Academic Writing for International Students of Science - Jane Bottomley 2015

7.5 Using your reading to build a bank of common structures and phrases
7 Referring to sources: paraphrase, refer-encing, criticality and the issue of plagiarism

As mentioned earlier in this chapter, using the exact same (non-technical) structures and phrases as the particular source you are using constitutes plagiarism. However, as you read the literature of your subject, you should try to become aware of common structures and phrases that you could use in the rest of your writing to help you express yourself in a natural way. These may also help you to organise your work and develop a critical voice.

Explorative Task

Look back at the texts on antibiotics and pick out any structures and phrases that could be easily used in other contexts.

Practice

Look at how some of these structures and phrases can be adapted to other contexts; then add an example from your own area of study.

1) the correlation between antibiotic use and resistance development

✵ the correlation between drug use and hepatitis

2) Despite many advances in infection control and treatment, infectious diseases remain a major threat.

✵ Despite many advances in computer science, viruses remain a major threat.

3) This, along with the introduction of better hygiene, led to a dramatic reduction in worldwide morbidity and mortality due to bacterial infections.

✵ Advances in materials design led to a dramatic reduction in fatal car accidents.

4) Much of subsequent antibiotic research has been devoted to the discovery and design of new compounds effective against the successive generations of resistant pathogens.

✵ Much of subsequent cancer research has been devoted to the development of vaccines.

5) The rise in drug-resistant diseases could trigger a national emergency comparable to a catastrophic terrorist attack, pandemic flu or major coastal flooding.

✵ The rise in obesity could trigger a healthcare crisis.

6) Misuse and overuse of these drugs, however, have contributed to a phenomenon known as antibiotic resistance.

✵ The adoption of cloud computing has contributed to a phenomenon known as ’information sprawl’, in which large volumes of data are hosted outside traditional data centres.

See Academic Phrasebank http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/, a useful collection of common structures and phrases taken from a wide range of academic texts.