How often have we heard students saying: "My teacher told me to keep my sentences short and simple" ? - i.e. recommending a safe policy of error avoidance.
Note:  This is not a problem exclusive to HK or the teaching of English.  "Schools have an obsession with teaching children to avoid mistakes. If you are driving a motor car the only way to avoid mistakes is to leave your car in the garage.�  Edward de Bono: 27 Oct., 2002. London, U.K.

We suggest that the only serious way to change these practices – error avoidance – is to get across the message that you get this simplicity at a cost. The costs of over-simplifying your communication are that your readers may question either:

• the level of your intellectual development, or
• how far you are socialised into your academic or professional community.

That in turn could lead the reader to take a poor view of the power and persuasiveness of your argumentation.

[Pre-]Task : What, if anything, do you find problematic about this statement ?

For your writing to be fully credible and persuasive, you need to be aware of how a reader will evaluate its realism, reasonableness, "truth-value", accuracy and appropriateness. The best way to do this is to put yourself in the position of your target reader, and consider whether what you have written passes a number of tests of what we shall call "delicacy".

We propose here that academic communication - by expert writers as well as students – can benefit from attention to linguistic delicacy (or `fine tuning') of expression.

We can identify 8 logical-cum-linguistic dimensions of delicacy that you should be able to "add" to your statements:

We’ll explore these one by one, but let’s begin first with the assertion which we suggest lacks any of these qualities:

Let’s look at the various ways in which we can improve on this assertion:

1. Probability/Certainty: Students often express their views in an over-certain manner, and are particularly fond of the "will" form, as in our example:
                                               "Nurses will go on strike" [Are you sure ?!] �

2. Scope/Generalisation: Students also tend not to define their referents or population sufficiently narrowly or accurately, in relation to the claim they are making, e.g.

a) "Students prefer IBM computers"

b) "People can no longer afford to eat out"

c) "Arts students study two or more languages"
 

4. Condition/Circumstance: it’s normal for there to be some condition or circumstance (introduced by if…when…where…unless ) for the idea or proposition which can be included in the same sentence. e.g.

Task 4: Add some realistic context or condition (use if, when, unless, in cases where):

5. Relativity: often an absolute measure needs replacing by a relative comment; e.g.:

"Long-serving nurses are more (or increasingly) likely to strike than the newer recruits, as they have more to lose"

Task 5: Make these statements relative (as opposed to absolute):s

a) "I like Chinese tea"

b) "The Democrats were always likely to vote against Clinton’s impeachment"

c) "House prices are low"
 

6.    Attribution: In academic communication, even our reconstructed formulation needs attributing to some source of information or opinion [i.e. Who says so ?!] � "Nurses in Hong Kong may go on strike over low pay unless the government promises to review their pay structure" �
   e.g.    "Sources in the Hospital Authority report/warn that .."
or Dr. C.K. Lo, Director of the Hospital Authority, warned that �
[Note the difference in tone once you introduce an involved source]

But no change is required if you use the neutral option:
                According to Dr. C.K. Lo, Director� , the nurses may go on strike�."

Task 6: Think of realistic ways of attributing the following ideas:

a) "If the HK Govt. continues to intervene in the market, devaluation is inevitable"

b) "Hong Kong finance companies are not behind the current wave of speculation"

c) "Interest rates are too high"

Version so far:
"Sources in the Hospital Authority report that Hong Kong’s nurses are likely to go on strike over low pay unless the government promises to review their pay structure"
 

7. Concession: But it might be that the "circumstance" is that the government had already promised to review the dustmen’s case, and that they had decided to threaten to strike despite that offer; we call clauses beginning with despite, although and while "concessive" clauses (& will offer further examples later); e.g.

Task 7: Add "concessive" qualifications: (using while, although, even if, despite, etc.)

a) "The Hong Kong stock market still continued to fall"

b) "The price of foodstuffs is continuing to rise"

c) "Many educators argue that mother-tongue education is best for university students"
 

The final dimension here makes the  point that it’s unhelpful to refer to concepts or organisations you haven’t previously (or subsequently) introduced in the text:

8. Presupposition: This relates to the assumptions writers often make about the things they’re writing about, what they’re referring to. We call this: "presupposition", or making assumptions about "given" information. If we feel that the reader may be unsure of what the Hospital Authority is, we might need to add �

Task 8: Clarify the jargon terms or acronyms in the following:

a) "So far, LEGCO has passed 98% of the government’s proposed legislation"

b) "UNESCO has recognised HKU as a lead centre in language education"

c) "Max Weber argued that capitalism had its roots in the Protestant ethic"

Summary : These 8 "pillars of delicacy" have taken us from the relatively simple and crude statement we started with:

To the much more complex, yet infinitely closer approximation to a believable representation of what probably reflects the complexity of the bargaining and strike situation, expressed (admittedly clumsily) as follows:

 Sources in the Hospital Authority (attribution), the government branch responsible
 for setting hospital staff salaries (presupposition), report that (fact/belief), although
the government has made promises to review their pay structure (concession),
Hong Kong�s nurses (scope/generalisation) will (fact/belief) go on strike unless the
government implements that review immediately (contingency/condition)

Concessive markers (Although, however) are used to indicate (at the same time):

Using these markers to acknowledging alternative points of view shows awareness of, and respect for, the value or stance of those views - even if you disagree with them. The whole point is that, although you will then go on to challenge or dismiss those views, your use of concession lends balance to your criticism [notice how this sentence does the same thing!]. And at a social level there is also the question of face. Wouldn’t you want your own work similarly respected by other people who may not agree with you ?!

Let’s take another statement which has already been expanded from a crude assertion:

Students refuse to accept direct rule from China

We have made this "more delicate" (via steps 1-6) as follows:

But what if we want to challenge this assertion by So ? We could replace `indicates’ with "wrongly claims that". But this, too, would lack delicacy. A more elegant solution is to introduce someone’s point first, and then to challenge it. This is where we use the argumentative strategy of concession.  E.g.:

Fact/Belief Status         "Most students did X" vs. "…reported doing X"

Condition/Circumstance  if, unless, where, when

Relativity                         more, increasingly, fewer, the more X, the …-er

Attribution                       So (1993) argues that….

Remember: academics read with a critical and sceptical eye, and can discriminate between conflicting arguments. If we look again at our 8 dimensions of delicacy, we can frame these in terms of critical questions that the sceptical reader is likely to ask:

Concession/Balance:    But surely…. I thought that … (s.th. contrasting or contrary)  
                                     Is s/he aware of the strengths of X’s position?

Presupposition:         What does (X) mean ?  Did you introduce this earlier ?

Task 9:  Reflecting on the examples above, and asking the full range of sceptical questions about the proposition,  expand the statement below to give it maximum "delicacy":

Delicacy Task: Pose sceptical questions in reaction to the statement:

The possibilities here are endless; here are some questions you could ask:

Concession:             I thought … (something contrasting or contrary)  
                                You have to admit they have a case …

Presupposition:         What does "the marking" mean/refer to ?
                                    Did you introduce this earlier ?

Note: This task can be undertaken by either teachers or students - in any discipline. The principles remain the same. You may find that you come up with some different dimensions – which you feel need taking into account in your discipline.

This opening page offers examples of different kinds of Literature review, complete with tasks and commentaries

http://www4.caes.hku.hk/acadgrammar/litrev/main.htm

Pages on actual writing of a Lit Review are:

http://www4.caes.hku.hk/acadgrammar/litrev/section2/two1.htm

- and the 4 pages that follow, complete with links to the most appropriate of the example reviews.

Extensive advice on how and why you refer to the literature, and write a bibliography, is on this site:

http://www4.caes.hku.hk/acadgrammar/general/argue/citation/frame2.htm

You may want to start at the more general site: "The Research Process: Conducting an Academic Investigation":

http://www4.caes.hku.hk/acadgrammar/report/resProc/one.htm

- or go more directly to the site on "Conducting a questionnaire survey":

http://www4.caes.hku.hk/acadgrammar/report/resProc/one.htm

You might want to kick off with "Methods and Results : what they have in common"

http://www4.caes.hku.hk/acadgrammar/report/resProc/one.htm

http://www4.caes.hku.hk/acadgrammar/report/repProc/sections/results/two2-4.htm

http://www4.caes.hku.hk/acadgrammar/report/repProc/sections/discuss/two2-5.htm

http://www4.caes.hku.hk/acadgrammar/report/repProc/sections/conclude/two2-6.htm

Academic Grammar is intended to be navigable without these pointers, but it might be useful to have the most appropriate starting point for more specific interim tasks.