TEACHING ACADEMIC ESL WRITING PART 6

in written academic text, the modal verb may rarely has the meaning of per-
mission as is described in most grammar books, but usually has the function of a hedging device).
The greatest issue with noticing words and features is that, first, learners need to know what specific text featur[r]

care doubt imply matter mind tend differ fancy know mean suppose want
An Important Caveat: In academic writing, a lack of grammatically correct subject-verb agreement is considered to be a serious error. For L2 writers, dealing with the subject-verb agreement issue is made more compl[r]

actually kind of more or pretty sort of anyway maybe less something
in a way like more like
Informal lexical hedges are often considered inappropriate in formal ac- ademic writing, although individual instructors may be somewhat flexible with regard to their uses. According to Kay (1997),[r]

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(For a detailed discussion of tense and aspect auxiliaries in English, see chap. 4.)
Although a great deal of time and effort is expended on teaching students how to use English tenses and aspects correctly, the point of fact is that this instruction may not be particularly necessarily for[r]

However, in composition textbooks and writing guides for basic writ-
ers, hedges, often called limiting modifiers (Hacker, 1994; Lunsford &
Connors, 1997), are not discussed in detail. Despite the prevalence and importance of hedges in written academic prose, textbooks for t[r]

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make errors in these constructions, will you consider these students to be ready for academic work in mainstream courses? Among the many types of errors that students are likely to make with these structures, which ones would you consider to be more severe or less severe? Why? Would you mak[r]

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(Lists of common academic passive verbs here and elsewhere are adopted from the research of Biber etal., 1999; Nation, 1990, 2001; Swales & Feak, 1994.)
These especially common passive verbs are usually familiar to L2 writers at intermediate and higher levels of proficiency simply becau[r]

parent word parts should be selected carefully because devoting ef- fort to learning many others may bring benefits reduced relative to the invested labor and time.
An additional argument for teaching prefixes and suffixes is that some amount of incidental vocabulary learning can result bec[r]

5. The ability to convey messages to_ a large number of people at once is the ma- jor benefit of advertising.
6. In the_ mass media, such as television and particularly radio, advertising companies have to follow strict guidelines and a number of federal regula- tions designed to control th[r]

It is important to note that adverbial phrases of time, place, and condi-
tion are not particularly common in formal academic writing (e.g., in Janu- ary, at the lab/in this city, and if the company sells).... On the other hand,
research has demonstrated that L2 academic wri[r]

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THE MOST ESSENTIAL VERBS
Various studies of academic prose have determined that certain verbs con- sistently recur in diverse genres of academic texts ranging from introduc- tory course books to publications of innovative research (Biber et al., 1999; Leech et al., 2001; Nation, 1990[r]

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ADVERBIAL CLAUSES
In general, adverbial clauses are more common in speech than in writing. However, in instruction in academic writing, and argumentative writing in particular, the uses of various types of adverb clauses such as causative, con- trast/concessive, and con[r]

every sentence for it to be grammatical. For example, the structure *For most students go to the U.S. to study is incorrect because a prepositional phrase occu-
pies the subject position.
The simplest approach to teaching the basic sentence structure can take advantage of the relative rig[r]