Page 146 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

132 CHAPTER 6
It-cleft constructions are syntactically complex, and for this reason, they frequently present an area of difficulty for academic L2 writers. In the prac- tical reality of writing academic text to be submitted for a grade, many it-deft structures can be avoided and replaced by other simpler construc- tions with similar focal and hedging functions.
Typical problems associated with the uses of it clefts and other imper- sonal constructions often lie in the fact that many L2 writers do not use them when they are necessary, as in the following two student sentences:
*Companies may be difficult to hire qualified employees when thejob market is high.
*Students are useful topractice individual notes and scales after they learn the piano keys.
It-cleft constructions can be confusing because the concept of a dummy subject is not particularly easy to understand for speakers of many lan- guages other than Germanic. (Asimilarissue may arise with existential there subjects, which are often confused with locative adverbials there). Although for the teacher the easiest way to correct the first sentence is simply to re- write it as in it is difficult for companies to hire qualified employees ..., another so- lution can be to provide syntacticallysimpler options:
(a) Hiring/to hire qualified employees may be difficult for companies ...
(b) For companies, qualified employees may be difficult to find/hire ...
In these alternative constructions, the focal information of the sentence that follows the it+be structures is moved from the beginning of the sen- tence to the position of the sentence subject, where it continues to play an important informational role.
In general terms, impersonal it constructions can be presented as sen- tence slots, some that are always filled regardless of context, and some that are open for optional informational content (see chap. 4 for an extended discussion).
(optional
Filled slot + BE slot Adjective prepositional slot Infinitive slot
IT may be/is hard easy (for xxx) to study
A similar system of slots can be used for other structures with the dummy subject it:
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