Page 306 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

292 CHAPTER 11
Replacing the omitted elements can usually correct the errors. However, it is important to make students aware of the complex comparative parallel structures with than.
SENTENCE TRANSITIONS AND IDEA CONNECTORS
Sentence transitions (also called sentences connectors or linking adverbials) have the primary function of connecting ideas between sen- tences and identifying the relationship between ideas (Swales & Feak, 1994). Practically every textbook on teaching college-level and academic writing to NS or NNS students presents detailed lists of sentence transi- tions, in which they are classified by their meanings (Bates, 1998; Hacker, 2000; Leki, 1999; Lunsford & Ruszkiewicz, 2001; Raimes, 1992, 1999; Smoke, 1999). In fact most textbooks for ESL learners encourage the use of sentence transitions because, as most textbook authors believe, they help novice writers establish clear cohesion between the ideas expressed in ad- joining sentences and overtly mark the flow of information in discourse. Teachers also emphasize these sentence linkers because they are relatively easy to explain and also because the ideas in L2 writing may occasionally seem so disjointed that every little bit can help.
The major problem with sentence connectors in L2 academic writing is that, because these linkers are easy to understand and use, NNS writers em- ploy far too many of them in their text. The second issue with these features of academic prose is that the use of sentence transitions does not necessarily make the L2 academic writing cohesive or the information flow easy to fol- low (Hinkel, 200la, 2002a). The following example from a student's text il- lustrates this point:
First, the teenage crime rate is increasing very fast. Besides, the age of criminals is going down. Therefore, this is a serious problem. The society structure is toward the money principle, and moreover, everybody thinks that money is the most important thing. But, it is about the source of crime. In addition, the common crimefor teenagers is stealing because they lack money. Nevertheless, sociologists have debated how toprevent teenage crime. Conclusively, family is the basic component of society, and family prob- lemscancauseteenagerstodomaleficent thingsbecausetheirfamily cannotletthemfeel warm. Thus, they lack parents' love and care. (Excerpted from a paper on the causes of youth crime, written by a Korean student.)
In light of the emphasis on sentence transitions in writinginstruc- tion for university-level students, the misuse and overuse of these co- hesive devices is not particularly surprising. In fact in teaching L2 writing, an important point to stress is that the uses of sentence transi- tions cannot make the text unified when the ideas in discourse flow are disjointed no matter how many transitions are employed.
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