VV070/03
1) Parallelism in sentences – exercise: Discuss the following lists with your partner and correct any
mistakes you will find. Keep in mind that one of the sentences is correct!
a) For the class, he had to read two books, write an essay and a short exercise.
b) We had to order new tools, additional light bulbs, and make sure everything goes according to
schedule.
c) He wanted me to finish the report, the accounting book, and to write to the CEO that we have
completed the project.
d) The deadline was approaching so I worked longer shifts, finished the project, and handed it in
according to the schedule.
e) The favorite books of my childhood were The Hobbit, Pippi Longstocking, Krása nesmírná.
f) He only brought his clothes, a shoe, a pencil into the class, and then proceeded to fall asleep
behind the desk.
g) I decided I have to do the following: buy new shoes, get some certificate in English, a new haircut,
and follow my dreams.
2) Reporting Verbs
Suggest, describe, reveal, argue, note, show, speculate, point out, reject, strongly believe that,
propose, deny, negate, report, challenge, take into consideration, study, imply, emphasize,
recommend, demonstrate, postulate, claim, examine, go on to say that, state.
Neutral Tentative Strong
VV070/03
ACADEMIC TEXTS
1) Read the following paragraph from a CS PhD thesis. What is the paragraph’s function?
Where do you think you can find it in the thesis?
2) Go through the paragraph again and think about the individual sentences. What is their
function in the text (i.e. to introduce an idea, to expand on a previous notion, etc.)?
3) Read the text one more time and then highlight all words or phrases that help connect the
sentences together.
Real-time distributed groupware systems are computer applications that allow people to work
together at the same time, but from different places. These systems are becoming more common as
network connectivity increases and organizations move towards mobile computing, telecommuting,
and distributed work teams. Unfortunately, groupware has usability problems: when compared with
working face-to-face, collaboration through groupware seems clumsy, stilted, and artificial. When
people use a groupware system, they often cannot interact in the ways that they do in front of a
whiteboard or over a table. Even simple things like pointing to an object or watching another person
work are often difficult or impossible in groupware.
(Adapted from: Carl Gutwin and Saul Greenberg. A Framework of Awareness for Small Groups in Shared-Workspace
Groupware http://www.cs.usask.ca/faculty/gutwin/1999/WA-theory/Theory-submitted-TR.html)
The following sentences compose the paragraph that directly follows the one above. Try to
put them into the correct order. Focus on words or phrases that make it easier for you to
determine the organization of the paragraph.
A Awareness is taken for granted in everyday face-to-face environments, but when the setting
changes to distributed groupware, many of the normal cues and information sources that people use
to maintain awareness are gone.
B It is a simple fact that awareness is an important part of collaboration.
C One of the problems with current groupware systems is that they make it hard for people to
stay aware of one another.
D Groupware systems provide only a fraction of the information about other people that is
available in a face-to-face situation, and as a result, interactions and behaviors that were once
effortless can become stilted and formal.
E One has only to watch a group activity to see people checking up, taking notice, and keeping
track of others, whether over a jigsaw puzzle, in front of a chalkboard, or on a basketball court.
4) Look at the organization of the paragraph and discuss it with your colleague(s). Why is it
organized that way?
5) Now that you have the first two paragraphs of the introduction, what do you think will be
in the third one?
VV070/03
Read the following abstract and identify its parts.
(1) Personalized Web applications automatically adapted for different clients and user preferences
gain more importance. (2) Still there are barely technologies to compensate the additional effort of
creating, maintaining and publishing such Web content. (3) To address this problem, this paper
introduces a declarative, component-based approach for adaptive, dynamic Web documents on the
basis of XML-technology. (4) Adaptive Web components on different abstraction levels are defined in
order to support effective Web page authorizing and generation. (5) Hierarchical document
components playing a specific semantic role are also defined. (6) The hyperlink view for defining
typed links is spanned over all component layers. (7) Beside the issue of both implementation
artifacts and higher level concepts, the model also allows to define adaptive behavior of components
in a fine-granular way. (8) As a further benefit the support for ubiquitous collaboration via
component annotations is introduced. (9) Finally, the stepwise pipeline-based process of document
generation is introduced and performance issues are sketched.
3) Dangling modifiers: change the following sentence so that the doer of the action is clear.
(Adapted from Chris Berry and Karl Stolley. “Dangling Modifiers and How to Correct Them.” Purdue Online Writing Lab. 2013.)
a) Having finished the assignment, the TV was turned on.
___________________________________________________________________________
b) Having arrived late for practice, a written excuse was needed.
___________________________________________________________________________
c) To improve his results, the experiment was done again.
___________________________________________________________________________
d) After reading the original study, the article remains unconvincing.
___________________________________________________________________________
e) Relieved of your responsibilities at your job, your home should be a place to relax.
___________________________________________________________________________
f) The experiment was a failure, not having studied the lab manual carefully.
___________________________________________________________________________
g) Before adding the chart, it was decided that the chart would have to cover two pages.
___________________________________________________________________________