Page 219 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

LEXICAL CLASSES OF VERBS
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Students receive lists of sentences and/or text excerpts in which conversa- tional or colloquial words are used (nouns or verbs). The students have to replace conversational vocabulary with academic equivalents or contextu- ally appropriate items whenever possible (some possible replacements are noted in square brackets):
1. These days, education is the most important thing [objective, achieve- ment, opportunity for advancement] in people's lives since without educa- tion we cannot do [accomplish, attain, carry out] anything [our objectives, goals, advancement] in our lives.
2. People [individuals, students, youth] whoget [acquire, obtain, re- ceive,] better education will [may, can] get [find, secure, compete for] a better
job, and people who get [have] less education will get [have] a hard time [trou- ble, difficulty] getting ajob [position, employment, job opportunities].
3. Students use telecommunication and try [attempt, undertake] to searchfor [find, learn, locate, obtain] something [information, fact, data] that they want [aspire, seek] to gain through [benefit from, increase their knowledge].
4. When we discuss [describe, examine, undertake to study, take a look at] the history of western music, we discuss [analyze, classify, catego- rize] the music history by dividing it into several parts [types, groups, cate- gories, classes].
5. Many scholars think [believe, have the opinion, hold the view] that since ancient times, music has not had a direct relation [connection] to painting.
(4) Describing Graphs/Charts and Writing Data Analysis
Various graphs, charts, or data can be given to students with instructions to write a report based on the data. Individual students or pairs of students can each receive different graphs and data (e.g., Country A, Country B, Country C [The World Almanac, The World Book, and numerous encyclopedias contain a wealth of all sorts of information]), and company business graphs, stock prices, the stock market overviewarticles, and other sources can be used. In addition, students receive a similar or different list of verbs for each graph or set of data. The students' task is to write a report that presents the data and includes the verbs from the list. As an extension activity, students can also produce specula- tive explanations for the distribution of data in their graphs and set.
Common Verbs for Various Graphs/Data
combine drop (off) lead reduce slip decline fall level reflect speculate
(3) Editing Practice and Word Replacements
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