Writing in a formal style: practice

1. Multi-word verbs: Consider this passage and then re-write it making
changes where necessary

Coal is expected to continue to account for almost 27% of the world's energy needs. However, awareness of pressures on the environment is building up and people have caught on to the need to achieve sustainable development in energy resources. The way in which the resource is extracted, transported and used is now seen as critical.

A wide range of pollution control devices and practices have been set up at most modern mines and significant resources are spent on coming up with new ways to rehabilitate mined land. In addition, programmes are currently being dreamed up which will be able to lead to efficiencies and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases during coal consumption. Such measures are helping coal to keep up its status as a major supplier of the world's energy needs.

The coal industry has been got at by its critics as a significant contributor to greenhouse warming. However, the greenhouse effect is a natural phenomenon involving the global surface temperature going up due to the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Without the greenhouse effect, the Earth's average temperature would be 33-35 degrees Celsius lower. Life on Earth, as we know it today, would not be possible. Nevertheless, despite its historic value, greenhouse warming and rising temperatures are issues that the world's population need to urgently deal with.

There are a variety of other factors that also characterise formal academic writing. Have a look at these sentences and underline those elements that reflect an informal style and would need to be changed in an academic essay,

1. As soon as you start to look carefully at social service provision in the community, you frequently find evidence of abuse.

2. The advisory panel set up by the government couldn't establish the cause of the disaster and in the end no blame was attached to the actions of the pilot.

3. The invasion of the island resulted in misery, starvation, destitution etc for large numbers of the people in the area and in addition the ruling party was unwilling to ask for aid.

4. This proposal creates a way for raising awareness in the UK of effective approaches to combat poverty practised by overseas partners.

5. The evidence produced at the enquiry was very damaging for the Prime Minister and anyone could see that he felt uncomfortable.

6. 1 believe that without clear leadership from the United Nations, we are likely to find ourselves in a similar position next year.

7. It is obvious that the decline of fish stocks in the North Sea will ultimately result in significant environmental damage in that area.

8. They found evidence of a fight when they studied the ancient body and they wrote a report which reflected their findings.

9. The results of the government study were great because they enabled the university to fund the new department.

10. It is certain that the new financial regulations will lead to a significant growth in output.

11. The research proves that drinking high levels of vitamin C may help to ward off colds in the winter.

12. The research was rigorous. But the way the results were used was poor. Few financial managers were trained in the new techniques. Little progress was made despite the hard work of the specialists.

Task

Rewrite this passage in a suitably academic style. When you have finished refer to the feedback. Your re-written passage does not need to be identical of course, but it should reflect an academic style.

The island was discovered in 1734 when a storm blew Sir Peter Newsbury off course and he stumbled upon this bit of land which no-one knew anything about before. Some excavations which have been carried out within the last ten years show us that members of the crew built houses to live in, and got through the very cold winter. Analysis of the soil in and around these buildings proves that the people liked to eat fish and fruit that they picked from the trees. However, despite the food that they had, it's obvious that their life was quite difficult because of the rocks and open ground and so on. People carrying out research have found debris from the ship close to the buildings. They have come up with a number of explanations for the smashing up of the ship but once you look at the waves you can see how dangerous the waters are in this area and there are lots of rocks and reefs and things like that.

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