds.). (2007)./ Essentials of Human Nutrition (3rd ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Text 3:
A varied wholefood vegan diet contains adequate levels of energy and protein to sustain
good health in all age groups, as evidenced by studies of vegans across the world. National and
international recommendations for protein intake can be easily met on a vegan diet. […] Vegans eat
the recommended amounts of protein and energy, unlike most omnivores who consume too much
protein, which can have health disadvantages. And, from a wider health perspective, it is significant
that animal protein is often associated with saturated fat, while plant protein is usually associated
with fiber.
Source: Langley, G. (1995). Vegan Nutrition (2nd ed.). St Leonards-on-Sea: The Vegan Society.
2) Compare texts 1-3 and write short answers to the following questions.
a. How objective does the text appear to be?
b. Which text has the most opinion in it?
c. How clearly presented is the cited material?
Read Text 4, a textbook extract. Identify a) cited material, b) references to cited material, and c) the
authors’ own material.
Text 4:
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An almost universal finding has been that vegetarians and vegans are lighter in weight than
their meat-eating counterparts. The Oxford cohort of the EPIC Study found a difference of 1 unit of
BMI [Spencer et al 2003]. The lower BMI would be expected to be associated with a decreased risk of
type 2 diabetes and gallstones. However, BMI tends to fall abruptly over the age of 60 in vegetarians
and especially vegans compared with meat-eaters, which suggests that elderly vegans may have
difficulty maintaining muscle mass in old age. This is of concern as a low body mass is associated with
increased mortality particularly from respiratory disorders. As vegans have a low proportion of body
fat, the decrease in BMI with age is likely to be due to a decrease in muscle mass. This finding would
be consistent with the lower reported concentrations of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGR-1) in vegans
compared with omnivores [Allen et al 2000].
References:
Allen, N. E., Appleby, P. N., Davey, G. K., & Key, T. J. (2000). Hormones and diet: low insulin-like growth factor-I
but abnormal bioavailable androgens in vegan men. British Journal of Cancer, 83, 095-7.
Spencer, E. A., Appleby, P. N., Davey, G. K., & Key, T. J. (2003). Diet and body mass index in 38000 EPIC-Oxford
meat-eaters, fish-eaters, vegetarians and vegans. International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic
Disorders, 27, 728-34.
1) Work in pairs and discuss the following questions.
a) Is the authors’ material clearly distinguished from the cited material?
b) How did you work out which material was the authors’ and which was citation?
c) Why do the in-text references come after the citations in this text?
2) Select two sentences from Text 4 to paraphrase. Then exchange paraphrases and answer the
following questions.
a) How easy is it to identify the original sentences in Text 2?
b) How clear is the meaning and language of the paraphrases?