Page 318 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

304 CHAPTER 11
• For the most part students should avoid rhetorical questions and presupposition markers such as obvious, obviously, and of course in their academic writing.
• There are a fewbasic punctuation rules that are fairly straightfor- ward. Students should be instructed on the application of these rules and held accountable for following them.
STRATEGIES AND TACTICS FOR TEACHING AND TEACHING ACTIVITIES
(See also Teaching Strategies and Tactics in chaps. 5 and 6, Nouns and Noun Phrases, and Pronouns for additional exercises with various types of nouns and personal and demonstrative pronouns.)
A number of effective teaching techniques may be useful in instruction dealing specifically with text cohesion in academic writing. These can focus on the judicious usage of sentence transitions, lexical and semantic cohesive ties, lexical substitutions, parallel structure, and punctuation.
(1) Identifying Cohesive Ties: Recognition Practice I
Students read excerpts of varied lengths from published sources, beginning with those that are one or twoparagraphs long and ranging to those that consist of several pages (the lengthy reading/cohesive ties excerpts can be assigned as homework). The texts can be selected from newspapers for in- termediate-level students, Internet news reports or society/human interest stories, or introductory university-level textbooks. The students' task is to identify and mark as many cohesive ties and lexical substitutions as possible. [To add a level of complexity, students can also be asked to identify known/ old and new information in each sentence.] Then in pairs or small groups, students can compare their findings. In short text excerpts at the beginning of the practice, the teacher should spot check or guide the activity. Students can use numbers to mark cohesive ties, as is shown in Example (3) earlier in this chapter. A illustration is provided next.
The paragraph in (a) can be used as a stand-alone excerpt or used to- gether with the paragraph in (b). Both tasks (a) and (b) have been com- pleted as an example.
(a) Cooperation [His a pattern of interaction ® in which individuals, groups, and societies|2|work togetherfljto achieveJ7J shared[T)goals[|). Coop- eration [T]is fundamental (5]to human survival[Hand without it social life[H
would be impossible §]. Cooperation [T] sustains routine, face-to-face en- counters U . It 00 is also necessary § for people J2]to raise children, protect themselves 2. and make a living. Some societies[2lplace greater emphasis on cooperation [I| than others [2J.
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