Page 193 - English for Writing Research Papers

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The confidence level of S5 could be reduced as in S6.

S6. Our data fit quite well with those of Mkrtchyan.
Words like quite (reasonably, sufficiently, adequately, satisfactorily, suitably, appro-

priately ) leave your claim open to interpretation. They are vague enough to allow
anyone to attach their own meaning to what you are saying. However, you don’t
want to use them more than once or twice, as otherwise you may risk being accused
of being too evasive or equivocal.
Other words you could use to replace quite in S6 are surprisingly, remarkably , and
unexpectedly . These words attribute a very subjective element to the interpretation
of the data, and again leave readers free to give their own meaning to what exactly

the author meant. However, again, you need to be careful (Sect. 9.3 ), and if you do
use such adverbs, it helps if you say what was surprising, remarkable or unexpected
about them.

Use the adverb signifi cantly wisely. It is often associated with statistics and simply
means that something is unlikely to have occurred by chance. So it does not have the
general meaning of being important or noteworthy.

Sometimes, you need to talk about the level of completeness of an operation or
activity. In such cases you can use adverbs such as partially, in part, to some extent ,
and to a certain extent . Again, these are rather vague expressions, if possible you
should try to quantify them.

10.7 Toning down the level of probability
Another way to hedge your claims is to give readers an indication of how likely your

findings are correct. There are many ways of expressing this kind of probability. The
percentage probabilities in the example below should only be seen as very general
indicators.

modal verbs

X must / cannot play a role in Y. (100% certain)
Smoking can cause cancer. (100% – this does not mean that smoking always leads to can-
cer, but only that it has been proved that in certain circumstances smoking is the cause of
cancer)

Future work will entail investigating X, which should prove whether x is equal to y or to z.
(80%)