Page 111 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

NOUNS ANDTHE NOUN PHRASE 97
(1) The people with higher level of education definitely have a betterfuture than the people who have less. Mostly, people also choose higher education because of its status. People would rather have an average status than a low status. The reason is that the so- cietyviewsthesepeopleasunderachieversinthecommunity....In the21stcentury,one of the reasons that people will try to get higher education is to have a better status. The other reason is to earn more money. With status and money, people can afford to have a higher standard of living. (From a student assignment on the economic impact
of education on the life of a local community.)
In this excerpt, the noun people is repeated seven times, higher education three times, and reason twice. The lexical redundancy clearly demonstrates the shortfalls in the writer's vocabulary associated with a particular lexical domain. Most NNS students who have taken the TOEFL are familiar with the notion (but not necessarily the term) of lexical redundancy because on the test the section on Structure includes items with redundant meanings. In studies of particularly problematic errors in NNS students' writing, uni- versity faculty repeatedly indicated that inappropriate and redundant uses of vocabulary are among the most egregious shortfalls in L2 academic texts—on par with errors in verb tenses and subject-verb agreement (Johns, 1997; Santos, 1988; Vann, Lorenz, & Meyer, 1991).
To help learners expand their vocabulary range in the domain people, al- ternatives can be provided and practiced in context:
People—adults, employees of local businesses, individuals, persons, population, the public, residents, community/group members, workers.
Higher education—college/university education, advanced training, college/ uni- versity degree studies, education beyond the high school, professional preparation,
professional training, college/university-level training.
Reason—aim, basis, cause, consideration, expectation, explanation, goal, purpose, thinking, understanding.
An important advantage of teaching vocabulary in semantic and contextually applicable clusters is that students see its immediate uses and practicality. Although to expand students' vocabulary ranges in various semantic domains simultaneously is a gradual and painstaking process, it is much easier and more profitable to work with papers, contexts, and assignments at hand because such an ap- proach meets students' immediate needs for developing a set of in- terchangeable lexical "plugs" that can be reused from one written assignment to the next.
Another important consideration when providing students with lexical alternatives is that they are essential in maintaining text cohesion by means of lexical substitutions (see further discussion on cohesion in chaps. 7, 8,
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