HANDOUT 1 - Exercises Unit 1
Exercise 1
Identify the informal expressions in the following sentences. Replace the informal
expressions with a more formal equivalent.
1. With women especially, there is a lot of social pressure to conform to a certain physical
shape.
2. Significantly, even at this late date, Lautrec was considered a bit conservative by his peers.
3. It focused on a subject that a lot of the bourgeois and upper-class exhibition-going public
regarded as anti-social and anti-establishment.
4. Later Florey got together with Paul Fildes in an experimental study of the use of curare to
relieve the intractable muscular spasms which occur in fully developed infection with tetanus or
lockjaw.
5. When a patient is admitted to a psychiatric inpatient unit, the clinical team should avoid the
temptation to start specific treatments immediately.
6. Therefore after six months the dieter is behaving according to all twenty-six goals and she has
achieved a big reduction in sugar intake.
7. Modern houses have so many labour-saving things that it is difficult for the person at home to
have adequate exercise by doing chores, cooking, and looking after a family.
8. Simply making the effort to reclaim this wasted stuff for fertilizer would have a positive
effect on greenhouse releases.
9. It is difficult to imagine exactly what is meant by saying that such a classification is natural as
any collection of things could be classified in this way.
10. Unfortunately, since there are so many possible explanations, the correct one is most
difficult to find out.
11. These exercises can easily be incorporated into an exercise routine, with each exercise done
again a number of times.
12. Fleming did well in isolating a streptococcus from the cerebrospinal fluid of the patient.
13. Effective vaccines prevent such hazards, but only if a social organisation makes sure that all
potential mothers are vaccinated in good time.
Exercise 2
In the following sentences, replace the informal abbreviated form with a more formal
equivalent.
1. The radical restructuring of British politics after 1931 doesn't lie in the events of 13-28
August, but in the changing attitudes within the National Government.
2. This isn't easy to do since most historians persist in speaking of The National Government as
if the same sort of government ruled from 1931 to 1940.
3. The first National Government wasn't intended to be a coalition government in the normal
sense of the term.
4. These aren't at all original or exotic but are based on the ordinary things that most people tend
to eat.
Exercise 3
It is often the case that formal words are longer than informal words. Formal words are
single words not multi-words and formal words are of French/Latin origin rather than
their informal equivalents which are of Anglo-Saxon origin. For example: "depart" is
from French/Latin but "go" is Anglo-Saxon. Complete the following table:
