Use of A Writing Web-Site By Pre-Masters Students On An English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Course

Use of A Writing Web-Site By Pre-Masters Students On An English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Course

A.J. Gillett, University of Hertfordshire

 

1 During the last 10 years, use of the World-Wide-Web for educational purposes has increased dramatically. 2 However, very little empirical research has been carried out to determine the effectiveness of this use. 3 The aim of this study was therefore to investigate the effectiveness of using the World-Wide-Web on an EAP writing course. 4 Two groups of students were taught writing by two different methods: one group was taught by a teacher in a traditional classroom, while a second group included use of an on-line web-site in their course. 5 The two groups were assessed in the same way after a twelve-week period of instruction. 6 Results of the assessment showed significant differences between the two groups, the group that used the on-line web-site performing much better on all aspects of the test. 7 This suggests that the use of computer assisted learning programmes for at least some of the teaching time available can be recommended for EAP writing courses.

 

Sentence 1 ____________ introduction ______________

Sentence 2 ___________________________________

Sentence 3 ___________________________________

Sentence 4 ___________________________________

Sentence 5 ___________________________________

Sentence 6 ___________________________________

Sentence 7 ___________________________________

III HOW TO WRITE A GOOD ANNOTATION?

To write an effective annotation you need to pay attention to its content and format. These tips will help you:

· Look specifically for these main parts of the article, paper, or report: purpose, methods, scope, results, conclusions and recommendation. · Begin with introduction and the summary. · Use the headings, outline heads, and table of contents as a guide to write your annotation. · Search through the entire document for key terms that identify the purpose, scope, and methods of the work. · To create the first draft of an annotation read through the entire paper and cut and paste sentences that particularly capture key passages in order to paraphrase them later in the annotation. · Don't copy key sentences from the article, paper, or report: you'll put in too much or too little information. · Don't rely on the way material was phrased in the article, paper, or report: summarize information in your own way.	C O N T E N T
SENTENCES. Whole sentences are preferable, but single descriptive words and simple phrases or lists are acceptable. Complex sentences should be avoided. PARAGRAPHS. Annotations should be one single paragraph. Avoid writing a paragraph that is nothing more than a series of unconnected sentences summarizing separate ideas, arguments and conclusions, by following the same order of information as the author and by using transitional words and phrases. · Typically annotations do not exceed 150 to 200 words.	F O R M A T
· Use the vocabulary of the author as much as possible to convey the ideas and conclusions of the author. · If you decide to include a quotation from the source, place it within quotation marks.	W O R D S

DOs

· Make you annotation unified, coherent, concise, and able to stand alone.

· Follow strictly the chronology of the article, paper, or report.

· Provide logical connections between the information included.

· Make it understandable to a wide audience.

· Use passive verbs to downplay the author and emphasize the information.

DON’Ts

· Do not start with "this paper…”, "this report…" or similar. It is better to write about the research than about the paper.

· Do not explain the sections or parts of the paper.

· Avoid sentences that end in "…is described", "…is reported", "…is analyzed" or similar.

· Do not begin sentences with "it is suggested that…” "it is believed that…", "it is felt that…"or similar. In every case, the four words can be omitted without damaging the essential message.

· Do not repeat or rephrase the title.

· Do not refer in the abstract to information that is not in the document.

· If possible, avoid trade names, acronyms, abbreviations, or symbols. You would need to explain them, and that takes too much room. [3]

TASK 4 Read the annotations and in pairs decide which of them is good, bad or middling. Give reasons. You can find the source article in APPENDIX 1 (1).

1

I absolutely agree with the author of this article. I think the problem, which is lightened here is really important. Our government spends huge amounts of money on nonsense, but they should concentrate on the supporting of environment and developing the new methods of making our planet and our city better. First of all I suggest investing some money in education. I think we must educate new generation about the environmental problems because only they can find reasonable solution and develop new environment protecting technologies. New generation is innovative and smart. Our future is in our hands and we are responsible for leaving Tomsk, and the whole planet, clean and beautiful for next generations. In addition to that new technologies and new industries will enjoy lots of people, which is a solution of the problem of unemployment in Tomsk, particularly today, in the situation of economic crisis. On my point of view we should develop: clean energy and clean technologies including recycling, agriculture, ecosystem infrastructure. It is all about making our life better. It is all about avoiding financial, fuel and food crises in future. Let’s be humane and intelligent.

2

The article analyses problems of development of economy in circumstances of financial, fuel and food crises. Modern economy needs to be re-focused and re-oriented. The reason of failure of economy is disability of government to manage and direct industry development. Thus, the author suggests paying attention to nature infrastructure such as forests and soils and creating sustainable business. According to him, it will help to change global situation, create new jobs and overcome crisis. He underlines that subsidies amount in those areas are not enough especially in comparison to global GDP and worsening of ecological situation. Ha also marks five priority areas to develop. In conclusion, author appeals to be more mobile and flexible to solve economical problems.

3

The given article is focused on the problem of sustainable business. To consider this issue United Nations (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner pointed out that the best way to accelerate growth of global economy was to invest in clean businesses. The author examines that there are a lot of various stimulus, which don’t support environment. Furthermore, the paper shows that the spending of the environment is not enough at all, it’s valued just10 per cent of investments needed. But Mr. Steiner underlined that there were some advantages from investing in natural infrastructure – one of them is creation new work places. This article presents some figures of income in different industries and number of employees accordingly. In conclusion the paper gives information about five main areas, which support economic growth in this century.

TASK 5 Read the paragraph and find key words for each sentence. Write one key word for each sentence. They may not necessarily be in the sentence itself.

e.g. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an experimental science whose goal is to understand the nature of intelligent thought and action.

Here the definition of what AI stands for is given. That’s why we may say that the key word is definition.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an experimental science whose goal is to understand the nature of intelligent thought and action. This goal is shared with a number of longer established subjects such as Philosophy, Psychology and Neuroscience. The essential difference is that AI scientists are committed to computational modelling as a methodology for explicating the interpretative processes which underlie intelligent behaviour, that relate sensing of the environment to action in it. Early workers in the field saw the digital computer as the best device available to support the many cycles of hypothesizing, modelling, simulating and testing involved in research into these interpretative processes. They set about the task of developing a programming technology that would enable the use of digital computers as an experimental tool. Over the first four decades of AI's life, a considerable amount of time and effort was given over to the design and development of new special purpose list programming languages, tools and techniques. While the symbolic programming approach dominated at the outset, other approaches such as non-symbolic neural nets and genetic algorithms have featured strongly, reflecting the fact that computing is merely a means to an end, an experimental tool, albeit a vital one.

The popular view of intelligence is that it is associated with high level problem solving, i.e. people who can play chess, solve mathematical problems, make complex financial decisions, and so on, are regarded as intelligent.

 

 

A Step-by-Step Guide to Annotating

· Familiarize yourself with the contents of the book or article. Examining the table of contents, the foreword and the introduction can be helpful.

· Read as much of the book or article as is necessary to understand its content.

· Make notes of the information you think you should include.

· Write a paragraph that reflects the spirit of the book or article without emphasis on any of the points.

 

Useful phrases to include in the annotation:

The article deals with …

The paper is concerned with…

It is known that…

The fact that … is stressed.

A mention should be made about …

It is spoken in detail about…

It is reported that …

The text gives valuable information on…

Much attention is given to…

It is shown that…

The main idea of the article is…

It gives a detailed analysis of…

It draws our attention to…

It is stressed that…

The article is of great help to …

The article is of interest to …

Study the verbs for referring to texts and ideas in annotations:

 

account for	compare	determine	frame	persuade
analyze	conclude	distinguish	identify	propose
argue	criticize	evaluate	illustrate	question
assess	defend	emphasize	imply	recognize
assert	define	examine	indicate	reflect
assume	demonstrate	exemplify	judge	refer to
claim	describe	exhibit	justify	report
clarify	depict	explain	narrate	review

 

TASK 6 Here’s the author’s abstract to this booklet “Annotation Writing”. Read it and decide if this abstract is a successful one. Does it follow basic rules of abstract writing? Would you add anything? What would you change? Discuss in plenary.

An abstract is a summary of a body of information in a paragraph. The purpose of an abstract is to give a reader a brief summary of a report. Writing an abstract is one of the skills useful for both students and teachers. Unawareness of the rules for writing an abstract will not allow creating a piece of work which could reveal the basic ideas and aspects of the article or other work being abstracted. Several sections are dedicated to theory and practice of writing an abstract. The list of references and appendix are appended.

TASK 7 Read the article and write the annotation to it.

 

Quantum computer

A quantum computer is any device for computation that makes direct use of distinctively quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data.

In a classical (or conventional) computer, information is stored as bits; in a quantum computer, it is stored as qubits (quantum bits).

The basic principle of quantum computation is that the quantum properties can be used to represent and structure data, and that quantum mechanisms can be devised and built to perform operations with this data. Although quantum computing is still in its infancy, experiments have been carried out in which quantum computational operations were executed on a very small number of qubits.

Research in both theoretical and practical areas continues at a frantic pace, and many national government and military funding agencies support quantum computing research to develop quantum computers for both civilian and national security purposes, such as cryptanalysis. If large-scale quantum computers can be built, they will be able to solve certain problems exponentially faster than any of our current classical computers (for example Shor's algorithm).

Quantum computers are different from other computers such as DNA computers and traditional computers based on transistors.

Some computing architectures such as optical computers may use classical superposition of electromagnetic waves, but without some specifically quantum mechanical resources such as entanglement, they have less potential for computational speed-up than quantum computers. The power of quantum computers Integer factorization is believed to be computationally infeasible with an ordinary computer for large integers that are the product of only a few prime numbers (e.g., products of two 300-digit primes).

By comparison, a quantum computer could solve this problem more efficiently than a classical computer using Shor's algorithm to find its factors.

This ability would allow a quantum computer to "break" many of the cryptographic systems in use today, in the sense that there would be a polynomial time (in the number of bits of the integer) algorithm for solving the problem.

These are used to protect secure Web pages, encrypted email, and many other types of data.

The only way to increase the security of an algorithm like RSA would be to increase the key size and hope that an adversary does not have the resources to build and use a powerful enough quantum computer.

It seems plausible that it will always be possible to build classical computers that have more bits than the number of qubits in the largest quantum computer.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/q/quantum_computer.htm

TASK 8 Read the article and write the annotation in English.

APPENDIX 1

Posted May 18, 2009

Eric McLamb

Active development and deployment of businesses and technologies geared towards sustainable development and climate change practices are becoming more vital to the global economy and individual state of living.

Mobilizing and re-focusing the global economy towards investments in clean technologies and ‘natural’ infrastructure such as forests and soils is the best bet for real growth, combating climate change and triggering an employment boom in the 21st century, says Achim Steiner, United Nations Under-Secretary General and UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director. “The financial, fuel and food crises of 2008 are in part a result of speculation and a failure of governments to intelligently manage and focus markets.”

Misaligned incentives work against the environment. Global agricultural subsidies amount to more than US$300 billion a year, but there is a lack of funds for reforestation. Global energy subsidies range from US$240 billion to US$310 billion per year or around 0.7 per cent of global GDP, but there is inadequate support for renewable energy development.

Global economic growth over the past 50 years has been accompanied by accelerated environmental decline. From 1981 to 2005, the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) more than doubled, in contrast to the 60% of the world’s ecosystems being degraded or used in an unsustainable manner.

Only a fraction of national income is spent on the environment. The global annual spending on the environment is estimated at best at US$10 billion per year. This is in contrast to the US$60-90 billion needed for those environmental investments that contribute directly to poverty reduction alone.

“The flip side of the coin is the enormous economic, social and environmental benefits likely to arise from combating climate change and re-investing in natural infrastructure - benefits ranging from new green jobs in clean tech and clean energy businesses up to ones in sustainable agriculture and conservation-based enterprises,” Mr. Steiner said.

The global automobile industry generates some $1.9 trillion in revenues but employs just 4.4 million people. The global steel industry is a $500 billion income earner but employs 4.5 million people. The world’s 100,000 National Parks and protected areas generate wealth via nature-based good and services equal to around $5 trillion but only employ 1.5 million people.

There are five priority areas underpinning economic and employment growth in this century, according to UNEP researchers and leading global economists. these sectors are the ones likely to generate the biggest transition in terms of economic returns; environmental sustainability and job creation: They are:

· Clean energy and clean technologies including recycling, rural energy, including renewables and sustainable biomass.

· Sustainable agriculture, including organic agriculture.

· Ecosystem Infrastructure.

· Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD).

· Sustainable cities including planning, transportation and green building.

This is not about being green, but about being innovative, smart and cognizant of the evolutionary and cyclical nature of Earth’s life systems.

APPENDIX 2

Linking Devices

To introduce the subject	Many people think…, Some people say…, It may seem…, You’ve probably heard…, We take it for granted that…, The truth of the matter is…, It may seem	Some people say that Columbus discovered America.
To make contrasting points	although, yet, however, but, nevertheless, in spite of, despite, while, even if, even though, at the same time, on the other hand	Susan is very generous, however, she can be very bossy.
To list view points (sequencing)	firstly, in the first place, first of all, to start with, to begin with, secondly, thirdly, (so)then, next, finally, at the end, on top of that	First of all, describe this chart, then make a report.
To add more points on a topic	what is more, furthermore, also, apart from this/that, in addition to, moreover, besides, too, not to mention the fact that	Sue is a clever student. Furthermore/ Moreover/ What is more, she is a kind girl.
To join contrasting, negative ideas	neither …nor, neither/ nor, not …either	Neither crocodiles nor snakes are mammals.
To list advantages disadvantages	one /another /one other /a further /the main /the first /the greatest advantage /disadvantage of…	The greatest advantage of regular exercise is that it leads to a healthier lifestyle.
To express personal opinion	in my opinion/view, to my mind/way of thinking, personally I believe, it strikes me that, I feel very strongly that, I am inclined to believe that, it seems to me that, as far as I am concerned, personally, as for me	In my opinion /view department stores offer a greater selection of clothes than smaller boutiques.
To refer to other sources	according to, with reference to	According to his report neighbourhood watch scheme can work effectively.
To conclude	finally, lastly, above all, all in all, taking everything into account, on the whole, all things considered, in conclusion, as I have said, as was previously stated, to sum up, on balance	All in all, I strongly believe that computers are a useful tool.
To express cause and reason	as/since, because of, owing to, due to, for this reason	Lots of animals are endangered as/ since their natural habitats are being destroyed.
To express effect	therefore, thus, as a result, consequently, so, as a consequence	As a result many people have lost their jobs.
To emphasize what you say	clearly, obviously, of course, needless to say, in particular	Needless to say that eating healthy foods and exercising regularly reduce the risk of heart disease.
To express reality	in fact, actually, as a matter of fact, in practice, the fact of the matter is that	In fact, the report states that most college graduates are interested in Master’s degree.
To express difference between appearance and reality	on the face of it, at first sight, apparently	At first sight the building looked safe but after a detailed inspection it was reported to be in need of much repairs.
To state an argument against your opinion	it is popularly believed that, people often claim that, contrary to popular believe, it is a fact that, it is often alleged that, people argue that	Contrary to popular believe, the teaching profession is in need of qualified educators.
To state other people’s opinion	many people are in favour/against, some people argue that, a lot of people think/believe	Many people are against the proposal to raise local taxes.
To introduce the other side of the argument	opponents if this view say, however there are people/those who oppose … claim that	Opponents of this view say that increasing the school year will only overwork students.
To express balance	while, on the one hand, on the other hand, whereas	While working for a large company is prestigious, it can be very stressful.
To give examples	for example, for instance	For instance, statistics say this is a true fact.
To refer to what actually happens	in practice, in effect	In practice, consumers spend more money on luxury items.
To make general statements	as a rule, generally, I general, as a general rule, on the whole	As a rule, girls get better exam results than boys.
To express limit of knowledge	to the best of my knowledge, for all I know, as far as I know	As far as I know, residents have lived in this region for a long time.
To rephrase	that is to say, in other words	In other words, they disagreed.
To bring up other points or aspects	as far as….. is concerned, regarding, with regard to, as for	As far as the community is concerned, the area is in need of a new elementary school.
To imply that nothing else needs to be said	anyway, at any rate, in any case	At any rate, a new community center will greatly benefit the people of the town.
Accepting the situation	as it is, under the circumstances, things being as they are	Under the circumstances, the situation cannot be improved.
Showing result	as a result, therefore, consequently/ as a consequence, so, so/such…that	The ozone layer hole is getting bigger. As a result, the earth’s climate is changing.

TEACHER’S NOTES

TASK 1

1. informative

2. descriptive

3. critical

4. descriptive

TASK 4

Sentence 1              introduction (background)

Sentence 2             introduction (background)

Sentence 3             outline of major thesis

Sentence 4             method

Sentence 5             method

Sentence 6             results

Sentence 7             conclusion

 

TASK 6

Possible answers

1. definition

2. interrelation

3. scientists’ opinion about AI

4. capabilities of digital computer in the past

5. new technology development

6. early AI objectives

7. several approaches

You may use appendices as additional materials:

• Appendix 1 – articles for annotation writing
• Appendix 2 – linking devices

Use of A Writing Web-Site By Pre-Masters Students On An English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Course

A.J. Gillett, University of Hertfordshire

 

1 During the last 10 years, use of the World-Wide-Web for educational purposes has increased dramatically. 2 However, very little empirical research has been carried out to determine the effectiveness of this use. 3 The aim of this study was therefore to investigate the effectiveness of using the World-Wide-Web on an EAP writing course. 4 Two groups of students were taught writing by two different methods: one group was taught by a teacher in a traditional classroom, while a second group included use of an on-line web-site in their course. 5 The two groups were assessed in the same way after a twelve-week period of instruction. 6 Results of the assessment showed significant differences between the two groups, the group that used the on-line web-site performing much better on all aspects of the test. 7 This suggests that the use of computer assisted learning programmes for at least some of the teaching time available can be recommended for EAP writing courses.

 

Sentence 1 ____________ introduction ______________

Sentence 2 ___________________________________

Sentence 3 ___________________________________

Sentence 4 ___________________________________

Sentence 5 ___________________________________

Sentence 6 ___________________________________

Sentence 7 ___________________________________

III HOW TO WRITE A GOOD ANNOTATION?

To write an effective annotation you need to pay attention to its content and format. These tips will help you:

· Look specifically for these main parts of the article, paper, or report: purpose, methods, scope, results, conclusions and recommendation. · Begin with introduction and the summary. · Use the headings, outline heads, and table of contents as a guide to write your annotation. · Search through the entire document for key terms that identify the purpose, scope, and methods of the work. · To create the first draft of an annotation read through the entire paper and cut and paste sentences that particularly capture key passages in order to paraphrase them later in the annotation. · Don't copy key sentences from the article, paper, or report: you'll put in too much or too little information. · Don't rely on the way material was phrased in the article, paper, or report: summarize information in your own way.	C O N T E N T
SENTENCES. Whole sentences are preferable, but single descriptive words and simple phrases or lists are acceptable. Complex sentences should be avoided. PARAGRAPHS. Annotations should be one single paragraph. Avoid writing a paragraph that is nothing more than a series of unconnected sentences summarizing separate ideas, arguments and conclusions, by following the same order of information as the author and by using transitional words and phrases. · Typically annotations do not exceed 150 to 200 words.	F O R M A T
· Use the vocabulary of the author as much as possible to convey the ideas and conclusions of the author. · If you decide to include a quotation from the source, place it within quotation marks.	W O R D S

DOs

· Make you annotation unified, coherent, concise, and able to stand alone.

· Follow strictly the chronology of the article, paper, or report.

· Provide logical connections between the information included.

· Make it understandable to a wide audience.

· Use passive verbs to downplay the author and emphasize the information.

DON’Ts

· Do not start with "this paper…”, "this report…" or similar. It is better to write about the research than about the paper.

· Do not explain the sections or parts of the paper.

· Avoid sentences that end in "…is described", "…is reported", "…is analyzed" or similar.

· Do not begin sentences with "it is suggested that…” "it is believed that…", "it is felt that…"or similar. In every case, the four words can be omitted without damaging the essential message.

· Do not repeat or rephrase the title.

· Do not refer in the abstract to information that is not in the document.

· If possible, avoid trade names, acronyms, abbreviations, or symbols. You would need to explain them, and that takes too much room. [3]

TASK 4 Read the annotations and in pairs decide which of them is good, bad or middling. Give reasons. You can find the source article in APPENDIX 1 (1).

1

I absolutely agree with the author of this article. I think the problem, which is lightened here is really important. Our government spends huge amounts of money on nonsense, but they should concentrate on the supporting of environment and developing the new methods of making our planet and our city better. First of all I suggest investing some money in education. I think we must educate new generation about the environmental problems because only they can find reasonable solution and develop new environment protecting technologies. New generation is innovative and smart. Our future is in our hands and we are responsible for leaving Tomsk, and the whole planet, clean and beautiful for next generations. In addition to that new technologies and new industries will enjoy lots of people, which is a solution of the problem of unemployment in Tomsk, particularly today, in the situation of economic crisis. On my point of view we should develop: clean energy and clean technologies including recycling, agriculture, ecosystem infrastructure. It is all about making our life better. It is all about avoiding financial, fuel and food crises in future. Let’s be humane and intelligent.

2

The article analyses problems of development of economy in circumstances of financial, fuel and food crises. Modern economy needs to be re-focused and re-oriented. The reason of failure of economy is disability of government to manage and direct industry development. Thus, the author suggests paying attention to nature infrastructure such as forests and soils and creating sustainable business. According to him, it will help to change global situation, create new jobs and overcome crisis. He underlines that subsidies amount in those areas are not enough especially in comparison to global GDP and worsening of ecological situation. Ha also marks five priority areas to develop. In conclusion, author appeals to be more mobile and flexible to solve economical problems.

3

The given article is focused on the problem of sustainable business. To consider this issue United Nations (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner pointed out that the best way to accelerate growth of global economy was to invest in clean businesses. The author examines that there are a lot of various stimulus, which don’t support environment. Furthermore, the paper shows that the spending of the environment is not enough at all, it’s valued just10 per cent of investments needed. But Mr. Steiner underlined that there were some advantages from investing in natural infrastructure – one of them is creation new work places. This article presents some figures of income in different industries and number of employees accordingly. In conclusion the paper gives information about five main areas, which support economic growth in this century.

TASK 5 Read the paragraph and find key words for each sentence. Write one key word for each sentence. They may not necessarily be in the sentence itself.

e.g. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an experimental science whose goal is to understand the nature of intelligent thought and action.

Here the definition of what AI stands for is given. That’s why we may say that the key word is definition.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an experimental science whose goal is to understand the nature of intelligent thought and action. This goal is shared with a number of longer established subjects such as Philosophy, Psychology and Neuroscience. The essential difference is that AI scientists are committed to computational modelling as a methodology for explicating the interpretative processes which underlie intelligent behaviour, that relate sensing of the environment to action in it. Early workers in the field saw the digital computer as the best device available to support the many cycles of hypothesizing, modelling, simulating and testing involved in research into these interpretative processes. They set about the task of developing a programming technology that would enable the use of digital computers as an experimental tool. Over the first four decades of AI's life, a considerable amount of time and effort was given over to the design and development of new special purpose list programming languages, tools and techniques. While the symbolic programming approach dominated at the outset, other approaches such as non-symbolic neural nets and genetic algorithms have featured strongly, reflecting the fact that computing is merely a means to an end, an experimental tool, albeit a vital one.

The popular view of intelligence is that it is associated with high level problem solving, i.e. people who can play chess, solve mathematical problems, make complex financial decisions, and so on, are regarded as intelligent.

 

 

A Step-by-Step Guide to Annotating

· Familiarize yourself with the contents of the book or article. Examining the table of contents, the foreword and the introduction can be helpful.

· Read as much of the book or article as is necessary to understand its content.

· Make notes of the information you think you should include.

· Write a paragraph that reflects the spirit of the book or article without emphasis on any of the points.

 

Useful phrases to include in the annotation:

The article deals with …

The paper is concerned with…

It is known that…

The fact that … is stressed.

A mention should be made about …

It is spoken in detail about…

It is reported that …

The text gives valuable information on…

Much attention is given to…

It is shown that…

The main idea of the article is…

It gives a detailed analysis of…

It draws our attention to…

It is stressed that…

The article is of great help to …

The article is of interest to …

Study the verbs for referring to texts and ideas in annotations:

 

account for	compare	determine	frame	persuade
analyze	conclude	distinguish	identify	propose
argue	criticize	evaluate	illustrate	question
assess	defend	emphasize	imply	recognize
assert	define	examine	indicate	reflect
assume	demonstrate	exemplify	judge	refer to
claim	describe	exhibit	justify	report
clarify	depict	explain	narrate	review

 

TASK 6 Here’s the author’s abstract to this booklet “Annotation Writing”. Read it and decide if this abstract is a successful one. Does it follow basic rules of abstract writing? Would you add anything? What would you change? Discuss in plenary.

An abstract is a summary of a body of information in a paragraph. The purpose of an abstract is to give a reader a brief summary of a report. Writing an abstract is one of the skills useful for both students and teachers. Unawareness of the rules for writing an abstract will not allow creating a piece of work which could reveal the basic ideas and aspects of the article or other work being abstracted. Several sections are dedicated to theory and practice of writing an abstract. The list of references and appendix are appended.

TASK 7 Read the article and write the annotation to it.

 

Quantum computer

A quantum computer is any device for computation that makes direct use of distinctively quantum mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement, to perform operations on data.

In a classical (or conventional) computer, information is stored as bits; in a quantum computer, it is stored as qubits (quantum bits).

The basic principle of quantum computation is that the quantum properties can be used to represent and structure data, and that quantum mechanisms can be devised and built to perform operations with this data. Although quantum computing is still in its infancy, experiments have been carried out in which quantum computational operations were executed on a very small number of qubits.

Research in both theoretical and practical areas continues at a frantic pace, and many national government and military funding agencies support quantum computing research to develop quantum computers for both civilian and national security purposes, such as cryptanalysis. If large-scale quantum computers can be built, they will be able to solve certain problems exponentially faster than any of our current classical computers (for example Shor's algorithm).

Quantum computers are different from other computers such as DNA computers and traditional computers based on transistors.

Some computing architectures such as optical computers may use classical superposition of electromagnetic waves, but without some specifically quantum mechanical resources such as entanglement, they have less potential for computational speed-up than quantum computers. The power of quantum computers Integer factorization is believed to be computationally infeasible with an ordinary computer for large integers that are the product of only a few prime numbers (e.g., products of two 300-digit primes).

By comparison, a quantum computer could solve this problem more efficiently than a classical computer using Shor's algorithm to find its factors.

This ability would allow a quantum computer to "break" many of the cryptographic systems in use today, in the sense that there would be a polynomial time (in the number of bits of the integer) algorithm for solving the problem.

These are used to protect secure Web pages, encrypted email, and many other types of data.

The only way to increase the security of an algorithm like RSA would be to increase the key size and hope that an adversary does not have the resources to build and use a powerful enough quantum computer.

It seems plausible that it will always be possible to build classical computers that have more bits than the number of qubits in the largest quantum computer.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/articles/q/quantum_computer.htm

TASK 8 Read the article and write the annotation in English.