Page 240 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

226 CHAPTER 9
Students need to be made aware of the various sentence roles of -ing words to be able to identify at least their important functions in sentences and contexts, such as gerunds or active/passive adjectives.
Infinitives as Adjectives and Adverbs
Infinitives have a large number of functions; for example, for postverb (predictative) positions of infinitives, some researchers identify as many as 10 (Biber et al., 1999) and others up to 20 functions (Huddleston & Pullum, 2002). The most common function of infinitives, noted in practically every ESL grammar book, is that of a nominal in the subject and/or object posi- tion (e.g., Tosee_is to believe or To_know her is to_love her). Another ubiquitous type of infinitive is that with lexical verbs + noun/gerund/infinitive con- structions as in Young consumers prefer denims/wearing stiletto heels/to_ wear sti- letto heels (see also chap. 5 on nouns and (3)). In this section, only the adjectival and adverbial functions of infinitives are discussed.
In academic writing, only two types of infinitives occur in adjectival func- tions (Biber et al., 1999):
a/the way to + verb a/the time to + verb
Other modifications by means of infinitive phrases have adverbial func- tions. Infinitives as adverbials adhere to several lexicalized patterns that simply need to be learned.
1.
2.
3.
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Infinitives of purpose with omitted [in order] to constructions:
The experiment was conducted fin order] to ...
This type of constructions can be relatively easy to teach: If the phrase [inorder to]can be inserted after the verb, an infinitive can be used; if not, a gerund may be an alternative. For example, which structure is correct: Students went to the library for studying or to study? In this sentence, the insertion seems to work: Students went totheli- brary [in order] to study. Therefore, the infinitive is correct. Infinitives after linking verbs such as be,seem, appear, tend (e.g., The water level seems to increase/be constant/be held at...). This is the most frequent type of construction in academic writing.
Infinitives in academic texts following particular types of lexical verbs,the mostcommon ofwhicharetry,attempt,fail, allow,continue,
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enable, require (e.g., The market continues to drop/rise ...).
Some of these frequent verbs can be used with infinitives that function as nominals (e.g., fail topass/the test, continues tofall/its decline) or without modification/complementation (e.g., The
experiment failed, The downturn continues).
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