Alternate Masculine and Feminine Pronouns.

4. Use Forms Like «He or She», «Hers or His», and «Him or Her».

5. Shift to Second-Person Pronouns.

An occasional he or she is acceptable, but a number of them in a short space destroy the sense of a passage.

Correct the sexist language in the following sentences:

1. The clerk must make sure that hepunches in.

2. Every secretary will hand in her timecard on Friday.

3. If he understands the process, the researcher can improve the results.

4. The president made it clear that each McDuff branch manager will be responsible for the balance sheet ofhis respective office.

5. After selecting her insurance option in the benefit plan, each new nurse should submit her paperwork to the Human Resources Department.

TASKS

I. Build up your vocabulary

a) Learn the words you may use talking about figures and processes:

If figures or decisions are referred to as arbitrary, they are based on chance rather than a plan or any particular reason.

Figures that deviatefrom the norm are different from what is typical.

If statistics distortthe picture, they give a false impression.

If you refer to the incidence of something (e.g. left-handedness), you are talking about how often it occurs in the population.

If something (e.g. the incidence of brown eyes) is predominant, it is the largest in number.

If things (e.g. stages in a process) happen in sequence, they happen in a particular order.

If you want to say that something happens in many places or with many people, you can say that it is widespread: widespread outbreaks of an illness, widespread alarm.

b) Categorising and including use the following words:

Japanese visitors comprised/made up 70% of the hotel’s guests last year. [70 % consisted of]

The course is comprised of two elements: reading and writing. [is composed of]

These two approaches can be subsumed under one heading. [brought together/united]

The book embracesa number of issues, from economic to religious ones. [covers/includes]

Her philosophy is difficult to categorise. [label as belonging to a particular type or class]

c) Answer the questions using the vocabulary you have learnt:

1. If the incidence of asthma in children is increasing, what is actually going up:

a) the seriousness of asthma attacks

b) the number of asthmatic children

2. What are the next two numbers in the sequence 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36?

3. If the average mark of schoolchildren in a maths test was 68% and James’s mark deviated most markedly from that average, what do we know about James’s mark?

4. If a historian distorts the facts, does he present them

a) accurately

b) clearly

c) in a misleading fashion?

5. If a sociologist chooses the subjects of her research in an arbitrary fashion, is she being careful to get people from an appropriate balance of backgrounds?

D) Rewrite these sentences using the verb in brackets and making any other necessary changes.

1. 70 % of the landmass is mountain ranges. (Comprise)

2. A wide variety of subjects are dealt with in the book. (Embrace)

3. I think these three sections can all come under one heading. (Subsume)

4. Poems are not easily amenable to being put into different types. (Categorise)

II. Analysis

Date: 2016-01-14; view: 800