4.10 Self-teaching questions (1-5)


QUESTION 1:
Below are the first few paragraphs of three articles. Decide whether each one of them is a news story, a feature story, a narrative, an investigative report, an interview, an editorial, a blog, or a combination of more than one type of science writing:
  1. Article 1 [ http://www.wfsj.org/course/en/L4/L4Stq-Article01.html ]
  2. Article 2 [ http://www.wfsj.org/course/en/L4/L4Stq-Article02.html ]
  3. Article 3 [ http://www.wfsj.org/course/en/L4/L4Stq-Article03.html ]
QUESTION 2:
Find creative ways to rewrite some of the terms in the following sentences. For your convenience, terms that might be difficult for the general public have been highlighted in bold:
  1. "Steve Linscombe still isn't quite sure how it happened. The director of the Louisiana State University AgCenter for Rice Research knows that he grew a few lines of transgenic rice in field trials between 2001 and 2003. He also knows that one of those lines, LLRICE601, was grown on less than one acre. What he is not clear on is how the line then wended its way into the food supply. That little mystery is now the subject of an official investigation and a class-action lawsuit."
  2. "There are drugs to treat this early chronic stage, but the parasite also causes a process similar to autoimmunity against which the drugs are not effective."
  3. The development of drug resistance in the parasite that causes river blindness could lead to outbreaks in communities where it has been under control, according to research published last week (16 June) in The Lancet.
  4. Materials scientists from Oxford and Nottingham universities performed chemical reactions inside nanotubes.
QUESTION 3:
Read the following sentences and think of ways to bring the numbers closer to home for your readers:
  1. Patients who inhaled radioactive ultrafine carbon particles displayed traces of it in their bloodstream not long afterwards. These very small pieces of matter are called nanoparticles, defined as anything smaller than 100 nanometres in size.
  2. Chajnantor has been chosen as the site for the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (Alma), a major telescope array that aims to illuminate one half of the Universe that has hitherto been shrouded in darkness. It lies at an altitude of 5,300 metres.
  3. An ongoing survey of the heavens has spotted the most distant, and therefore earliest, giant black hole in the universe. The object, a quasar given the catchy name CFHQS J2329-0301, was found with three other extremely distant quasars in the Canada-France High-z Quasar Survey. CFHQS J2329-0301 is about 13 billion light-years away, say the scientists.
QUESTION 4:
With each of the following three news stories, determine what type of news story each is, list which elements of newsworthiness they have, and what categories of news sources were used.

News story Type of news story Elements of newsworthiness Categories of news sources
'Better and cheaper' typhoid treatment found
[ http://www.scidev.net/content/news/eng/better-and-cheaper-typhoid-treatment-found.cfm ] 		     
Science journalists 'need code of ethics'
[ http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readnews&itemid=3561&language=1 ] 		     
Apple's iPhone makes it to stores
[ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6250192.stm ] 		     


QUESTION 5:
What kinds of leads were used in the following three articles?

Article Type of lead
Beauty with a purpose
[ http://www.islamonline.net/English/Science/2004/05/article05.shtml ]		  
Fish farming saves Kenya's wetlands
[ http://www.islamonline.net/English/Science/Nature/Ecology/2006/07/03.shtml ] 		 
Sorting out the junk: Email in a data-congested world
[ http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&cid=1168265723518&pagename=Zone-English-HealthScience%2FHSELayout ] 		 



Home | Self-teaching questions | Answers | Assignments