Unit 9b Book

As you could see in the previous listening task, not every explanation or statement is a definition. Similarly, not every relative clause is a definition. A proper written definition is a full sentence (not just a phrase) that must contain the term to be defined, a generic noun (aka a hypernym, i.e. a more general word from a higher semantic category) and the defining information, which is the explanatory/informative part:

Now, read more about a definition structure on the first two pages of this document. The most difficult part of a definition is the "higher category word", i.e. the hypernym or generic noun, because sometimes it is hard to find the most appropriate one. Practise choosing generic nouns in this task. 

Once you are able to choose the correct generic noun, you can practise the whole definitions in these two tasks: Task A and Task B. While completing these two tasks, notice that in order to come up with a clear and appropriate informative part of a definition, various grammatical structures can be used, for example, a relative clause (… which is used…; … which provides…), past participle (… used…), present participle (…providing…) and prepositional phrase (of reduced economic activity). In complex definitions, which seem to be more packed with information, it is desirable to use a variety of grammar forms in order to achieve good wording in terms of stylistics. You will see that in the four follow-up tasks, in which you are given four technical definitions: of a switch, capacitor, battery and theodolite. Put the parts of the definitions in the correct order.