Page 236 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

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CHAPTER 9
increase/decrease/gain/growth/advance involvement/participation/part/role/lead factor/issue/component/element/ingredient difference/similarity/variation/contrast difficulty/success/progress/delay
in profit/sales/crime/thenumber of incidents in politics/markets/research/the study o f . . . in this decision/development/plan/choice inmeaning/their performance/the levelof... in the analysis/determining ... /identifying ...
(mostly followed by gerunds, see chap. 5)
In addition to their adjectival functions, prepositional phrases also play the role of adverbials in practically all academic texts. In fact they represent the most frequent form of adverbial modification, followed by single-word adverbs (Kucera & Francis, 1967; comparatively speaking, adverb clauses are much rarer; see chap. 10). Adverbials of manner predominate and de- scribe how an action occurred or something was done (e.g., with care,by air/water, piece-by-piece; Quirk et al., 1985). The second most common type consists of agentive/instrumental adverbials (e.g., byusers/software developers, with/for this purpose; Biber et al., 1999).
It is important to note that adverbial phrases of time, place, and condi- tion are not particularly common in formal academic writing (e.g., inJanu- ary, at the lab/in this city, and if the company sells).... On the other hand, research has demonstrated that L2 academic writers overuse adverbials in these three semantic classes, and their prose often appears repetitive (Hinkel, 2002a). For example,
Nowadays, knowledge explosion is a term we often hear of. Knowledge explosion in technology today means massiveaccumulation of data. Sixty years ago, there is even no computer, but these days there is computer science. Computers are now used everywhere, in laboratories, on assembly lines, and in offices. Computers are used to controlproduc- tionon_assemblylinesandat_thefactory. Ifweneedcomputers,weneedtoknowhowthey work. Nowadays in offices, most paperwork can be done on computers. If computers do_ notfunction well, our society cannot work well either. (Extracted from a student as- signment on knowledge explosion and technology.)
This short excerpt from a student's text contains seven adverbials of place, six adverbials of time, and two conditional clauses (see chap. 10), not even to mention two manner adverbs, an intensifier, and a frequency ad- verb. Clearly the redundant adverbials of time and place need to be omitted and, possibly, replaced with other information.
Another large and important class of adverbials consists of various hedg- ing devices that express hesitation (possibly, perhaps), an element of doubt and uncertainty (probably, quite likely), attribution of knowledge and infor- mation (according to the article], and limitation (in this case, in my view). These are discussed in chapter 12.
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