Page 311 - English - Teaching Academic Esl Writing

COHESION AND COHERENCE 297
As many teachers know from experience, a common tendency among L2 writers is to employ a particular set of connectives repeatedly in their text (e.g., according to, moreover, therefore}. However, the quality of academic writ- ing is often evaluated based on lexical and syntactic variety, and providing writers with options for essential academic expressions may help create less stilted prose (Davidson, 1991; Hale et al., 1996; Read, 2000). To this end the usage of complex prepositions in addition to sentence transitions and sub- ordinate clauses (see also chap. 10)can provide at least some degree ofvari- ation among lexical connectives and syntactic structures.
CLARIFYING AND GIVING EXAMPLES
In academic writing instruction, giving examples is often strongly encour- aged. In most textbooks on academic writing, among other types of sup- porting evidence, examples are presented as a common means of rhetorical support for the writer's position in academic writing (Raimes, 1999; Reid, 2000a; Smoke, 1999). Many teachers emphasize that providing contextu- ally relevant examples and illustrations represents a reasonable and valid means of thesis support in explaining one's position on an issue.
Instructional materials in L2 academic writing consistently point out that the examples employed in written academic discourse need to be represen- tative of general points and ideas discussed in support of the writer's thesis. The types of examples included as supporting illustrations also need to be varied and rely on materials such as pertinent facts, statistics, descriptive details, and elaborate explanations (Raimes, 1999; Smalley et al., 2000).
However, what actually represents pertinent facts, descriptive details, and elaborate explanations is not clear cut. Although giving examples rep- resents a prevalent explanatory and thesis support strategy in constructing persuasive text in English, teachers and researchers have found that col- lege-level L2 writers rarely employ this strategy successfully and in accor- dance with the guidelines identified in L2 composition instruction (Dong, 1998; Hvitfeld, 1992). In fact in many cases, the strategy is counterproduc- tive and leads to L2 writers' academic prose that seem to be particularly un-academic, when it includes high frequencies of discourse and text fea- tures incongruous with common characteristics of written academic dis- course in English (Johns, 1991, 1997; Jordan, 1997). Some examples of incorrect and/inappropriate examples found in student writing can in- clude: *For example, my brother/my country/my case; *For example, I do too; *For example, I agree/I hate it. Other studies have noted that L2 writers frequently misunderstand how to provide appropriate exemplification and use brief mentions of situations or events rather than elaborated examples expected in formal college-level compositions (Hinkel, 1994). In many cases, stu- dents recount lengthy, highly personal narratives in lieu of representative examples (Hinkel,200Ic).
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