Page 194 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

180 CHAPTERS
affect
allow appear
apply
(a)rise (from) assume cause change
1 The 40 Most Essential Verbs
consider form matter
reflect relate remain represent require result (in) seem
tend
constitute contain determine develop emerge
find follow
include obtain increase occur indicate produce investigate prove involve provide lack reach leave reduce
(Adapted from Biber et al., 1999; Leech et al, 2001; Nation 1990, 2001)
Learning many of the essential verbs may take little effort because they can be encountered in all kinds of settings that are not necessarily academic (e.g., change, find, follow, or leave). These can be practiced in conversational activities, reading, or listening exercises. On the other hand, others have been traditionally difficult for students to learn and use appropriately (e.g., affect, cause,form, lack, or matter). In part, the reason for learners' difficulties with these verbs stems from the fact that they have identical noun-verb forms. The similarity in the spelling of these dual noun-verb forms can make identifying their syntactic functions particularly confusing.
Identical spelling and divergent syntactic functions of nouns, verbs, and adjectives have to be explicitly addressed in teaching. To determine whether a particular word is a noun or a verb, one needs to look around the sentence when an ambiguous word is encountered in reading and exercises. For instance, if an article or a possessive pronoun can be found in front of the word, it is probably a noun. On the other hand, if the word follows some- thing that looks like a noun, it is likely to be a verb. Contrasting nouns and verbs that have identical spelling (e.g., change,form, lack, and matter) can clarify their uses as nouns or verbs:
1. A lack of rain in the pastfew days has caused an increase in water consump- tion.
2. The companies lackfunding for a new venture.
3. A change in the weather pattern may bring us a welcome precipitation. 4. The weather patterns will change in the next few days.
For instance, in (1),a lack is preceded by the article a, and therefore, it is probably a noun. However, in (2), the companies is probably a noun phrase—the article again followed by lack and funding. In this case, lack is
'Some of the verbs on this list are discussed and exemplified later in this chapter.
TLFeBOOK