0 © Henrique Moura

Common mistakes
All of these sentences have been extracted from Delta background essays and are either
i. marked, ii. inappropriate for the genre, iii. wrong. In pairs, suggest improvements for
these sentences.

a) I could notice that phrasal verbs are especially difficult for intermediate learners.
b) The topic of this essay was chosen in view of my experience with ESP learners.
c) Grammar awareness and cohesion devices (such as substitution, ellipsis and
conjunctions)…
d) Students don’t always know the necessary language to engage in this kind of activity.
e) Beginners usually find it difficult to see the correspondence between pronunciation
and spelling, and they have difficulty with bottom-up decoding strategies.
f) The purpose of this background essay is to describe the meaning, pronunciation and
form of the Present Perfect Simple.
g) Elementary students need to rely on conversational gambits in order to have longer
speaking activities in class, and it is what challenges teachers the most.
h) (after a list of grammar rules) Those are interesting rules, but I prefer not to teach
them to students.
i) Students who speak Latin languages find it difficult to think of the present perfect
simple as a form which refers to the present time in some contexts and past time in
others.
j) Speaking is the skill learners most want to acquire and the one which takes them
longer to master.
k) Trouble is, since speaking has long been dealt with as a mere means to practice
grammatical structures and lexical items instead of a skill…
l) This can be explained by the fact that transactions are more “objective” in the sense
that there is one explicit goal and one can easily assess to which extent such goal
was achieved.
m) Most authors believe that intermediate students need more practice on LOTS than
on HOTS, HOTS are believed to be relevant to higher levels only.
n) It is believed that the communicative approach is misunderstood by many teachers.
o) In order to solve this problem, I will write on the board the phonemes that
correspond to this sound and refer students to them.
p) There is a problem with the concept of phrasal verbs in that…

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 q) Current researches in the field of neurolinguistics have shown that…
r) …and there are evidences to support the idea that…
s) I conducted a survey with students to know if…

For more:

• Biber, D. and Gray, B. (2016). Grammatical Complexity in Academic English. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
press.

• Hesson, J. (2015). English for Research Papers: A Handbook for Brazilian Authors. 1st ed. [Kindle]. Retrieved from
Amazon.com

a. could vs. simple past b. passive voice c. parentheses d. contractions

e. parallelism f. capitalization g. deitic pronouns h. these vs. those
i. articles j. overgeneralization k. informal lexis l. inverted commas
m. run-on sentences n. introductory it o. markedness (SVO) p. there is/there are
q. count vs. uncount r. count vs. uncount s. nominalization t.

In-text citations
What do you think the relation between elephants and cheese is?

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Read the text below and check if your predictions were correct.

ELEPHANTS AND CHEESE: AN EXPLORATORY PAPER

by Teck Wann

It is widely known that elephants fear cheese, and will flee at the first whiff of it 1.
(SOURCE F). What is not yet well understood is why this phenomenon occurs. For more
than a decade academics have been researching this perplexing topic. Their work
constitutes part of the booming new discipline known as pachydermo-fromagology, which
is defined as “the study of elephant-cheese interactions” 2. (SOURCE D). This paper will
evaluate existing research and theories, and argue that none of them satisfactorily explain
the data which has been gathered so far.

That elephants fear cheese was an accidental discovery made by the noted
elephantologist G. Coleman 3. (SOURCE B). The story of the discovery is now famous, but
worth repeating:

After a hard morning following the herd, I had just sat down under
a tree for lunch and unwrapped a particularly delectable chunk of
cheddar sent up from the base camp. Suddenly I heard an enormous
trampling sound, and when I looked up, the entire herd was gone. 4.
(SOURCE C, page 160)

His discovery, while dismissed at the time, was subsequently corroborated by other
researchers. Several studies 5. (SOURCES G and H) have confirmed the phenomenon, and
that it occurs among both African and Asian elephants. A recent report by the Elephant
Research Institute 6. (SOURCE E) established that smell is the primary means elephants
detect cheese, and that they will ignore large pieces of cheese if tightly wrapped.
Meanwhile a French c(heese expert asserts on his website that elephants do not flee from
French cheese, only the lesser cheeses of other nations. “Zee creatures, zey have good
taste, non?” he writes 7. (SOURCE I, Introduction, paragraph 2).

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 Recently, a new theory has exploded on the scene and caused quite a stink. Based
on several clever experiments, K. Maas 8. (SOURCE J, page 468) has claimed that in fact
elephants do not fear cheese at all, but instead fear the mice which are attracted to
cheese. However, this theory, which she calls the Maas Mouse Hypothesis (MMH), has not
yet been widely accepted. One researcher 9. (SOURCES K and L) has published a series
of articles roundly denouncing the MMH, and the debate has even spilled over into the
popular press 10. (SOURCE A).

What are we to make of this controversy?

Read the text again and write the in-text references using a standard in-text referencing
system.

Achison, C.L. (2004, April). A ripe and weighty issue: an interview with Monica Sturgess. Cheese Lovers
A World, 6 (4), 12-13.
Coleman, G.J. (1984). An odd behaviour observed among the species Elephas maximus. Journal of
B Trunked Mammal Studies, 23, 421-429.

C Coleman, G.J. (1988). Underfoot: ten years among the elephants. New York: Oxford University Press.
Concise Oxford dictionary, 11th ed. (2004). Oxford University Press. Retrieved October 20, 2004, from
D Oxford Reference Online database.
Elephant Research Institute, Simon Fraser University. (2001) Smell versus sight: detection of cheese by
E elephants. Retrieved November 1, 2004, from http://www.sfu.ca/eri/reports/00107elephants.pdf

F Elephants stampede, 7 cheese-lovers trampled. (2003, November 22). Vancouver Sun, p. A1, A8.
Gibson, C.N. & Sturgess, M.N. (1987). Elephant fleeing behaviour confirmed. Journal of Elephantology,
G 16, 239-245. Retrieved October 27, 2004, from Academic Search Elite database.
Gibson, C.N. Sturgess, M.N., & Bates, A.T. (1989). Experiments with cheese effects on Elephas maximus
H and Elephas africanus. Journal of Elephantology, 18, 120-134. Retrieved October 27, 2004, from
Academic Search Elite database.
Gouda, A.N. (n.d.) Commentary of a report about cheese and les elephants. Retrieved October 23,
I 2004, from http://www.mondedefromage.fr/elephants.html
Maas, K.A. (2003). The missing link: elephants, mice, and cheese. International Journal of Rodentia
J Research, 56, 459-471. Retrieved October 31, 2004, from
http://www.elsevierpublisher.com/ijrr/56/4/maas.htm

K Sturgess, M.N. (2004a). Of mice and cheese (Part 1). Journal of Trunked Mammal Studies, 43, 10-15.

L Sturgess, M.N. (2004b). Of mice and cheese (Part 2). Journal of Trunked Mammal Studies, 43, 219-225.

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 1. (“Elephants stampede”, 2003)
2. (Concise Oxford dictionary, 2004)
3. (1984)
4. (Coleman, 1988, p. 160)
5. (Gibson and Sturgess, 1987; Gibson et al., 1989)
6. (2001)
7. (Gouda, n.d., Introduction section, para. 2)
8. (2003)
9. (Sturgess, 2004a; 2004b)
10. (Achison, 2004)

Reporting verbs
Read the sentences below, underline the reporting verbs and:
1. Say if it is weak, strong or neutral.
2. Explain what the author means.

a) Richards, Ho and Giblin (1996) argue that the activity of teaching is both cognitive
and behavioural.
b) Richards, Ho and Giblin (1996) explain that practical classroom actions are directly
guided teachers’ theories and beliefs about teaching, teachers, and learners
c) Richards, Ho and Giblin (1996) claim that TESOL needs to separate from “applied
linguistics” and become an own science using its own terms.
d) Pennington (1996) acknowledges that teachers-in-training absorb and apply
knowledge in their own way, like students do.
e) Senior (2007) points out that English tends to be the language of international
communication.
f) Senior (2007) explains that the heavy demand for English language tuition has led
to an exponential growth in job opportunities in the ELT market.
g) Senior (2007) remarks that Native speakers believe that upon completing a teaching
training course they can easily find a teaching job anywhere in the world.
h) Senior (2007) highlights that more and more teachers enter the ELT market after an
initial qualification.

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i) Senior (2007) assures that there are varied reasons why English speakers choose ELT
as a career.
j) Senior (2007) believes that the reasons why speakers of English decide to become
teachers can be divided into ‘pull factors’ and ‘push factors’.

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 Common reporting verbs for
academic writing
WEAKER NEUTRAL STRONGER
addition adds
advice advices
accepts, acknowledges, applauds,
agreement admits, concedes agrees, concurs, congratulates, extols,
confirms, recognises praises, supports
alerts, argues, boasts,
contends, convinces,
assures, encourages,
argument and emphasises, exhorts,
apologises interprets, justifies,
persuasion forbids, insists, proves,
reasons
promises, persuades,
threatens, warns
believes, claims,
declares, expresses,
guesses, hopes, asserts, guarantees,
believing feels, holds, knows,
imagines insists, upholds
maintains, professes,
subscribes to, thinks
concludes, discovers,
conclusion
finds, infers, realises
accuses, attacks,
complains, contradicts,
criticises, denies,
challenges, debates, discards, disclaims,
disagreement and
doubts, questions disagrees, questions, discounts, dismisses,
questioning
requests, wonders disputes, disregards,
negates, objects to,
opposes, refutes,
rejects
discussion comments discusses, explores reasons
accentuates,
emphasises, highlights,
emphasis
stresses, underscores,
warns

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 analyses, appraises,
assesses, compares,
blames, complains,
evaluation and considers, contrasts,
ignores, scrutinises,
examination critiques, evaluates,
warns.
examines, investigates,
understands
articulates, clarifies,
explanation
explains
comments, defines,
describes, estimates,
forgets, identifies,
illustrates, implies,
informs, instructs, lists,
mentions, notes,
presentation confuses announces, promises
observes, outlines,
points out, presents,
remarks, reminds,
reports, restates,
reveals, shows, states,
studies, tells, uses
advises, advocates,
alleges, intimates, hypothesises, posits, asserts, recommends,
suggestion
speculates postulates, proposes, urges
suggests, theorises

Translate into English

a) É importante ressaltar que existem diferentes aspectos…
b) Também é muito comum dizer que não se dá atenção…
c) Há pouca atenção a este assunto…
d) Os alunos brasileiros precisam de…
e) As dificuldades que alunos apresentam são na maioria das vezes…
f) Ele apresenta problemas com tempos verbais, como o presente perfeito.
g) Os resultados mostraram que muitos alunos preferem…
h) As características do curso são…
i) As dificuldades dos alunos são…
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 j) Doze alunos foram entrevistados. Destes, 5 precisam de inglês para…
k) Neste estudo percebi que…
l) Com minha leitura pude perceber que é mais fácil…

Tips
1. Avoid beginning sentences with “It is”.
2. Use the article ‘the’ only when referring to something specific.
3. Only capitalize proper names.
4. Remove ‘that’ after reporting verbs.
5. Prefer the ADJ+NOUN order than using OF.
6. Always mention the subject. Your sentences have to be parallel.
7. Prepositional phrases are followed by a comma.
8. The modal verb ‘could’ indicates ability, not had the opportunity to.
9. Avoid passive voice.
10. Avoid parenthesis – prefer relative clauses.

LSA guidelines
The sections of the background essay are:

1. Introduction
2. Analysis
3. Issues & Suggestions

Introduction

Give a brief outline answering:

• What language/skill feature is the focus of your assignment?

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 • Why is it useful & appropriate for your learners?
• Why did you choose it in light of your experience?
• Why did you choose it in light of your background reading?
• How do you expect to achieve with this essay?

Analysis

• Systems analysis: Include meaning, form, use, pronunciation, appropriacy etc.

• Skills analysis: Write clear analyses of the sub-skills, their purpose/function and how
they are applied.

Remember:
• Use more than one source to illustrate each point of your analysis.
• The analysis is not a summary of what you read – you need to add your voice.
Exemplify when appropriate, explain concepts using your own words, and say how
this is relevant in your context/experience. You need to demonstrate understanding
of the area. You need to comment on all references used. Simply quoting is not
enough.
• Always define key terms.
• Do not go beyond the scope of your title.

Issues & Suggestions

• If the essay has a systems focus, consider problems with form, meaning and
pronunciation, and/or with awareness and production.
• If the essay has a skills focus, consider particular difficulties with applying the chosen
strategy, or problems with understanding or producing the text type, or typical
problems with the task type, etc as appropriate.
• You should consider a range of different issues for learners.
• You should consider different contexts (geographical, educational, cultural, learning
styles, levels, ages, course types (intensive <-> extensive).
• You need to show familiarity with a range of procedures, techniques, resources
and/or materials.

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 • Each suggestion should be described in sufficient detail for the reader to assess its
suitability.
• State how the idea might be used in classroom practice.
• Comment on the value of each suggestion.
• Evaluate each suggestion critically: Say what its upsides and downsides are.

Further guidance
Presentation of the essay

Essays must be word processed, using Microsoft Word, and submitted electronically as
one single document (attachments included).

All essays must include:

• a standard cover page showing the title of the essay, number of words used, version
of Word used, date of submission, candidate name and centre number;
• a contents page;
• a running footer, which should be inserted with candidate name, essay title and page
numbering;
• all appendices.

The files should be saved with the following name:

BR134_00#_lastname_internal_LSA1_BE.docx

Plagiarised work will not be accepted and the background essay will be considered an
automatic fail.

Organisation of the essay

The essay will consist of a short introduction, followed by an analysis of the topic area,
discussion of issues for learners, and suggestions for teaching.

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 • Introduction (around 200 words)
• Analysis (around 800 words)
• Issues & Suggestions for teaching (around 1,500 words)

The introduction should have the focus of the essay and reasons for the choice of topic.

Essays exceeding the word limit (2,000 to 2,500 words) or abusing the use of appendices
cannot be awarded a grade higher than Pass. Any text which belong better in the main
body of the essay must not be appendiced.

All referencing must be included in the body of the essay.

Footnotes must not be used.

Quality of writing

The essay should be written in language which is clear, accurate and easy to follow. Essays
that do not follow these instructions cannot be awarded a Pass grade.

The essay should be clearly ordered with headings and sub-headings.

Terminology must be used accurately.

Terms must be defined and exemplified.

A range of references and key sources must be referred to (a bare minimum of 10 different
references per background essay).

Essays that have fewer than three references cannot be awarded a Pass grade.

When referring to a source, the author’s surname(s), and the year of the work’s publication
must be given in parentheses.

If specific quotes are used, they must be referenced using author surname(s), year of
publication and page numbers quoted, e.g. (Lightbown & Spada 1993:302).
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A bibliography in alphabetical order according to author’s surname must be included after
the essay and before the appendices.

Clarity of topic

The topic of the background essay should include:

• the system (grammar, lexis, phonology, function, discourse etc)

• or skill (listening, reading, writing, speaking)
• area (perfect aspect, collocations, liaison, backchannel devices etc)
• or sub-skill (top-down processing, bottom-up processing, turn taking etc)
• (level of learners)
• (context of group)

Examples of essay titles:

• Modal verbs expressing obligation

• Understanding and using different ways of expressing the future with lower level
learners
• Enabling lower level learners to read authentic texts
• Helping learners use top down and bottom up processing in CAE Paper One
• Helping intermediate learners infer meaning from authentic texts
• Helping Brazilian A2 students understand and produce elision and liaison in
connected speech
• Teaching condition conjuncts to upper intermediate students
• Helping A2 students perform simple transactions in dialogues
• Developing Learners’ Speaking Skills in Meetings
• Helping intermediate learners use bottom up processing to better understand
listening texts
• Idioms about money at higher levels
• Developing High-level Learners’ Interactive Listening in Conversation about Work
• Promoting speaking skills on Portuguese-speaking learners of English: turn-taking
and back-channeling
• Helping A2 learners use modal verbs to speculate on present and future events

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 • Promoting listening skill development: Applying background knowledge and
predicting

The title of the essay should really describe the topic of the essay.

You should refer to the title often as you write.

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 Road map
Week Date Action ✔
Complete Work Plan
Diagnostic Lesson
Week 1
PDA A - Stage 2
Peer observation 1
LSA 1 – Background Essay
Peer observation 2
Week 2
Peer observation 3

LSA 1 – Lesson Plan

Week 3

Peer observation 4
Peer observation 5
Week 4

LSA 2 – Background Essay

Week 5

LSA 2 – Lesson Plan

Week 6

Peer observation 6
Peer observation 7
Week 7

PDA A – Stage 3
Week 8

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 PDA B – Experimental Practice
Week 9
Peer observation 8

LSA 3 – Background Essay

Week 10

LSA 3 – Lesson Plan

Week 11

PDA A - Stage 4
Peer observation 9
Week 12
Peer observation 10

LSA 4 – Background Essay

Submission of Coursework
Week 13
Signing forms

LSA 4 – Lesson Plan

Week 14

Week 15

Week 16

16 © Henrique Moura