Page 143 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

PRONOUNS 129
data and sources, combined with the fact that the citations must validate all points made in the text and not just some of them.
In general terms, NNS students need to be explicitly instructed to avoid the uses of:
• personal examples, narratives, and recounts of personal experiences
• addressing the reader directly and, thus, second-person pronouns • personal tone and its attendant linguistic features, such as adjec-
tives (wonderful, great, terrible, horrible, disgusting}, adverbs (very, much, really, definitely, pretty (good)), and context-specific nouns (winner, loser, miracle, magic)
If these textual features appear in student texts, they can be replaced by common nouns or impersonal/indefinite pronouns.
Highly advanced NNS students employ first- and second-person pro- nouns in texts written in various disciplines such as business, finance, and management. For example, in the following excerpt from an assignment on Profitability, the NNS student employs first- and second-person pronouns in contexts where common nouns may be more appropriate. As mentioned (see chap. 3), L2 writers who are pressed for time and are dealing with high demands placed on their language skills often resort to employingvocabu- lary immediately accessible to them. Also as discussed in chapter 5, the vo- cabulary items used extensively in courses and texts in particular disciplines are acquired incidentally by virtue of their prevalence in academic reading texts, textbooks, and lectures.
An excerpt from a student's academic assignment on profitability illus- trates the use of first-person pronouns that do not seem to be necessary:
Profitability is especially useful for potential investors. Comparing Martin Marietta toitscompetitorsovertheprofitability ratios,wecanseethatitperformed wellabovethe industry. The only concern is its business nature. Any political change will influence its business. Ifour_perception toward the world future situation is same as current one, then Martin Marietta is a good buy. If not, then if the money you have isfor the rest of your life then try some other industry. Otherwise, in the good time you get stable return and in war time, you get a lot more back. My recommendation is that if Martin Marietta gets new contracts in the new administration, you should buy their stock. (From a student paper on profitability.)
In this excerpt, the uses of first-person pronouns can be replaced by im- personal constructions:
• we can see—it is easy to see,one can see, an analysis can show
• If our perception toward the worldfuture situation—in thefuture, if the sit-
uation remains the same/all things being equal, if the world does not change much/a great deal, if the present situation continues to hold/remain the same
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