Page 182 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

168 CHAPTER7
6. *The students are taught by the Silent Method.
If this sentence is converted back from the passive to the active voice, the
following structure results:
7. *The Silent Method teaches the students.
As noted, in passive sentences agentive by-phrases are located at the end and include nouns and noun phrases that would be subjects of parallel ac- tive constructions (e.g., The solution was mixed by the student [passive]—The student mixed the solution [active]).
In this case, the test question can be used to identify the doer of the verb action:Doesthesubjectnounofthesentenceperform/do theactionexpressedbythe verb"? If the answer is no, then the passive cannot be used (e.g., Teachers teach the students). Thus, the sentence may need to be completely rewritten:
8. Teachers taught the students bymeans of the Silent Method [instrumental meaning]
9. Students were taught bymeans of the Silent Method [instrumental meaning]
When working with passive sentences, it is important that L2 writ- ers learn to identify the differences in meaning and function between the agentive meaning of the fry-phrase [the action was done by whom?/who did the action?] and the instrumental meaning in the fry means of phrase (see also chap. 11) [how was the action donef/by what means was the action done?].
The agentivefry-phraserefers directly to the doer of the action, and the sentence subject that did the action can be always reconstructed when the passive sentence is converted back to active, as in (6). On the other hand, in- strumentalfrymeans of (prepositional) phrases can never be sentences sub-
jects of any sentence (see chap. 3).
In general terms, the uses of tenses and aspects in English are complex,
and tense-related errors are considered to be one of the most grievous in L2 writing. However, written academic discourse and text are relatively rigid and conventionalized; from this perspective, L2 writers do not need to be- come excellent users of the entire range offenses in English, but only some of them. A great proportion of contextualized verb phrases in academic prose employs the simple present tense, and it is probably one of the sim- pler tenses in English in terms of its attendant verb forms and contextual application. The simple past tense is also not particularly complicated to use. Byconsistentlymaintaining these twotenses in appropriate and overtly marked contexts, L2 writers may be able to construct a large variety of rea-
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