Page 272 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

258 CHAPTER 10
Some examples of the chunks with these participles can be taught in combinations with catch-all and other academic nouns found in chapter 4:
the issue concerning
the experiment involving
the problem relating to/resulting the data containing/using
a solution requiring
the result produced
the information taken (together) given these facts
As mentioned, however, the reduction of adjective clauses to adjective par- ticipial phrases is an optional and advanced syntactic operation. For this rea- son, it should only be taught in the case of highly proficient L2 writers or when a specific need arises in light of student errors with these constructions.
NOUN CLAUSES
Noun clauses are highly common in academic writing, and they are proba- bly the most common type of subordinate construction. As the followingin- formation demonstrates, they are also by far the most structurally complex.
As mentioned earlier, the functions of nouns can be performed by single words, phrases, full clauses, and reduced clauses (such as infinitive or gerund phrases; see chap. 4). Noun clauses can fill the noun slot in a complex sen- tence (e.g., the subject, the object, the subject complement, or the adjective complement; see chap. 3). However, noun clauses that fill the object slot are by far the most frequent in academic writing (Biber et al., 1999). For example:
Psychologists know that information in short-term memory must be repeated.
[Psychologists know the fact/something/xxx—noun].
The sentence pattern with noun clauses in object slots, following the main verb phrase, is very common indeed:
Millions of students have learned that they need to repeat the multiplication ta- ble to remember it.
Bartlett's research shows that material in long-term memory interacts in inter- esting ways.
The most important discourse function of noun clauses is to pres- ent and paraphrase information from sources. For this reason, noun clauses are particularly prevalent in academic writing when they fol- low reporting verbs in summaries, restatements, and citations (Leki,
1999; Swales, 1990a; Swales & Feak, 1994; see chap. 8 for information on reporting verbs).
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