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Diploma in Higher Education Studies

Formal and informal English

HES 101 · English for Academic Purposes — Week 5 of 16

CourseHES 101
Week5 of 16
SemesterI
TutorOnline in the course chat

This week’s topics

Formal and informal English

  1. Slang, contractions and personal language
  2. Choosing formal words
  3. Rewriting informal sentences

What you will be able to do

  • 2.2 Use formal register and avoid colloquial language.

Activity

Rewrite a chatty text message as a formal paragraph.

Study materials

Further resources

  • Writing for Success, ch. 4.3: Word choice (slang, idioms, formal words) · PDF · Saylor (2012); pp. 147–153 · for registered students
  • Writing for Success, ch. 6.1: Purpose, audience, tone and content · PDF · Saylor (2012), formal and informal tone; pp. 216–231 · for registered students
  • How to write clearly (10 hints) · PDF · European Commission (2016), 16 pages on clear, formal writing · for registered students
  • Is academic writing becoming more informal? · Open-access article · Hyland & Jiang (2017), English for Specific Purposes. Corpus study of which informal features (I, questions, contractions) appear in academic journals and which do not. · for registered students
Materials marked “for registered students” open in the student portal, which is set up as soon as you receive final acceptance.
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Course plan
  • Week 1: How a non-fiction article is organised
  • Week 2: Reading for the main idea: skimming
  • Week 3: Finding information fast: scanning
  • Week 4: The parts of an academic article
  • Week 5: Formal and informal English
  • Week 6: Building a paragraph: the topic sentence
  • Week 7: Supporting your point with evidence and examples
  • Midterm: Midterm evaluation
  • Week 9: Linking ideas with connectives
  • Week 10: Listening to a short lecture
  • Week 11: Taking notes that work
  • Week 12: Summarising in your own words
  • Week 13: From lecture notes to a summary
  • Week 14: Checking and improving your writing
  • Week 15: Review and coursework completion
  • Final: Final assessment and submission
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