In addition to embedding simple noun clauses in the sub-ject or obsub-ject position of a sentence, students must be able to con-vert wh-question and yes/no question sentences into statem
Trang 1complex In addition to embedding simple noun clauses in the
sub-ject or obsub-ject position of a sentence, students must be able to
con-vert wh-question and yes/no question sentences into statement
format when creating noun clauses from question sentences
STRATEGIES AND TACTICS FOR TEACHING
AND TEACHING ACTIVITIES
The following four exercises (some with extended activities) are designed to help students improve their use of subordinate clauses appropriate for aca-demic writing
(1) Reviewing the Reviewer
(a) Students are assigned to read an article, op-ed piece, or book/movie re-view Their task is to assess the writer's position on the issue discussed in an article or evaluate the review The first step is to identify the article writer's position conveyed in citations of the opinions and arguments of others, agreement/disagreement with these opinions/arguments, and points that the writer chooses to emphasize In addition, students focus on reporting verbs and their contextual meanings by means of which the writer's position
is established
The reporting verbs and evaluative adjectives (see also Suggestions for Teaching in chaps 8 and 9) can be organized into several groups such as positive-negative, supporting-rejecting, or neutral As the next step, stu-dents can be asked to add their own items to supplement the lists (e.g., Posi-tive Reporting Verbs, PosiPosi-tive EvaluaPosi-tive AdjecPosi-tives, NegaPosi-tive Reporting Verbs, or Negative Evaluative Adjectives) Students can work in pairs to con-struct the lists
Another option is to supply students with starter lists from which they can begin making their own:
Positive Reporting Verbs Negative Reporting Verbs Neutral Reporting Verbs agree deny maintain
confirm claim demonstrate
assert allege note
When the lists are completed in pairs or individually, students write an evaluation of the article, op-ed piece, or review they read or another arti-cle/review This tasks can be assigned several times throughout the term or a couple of times per week provided that students continue to build on the items already included in their lists
Trang 2(b) The same task can be carried out if students are asked to identify the writer's implications or possible outcomes of the argument/position ex-pressed in the article/review The reporting verbs in the starter list can
in-clude those in the belief verb list (see appendix to this chapter; e.g., imply, forget, deduce, conclude).
(2) Analyzing and Explaining Data
This activity can take 2 to 3 hours of class time and can be carried out in in-termittent phrases with gaps of 1 to 3 days between phrases.
(a) Students can be presented with data in graph, charts, table, or text form The data should deal with issues that most students find useful and
in-teresting For instance, the U.S Census Web site (www.census.gov) contains a
wealth of such information, including data on immigrants and immigra-tion, educaimmigra-tion, men and women, college enrollments, cost of housing in a particular area of the country, or food Sociological and demographic data can also be useful for students to practice their academic vocabulary in writ-ing (see chaps 4, 8, and 9).
Students can be asked to describe and explain the data In some cases, it may be helpful for students if the data in the graphs or text are discussed without explanations before students begin writing This exercise can be useful for students to work in pairs.
Sample 1 Figure 10.1 shows that the number of college students 25 years
of age and older has grown dramatically over the past half century The same can be said about traditional students who are younger than 25 What can explain these changes? In your opinion, why do older students in the United States attend colleges and universities?
Sample 2 According to the U.S Census, in 1999, 54% of all college
stu-dents were women Among traditional stustu-dents who are 25 years old or younger, 52% are women, and their proportion among older students overall constitutes 57% In addition, in the age group of students older than 35 years, 62% are women Approximately 3 million students attend graduate school, and graduate students consist of 1.8 million women and 1.4 million men.
(a) Please propose a tentative explanation (3-5 paragraphs) for these develop-ments in U.S education from a social and economic point of view What do these fig-ures demonstrate ? What possible trends and changes in the social structure does the gender imbalance imply? What could demographers, sociologists, economists, and employers conclude from these census findings'?
Please use some or all of the following verbs (or any other types of verbs) to help you construct your text:
Trang 3FIG 10.1.
assume conjecture doubt explain infer reason suppose believe deduce exemplify illustrate mean reveal
conclude demonstrate expect imply note show
Please do not forget such important modal verbs as can, may, or might (see chap 12).
(b) When you are finished with your possible suggestions and discussion of the data trends, please exchange your proposed hypotheses to explain the data with another pair of students.
(c) Please read the alternative explanation of the data and suggested trends pro-posed by other students Also please write a brief evaluation of the alternative expla-nation: Do you agree with other explanatory approaches suggested by another student/pair of students? What good points are observed and mentioned in the alter-native discussion ? What possible points or issues does an alteralter-native explanation overlook ? What broad conclusions can be made about the data if both your own and alternative explanations are combined to write a general comprehensive report?
Trang 4Please do not forget some of the useful evaluative adjectives and adverbs such as
(see chap 9):]
Positive Evaluative Adjectives and Adverbs accurate(-ly) correct(-ly) impressive(-ly) significant(-ly)
careful(-ly) good/well interesting(-ly) special(-ly)
clear(-ly) important(-ly) right(-ly) thorough(-ly)
Negative Evaluative Adjectives inaccurate(-ly) limited(-ly) misguided(-ly) unconvincing(-ly) inconclusive(-ly) minor questionable(-ly) unsatisfactory(-ly)
Sample 3 In 2000, 84% of the U.S population lived in the same place of
residence they did 1 year earlier Of the remainder, 10% moved to a different residence in the same area or city, 3% relocated from another area in the same state, 3% moved from another state, and 1% moved from abroad In addition, 11% of the U.S population are foreign-born, whereas 89% are native Among the native population, 67% continue to live in the state of their birth
Please propose a tentative explanation (3-5 paragraphs) for the reasons that a rel-atively large number of individuals move in the same area or city or from one state to another What do these figures point to in the U S demographics and social and eco-nomic mobility ? What do these census data imply about the number of immigrants in the United States? What could demographers, sociologists, and economists conclude from these census findings ?
Teachers can also provide verb and adjective lists for Sample 3 as in Sample 2
(3) Error Correction and Editing
The goal of this activity is to help students articulate and reason their edit-ing of text
Please correct the errors in the following texts and sentences and explain what you think needs to be corrected Please keep in mind that some of the text needs to be com-pletely rewritten.
1 The biologists and zoologists who study the environment where
we live in they are called environmentalists But in addition, social sci-entists who work in sociology, education, and public science, they also examine how do we talk about environment Our thinking reveals
more about what don't we understand about nature than about what
Trang 5can we count on as we study How to carry out the effective advocacy
approach I will take an environmental issue which is solid waste man-agement to make an example to utter clearly how does the process of environmental education work on it
Solid waste management defining as that an area of study associate with the control of generation, storage, collection, and disposal in a
manner that are in accord with the principles of economics, public
health, conservation, and other environmental consideration, and that are also responsibly to the public Solid waste management includes
administrative functions involving in the whole solution to the
prob-lems of solid waste thrust the community by its inhabitants Because it
is important for our future and for the life
According to EPA Journal, 1989, it provided a general introduc-tion to solid waste management and served as a way for
under-standing To solve specific solid waste problems, the various
elements that are combining in what is usually knows as a solid
waste management system In most cities, a solid waste
manage-ment system that is existed for collection of solid waste In below,
these are relationships among four functional elements and solid
waste concerns (From a student paper on the importance of solid waste management for the environment)
2 The reason of I mention the culture of poverty can be relate with work incentive although different opinion for different people In la-bor economics and with public assist that is providing in the field of
social work, the author of the article states that as a dominating social perspective seen by higher social class on the poor people
3 Because the brightest focus about this matter is that was put in
our society in the dilemma that we should provide economic assist
with the poor who are not working or not Another matter that we
should look for it further is if the culture of poverty is really existed in them and is maintaining generation by generation (From a student
assignment on the culture of poverty)
(4) What Is Your Point?
Students read an editorial, op-ed piece, or article from a newspaper or pro-fessional journal of their choice The teacher can select articles for students
or students choose their own (Caveat: A common complaint, "But I could-n't find a suitable/interesting/good article," is easy to counter if the teacher has a small stock of articles—possibly saved back from earlier courses.) When students submit their work, they should be required to submit copies
of their articles If the work is done in class, they need to bring an additional copy to hand in with their writing
Option: Students may be asked to read two articles on a similar topic, particularly when some "hot" issue is discussed in print media or on the Internet news sites, and articles are relatively easy to find
Trang 6Step 1 Please read the article, identify the author's thesis and main points/thesis supports [see appendix to chap 11], and underline them Then build a para-phrase of the author's main points, point by point Be sure not to copy the author's wording.
For example, Skeleton Summary:
The author's main point is that
The article also states/notes/observes that
In addition, the author believes/thinks that
The conclusion of the article is that
A variety of sentence stems for summary making is presented in ap-pendix to this chapter.
Step 2 Please decide which of the author's points are valid and which are not Then express your support or disagreement with each of the author's points Please do not neglect to make your arguments balanced by acknowledging that even though you may disagree with a particular point Expand on your Skeleton Summary and give it some argumentation muscle.
For example, Muscular Summary and Solid Argumentation:
The author's main point is that Although I can see her point, xxx is not the only issue in yyy
The article also states/notes/observes that I also think/believe that zzz
In addition, the author believes/thinks that She supports her posi-tion based on xxx, but she may remember that zzz
The conclusion of the article is that Other authors/reports/articles state that In my opinion, the author may need to consider that Step 3—Optional Students can exchange articles and do it all again, Round 2, based on an article chosen by their classmate Then when both Muscular Summaries and Argumentations are completed, students can compare (a) how they identified the article author's main point(s), and (b) what points in the article they chose to support or argue against
QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION
1 In English, complex sentences with subordinate clauses represent
highly advanced constructions that are difficult for L2 writers to use
correctly If you have a few students in your class who continue to
Trang 7make errors in these constructions, will you consider these students
to be ready for academic work in mainstream courses? Among the
many types of errors that students are likely to make with these
structures, which ones would you consider to be more severe or less
severe? Why? Would you make such distinctions in the gravity of
er-rors in subordinate clauses? Which ones and why?
2 As was discussed in chapter 4, it is important for L2 writers to learn
to identify sentence elements such as subject phrases and head
sub-ject nouns, auxiliary verbs, main verbs, and obsub-jects However, it is
quite common that at the college level even native speakers of
Eng-lish are not always able to identify subject, verb, and object phrases
correctly In this case, how proficient should non-native speakers
become in identifying sentence parts? Is it reasonable to expect
non-native speakers to become better at identifying sentence
ele-ments than many native speakers are? Why or why not?
3 The following sentences include subordinate clauses Can you
identify their sentence functions and explain your decision? Are
these sentence acceptable in formal academic written English?
• Many L2 writers dislike learning vocabulary—a common problem that
can bother ESL teachers.
• It goes without saying that learning to write academic essays in a second
language takes a great deal of work.
• Copernicus proposed that the Earth revolved around the Sun, which
came as a complete surprise to his contemporaries.
• In Wisconsin and other Great Lake states, snowstorms can produce large
amounts of precipitation, which can impede transportation.
• At a recent gathering of environmentalists, angry spats arose between
the proponents and opponents of conservation, which were relished by
the media.
4 In your opinion, why do fewer sentence fragment errors occur with
adjective and noun clauses than with adverb clauses?
5 In many constructions it is perfectly acceptable to mix the past and
future tenses:
• This morning, psychologists announced to the media that they will finish
the experiment next year.
• John told Sue that he will buy a new computer when he is ready.
• The spokeswoman for the president stated that no new taxes will be
imple-mented in the forthcoming future.
In your opinion, in what contexts and under what circumstances is
it acceptable to mix the past and future tenses? Can you come up
with a quick rule to explain this distinction to students?
6 Would the semantic or structural regularities (and irregularities) of
English be easier for L2 learners to deal with in their academic
writ-ing? Why? By the same token, would discourse organization or
Trang 8sen-tence structure be easier for L2 writers to learn to use
approp-riately? Why?
FURTHER READINGS ABOUT SENTENCE
AND PHRASE STRUCTURE
Chafe, W (1985) Linguistic differences produced by differences between speaking
and writing In D R Olson, N Torrance, & A Hildyard (Eds.), Literature, lan-guage, and learning: The nature and consequences of reading and writing (pp.
105-123) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Croft, W (1998) The structure of events and the structure of language In M.
Tomasello (Ed.), The new psychology of language (pp 67-92) Mahwah, NJ:
Law-rence Erlbaum Associates.
Davidson, F (1991) Statistical support for training in ESL composition rating In L.
Hamp-Lyons (Ed.), Assessing second language writing (pp 155-165) Norwood, NJ:
Ablex.
Dixon, R M W (1995) Complement clauses and complementation strategies In
F.R Palmer (Ed.), Grammar and meaning (pp 175-220 ) Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Ford, C (1993) Grammar in interaction Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hamp-Lyons, L (1991) Reconstructing academic writing proficiency In L.
Hamp-Lyons (Ed.), Assessing second language writing (pp 127-153) Norwood, NJ:
Ablex.
Hinkel, E (2003) Adverbial markers and tone in L1 and L2 students'
writing.Jour-nal of Pragmatics, 35(7), 1049-1068.
Nash, W., & Stacey, D (1997) Creating texts London: Longman.
Ragan, P (2001) Classroom use of a systemic functional small learner corpus In M.
Ghadessy, A Henry, & R Roseberry (Eds.), Small corpus studies and ELT: Theory and practice (pp 207-236) Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Vann, R., Lorenz, F., & Meyer, D (1991) Error gravity: Response to errors in the
written discourse of nonnative speakers of English In L Hamp-Lyons (Ed.), As-sessing second language writing (pp 181-196) Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
Appendix to Chapter 10
REPORTING AND BELIEF VERBS FOR ACADEMIC WRITING
Common Academic Reporting Verbs affirm assume discuss illustrate presume
allege claim examine imply reveal
argue contend exemplify maintain state
assert describe explain present
Trang 9Other Academic Reporting Verbs add comment describe object report
agree concede discuss present reveal
allege confirm examine presume say
announce convey imply promise suggest
assume deny mention remark write
Belief Verbs Common in Academic Writing
accept deduce expect mean reason
assume deem forget note understand
believe demonstrate hold (the view presume
conclude determine that) presuppose
conjecture doubt imply prove
consider establish infer realize
(Adapted from Quirk et al., 1985)
REPORTING VERBS AND NOUN CLAUSE CHUNKS
FOR SUMMARY MAKING
The author goes on to say/state/show that xxx
The author farther argues/explains/shows that
The article further states that
(Smith) also states/maintains/argues/asserts that
(Smith) also believes/concludes/feels that
The article/report concludes that
In the second half of the article/report, (Johnson) presents xxx to show/explain that
(Adapted from Swales & Peak, 1994)
ADJECTIVE CLAUSE CHUNKS FOR ACADEMIC WRITING
Common Noun + Adjective Clause Chunks
Place
area(s) where case(s) where
area(s) in/to which country where
Trang 10situation where conditions where
situation in/to which examples where
point where
Time
time(s) when case(s) when
time(s) in/at which period(s) when
Other Frequent Noun + Adjective Clause Chunks
the way in which (the) extent to which the
the ways in which the fact that the
way in which the the fact that it
such a way that the degree to which
the extent to which (the) and the extent to which the
(Adapted from Biber et al., 1999)
Academic Nouns Most Frequently Modified by That-Clauses
(in declining order, the fact that pattern)
fact idea view report
possibility suggestion sense sign
doubt conclusion notion
belief claim hypothesis
assumption grounds observation
(Adapted from Nation, 2001; Biber et al., 1999)