Tài liệu Teaching academic ESL writing part 27 docx

In L2 academic writing, there are only a couple of important things to re-member about the placement and punctuation of adverb clauses: If adverb clauses are placed at the beginning of a

ance and mobilizing support for strong social control Because they need to capture the

public interest, the mass media often sensationalize crime and deviance (Thompson &

Hickey, 2002, p 183)

In this excerpt, the sentence-initial position of the because clause con-nects the information in the preceding sentence to that in the main clause

(e.g., public opinion—public interest, the mass media—they, and vast power—cap-ture} Specifically, adverbial clauses at the beginning of sentences play the

role of connectives and transitions between ideas and information in keep-ing with the-old-information-first-and-the-new-information last pattern (see chap 11) Some researchers have found that the majority of all initial

clauses consist of if-conditionals that have the function of organizing

dis-course and establishing and maintaining topics (Ford & Thompson, 1986)

On the other hand, corpus analyses of various genres have demonstrated that conditional clauses are less common in academic writing than in con-versation or fiction (Biber et al., 1999; Leech et al., 2001)

The ability of the sentence-final adverb clause to expand the informa-tion in the main clause can be further noted in the following text, where the information in the clause provides an example for the point made in the main clause:

The annihilation of a minority may be unintentional, as when Puritans brought

deadly diseases that Native Americans had no immunity to (Thompson & Hickey,

2002, p 237)

In addition to the sentence-initial and sentence-final positions, adverb clauses can also occur in the middles of sentences However, these types of constructions require a break in the flow of information in a sentence, re-sulting in syntactically complex constructions that most (if not all) L2 writ-ers probably would not miss a great deal

Tenses in Adverb Clauses of Time and Condition

In adverb clauses of time and condition, only the present and past tense can

be used:

When medical trials are completed, patients' records will be kept indefinitely.

If multinational companies increase their control of the global market, cross-cultural

employment training will become an essential job requirement.

In complex sentences with clauses of time and condition, only the main clause can be marked for the future tense

The future tense is never used in time and condition clauses

marked by such subordinate conjunctions as after, as (soon as), before,

when, while, until, and if In time and condition clauses, perfect tenses

are also singularly rare As discussed in chapter 7, in general the uses

of the future and perfect tenses are rare in academic writing.

Position and Punctuation of Adverbial Clauses

As mentioned earlier, complex sentences with adverbial clauses in effect represent two conjoined simple sentences, which can be moved around freely until they are conjoined:

1 In the past, colleges and universities were primarily the domain of students

in their late teens and early twenties.

2 Now increasing numbers of older students are returning to school.

These two sentences can be combined in various ways depending on the writer's ideas and desired context: The main point of a sentence is placed in the main (independent clause) and secondary information in the adverb clause The two sentences can be sequenced in a way that best fits the con-text as well:

3 Although in the past, colleges and universities were primarily the domain of

students in their late teens and early twenties, now increasing numbers of

older students are returning to school, [the adverb clause precedes the

main clause]

4 Now increasing numbers of older students are returning to school,

al-though in the past, colleges and universities were primarily the domain

of students in their late teens and early twenties, [the same basic

mean-ing can be conveyed when the adverb clause follows the main

clause]

5 Although now increasing numbers of older students are returning to school,

in the past, colleges and universities were primarily the domain of students

in their late teens and early twenties, [the main and background

infor-mation is switched, and the meaning of sentence (5) is different

from that in either (3) or (4)]

6 In the past, colleges and universities were primarily the domain of students

in their late teens and early twenties, although now the increasing number

of older students are returning to school, [the basic meaning of

sen-tence (6) is the same as that in (5), and both (5) and (6) are different

from (3) and (4)]

In L2 academic writing, there are only a couple of important things to re-member about the placement and punctuation of adverb clauses:

If adverb clauses are placed at the beginning of a complex

sen-tence, a comma must be used to separate it from the main clause No

comma is necessary when the clause is at the end of the sentence.

COMMON ERRORS WITH ADVERBIAL CLAUSES

Three Steps Back: Although but Errors

The main discourse and contextual function of concessive clauses is to hedge the idea/generalization/statement in the main clause and present a balanced position by accounting for other perspectives:

Although not all communities and groups accept society's institutions, a majority

of the citizens in any country do not challenge the social order and accepted social patterns.

Economic descriptions of buying decision making assume buyers' purely rational purchase decisions, even though many buying decisions have emotional aspects.

To put it simply, concessive clauses play a role analogous to "one step back" and the main clause "two steps forward." In this way, writers advance their ideas/positions gradually and diplomatically, as is usually expected in academic writing, rather than rushing forward (Swales, 1990a).

In L2 writing, however, when writers misunderstand the "one step back"

function of concessives, they additionally employ the conjunction but with

main clauses:

*Although managers believe that a worker's salary is everything, but they for-get to think about other benefits.

*Even though art was very important in the 18th century, but it is not so im-portant now because technology is where the future is.

In effect such structures result in one-step-back (although) + two-steps-back (but with the main clause) = three steps back, and the thrust of

the writer's main point does not seem to advance.

A common student error is using although/even though and but in

one complex sentence The teacher may have to persistently and

em-phatically warn against this use.

Sentence Fragments

The most common types of sentence fragments found in students' writing consist of separated adverb clauses or prepositional phrases The first type

of error is usually easy to notice and correct:

*Because engineering is a practical field of the application of science and math.

* Although education and training are an investment.

*When students earn more knowledge and hospital experience in nursing.

To a large extent, such errors occur (in L1 and L2 writing alike) because sep-arated adverb clauses are acceptable and highly common in conversations:

• Why did you decide to study engineering?

—Because engineering is a practical field of application of science and math.

• Education is expensive these days Hmmm.

—Education and training are an investment though.

• So, when do students get a chance to do clinical training?

—When students earn more knowledge and hospital experience in nursing.

The purpose of subordinate conjunctions such as because, although, when, and if is to conjoin the main and subordinate clauses Thus, when

tions are used, they need to have two clauses to conjoin In a sense conjunc-tions play the role of glue to glue two sentences together; if a sentence includes only one simple sentence and a bit of glue, there is nothing for the conjunction to conjoin.

To correct separated adverb clauses, two options are possible:

Ei-ther the glue must be removed (and the conjunction deleted), or

an-other sentence needs to be added to make use of the gluing

conjunction power.

Other types of sentence fragments such as separated prepositional phrases are also highly common in conversations:

• Where did you read about xxx ?

—In an article about the importance of visual art in advertising.

• When did World War I begin ?

—On the day when the Austrian crown prince was assassinated in Sarajevo.

In written text separated prepositional phrases are more difficult to no-tice and correct than abandoned adverb clauses Fortunately, however, lonely prepositional phrases are less common.

As discussed in chapter 4, every English sentence must have at least a subject and a verb to be grammatical Thus, to identify separated

preposi-tional phrases, the first step is to ask the student to find the sentence verb.

If there is no verb, it is a safe guess that there is probably no sentence

How-ever, if one merely inserts a verb into a prepositional phrase to turn it into a

sentence, the next step is to find the subject As also discussed in chapters 4 and 9, prepositional phrases cannot be sentence subjects For this reason the last step is to give the sentence a subject, in addition to the verb, and if

the subject and verb "agree" in number (singular or plural), the sentence is finally complete.

ADJECTIVE (RELATIVE) CLAUSES

Adjective clauses have functions similar to those of simple adjectives or ad-jective phrases An important difference among these adjectival construc-tions is that single-word adjectives (even a series of single-word adjectives) are placed in front of the noun they describe, whereas adjective phrases and clauses follow the noun they describe For example,

• Yellow ribbons play an important symbolic role in American culture [a

sin-gle-word adjective]

• Contemporary educational reform is an issue for the public debate [serial

single-word adjectives]

• A study carried out at the University of Kansas focuses on TV viewing

among adolescents, [an adjective phrase that describes the study]

• Today, a typical American couple consists of a husband and wife, who both

work outside the home [an adjective clause that describes a husband

and wife noun phrase]

• Many of the children who attend day care centers do not seem to pay much

attention to their mothers'departure and return, [an adjective clause that

describes the noun phrase the children]

In academic writing, an advantage of using adjective clauses, as opposed

to attributive (descriptive) adjectives, is that the amount of information in-cluded in a clause can be greater than that conveyed by single-word adjec-tives (Chafe, 1994) Adjective clauses can be used to modify practically any type of noun or noun phrase, and in these subordinate clause constructions

the relative pronouns that, who, and which replace the noun that the

adjec-tive clause modifies:

1 Livia (58 B.C.-A.D 29), who [Livia] was Octavian's third wife, was_

ad-mired for her wisdom and dignity.

2 In search of spices that [spices] were in extraordinarily high demand, the

Portuguese went directly to the source, to India.

In academic writing, among all types of relative pronouns, who, that, and which are used far more frequently than whom,l whose, when, or why The fourth common relative pronoun is where to modify nouns that refer to places or nouns in prepositional phrases of place (e.g., the regions where, in the city where,

or at the site where) Other types of relativizers occasionally found in academic writing include in which and to which (Biber et al., 1999) A list of chunks with

nouns and relative pronouns that follow them in frequently encountered ad-jective clauses is included in the appendix to this chapter.

When working with adjective clauses, L2 writers must remember an im-portant point:

Relative pronouns (e.g., that, who, and which) "copy" the

grammati-cal information from the noun phrase they replace (i.e., if the noun

phrase is plural, then the relative pronoun remains plural and

re-quires the plural form of the verb).

In Example (1), Livia is a singular noun, therefore the pronoun who is also singular, and therefore the verb was is also singular On the other hand,

in Example (2), the noun spices is plural, therefore the pronoun that is also plural, and therefore the verb were is plural.

In addition to these relatively simple adjective clauses, one more type of these constructions exists, and it is not so simple In adjective clauses (1) and (2) with Livia and spices, the verb immediately follows the relative pronouns

who (was) and that (were) Thus, a conclusion can be made that who and that are subjects of the adjective clauses who was Octavian's third wife and that were

in extraordinarily high demand.

However, adjective clauses can become far more complex (and far more er-ror-prone) when the relative pronoun is the object of the adjective clause verb:

European expansion advanced outside the continent with the development of the sail and the gun Western Europeans combined the sail and the gun in the form of the gunned ship.

European expansion advanced outside the continent with the development of the sail and the gun, which Western Europeans combined [the sail and the gun] in the form of the gunned ship.

In (3) and (4), the adjective clause modifies the noun phrase that actually has the function of the verb object When the verb object in the adjective

clause is turned into a relative pronoun (e.g., who, that, which), two things

happen:

'The pronoun whom is required only when it follows a preposition (e.g., to whom, for whom, about

whom) In all other cases, who would be appropriate (Leech & Svartvik, 1994; Quirk et al., 1985).

• The relative pronoun is moved to the first position in the clause to

follow the noun it describes

• The object noun phrase (the sail and the gun) is omitted because it

has taken the form of the relative pronoun2

The following points are important for L2 writers to know:

• The structure such as *European expansion advanced outside the

conti-nent with the development of the sail and the gun, which Western

Europe-ans combined *them* in the form of the gunned ship is incorrect because

it includes two pronouns—which and them—to refer to the same

noun phrase when only one is needed.

• Relative pronouns of any kind always follow the noun phrase they

describe.

• In general, adjective clauses always immediately follow the noun

phrase they describe.

Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Adjective Clauses

As mentioned, the purpose of adjective clauses is to modify (describe) the nouns that they follow All grammar textbooks that deal with adjective clauses invariably mention restrictive and nonrestrictive adjective clauses Restrictive clauses, by means of narrowly identifying a particular noun, re-strict the range and type of nouns they modify only to one specific noun or type of nouns:

A primary group consists of a small number of people who regularly

inter-act on a face-to-face basis, have close personal ties, and are emotionally

com-mitted to the relationship (Thompson & Hickey, 2002, p 158)

In this example, the rather vague noun phrase a small number of people is

"restricted" or limited by the specific definition in the adjective clause Re-strictive adjective clauses are never separated by commas because the infor-mation in the adjective clauses is necessary (and cannot be separated out) to define and identify the noun.

On the other hand, nonrestrictive clauses are those that supply additional information to describe nouns that are already known or well defined:

In preindustrial societies, most interactions occur in primary groups of friends,

neighbors, and kin, who can consist of parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, cousins, and

other relations.

2 In some languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, or Amharic, the repetition of the object noun

or pronoun is required, and L2 writers who are speakers of these languages may make this type

of error particularly frequently.

The adjective clause in this sentence largely defines the word kin, which

actually may not need a specific definition and is likely to be known to most native speakers of English Nonrestrictive clauses do not delimit the noun to one specific object or range of objects in the context because a narrow

iden-tification of this specific noun is not needed (e.g., low rainfall regions, which )the Romans, who , feudal law, which ) In this case, the adjective clause

is separated by commas: It provides helpful but inessential information The greatest issues with the ever-popular discussions on restrictive and nonrestrictive adjective clauses, included in every grammar and composition book, is that they are extraordinarily difficult for L2 writers to identify In an earlier example, for instance, the L2 writer would have to know the meaning

of the word kin and then be able to figure out that this word already has a

rela-tively limited meaning in English, and therefore be able to conclude that the adjective clause has to be separated out by commas The teaching of restric-tive and nonrestricrestric-tive adjecrestric-tive clauses and their punctuation may simply not be worth the time and work expended on their conceptual (and abstract) definitions and the ambiguous rules that govern their uses.

In formal academic writing, only 15% of all adjective clauses are

nonrestrictive, and the information included in them is usually

tan-gential and somewhat unnecessary (Biber et al., 1999).

Undoubtedly, the quality and types of prose in the formal academic writing research in English language corpora are different from that in student writing.

Nonetheless, in teaching ESL or academic L2 writing, the

distinc-tion between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses, as well as this

par-ticular aspect of punctuation, may simply occupy very low priority.

In light of the lexical and conceptual complexities associated with the distinctions between restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses, a general rule of thumb may be useful for L2 writers:

Adjective clauses with that relative pronouns are never separated by

commas.

Adjective Participial Phrases

Adjective participial phrases are derived by reducing an adjective clause to

an adjective phrase, and the functions of participial phrases are largely the same as those of single-word adjectives and adjective clauses (i.e., to modify nouns and noun phrases; Meyer, 1991) In formal academic writing, the

main purpose of these advanced constructions is to package information as compactly as possible (Biber, 1988) In various studies of written discourse and the assessment of L2 writing, reduced clauses and participial phrases are often identified with formal written (rather than informal) discourse and advanced facility in writing and grammar (Davidson, 1991; Hamp-Ly-ons, 1991a, 1991b).

It is important to note that participial phrases of any type are hardly ever found in L2 academic writing, but using them occasionally (and cor-rectly) in academic text may project a certain degree of linguistic sophis-tication.

Adjective participles can be active or passive (see also chap 7):

Most water flowing in irrigation canals comes from nearby rivers

[active participial phrase]

Water stored in artificial lakes evaporates during dry and hot summers

[passive participial phrase]

When teaching advanced ESL/EAP writing classes, teachers need

to be familiar with the mechanisms for adjective clause reductions

even if they are not explicitly taught For instructors, familiarity with

the participial phrase derivation may come in handy when working

with common student errors in the uses of active and passive

adjec-tives (see chap 7 for more information).

Adjective clauses are reduced by means of just a few steps:

1 The relative pronoun—the adjective clause subject (e.g., who, that,

which)—is deleted

2 The adjective clause verb is converted to a participle.

a In the case of the active verb, -ing is added to the base form of the

verb (e.g., flow + ing, contain + ing, include + ing)

b In the case of the passive verb, the auxiliary -be verb is deleted,

and the past participle form of the verb is used (or simply

re-tained without change as it is used in passive verb constructions;

e.g., [is/are] found, [was] reduced, [were] taught]

Adjective Participial Phrase: Active

In regions that face the most serious water shortages, about 85% of the water is

used in irrigation.

In regions face + ing the most serious water shortage, about 85% of the water is

used in irrigation.

Adjective Participial Phrase: Passive

The volume of ground water that is found in underground reservoirs exceeds that of

all surface water The volume of ground water found in underground reservoirs exceeds that of

all surface water.

Adjective clause reduction in most contexts is considered optional (Chafe, 1970) According to a detailed study by Master (2002), the preva-lence of adjective clause reduction depends on the discipline to some ex-tent For example, in biology, chemistry, psychology, computer science, geology, math, and physics, adjective clauses are reduced far more rarely than in humanities On the whole, however, discipline-related distinctions are not very pronounced Most important, however, Master (2002) found

that in a vast majority of cases, adjective clause reduction occurs when

relative pronouns (e.g., who, that, which) occupy the clause subject posi-tion (e.g., the river flowing ) These types of participial phrases are far

eas-ier to teach (and for students to learn) than those where the relative clause pronoun occupies the clause object position (fortunately indeed).

A small number of active or passive adjective participles have been en-countered repeatedly in formal academic writing, and these are derived from highly common academic verbs (see chap 8) The frequent participles can be learned and used as needed in academic writing.

With the exception of using, the -ing participles in the list hardly

ever occur in the form of progressive verbs, and L2 writers do not

need to be concerned about confusing them.

Common Academic Participles Active (in declining order)

containing involving relating

using arising requiring

concerning consisting resulting

having corresponding

Passive (in declining order)

based caused obtained

given concerned produced

used made taken

(Adapted from Biber et al., 1999)