Page 87 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

SENTENCES, PHRASES, ANDTEXT CONSTRUCTION 73
up—down Mary cannot come down because something came up. over However, Peter can take over/move over/run over.
It is important to keep in mind that two- and three-word verbs are highly
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infrequent in academic prose
teaching them unless one goal of the course is to improve students' conver- sational skills.
Intransitive Verb
remain occurred look gave
Adverbial
on thejob/at rest regularly/in the library carefully/everywhere/up in/out/up
and may not be worth the effort expended on
In general terms, intransitive verbs are simple to use, but they are impor- tant inasmuch as they have to be distinguished from transitive verbs,which are far more numerous and complex.
Transitive Verbs
Transitiveverbsrequire direct objects(monotransitiveverbs—e.g.,causean accident), direct and indirect objects (ditransitive verbs—e.g., give John a sandwich), or direct objects and additional noun or adjective complements (e.g., elect Mary president, considerJane studious). The important thing about transitive verbs is that all of them require a direct object (always used with- out a preposition), similar to the noun complement following be-or linking verbs. For example,
John
This book His memoirs
reads is became
a novel. a novel. a novel.
The tricky aspect of object constructions is to distinguish between direct and indirect objects (this distinction becomes important in chap. 7 in the
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Analyses of written English corpora have shown that two- and three-word verbs are hardly
everusedinacademicprose(Biberetal., 1999).The mostcommonaretobesetoutinortobeset upinusedattherateof0.002%(20occurrencesper 1millionwords).
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