Page 152 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

138 CHAPTER 6
However, in Anglo-American academic prose, neither exaggerations nor vagueness are valued highly, thus the usage of indefinite pronouns is not likely to make a favorable impression on the reader. For instance, in the prior excerpt, the -body and-one pronouns can be relatively easily replaced with nouns such as business managers/researchers/students/community and -thing pronouns with contextually relevant nouns.
Ingeneralterms,itisimportantthatNNSwriterslearn toavoidev- ery- and no-pronouns and use some- and any-words sparingly.
CHAPTER SUMMARY
On the whole, the uses of specific personal pronouns differ by genre and text types. Thus, the work on pronouns represents only one aspect of a big- ger picture of teaching students to identify their audience and adjust their
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accordingly.
First-person pronouns are common in personal narratives and oc- casionally fiction, but they are relatively rare in academic prose. By the same token, second-person pronouns are associated with di- rect appeals to and/or establishing common ground with the audi- ence. This type of text is particularly rare in Anglo-American academic prose.
Third-person pronouns can be useful in avoiding repetition of proper nouns. However, uses of third-person pronouns require care to ensure that pronouns refer to specific and easily identifiable nouns in the preceding text.
It-cleft constructions are common in academic text because they project authorial distance and depersonalization. However, they represent a persistent problem for students and may require addi- tional and specifically focused work and persistence.
Because demonstratives represent the simplest cohesive device, L2 students frequently overuse them in their text or employ them in inappropriate contexts. The popularity of demonstratives can be reduced to some extent if learners' lexical repertoire is expanded to include enumerative catch-all nouns.
Indefinite pronouns with their exaggerative or vague meanings should be avoided.
STRATEGIES AND TACTICS FOR TEACHING AND TEACHINGACTIVITIES
Various written genres can be relatively easily identified by their text fea- tures. The goal of the activities described next is to help learners identify
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