Author: Q13733214 ENG199

Academic Exercises
1. You are writing an essay about making ethical decisions in journalism. On
page 60 of the book detailed below, you find the following quotation (underlined),
which you want to quote exactly:
“One of the challenges we face in the process of ethical decision making is to heighten
our level of moral reasoning (Black, Steele and Barney 1999, p.60), to expand our skills
at doing ethics. Many journalists say they make ethical judgements based on their “gut
reactions”. While it is natural to respond in such a way, these gut reactions only
provide an entry point for confronting an ethical dilemma. At this gut-reaction level, we
tend to see ethics in stark black and white, suggesting that the distinction between right
and wrong is quite clear and that the answer is intuitively obvious...
It is important for journalists to be willing to struggle with the gray areas of ethical
dilemmas, to develop the capacity to recognize competing principles within a case, to
hear opposing positions...”

Title: Doing Ethics in Journalism – A Handbook with Case Studies

Author: Jay Black, Rob Steele and Ralph Barney
Published by: Allyn & Bacon
Published in: 1999
Published in: Massachusetts

2. You are writing an essay about making a motion picture. Your next point is
about “The Scene”. On page 38 of the book detailed below, you find the following
quotation, and you want to quote the parts which are underlined:
“The story is an uninterrupted flow of developments. But the scenes of a motion
picture represent only certain events from among this continuous stream we must
consider the motion picture a story of which certain events are told and others are not
told. The former are contained in the scenes, and the latter take place between scenes.
The scene can be defined as a section of the entire story in which a certain happening
occurs (Vale 1998, p.38). Now every happening occurs at a certain place and a certain
time...”

Title: Vale’s Technique of Screen and Television Writing

Author: Eugene Vale
Published by: Butterworth-Heinemann
Published in: 1998
Published in: Massachusetts
Author: Q13733214 ENG199

3. You are writing an essay about scheduling TV programmes. On pages 173-

174 of the book detailed below, you find the following quotation. You want
to quote what Maltby wrote:
“...it is possible to run a channel such as Channel 4 as a commercial concern, with only
10 per cent of the total viewing figures, or an entire 24-hour satellite station such as
Asia Business News with high production values, on a tiny fraction of the Asian television
market. Maltby (1989) notes this development in relation to the type of programming
developed on the US networks:
In the developed world, further expansion of the media involved the exploitation of
increasingly specialised markets for higher-priced media commodities such as financial
information or “quality” television...” (Maltby cited in McQueen 1998, pp.173-174)

Title: Television – A Media Student’s Guide

Author: David McQueen
Published by: Arnold
Published in: 1998
Published in: London

4. You are writing an essay about the analysis of production costs. On pages 57-
58 of the book detailed below, you find the following quotation. You want to quote
the part which is underlined:
“The art of good management is to capture the benefits of internal and external
economies and, of course, to avoid the onset of internal and external
diseconomies. Ideally, firms will want to operate at the level of output which
corresponds to minimum unit costs over the long run or what is sometimes termed the
minimum efficient scale (MES) (Nellis and Parker 1997, pp.57-58). This represents the
technical optimum scale of production for the firm...”

Title: The Essence of Business Economics

Author: Joseph G. Nellis and David Parker
Published by: Prentice Hall Europe
Published in: 1997
Published in: Hertfordshire

On page 66 of the same book, you then find the following quotation, which you
want to paraphrase:
According to Nellis and Parker (1997, p.66) state that the elasticity of supply can be
influenced by factors such as changing production costs based on the type of supply,
current capacity of the supplier, what is the level of stocks the company is currently
holding or the possibility to change the source of production or supplier. Another factor
is the time. If the firm relies on the change of price which takes them more time to
adapt, then the supply is likely to be more responsive. In case there will be short
amount of time for changes, the supply will be less price elastic.
Author: Q13733214 ENG199

5. You are writing an essay about intercultural communication in the

classroom. In sections 5.1 and 3 respectively of the websites detailed below, you
find the following quotations and you want to quote the parts which are
underlined:
“Culture is separated from the individuals or the event itself, being viewed both as the
source of a problem and as a means of explaining the problem away without, however,
solving it (White 1997). Cross-cultural comparison, analogous to contrastive linguistics,
identifies differences, and these are used to account for or to predict communication
problems.”

Title: Going round in circles: English as an International Language, and cross-cultural

capability
Author: Ron White
Web address: http://www.rdg.ac.uk/AcaDepts/cl/SLALS/circles.htm
Published in: 1997
Published by: The University of Reading
“The differences which may be observed in inter-discoursal communication are strongly
influenced by expectations and styles of interaction having their origins in those
universal attributes which we label ‘human nature’, in the learned behaviour which we
term ‘culture’ and in the unique characteristics of the individual, which we call
‘personality’,...
Of these influences, culture is likely to be the most potent because, according to
Simons, Vazques and Harris (1993, p209), we can assume that at least 80% of what you
react to in others is cultural and that 20% or less is personal (White 1997).”

Title: Closing the Gap between Intercultural and Business Communication Skills
Author: Ron White
Web address: http://www.rdg.ac.uk/AcaDepts/cl/SLALS/closing.htm
Published in: 1997
Published by: The University of Reading

6. Write a bibliography for the references in the exercises above.

BARNEY, R.D. et al., 1999. Doing ethics in journalism - a handbook with case studies.
Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon

VALE, E., 1998. Vale's technique of screen and television writing. MA: Butterworth-
Heinemann

MCQUEEN, D., 1998. Television - a media student's guide. London: Arnold

Nellis, J. and Parker, D. (1997). The essence of business economics. Hertfordshire:

Prentice Hall Europe.
Author: Q13733214 ENG199

WHITE, R., 1997. Going round in circles: English as an International Language, and cross -
cultural capability Available
from: http://www.rdg.ac.uk/AcaDepts/cl/SLALS/circles.htm

7. Proofread the paragraph below and find the 15 errors:

Comparative studies (study) of animals (animal) help to show how man's space
requirements (require) are influenced by (in) his environment. In animals we can observe
(observing) the direction, the rate, and the extent of changes in (of) behaviour that
follow changes in space available to them as we can never hope to do in men. For one
thing, by using animals it is (am) possible to accelerate (acelerate) time, since animal
generations are (is) relatively short. A scientist can, in (at) forty years, observe four
hundred and forty _ generations of mice, while he has in the same span of time seen
only two generations of his own kind. And, of (off) course, he can be more detached
(detatched) about the fate of animals (animal).