Astana IT University

Department of General Education Disciplines

Academic Writing

Week 5

Lecture 1: Theoretical and Conceptual

Frameworks
Lecture 2: Concept Definition.
Extended Definitions of Terms

Seminars 1-2: Language

focus: Extended definitions
Seminar 3: Midterm: Test 1 on language
focus and academic article evaluation
Learning outcomes:
• By the end of the lessons, students will be able to:
• analyze the teacher's comments;
• modify the definitions according to the teacher's comments;
• formulate the definition for their research.
 Task A: Complete the definitions by inserting an appropriate preposition.

An anhydride is a compound______which the elements of water

have been removed. ​
 Task A: Complete the definitions by inserting an appropriate
preposition. ​
A thermometer is an instrument ________which temperature can be measured.
 Task A: Complete the definitions by inserting an appropriate
preposition. ​

An eclipse is a celestial event________which one body, such as a star, is covered by another, s

uch as a planet.
 Task A: Complete the definitions by inserting an appropriate
preposition. ​

An axis is an imaginary line _________which a body is said to rotate.

​
 Task A: Complete the definitions by inserting an appropriate
preposition. ​
​Demography is a discipline that is concerned with changes in population size and the degree
_____ which fertility (i.e., births), mortality (i.e., deaths), and migration
(i.e., movement into and out of an area) contribute to these changes. ​
 Task A: Complete the definitions by inserting an appropriate
preposition. ​
​
Energy balance is a state___________which the number of calories eaten equals the number o
f calories used.
Task B. 10 min
Put the sentences in the correct order.
Palindromes
____a. The term itself comes from the Ancient Greek word palindromes meaning "running back again."
____b. Another good and more recent example is "draw pupil's lip upward".
____c. Now, however, computers have allowed word puzzlers to construct palindromes that are
thousands of words long, but these are simply lists of unrelated words that do not have meaning when
taken together.
____d. A palindrome is a word or phrase that results in the same sequence of letters no matter whether it
is read from left to right or from right to left.
____e. One of the classic long palindromes is "A man, a plan, a canal, Panama."
____f. Before we had computers, long palindromes used to be very hard to construct, and some word
puzzlers spent immense amounts of time trying to produce good examples.
____g. Some common English words are palindromes, such as pop, dad, noon, and race car.
Task C. 20 min
This task presents a draft of a definition along with
some instructor comments.
Revise the text after reading the comments.
Rewrite the entire passage to reflect the changes that
you think are reasonable

1.Automotive airbag is occupant restraint system. 2.It provides protection for occupant of
vehicle in crash. 3.Although airbags may seem to be somewhat recent innovation, rapidly
inflating air cushions designed to prevent crash injuries existed for quite some time.
4.Before being used in the automobiles. 5.In fact researchers filed very first patents for
inflatable safety cushion to be used in airplanes during World War II. 6.A recent study by
the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration concluded that airbags save nearly
1,000 lives annually. 7.In the future even more lives will be saved as new airbag
technologies are developed. 8.Currently, for example, research is being done on as many
as six different types of airbags that will offer protection in a wider range of accidents
beyond front-end and side-impact collisions. 9.Automotive airbag technology developed
between 1940 and 1960 was quite similar to that of airbags currently in use. 10.Those
early airbag systems were very difficult to implement and costly. 11.The main concern for
design engineers at the time centered on storage. 12.And the efficient release of
compressed air . 13.The housing of the system had to be large enough for a gas canister.
14.The canister had to keep the gas at high pressure for a long period of time. 15.The bag
itself had to have a special design. 16.It would deploy reliably and inflate within 40
milliseconds. 17.The solution to these problems came in the early 1970s with the
development of small inflators. 18.Inflators used hot nitro- gen instead of air to deploy the
bag. 19.It allowed the widespread installation of airbags in vehicles beginning in the
1980s.
Task D: Identifying the parts of extended definitions.
15 min
• Work in your original small teams
• Scan the article “Preparing teachers for the application of AI-powered technologies in foreign language education” (LMS Moodle, Week
5)
• Find the following definitions and match them to the parts:
Definitions Parts
AI-powered tools​

Adaptive educational systems (AES)​

Intelligent educational systems (IES)​

Chatting robots (chatbots)

Intelligent tutoring systems (ITS)

Machine translation (MT)

Intelligent virtual reality (IVR)

Definitions Baker and Smith (2019) divide AI tools used in education into three groups: a) learner-facing, b) teacher-facing, and c) system-facing ones. a. Learner-facing AI tools are
software that students use to learn a subject matter. b. Teacher-facing systems are used by teachers with the purpose to reduce their workload and make their output more
AI-powered tools​ effective in specific automating tasks, such as administration, assessment, feedback and plagiarism detection. c. System-facing AI tools provide information for
administrators and managers on the institutional level, for example, they help monitor attrition patterns across faculties or colleges.

Adaptive Adaptive educational systems (AES) are designed to adapt some of the key functional characteristics (e.g. content, sequence of activities or navigation support) to the
educational learner needs. This may happen thanks to “building a model of the goals, preferences and knowledge of each individual student and using this model throughout the
systems interaction with the student in order to adapt to the needs of that student” (Brusilovsky & Peylo, 2003, p. 156). An adaptive system thus “operates differently for different
(AES)​ learners, taking into account information accumulated in the individual or group learner models” (Magnisalis et al., 2011).

Intelligent Intelligent educational systems (IES) incorporate and perform “some activities traditionally executed by a human teacher - such as coaching students or diagnosing their
educational misconceptions“ (Brusilovsky & Peylo, 2003, p. 156). They aim to provide learner-tailored support through implementing “extensive modelling of the problem-solving
systems process in the specific domain of application” (Magnisalis et al., 2011). Brusilovsky & Peylo (2003) list as major Intelligent Tutoring technologies the following:
(IES)​ curriculum sequencing (providing the student with the most suitable individually planned sequence of topics and learning tasks to help find an “optimal path” through the
learning material), intelligent solution analysis, and problem solving support.

Chatting robots Chatting robots (chatbots) are groups of computer programs that are meant to simulate intelligent human language interaction. A human user and a computer (robot) are
(chatbots) engaged in informal chat (in a written or spoken form) using a natural language. Chatbots are most frequently utilized in marketing communication; however, they may be
used effectively in foreign language classrooms as well (Dargan, 2019; Jia, 2004a, 2004b; Jia, 2008; Kerly et al., 2007).

Intelligent ITS are computer-based learning systems designed to simulate one-to-one personal tutoring. They consist of four basic components: the domain model, the student model,
tutoring the tutoring model, and the interface model. “Based on learner models, algorithms and neural networks, they can make decisions about the learning path of an individual
systems (ITS) student and the content to select, provide cognitive scaffolding and help, to engage the student in dialogue. ITS have enormous potential, especially in large-scale distance
teaching institutions, which run modules with thousands of students, where human one-to-one tutoring is impossible” (Zawacki-Richter et al., 2018, p. 5).

Machine translation Machine translation (MT) is the process when computer software is employed to translate a text (written or spoken) from one natural language to another. For a long time,
(MT) using MT tools for language learning purposes has been limited due to a questionable quality of their outputs. Artificial intelligence technologies like neural machine
translation have improved the quality of machine translation considerably and free-access web-based MT services resulted in millions of users using services such as
Google Translator, Translator Online, Foreign Word, Web Trance for their work or study every day.

Intelligent Intelligent virtual reality (IVR) is a complex system integrating conversational AI tools, spatial context awareness technologies, and gesture and facial landmark recognition
virtual reality (IVR) systems, NLP, speech recognition and natural language understanding technologies. Learners can practice speaking with AIbased avatars that simulate realistic
conversations with native speakers, which enable learners to gain fluency and build confidence through highly personalized practice.
 Develop a Theoretical Framework
Asking yourself the following questions, should help you to develop an effective theoretical framework,
tailored to your own data analysis needs:
Are there theories that have been developed in the field of my research topic, or in similar topics that might
inform an understanding of my research question, my research problem and data analysis?
What do experts in the field of my proposed research say about the problem I want to investigate?
What do they say about the research questions I want to investigate, from theoretical perspectives?
Which assumptions, definitions, and propositions are in these leading scholars’ theories, and how can I make
them explicitly relevant to my research question, research problem, and data analysis?
Have I defined the key concepts in my theoretical framework?
Does the theoretical framework I am developing address the research questions of my research?
Is my theoretical framework easily applicable to my data analysis?
Task E. 10 min
Writing a definition
Write an extended definition for a key innovation or discovery related to your chosen research topic. For
example, this could be a process, an approach to doing something, or a device. Include the following
information: a sentence definition of the innovation, when the innovation came about, the importance of
the innovation, the problem that the innovation addressed, and some discussion of how the innovation
changed your field.
There may be a need to focus on aspects such as:
o Components
o Types
o Examples
o or Perspectives etc.
Language chunks recommended to use
https://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/writing-definitions/
 Concepts submission 5%
Assessment criteria rubric Deadline – Week 6, Sunday 23:59

Criteria Score Score

given
Content: One key concept is identified in relation to the topic of the research paper.
The description of the concept is based on a minimum of at least 2 academic sources and has these features:
1. Two definitions of one key concept , e.g., from a dictionary or an expert in the field (from at least two different sources) 20

2. An extended definition of one key concept with expansion to components/types/applications/operating principles/history/examples 35

3. A comment on the definition and its relation to the research paper written by the students
20

Formatting and citations:

Both, in-text citation and the references are correctly formatted following the APA 7 th style conventions 10

Paper submitted:
1. is free of grammar, punctuation and spelling mistakes
2. is flexible and accurate use of a wide range of vocabulary and has language chunks provided in lectures (use and highlight at least 3 chunks)
4. is 100-150 words long 15

Total
100
Variations in Definitions
• Sometimes a definition of a term or concept is not fixed.
• There may be a lack of agreement as to a precise definition, or perhaps there are competing perspectives.
• While not as common in the hard sciences, this is something that students in other fields may encounter.
• If competing definitions exist for a term that you will be using, a good strategy is to acknowledge some of the different
definitions, but then make clear to your reader the definition you will adopt.
• Notice how the authors of the examples express the lack of agreement surrounding a term.​

• Here are some skeletal phrases that you could use to present the definition that you have chosen. ​
• While debate exists regarding a precise definition of ... , the stance adopted in this paper is that .... ​
• For the purposes of this paper, ... refers to/is defined as/is considered to be .... Here we define ... as ... ​
• In this paper I have adopted [author's] definition of ... . This paper follows [author's] definition of ....​
Draft your assignment
• See the template in Week 5, LMS Moodle
Thank you for participation!