Page 66 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

52 CHAPTER 3
do attempt to discuss their writing with their professors, university faculty who are not trained in analyses of L2 writing are unlikely to provide detailed explanations that, for example, a student's essay has too many errors in noun clauses, verb tenses, or word suffixes.
It is a fact of life that after learners move from ESL and EAP programs into their university studies, with the exception of the writing center tutors, they are largely left to their own devices in producing academic writing of passing quality. According to Bratt Paulston (1992), a prominent scholar in language teaching, "now the truth of the matter is most normal people don't find language learning tasks very interesting" (pp. 106-107). She added that learning in many disciplines, such as reading or mathematics, "errors and correction are part of school life," but good teaching prepares students to be competent learners—not necessarily always successful learn- ers, but those who are able to achieve success when they are given access to information and skills for how to achieve success.
WHAT NOT TO TEACH—LOW-PRIORITY CONSTRUCTIONS
The following features of academic writing and text have been identified as rare; in fact, some are never encountered in large written academic and NS student writing corpora (Biber, 1988; Biber et al., 1999; Hinkel, 2002a; Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985). Although many of these are traditionally taught in practically all ESL grammar courses, the features listed next may have a verifiably reduced importance in teaching L2 learners to become proficient academic writers. These constructions have a low prior- ity particularly when the teacher and learners have a limited amount of time to make maximum gains in improving the quality of students' writing skills.
Nouns and the Noun Phrase
• first- and second-person pronouns and contexts that require their uses (e.g., personal narratives/examples/experiences)
• indefinite pronouns (someone, anything, nobody, everything)
• existential there- constructions (there is a view that ...)
• prepositions with the exception of collocations (see chaps. 4,
Nouns, and 8, Lexical Verbs) Verbs and the Verb Phrase
• progressive and perfect aspects (issinging, hassung,hasbeen singing)
• the future tense and the predictive modal would
• modals of obligation (must, have to)
• contractions (don't, can't)
• place adverbials (here, in the house)
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