Page 225 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

ADJECTIVES ANDADVERBS
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organization's objectives are achieved. (Zikmund, Middlemist, & Middlemist,
1995, p. 140;italics in original).
From this short excerpt, it may be easy to see that neither the definition of management or a manager can be constructed without the crucial role of adjectives.
On the other hand, adverbs are far less frequent. The next example is similarly extracted from an introductory textbook on macroeconomics to outline competitive markets:
(2) Markets take many forms. Sometimes markets are highly organized, such as the marketsformanyagricultural commodities,Inthesemarkets,buyersandsellersmeetat aspecific timeandplace,whereanauctioneerhelpssetpricesandarrangesales.More often, markets are less organized. For example, consider the market for ice cream in a
particular town. Buyers of ice cream do not meet together at any one time. The sellers of ice cream are in different locations and offer somewhat different products. (Mankiw, 2001, p. 66)
The text in (2),like that in (1),also contains 83 words, one definition, and seven adverbs, including one adverbial phrase (in these markets). However, the most important difference between the uses of adjectives in (1) and adverbs in (2) is that it may not be possible to define management and a manager in (1) without adjectives, whereas the brief description of markets in (2) is likely to remain clear even if most adverbs are dropped (see also chap. 3).
In academic discourse, adjectivesplay important cohesive, classificatory, and evaluative roles (Francis, 1994; Halliday & Hasan, 1976). For example, numerous nouns with broad meanings highly frequent in academic prose can be narrowed down by means of adjectives (Bhatia, 1992, 1993); as in concept, decision, recommendation, or development can be made more specific to fit in particular contexts:
new-innovative /_difficult-complex /_dear-transparent concept positive/negative/radical/creative/fantastic decision/ recommendation/development
(See the sections on thesis statements and evaluative adjectives later in this chapter.)
Adverbs can play a similar focusing role for the meanings of semantically broad verbs or entire sentences. For example, the meanings of the verbs from the University Word List dissipate, establish, or rely can be delimited to such an extent as to make them different in their textual implications:
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Highlighting of keyterms is retained from the original texts in both Examples (1) and (2).
Adjectives and adverbs are underlined.
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