Verbs for Structuring Academic Assignments or Debate.
Look at the tasks which students have been given. In Exercise 1, highlight the key verbs in each task.
| Discuss some of the issues involved in investigating attitudes to diet and health. Write a critical review of an investigation that you have read or describe an investigation that you yourself could conduct. |
| Examine how industrial growth has affected two regions of your country. Provide statistical evidence where necessary and include a discussion of likely future trends. |
| Starting from a stationary position, an aircraft accelerates to its take-off speed of 30m s-1 in a distance of 900 metres. Illustrate this with a velocity-time graph. Assuming constant acceleration, find how long the take-off run lasts. Calculate the acceleration. |
| ‘The fact that nations agree to follow international law demonstrates that we can identify ideals that are trans-national and trans-cultural.’ To what degree is this statement true? Critically analyse any recent event which supports or challenges the above quote. |
More Key Verbs
These extracts from academic writings contain other key verbs.
| In developing methods to explain the significance of health status measures, one can classify ways of establishing quality of life into two principle types. |
| The data presented in the report showed that the age of the subjects was not the main factor. |
| Economic theory attempts to build bridges between different schools of economic thought. |
| The length of time needed to be spent on the various tasks might account for the lack of motivation in many of the examination candidates. |
Verb and Noun Combinations
In academic style , a verb + the noun form of the key verb can be used.
| explore | carry out an exploration of | We have carried out an extensive exploration of the influences of hip-hop music in present attitudes. |
| emphasise | place/put emphasis on | We put emphasis on task-based learning. |
| describe | give/provide a description of | The article gives a fairly accurate description of day to day life in a refugee camp. |
Exercise
Please click the Exercise link to continue.