Page 181 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

TEACHING VERB TENSES AND VOICE
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stored thought studied told
Typical Problems With Passives
treated understood
Verb Forms. Many, many errors with passive constructions have to do with verb forms:
1. *The articles on the sociology of crime was write/wrote byJohn Smith. 2. *Psychology studies were conduct at Harvard University.
It is important to emphasize that the past participle form of the verb is re- quired in passive constructions following fo-verbs. Many L2writers—even those who are highly advanced—do not attribute sufficient importance to the distinctions between the past-tense and past-participle forms of irregu- lar verbs, and both types of forms need to be learned.
Other similar types of problems occur simply because even at the college level L2 writers have not learned the three basic forms of irregular verbs.
3. *Cheaters are usually catched by their professors.
When such ugly constructions are encountered in academic assignments and term papers, they usually prove to be highly embarrassing regardless of whether L2 writers are actually embarrassed by them.
Learning the forms of irregular verbs is one of the basic essentials in university-level studies, similar to learning the multiplication table to be able to do such basic math operations as counting the change due.
Intransitive Verbs in Passive Constructions. A very common type of error includes perfectly correct passive structures with verbs that can never be used in the passive:
4. *This problem was happened in my country.
5. *The change in climate was occurred in coastal areas.
As mentioned earlier, only transitive verbs (those that require direct ob- jects) can be used in passive. Hence, L2 writers must learn the verbs that
never occur in the passive (see the list earlier in this chapter).
Agentive (Who Does It) and Instrumental (by Means of) By-Phrases.
These types of errors are encountered occasionally and may be worth men- tioning only when necessary:
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