Page 140 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

126 CHAPTER 6
Additional levels of complexity arise when L2 writers transfer culturally determined considerations of appropriateness in pronoun use, as is the case, for example, with personal pronouns. In the teaching of L2 writing in ESL/EAP and writing/composition courses, frequent employment of per- sonal pronouns is often perceived to be appropriate and acceptable, partic- ularly in essays associated with expressing personal views and ideas. However, several studies of large corpora of formal academic text have found that in many disciplines uses of personal pronouns are very infre- quent. With regard to L1 and L2 essay texts, prominent and significant dis- tinctions have been identified between NS students' uses of various types of pronouns and those encountered in NNS academic prose in English (Hinkel, 2001c, 2002a).
This chapter begins with an examination of personal pronouns in aca- demic texts, followed by slot fillers (it/there), and then demonstrative and in- definite pronouns and their functions in academic discourse and text.
PERSONAL PRONOUNS IN ACADEMIC TEXTS
The textual purpose of personal pronouns in written discourse is to refer di- rectly to the writer, the audience of writing, and specific things or persons other than the writer or audience. Corpus analyses of various genres have shown that personal pronouns are orders of magnitude more common than other types of pronouns, and these features are far more common in conver- sational than in any other type of genres. In addition to conversational dis- course, personal pronouns are also encountered in fiction, but only rarely in academic text. As Biber et al. (1999) pointed out, because personal pro- nouns mostly refer to persons, "human beings are a more marginal topic" (p. 333) in academic prose.
First- and Second-Person Pronouns
In written text, the uses of first-person pronouns usuallymark personal nar- ratives and/or examples that are often considered inappropriate in aca- demic writing. Many researchers of academic discourse and prose have noted the highly depersonalized and objective character of academic prose that requires "author evacuation" (Johns, 1997, p. 57). Explicit teaching of features of formal and academic discourse and text requires avoiding per- sonal pronouns, personal tone, and personal references (Jordan, 1997; Raimes, 1992; Swales & Feak, 1994).
In fact, Swales' (1990a) analysis of written academic genre found that ac- ademic texts are often expected to project objectivity in presenting informa- tion and depersonalize text by various lexical and syntactic means. Swales further argued that the teaching of writing and "student writing in colleges and universities should not be viewed as an individually-oriented, inner-di-
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