Academic Definitions

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Academic Definitions

• Communicative and Academic English for the EFL
  Professional

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Todays Class

• (1) Discuss Academic Definitions.
• (2) Discuss Final Research Paper Project.

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Definitions

• One import task of academic writers is to define
  terms. As a teacher you will constantly have to
  provide definitions for your students and as a
  researcher you will also have to define the terms
  you use in your research paper.

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Definitions in Formal Academic Writing

• In general, there are three kinds of definitions
  in academic writing
• (1) Short definitions provided within sentences.
• (2) Full sentence definitions.
• (3) Extended definitions.

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Short Definitions within Sentences

• Short definitions within sentences are usually
  provided
• using phrases such as
• . . .known as . . .
• . . . defined as . . .
• . . . called . . .
• Short definitions are also given using the
  following
• e.g.
• , or
• i.e.

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Short Definitions within Sentences

• Here is one example sentence
• Questions where the teacher already knows the
  answer, known as display questions, are rarely
  asked in conversation outside of the classroom.

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Short Definitions within Sentences

• Here is another example
• Repeating what students have said for the
  benefits of the whole class, called teacher echo,
  may be beneficial or harmful depending on when a
  teacher uses it.

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Short Definitions within Sentences

• Here is another example
• Elicitation, defined as getting responses from
  students, is a valuable skill that teachers
  acquire over time with experience.

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Short Definitions within Sentences

• Here is another example
• Questions for which there are more than one
  possible answer, or open-ended questions, are
  thought to foster creativity and divergent
  thinking .

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Short Definitions within Sentences

• Here is another example using an appositive
  structure
• Wait time, the duration of teacher pauses after
  questions, is an important variable in research
  on science teaching.

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Sentence Length Definitions

• Full sentence length definitions can be given
  using the following constructions
• (term)is defined as (definition)
• (definition) is known as (term)

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Sentence Length Definitions

• Here is one example
• Wait time is defined as the time a teacher
  allows for a student to respond to a question.

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Sentence Length Definitions

• Here is another example
• The difference between what a learner can do
  without help and what he or she can do with help
  is known as the Zone of Proximal Development.

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Sentence Length Definitions

• Full sentence length definitions can also be
  given using the term/category/description model
• (term) is a (category) that/which (description)
• This is a very powerful and useful model for
  making formal definitions. It is also useful for
  making definitions in the classroom for your
  students.

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Sentence Length Definitions

• Here is one example
• A polyword is a phrase that acts as a single
  word.

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Sentence Length Definitions

• Here is another example
• TPR is a teaching technique in which a learners
  (usually children) responds to language input
  with body motions.

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Sentence Length Definitions

• Here is another example
• A collocation is a pair of words that occur
  together with high frequency so that their
  association seems natural whereas other
  synonymous words may seem awkward.

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Extended Definitions

• Extended definitions are definitions that are
  long than a single sentence and contain much
  detail.

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Extended Definitions

• Here is one example
• In linguistics, a corpus (plural corpora) or text
  corpus is a large and structured set of real
  world texts that are usually electronically
  stored and processed. They are used to do
  statistical analysis and hypothesis testing,
  checking occurrences or validating linguistic
  rules. Corpora are often subjected to a process
  known as annotation such as part-of-speech
  tagging, or POS-tagging, in which information
  about each word's part of speech (verb, noun,
  adjective, etc.) is added to the corpus in the
  form of tags.

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Competing Definitions

• In the examples above, the definitions were
  presented as if they were definitions that would
  be generally accepted by most interested people.
• However, there are times when there is a lack of
  agreement over the definition of a term. In this
  case, the term may be defined differently by
  different people or have different definitions
  under different conditions. It may be important
  to indicate that (a) a universally accepted
  definition does not exist (b) you are using the
  terms as defined in one specific way or that you
  are adopting a particular definition.

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Competing Definitions

• Here are some examples
• For the purposes of this paper, . . . is
  defined as . . .
• Here we define . . . as . . .
• We have adopted (authors) definition of . . .

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Competing Definitions

• Although there is no universally accepted
  definition of cultural and linguistic competency,
  a useful definition adopted by the Office of
  Minority Health (OMH) distinguishes between
  culture, competence and the relationship between
  the terms
• "Cultural and linguistic competence is a set of
  congruent behaviors, attitudes and policies that
  come together in a system, agency or among health
  professionals that enables work in cross-cultural
  situations. http//www.nhchc.org/cultur
  al.html

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Competing Definitions

• Applied linguistics is broadly defined here as
  linguistics with an interest in social issues,
  and in the service of society.

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Contrastive Definitions

• You may be asked to define two terms at once
  through a contrastive definition. This can
  accomplished using the following
• On the other hand, . . .
• Whereas, . . .
• While, . . .
• The former . . . . The latter . . .