Page 195 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

LEXICAL CLASSES OF VERBS 181
likely to be a verb, and funding a gerund because -ing verbs require an auxil- iarybetobepresent(arefunding). Similarly,in(3),achangeisanoun,andwill change is a verb phrase with the future auxiliary will.
Because verbs such as change, form, lack, and matter are very common, they are easy to find in newspaper text or Internet news or business reports. To highlight the high frequencies of words with identical noun-verb(-adjec- tive) forms, students can be assigned to find and bring to class news and magazine articles or printouts of Internet text with, for example, three uses of these words as nouns and three as verbs. Although locating the words in the media is not difficult, students need to learn to differentiate between noun or verb word forms of these words in contexts or sentences. To accom- plish this learning goal, students need to become careful analysts of the ba- sic English sentence structure.
THE FOUNDATIONAL ACADEMICVERBS
As discussed in chapter 5 on nouns, the restricted vocabulary and syntactic range accessible to NNS students can effectively reduce their ability to write academic text. Thus, the crucial learning of the foundational nouns needs to extend to a similar learning of verbs (i.e., it may simply not be possible to construct academic text if one's vocabulary range is fewer than 1,000 words; Nation, 1990, 2001). The list of approximately 350 foundational verbs is presented next, and the words in the bold font are found most frequently and in highly varied texts across all academic disciplines.
Common Verbs in Introductory Course Texts at the University Level 2
abandon accelerate access accompany accomplish accumulate achieve acquire adhere adjust administer advocate
affiliate approach attain
coincide compute collide conceive commit concentrate communicate conclude compel condense compensate conduct
(Extracted from the University Word List [Nation, 1990] )
agitate arouse
a i d ascribe align assemble allege assert allude assess alter assign analyze assimilate appeal assist
avail
benefit
bore
breed
cancel
capture complement confer
append appraise appreciate
assume assure attach
cater complicate cease comply challenge compound circulate comprehend clarify comprise
confine conflict conform confront conserve
2
These are included on both the list of common nouns and the parallel list of common verbs.
In many cases, noun and verb forms can be identical (e.g., access, aid, influence, advocate).
TLFeBOOK