a test

1. Language of Academic Discourse (TSL754)
Quiz Practice
Instructor: AP Dr Kaarthiyainy Supramaniam
1. Read Text A and answer the questions.
Text A
To promote higher education development and introduce competition, the Chinese
government launched a number of long running and massive funding projects in the
1990s with an ambition to build a bevy of ‘world-class’ universities in the 21st century.
These projects have been carried out to reward those go-ahead universities and spur on
the rest. Assessment and screening are based on quantifiable and objective criteria
regarding such things as staffing, facilities, buildings, libraries, and research output. In
response, in the late 1990s and early 2000s there was a nation-wide surge of mergers of
small and medium-sized institutions to form bigger ones and attract more funding from
the government. To increase competitiveness and promote public profiles, universities
have increasingly relied on public relations strategies such as advertising.
What do the following phrases reflect in Text A? (2 marks)
1a. These projects
1b. such things
2. Read sentences i-ii below from a research article and answer the following questions.
i. The course content of entrepreneurship courses varies according to case study
materials and simulations (Goman, 1997).
ii. Courses on entrepreneurship have been found to adopt different “hands-on”
approaches
(Vesper & Mullan, 2009).
2a. The citation format used in sentences i and ii is the non-integral format. What do the
writers emphasis when using this form? (1 mark)
2b. Change sentences i and ii into sentences with integrated citations. (4 marks)
2c. Synthesize i and ii into a single sentence using the same citation format. (2 marks)
3. Read the following text and answer the questions that follow:
[Type here] 1 [Type here]
It seems every ESL grammar textbook or course devotes a good deal of time and effort to the
teaching of the progressive and the perfect aspects. However, it seems that neither is particularly
common in English academic writing (Dudley-Evans & St. John, 1998; Jordan, 1997). Research

2. into the written academic register seems to have found that while progressive tense is common in
conversational and spoken discourse, it is very rare in academic prose (Hunston, 2009; Paltridge,
2011).
3.1 The writer has used seem(s) in several places in the text. What effect does this create on
the reader? (2 marks)
3.2 Rewrite the first sentence to confirm the idea. (2 marks)
3.3 What is the difference between the It in line 1 and it in the last line of the text? (2 marks)
4. Read the sentence answer the questions that follow on the use of the national language.
i. Hamid (2012)- Students should be able to converse well in the national language
because they enrol for secondary education where Malay is a compulsory subject. ii.
Raghu (2013)- Students are taught Malay to get through major exams. iii. Lim (2018)-
The increasing number international schools with foreign syllabi do not emphasis the
Malay language.
4.1 Rewrite sentence i using verb(s) that reflect a neutral stance. (2 marks) 4.2 Rewrite sentence
ii using verb(s) that reflect a provocative stance. (2 marks) 4.3 Combine sentences i and ii using
a conjunction. Use any citation format. (3 marks) 4.4. Use the information in i-iii to write a
short paragraph of about 3-5 sentences to reflect your critical stance. Use additional words and
phrases if necessary. (6 marks)
i.What do the verbs used in (a) reflect of the writer’s stance? Explain.
________________________________________________________________________
ii.What do the verbs used in (b) reflect of the writer’s stance? Explain.
________________________________________________________________________
[Type here] 1 [Type here]