English for Academic Research: Vocabulary Exercises

Book excerpt: This book is based on a study of referees' reports and letters from journal editors on reasons why papers written by non-native researchers are rejected due to problems with English (long sentences, redundancy, poor structure etc). It draws on English-related errors from around 5000 papers written by non-native authors, around 3000 emails, 500 abstracts by PhD students, and over 1000 hours of teaching researchers how to write and present research papers. The exercises are organized into nine chapters on: adjectives and adverbs (e.g. actual vs current, different vs several, continually vs continuously), link words (e.g. on the contrary vs on the other hand, despite vs nevertheless), nouns (e.g. danger vs hazard, measure vs measurement), prepositions (e.g. among vs between, in vs into, with vs within), verbs (e.g. check vs control, compose vs comprise, arise vs raise, exclude vs rule out), false friends and synonyms, spelling, useful phrases, emails Nearly all exercises require no actual writing but simply choosing between various options, thus facilitating self-study, e-reading and rapid progress. The exercises can also be integrated into English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and English for Special Purposes (ESP) courses at universities and research institutes. The book can be used in conjunction with the other exercise books in the series: English for Academic Research: Writing Exercises English for Academic Research: Grammar Exercises