Page 51 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

TEACHING LANGUAGE FEATURES OF ACADEMIC WRITING 37
Johns & Dudley-Evans, 1991; Jordan, 1997; Nation, 1990, 2001). Among the most urgent are:
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Expanding the accessible repertoire of common academic nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs (e.g., analysis,develop, dramatic, ev- idently)
Contextual functions and uses of verb tenses in discourse
Functions and uses of the passive voice in academic text Functions of adverbs in pivoting discourse and information flow Regularities in phrase and sentence construction
Backgrounding information in subordinate clauses
Textual features of cohesion and coherence in discourse Functions and uses of hedges in academic prose (based on Hinkel, 2002a)
Although at first glance producing academic assignments and papers may seem difficult and daunting, the greatest advantage of the fact that written academic discourse is highly conventionalized and its features are recurrent is that, with the groundwork in place and consistent practice, pro- ducing academic writing is actually relativelyeasy.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGEPROFICIENCY FORWRITING
In the production of academic writing, various L2 skills have divergent de- grees of importance. For instance, P .Johnson's (1988) study of international undergraduate students' GPAs and TOEFL scores in listening comprehen- sion, grammar, and reading sections established strong positive correla- tions between students' academic performance and grammar and reading proficiencies. The correlations between listening scores and undergraduate GPAs were not significant, and Johnson concluded that L2 grammar and reading skills play a highly influential role in students' abilities to perform well in humanities, social sciences, and business courses.
Celce-Murcia (1991) emphasized that for educated, academically oriented, and advanced L2 learners, grammar instruction is essen- tial if they are to achieve their educational and professional goals. She commented that, "the importance of a reasonable degree of grammatical accuracy in academic or professional writing cannot be overstated" (p. 465). Celce-Murcia cited a study that indicates that a high frequency of grammar errors in NNS students' academic writ- ing can make essaysunacceptable to universityfaculty, and an aver- age of 7.2 grammatical errors per 100 words in L2 academic prose
wasjudged to be nonpassing by professors in mainstream courses.
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