Per Lysv책g & Gjertrud Flermoen Stenbrenden
Academic Writing in English A PRACTICAL HANDBOOK
Academic Writing in English Preface We welcome users to this book on Academic English Writing, a book which should have been written long ago considering the increasing importance these days of good writing skills in academic and professional contexts. With the obvious exception of the introductory chapter, our presentation starts at the macro-level, the text level (chapters 2–7), and moves on to the micro-level in chapters 8 (choice of academic vocabulary), 9 (mainly advice on cohesion and compression) and 10 (problems of contrastive grammar). Chapters 11 and 12 deal with the technicalities of correct academic writing such as referencing, including how to do bibliographies, and punctuation. Chapter 6 is a little different from the others. Our intention is to exemplify good writing from the diverse academic fields that are included in most English language programmes, as well as from two very different fields: political science and medicine. In that way we hope to kill two birds with one stone: to give you academic insight and to illustrate good writing – in chapter 7 even samples of poor writing to raise your awareness further. It may seem that academic writing within medicine or political science is dramatically different from that within the humanities. We disagree. Different types of academic writing may have different structures: a case or lab report and a monograph are obviously very different. It is our contention, however, that if you strip any academic text of its special terminology, the ‘skeleton’ remains very similar indeed, and this skeleton is the English used in academic writing.
To a large extent the chapters are self-contained units that can be worked through independently of each other, but there are frequent references across chapter boundaries. Most chapters contain relevant goal-directed exercises, suggested answers to which are available as a net resource. A few more comprehensive exercises are to be found in chapter 13. We wish to emphasize one point: writing good texts requires various skills, such as collecting relevant material, structuring and organizing it into coherent paragraphs, and an ability to reflect critically on the issue you address. If you can do this well in your native language, you have a head start when writing in English. What is specifically English, however, is how you apply the tools of the trade, your choice of vocabulary and the patterns of English grammar you make use of. That is why we provide more detailed information about these areas in chapters 8–10. This coverage necessarily draws on the meta-language of English linguistics. To do otherwise would be to relax on precision in our description. Per Otterstedt, lecturer at the Department of English, Uppsala University, has adapted the text to Swedish conditions and is the author of section 4.3 Paragraphing. We thank him cordially for his contributions. Oslo, April 2014 Per Lysvüg and Gjertrud Flermoen Stenbrenden
Table of contents
1 Introduction 1.1 Target group 1.2 Assumed background 1.3 Academic English 1.4 Two ways of writing academically about English 1.5 Academic English or Academic Writing in English 1.6 Characteristics of good writing 1.7 The language of this book
2 Text Parameters 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Field, tenor, mode and purpose 2.3 Contexts 2.4 Register or style characteristics: formal vs. informal 2.5 Exercises
3 The Writing Process 3.1 Writing as a process 3.2 The stages of the writing process Stage 1: The nature of the writing task Stage 2: Clearing the theoretical ground Stage 3: Brain-storming Stage 4: Collecting and analysing material Stage 5: The first draft Stage 6: Feedback
11 11 12 13 14 15 15 17 19 19 19 21 23 25 29 29 29 29 30 31 31 32 33
Stage 7: Revision Stage 8: Finishing touches
3.3 Exercises
33 34 35
4 Types of Academic Assignments
37
4.1 Discipline and writing task
37 38 38 39 41 42 44 45
Point 1 Point 2
4.2 Conventional text structure 4.3 Paragraphing Topic sentences
4.4 Argumentative writing 4.5 Exercises
5 Text Production 5.1 Four basic questions 5.2 Styles of writing A. Clause-level grammar B. Word and phrase level grammar C. Lexis/vocabulary
5.3 Text types 5.4 Genres 5.5 Exercises
49 49 50 52 53 54 58 60 60
6 Samples of Good Practice
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6.1 Introduction 6.2 Language studies
63 64 64 64 66 67 67 67 70
A. Essay question B. Answer C. Comments on the text structure of the essay
6.3 Cultural studies A. Task B. Answer C. Comment on the text structure of the essay
6.4 Literature A. Essay question B. Answer C. Comments on the text structure of the essay
6.5 Political science A. The text B. Comments on language and text structure
6.6 Medicine A. The text B. Comments on language and text structure
6.7 Exercise with suggested answer Argumentative writing: Authentic Letter to the Editor A. Task B. Answer
7 Poor Writing 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Sample texts and exercises Text 1 Comments on Text 1 Text 2 Comment on Text 2 Text 3 Essay Comments on Text 3 Text 4 Essay question Comments on text 4
8 Vocabulary 8.1 Introduction 8.2 The semiotic triangle 8.3 Sense components 8.4 Exercises to build your vocabulary
71 71 71 75 76 76 78 80 80 81 81 81 82 82 85 85 86 86 87 87 88 89 89 90 91 91 92 95 95 95 97 98
9 How to Make Your Text Better: 12 Reminders
105
9.1 Introduction 9.2 Point 1: Information structure 9.3 Point 2: Cohesion
105 105 108 9.3.1 General 108 9.3.2 Conjuncts 109 9.3.3 Lexical cohesion 112 9.4 Point 3: Pronouns/determiners with unclear reference 115 9.5 Point 4: Noun phrases and the compression of meaning 116 9.5.1 Leave out material that can be supplied from context 117 9.5.2 Condense material into pre-modifiers 117 9.5.3 Use parallels 118 9.6 Point 5: Nominalizations 120 9.7 Point 6: Sentence length 122 9.8 Point 7: Sentence fragments 125 9.9 Point 8: The position of modifiers 125 9.10 Point 9: Syntactic breakdowns 127 9.11 Point 10: Jarring word combinations 128 9.12 Point 11: Jargon 129 9.13 Point 12: Verbosity – too many unnecessary words 131
10 Contrastive Micro-Level Problems of Grammar 10.1 Introduction 10.2 The building blocks: word classes 10.3 Nouns 10.3.1 Countable and uncountable nouns 10.3.2 Compound nouns
10.4 Determiners and pronouns 10.4.1 Determiners 10.4.2 Articles 10.4.3 Quantifiers
10.5 Relative pronouns
133 133 134 135 135 136 137 137 137 139 141
10.6 Verbs and verb forms 10.6.1 Tense 10.6.2 Aspect 10.6.3 Voice
10.7 Modality 10.8 Concord 10.8.1 There-sentences 10.8.2 Co-ordinated subjects 10.8.3 Every(one/body/thing), each, either, neither, none as subject 10.8.4 Collective nouns (group, family, staff, committee, etc.) 10.8.5 Adjectives used as nouns 10.8.6 The subject is a clause 10.8.7 Notional concord: the subject is interpreted by writer 10.8.8 Special nouns
10.9 Adjectives and adverbs 10.9.1 Adjectives/adverbs after copular verbs 10.9.2 The form of adverbs 10.9.3 Adjectives used as nouns
10.10 Word order 10.10.1 Swedish X+V+S order vs. English X+S+V order 10.10.2 Inversion 10.10.3 The position of long adverbials 10.10.4 Preposition in final position (stranded preposition)
10.11 It vs. there 10.12 The -ing-clause 10.12.1 -ing-form or infinitive after verbs 10.12.2 Dangling participles
10.13 Contractions 10.14 Exercises covering topics treated in this chapter
11 How to Acknowledge Other Voices: quotes, references, bibliographies 11.1 The production of truth and knowledge 11.2 Conventions regarding references 11.3 Conventions regarding quotes
143 144 144 145 146 149 150 150 151 151 152 152 152 153 154 155 156 156 158 159 160 161 162 162 164 165 166 167 168
171 171 172 173
11.4 Referring to other voices 11.5 Reference lists and bibliographies 11.6 Using words vs. discussing words 11.7 Using foreign words 11.8 Exercises
12 Punctuation 12.1 Introduction 12.2 The comma 12.3 The apostrophe 12.4 The hyphen 12.5 Inverted commas and quotation marks 12.6 Miscellaneous 12.7 The colon 12.8 The semicolon
13 Writing Assignments 13.1 Linguistics 13.2 Literature 13.3 Civilization and area studies
14 References Books, articles, papers URL addresses
174 177 179 180 181 183 183 183 186 186 186 187 187 188 189 189 195 197 199 199 200
1 Introduction Terms: academic English academic writing
micro-level macro-level
1.1 Target group This book is written for you, for students of English in higher education, who are expected to be able to read, understand, and speak English, and not least produce good written English.1 These basic skills to a large extent determine your success or failure as students. Most important perhaps among these is the quality of your writing because you are normally assessed on the basis of written work – term papers, take-home exams, final school exams, even theses. That is why we think this book is necessary. We have asked ourselves: What challenges does the average Swedish student of English face, whether university student or student in teacher education, when sitting down to produce a text? These are our answers: (1) the ability to find evidence in material/data for whatever position the writer takes on an issue, and, not least, critically reflect on this evidence 1 Some material from Per Lysvåg (2005) The English Language appears in a modified form in this book with the author’s and publisher’s permission. Otherwise, in order to suit the needs of a wider user group, the present text contains new or fully revised material.
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Academic Writing in English (2) the ability to give the text a coherent and logical structure. That includes a clear reference to the wider context of the text (why do I write?), a transparent topic sentence (what do I write about?), good relevant sub-points (these are my arguments) and a convincing conclusion that follows from your arguments (this is my position) (3) the ability to find the appropriate stylistic level (which, of course, has to do with choice of language forms) (4) the ability to use the resources of the languages, both lexical and grammatical, to the full and in a varied and precise way. The first point above is to some extent independent of the form of the written text since it has to do with your general cognitive ability and field-specific knowledge. However, points 2–4 relate squarely to your writing skills: all those who are expected to produce good written English have the same challenges regarding points 2–4. That is why we think this book has considerable transfer value to other academic fields. So, more specifically, our primary target group consists of students of English in higher education; our second target group includes students, even academics, outside of English who are required to submit written work in English.
1.2 Assumed background By the time you start your higher education, you have already had classes in English for anywhere from 8 to 12–13 years. This raises the question of your starting level. How good are your writing skills? What can we build on when our explicit goal is to raise your level of writing competence? There is obviously a lot of individual variation, but it is worth bearing in mind that most degree courses presuppose no more than a pass mark – high or low – in what is known as English 5 or 6. Against this background, we have chosen to include in chapter 10 areas of English grammar which are known to create problems for Swedish learners.
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1 Introduction
1.3 Academic English The term ‘academic English’ in the heading above is controversial in many ways. Rather imprecisely, it refers to the type of English used in academic publications, a type of English we hope you will be able to approach in your own writing. The ordinary ‘man in the street’, however, often associates an additional negative sense with the term: namely English that is made unnecessarily difficult and inaccessible. There is some truth in this. Even the neutral value-free sense of the term is not without complications, since it implies that it is fairly uniform with little individual variation. That is not the case. Some publications in academic fields – we venture to mention medicine and some of the natural sciences – are expected to adhere to the IMRaD model. Their text structure is more or less fixed, consisting of the sections Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion. This proscribed template for research articles in many prestigious journals leaves little room for the writer’s creative language frills. At the other extreme, we find the less conventionalized formats of articles in cultural studies, including literary research. They allow writers a very personal and subjective take on the form of their text. And in-between these extremes there is a lot of variation. Our stance is clear. Since the common tool is the English language, and the general skill is the ability to use this tool most effectively, we have decided to focus on the common features of this tool, the structural, logical, lexical and grammatical characteristics of English, cf. 2–4 in 1.1 above. The terminology that characterizes each separate field of science and scholarship is best learnt from field-specific textbooks, not from a general book on English writing. In addition, since we have our background in English language studies, we feel that we have a small contribution to make in this area. Massive exposure to the diverse applications of this tool helps build a solid writing competence, but acquiring this competence is a time-consuming process; there is no shortcut. The next best thing is probably to give a fairly detailed presentation of the macro-level and micro-level characteristics of good (and bad) English writing. That is what we do 13
Academic Writing in English in chapters 6–7 and 9–10. Here we give concrete and specific advice and encourage complementary student work.
1.4 Two ways of writing academically about English To give you an idea of variation even within a narrow field of academic English, we include extracts A and B below. Both deal with language and the study of language. The first is the authors’ voice in a textbook; the second, the author’s voice in an MA thesis. A is much easier to understand because it is written for students, for non-specialists. The second presupposes specialist readers with considerable background in language studies. A For us a genre is a staged, goal-directed social process. Social because we participate in genres with other people; goal-oriented because we use genres to get things done; staged because it usually takes us a few steps to reach our goals. In this book we’re focusing on three familiar genres – story, argument, and legislation. We’ll look briefly at their staging here so we can get a feel for the basic organization of these texts. J. R. Martin and D. Rose (2008: p. 8)
B In order to address this apparent disparity between textual and contextual studies of genre, the primary objective of this study is to analyze and describe the structure and rhetorical function of the medical research article, using a combination of theoretical approaches. This includes register and genre analysis as well as a description of the medical discourse community in order to emphasize the relationship between written medical discourse (text) and the activity of medical research (context). D. L. Fryer (2007: p. 1)
A number of differences in their language form follow from the fact that the two are meant for different readers. We will go further into 14
1 Introduction these in several places in our book, in 2.4 and most comprehensively in 5.2. But briefly: A has a personal style (us, we), uses everyday vocabulary (get things done, takes us a few steps to reach our goal, get a feel for), contains four sentences, which could easily have been transformed into six or seven (note the semicolons), allows informal contracted forms (we’re, we’ll), and not least, gives explicit explanations of difficult terms.
1.5 Academic English or Academic Writing in English If we compare the alternative headings above, we notice a difference. Academic Writing in English includes writing, an -ing form that refers to an activity. This title can relevantly be understood either as a process, or as the end result of that process, cf. 1 and 2 below: (1) Academic writing is sometimes difficult to understand. (2) Academic writing requires special skills. (1) tells us that the end result, what has been written, is hard to grasp; (2) says that one needs special qualities to carry out the activity. In the following presentation we are concerned about both, but it would be counterproductive to try to maintain this distinction throughout the book. On balance therefore, and in view of the unfortunate implications of the term ‘academic English’, we have decided to use the title Academic Writing in English. We have now touched on many of the central elements in our book. Many of the terms will be developed further in later chapters. We hope you are tempted to read on.
1.6 Characteristics of good writing With considerable anxiety (since our own skill is, literally, on the line for scrutiny) we will move on to the complex set of interrelated dimensions that must be handled competently for a text to deserve the verdict: good academic writing. 15
Academic Writing in English The overall requirements are that: • • • •
you are well-informed about the topic you are addressing; you have a personal view that is worth stating; your position comes out clearly; you choose a polite and appropriate form of language.
These dimensions are developed further in the table below, where we break down language form into further sub-dimensions. Each of these, it is presumed here, in some way or other falls short of a good standard. Dimension where shortcomings may occur
Adjective to describe the result
Aid/remedy
knowledge of topic
un-/misinformed, irrelevant, ignorant, lacking in insight
field-specific textbooks
vocabulary
wrong, imprecise, repetitive, impoverished
dictionaries, books of synonyms, word finders
idiomaticity
awkward, unidiomatic, jarring
dictionaries, corpora on the web, phrase books
grammar
wrong, clumsy, ungrammatical, awkward
grammars, usage books
text design
illogical, confusing, ineffective, unstructured
writing manuals, exposure to clear texts, writing practice
text structure
incoherent, disconnected, rambling
writing manuals, handbooks, exposure to good writing, writing practice
paragraphing
unclear, confusing
raising of awareness of unity of content
appropriateness
offensive, impolite, too informal OR stilted, pompous, too formal
exposure to different registers
spelling
wrong
dictionaries
punctuation
wrong, confusing
reference works
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1 Introduction The order of dimensions in this table to some extent also reflects the order of importance. Obviously, you will not be able to write well on a topic you know little or nothing about. In that case you will not have the necessary vocabulary either, nor the idiomatic flair to develop it. It is theoretically possible to write grammatically correct, but still boring, texts. The reason is often that the text does not make use of the rich resources of the language and becomes repetitive. Vocabulary, grammar, idiomaticity as well as spelling and punctuation belong to the clause/sentence level of the text – what is often referred to as the micro-level. On the macro-level we include those aspects which go beyond individual sentences, e.g. how you tie sentences together (text structure), how you organize the larger parts of your text (text design) and how you take into consideration your reader’s needs and the genre conventions that apply to the text type you are producing (appropriateness).
1.7 The language of this book We have tried to use a modified academic style in this book since it is a textbook for students in higher education. Exposure to this type of language will, we hope, have a certain transfer value to your own writing. We have avoided the lexically dense style of professional journals and quality news reportage. Especially the former type of language has many technical terms, long sentences and complicated noun phrases. Although it may be hard to understand, it has its virtues, because it compresses a lot of meaning into few words. This quality is often lacking in the academic writing of Swedes.
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6 Samples of Good Practice 6.1 Introduction In this chapter, we present six texts. In terms of content, the first five are meant to give you general academic insights into aspects of language studies, cultural studies, literature, political science, and medicine, respectively. In addition, all five illustrate nicely structured and coherent pieces of writing, a quality that we want you to learn from and emulate in your own writing. The sixth text, we feel, is an example of a well-written argumentative text. We have not reproduced all the texts in full (due to copyright restrictions).3 The literary essay in 6.4 stands out. Its structure is quite different from the IMRaD-based research article, but it is nevertheless favoured by many literary scholars who cherish the creative freedom that a personal style allows. It deserves a place in this collection. Importantly, we believe the texts substantiate our stance, introduced in the preface to this book, that most academic texts written in English are more similar than they are different. True differences are rather a consequence of genre conventions. It is not uncommon, for example, to find papers on acoustic phonetics (which is firmly rooted in the humanities) that read almost like lab reports in physics or medicine, because the description, execution and findings of the experiments themselves are given more space and importance than in articles within, e.g. literary studies, archaeology or area studies. Rhys, Ulbrich & Ordin 2013, for instance, illustrates this point nicely (see reference list at the end of this book). Similarly, reports on fieldwork experiments tend to be linguistically similar, whether they are carried out within socio-linguistics, political science or anthropology. 3 We have, however, indicated the URL addresses where the articles may be read in full.
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6.2 Language studies A. Essay question Explain what you understand by the form and meaning of a sentence.
B. Answer The relationship between the form of a sentence and its meaning is fundamental in linguistics. Some linguists would claim that wherever there is a difference in form, however negligible, there is a difference in meaning. So we need to explore the two concepts in some depth. Most people will associate the term ‘sentence’ with the written language and, if pressed for further clarification, define it as the stretch between two full stops. This stretch, however, may well consist of several dependent and/or independent clauses. The spoken equivalent of ‘sentence’ is ‘utterance’, a term which takes us into pragmatics. That is an area of linguistics which investigates the meaningful use of utterances in spoken interaction. We can illustrate the difference between the two in this example: I know what he said (i.e. wrote), but I don’t understand what he meant. The word ‘meant’ here can be replaced by ‘implied’, that is something not expressed explicitly. In the following we will disregard this implicit (pragmatic) meaning of utterances and focus on the explicit form–meaning relationship. Single lexical words like book, write, academic and soon have a meaning out of context that we look up in a dictionary. For this type of meaning the more technical word ‘sense’ is often used. Very many lexical words have two or more related senses. This is particularly the case with multi-word lexemes with both a literal and a figurative/ idiomatic sense, e.g. look down on = ‘look downwards’, look down on = ‘disdain’. Dictionaries are full of entries with multiple senses. Lexical words also have a form; in written language it is their conventional spelling; in spoken language it is reflected in the phonemic transcription of the word when pronounced in isolation. 64
6 Samples of Good Practice However, once we start combining words into phrases and phrases into clauses, we move into a different dimension of the form–meaning correlation. There is a difference in meaning between an only child (‘no sisters and brothers’) and a child only (‘a mere child’). The visible difference is the order of the words. Here is another: obliging people are very popular vs. obliging people is not always easy. The first means ‘people who are obliging…’; the other: ‘the action of obliging people is…’. We are now fully on to the level of clause syntax. It is a formal level which often proves a challenge for students to describe correctly. In simple terms this level of meaning gives us the clause elements (Swe. ‘satsdelarna’) and tells us who does what to whom under what circumstances. In other words, we get to know the subject, the verbal action, whoever else is involved in the situation referred to and the circumstances under which the situation takes place. There are fascinatingly many pairs of seemingly similar sentences that differ in meaning because their phrase or clause syntax is different. A difference in meaning may not be visible on the level of clause syntax, but it normally is in some other formal way. It may for example be in the choice of lexical words (1a/b) or function words (4a/b), in the order of words (1a/b), in the use of grammatical endings (2a/b), sometimes in the use of punctuation marks – and endings (3a/b). Here are some examples. 1a 1b 2a 2b 3a 3b 4a 4b
The man killed the bear. The bear killed the man. We considered him quite carefully. We considered him quite careful. It was a characteristically Edwardian house. It was a characteristic, Edwardian house. Does she read well? Does it read well?
The form of a sentence also includes how clauses are combined, as we noted above. We understand the co-ordination in 5a to mean that he whistled after he had opened the letter. In 5b the formal feature, the 65
Academic Writing in English -ing form, yields the meaning that the two activities happened at the same time. 5a He opened the letter and whistled his favourite tune. 5b He opened the letter, whistling his favourite tune. Some formal features of language have no correlation on the level of meaning. We know that He don’t like no meddling in his affairs and He doesn’t like any meddling in his affairs have the same meaning, despite what we said in our first paragraph. The point is that the first example is in non-standard English. Certain mandatory rules of grammatical form, for example concord rules, have no impact on meaning, but they must nevertheless be observed. As we said in paragraph three, this brief overview looks at the form– meaning correlation in the abstract, removed from an actual speech situation. Obviously, language in use opens up very many interesting aspects. If somebody says Can’t you read?, you may well wonder if it is was meant as a genuine question or a reproach, i.e. a difference in pragmatic meaning. To sum up, the meaning of a sentence includes not only the sense of the individual lexical words used but also how the syntactic form, i.e. the structural patterns of English grammar, imposes extra meaning on the words that the sentence consists of. Establishing the syntactic form involves two simultaneous processes: a) chunking the clause into its main constituents (see vertical lines in the example below) and b) assigning labels to them e.g. S, V, dO, sP. I A I S I V I dO I For a long time the issue of surveillance has escaped the media radar
C. Comments on the text structure of the essay The first paragraph sets the dialogic context by repeating the central terms ‘form’ and ‘meaning’ from the question. It introduces the topic of the text: the relationship between the two. The second paragraph 66
6 Samples of Good Practice defines ‘sentence’, taken over from paragraph 1, in contrast to ‘clause’ and ‘utterance’. The third paragraph narrows the focus and deals with the notion of lexical sense. The next paragraph further develops the concept of meaning and shows what types of meaning emerge from the basic syntactic patterns. The fifth paragraph expands on and exemplifies the correlation between meaning and syntactic form. Paragraph 6 takes still another look at form, namely how meaning depends on how clauses are combined into sentences. The next paragraph points back to and corrects a claim made in the first paragraph. The last but one paragraph coheres well with paragraph 2 since it repeats why and how the text disregards pragmatic meaning. The text has signpost signals, e.g. in the following and as we said in paragraph three, to help readers connect information they are in the process of reading to what is said elsewhere. Finally, the last paragraph sums up the main elements of the text.
6.3 Cultural studies A. Task Present a brief historical survey of the conflict in Northern Ireland.
B. Answer The conflict in Northern Ireland is often presented as ‘a problem’ whose resolution lies around the corner for anyone who is ingenious enough to see it. Given its complexity, it is more accurate and productive to see the issue as a tangle of interrelated problems. Here are some: • There is a central constitutional problem: what should be the political context for the people of Northern Ireland? Integration with Britain? A united Ireland? Independence? • There is a continuing problem of social and economic inequalities, especially in the field of employment. 67
10 Contrastive Micro-Level Problems of Grammar Terms: word classes voice nouns and noun phrases modality determiners concord relative pronouns word order tense inversion aspect contractions
10.1 Introduction In this chapter we focus on aspects of English grammar that you should be familiar with, but which nevertheless need repeating in a condensed form. After all, writing good academic English entails writing grammatically correct English! The approach is contrastive, since we know that mistakes occur in learner English in areas where English grammar differs from that of the learner’s mother tongue. Learners tend to transfer the grammar of their mother tongue to their English – this is called ‘interference’. We encourage you to read more comprehensive grammars if necessary, since we have opted to include only the most basic material here. Each section ends with a set of exercises, and there are two exercises at the end, testing the various topics covered in this chapter.
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10.2 The building blocks: word classes Language has two sets of building blocks, lexical words and function words. A. Lexical words (also called content words) nouns verbs adjectives adverbs B. Function words (also called grammatical words) pronouns (personal, possessive, interrogative, relative, indefinite) determiners6 (bestämningsord – articles, quantifiers, possessives, interrogatives) auxiliaries (hjälpverb) prepositions conjunctions (konjunktioner and subjunktioner) The A group includes millions of words with meaning. We choose content words in accordance with our writing topic: for instance, a description of the geographical regions in the US, the arguments for Scottish independence, and a comparison of two plays by Shakespeare, all require different lexical words. The B group includes a limited set of words. They have little dictionary meaning but are crucial in combining content words into grammatically correct sentences. It follows from this that all texts need to use function words, e.g. the, they, and, from, should, but individual content words such as region, devolution and playwright are specific to the writing task at hand (see 6.2–6.4).
6 Some linguists prefer to reserve the term determiner for a phrase function rather than for a range of word classes whose members often serve the same function, i.e. that of delimiting the reference of nouns.
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10 Contrastive Micro-Level Problems of Grammar
10.3 Nouns Nouns are used to refer to concrete and abstract entities, things, people, places, substances and abstractions. The grammar of nouns includes rules for forming plurals, rules for forming the genitive, rules for crea ting compounds, and rules for expanding a single noun into a noun phrase. Most of this should be known at this stage in your education. Consult a standard grammar or dictionary for details.
10.3.1 Countable and uncountable nouns Countable nouns refer to things that have discrete limits and therefore can be counted. Uncountable nouns do not. Many languages have both a singular and a plural form of countables, which may be concrete or abstract, e.g. glass – glasses, idea – ideas. Uncountable nouns like chaos, enthusiasm are impossible in the plural (*chaoses, *enthusiasms), simply because they cannot be counted. On the whole, Swedish and English are similar with respect to countablility, but unfortunately, some troublemakers behave differently in the two languages. The following English nouns are uncountable: they do not allow a plural form, they do not combine with a plural determiner, nor, in subject position, do they pattern with a plural verb. advice, bread, cash, change (‘växel/växelpengar’), evidence, furniture, homework, income, information, interest (‘ränta’), jewellery, knowledge, money, news, progress
These plural forms are correct in Swedish: goda råd, tre bröd, mycket kontanter, många bevis, flera möbler, många läxor, lätta intäkter, nya upp lysningar, räntorna, dessa smycken, kunskaper, pengar, goda nyheter, stora framsteg. Normal English use of these nouns does not show any trace of a plural, e.g. his advice was useful, this evidence doesn’t hold water, more income, no information, no news is good news. If you really need to refer to one 135
Academic Writing in English countable example, use a unit noun, e.g. a piece of advice, a loaf of bread, a set of furniture, or alternatively, choose a different noun altogether, e.g. a coin, a chair, a news item, three bracelets, a step forward.
Exercise Translate the following sentences into correct English. (1) Jag fick många goda råd. (2) Möblerna har kommit. De står ute i regnet. (3) Bevisen som har lagts fram är inte övertygande nog för att övertyga rätten. (4) Intäkterna från försäljningen var mycket stora. (5) Penger är en sak, men diamantsmycken är något helt annat. (6) En upplysning var i alla fall helt ny.
10.3.2 Compound nouns Long Swedish nouns like semesterparadis, bilmekaniker, brödskiva, öpp ningsceremoni, socialbidrag and bedrägerifall consist of two or more parts written together into one word (= sammansatta ord ‘compounding’). This is the basic rule in Swedish, but not in English. Corresponding to those above, we have: holiday paradise, car mechanic, slice of bread, opening ceremony, welfare benefits and a case of fraud. Most often English simply splits Swedish compounds or uses a reformulation, frequently with an of paraphrase. It is true that well-established combinations such as armchair, laptop, needlework, and firewood are written as one word. There is considerable uncertainty in this area, even among native writers, so if you are in doubt, check with handbooks, print or Internet dictionaries. Our advice is not to create compound nouns on the basis of the Swedish pattern; rather, you should divide them, hyphenate them or rephrase them.
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10 Contrastive Micro-Level Problems of Grammar Exercise 1 Write a short paragraph on the main differences between Swedish and English in the area of compound nouns, and your strategies for overcoming the problem. Give examples to illustrate your claims, and use appropriate terminology. Do you see any patterns with regard to compounding?
Exercise 2 Translate the following Swedish words into English. bibliotekschef, säkerhetsåtgärd, totalövervakning, samvetsfråga, bombhot, övervakningskameror, beslutsfattare, biståndssänkning, karantänregler
10.4 Determiners and pronouns 10.4.1 Determiners Determiners (bestämningsord) are function words that help us identify who or what we are referring to. They occur in front of nouns. Pronouns replace noun phrases, shorten our language and have no determiner in front. In the invented dialogue below, determiners are underlined, pronouns are in bold. The goal of this exchange is to determine, i.e. identify, the specific person responsible for the report. A: Who wrote the report? B: The consultant. A: Which consultant? B: The one we brought in to advise the company. A: Does she have enough experience?
10.4.2 Articles The articles are among the most frequent determiners. Unlike Swedish, English uses the indefinite article to place people in professional, ethnic, national or religious groups: 137
Academic Writing in English A practical handbook Per Lysvåg & Gjertrud Flermoen Stenbrenden is intended primarily for students in higher education with Swedish as their native language. There is for example a condensed presentation of the contrastive dimension, the main areas of grammar where Swedish and English differ. This handbook will be of particular use to students who are expected to hand in independently produced English as part of their programme requirements. Its aim is to exemplify good writing from the diverse academic fields included in most English language programmes, as well as from two very different fields: political science and medicine. ACADEMIC WRITING IN ENGLISH
The book adopts an approach with a gradually narrowing focus. It opens with a general discussion of the genre of academic writing and its linguistic characteristics. Students are then taken through the stages of the writing process. We also discuss text cohesion and problems that detract from the quality of the text. A special chapter presents the standard conventions for correctly acknowledging, referring to and quoting text-external voices. ACADEMIC WRITING IN ENGLISH provides its users with academic insight into the characteristics of well-written texts and offers practical advice on how to attain the same level in their own writing. Comments on the exercises in the book can be found in the e-book ACADEMIC WRITING IN ENGLISH – SUGGESTED ANSWERS .
Per Lysvåg is retired Associate Professor of English Language at the University of Oslo. Ph.D. Gjertrud Flermoen Stenbrenden is Associate Professor of English Language at the University of Oslo.
ISBN 978-91-40-69113-2
9 789140 691132