Teaching Academic ESL Writing: Practical Techniques in Vocabulary and Grammar (ESL & Applied Linguistics Professional Series)

373 Pages·2003·19.08 MB·English

by  Eli Hinkel

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TEACHING ACADEMIC
ESL WRITING
Practical Techniques in Vocabulary
and Grammar
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ESL & Applied Linguistics Professor Series
Eli Hinkel, Series Editor
Birch • English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom
Fotos/Browne • New Perspectives on CALL for Second Language Classrooms
Hinkel • Second Language Writers' Text: Linguistic and Rhetorical Features
Hinkel • Teaching Academic ESL Writing: Practical Techniques in Vocabulary
and Grammar
Hinkel/Fotos, Eds. • New Perspectives on Grammar Teaching in Second
Language Classrooms
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Teaching Academic
ESL Writing
Practical Techniques in Vocabulary
and Grammar
Eli Hinkel
Seattle University
LAWRENCE ERLBAUM ASSOCIATES, PUBLISHERS
2004 Mahwah, New Jersey London
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Copyright © 2004 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by
photostat, microform, retrieval system, or any other means, without prior
written permission of the publisher.
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Publishers
10 Industrial Avenue
Mahwah, NJ 07430
Cover design by Kathryn Houghtaling Lacey
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hinkel, Eli.
Teaching Academic ESL writing : practical techniques in vocabulary and
grammar / Eli Hinkel.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8058-3889-9 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 0-8058-3890-2 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. English language—Rehtoric—Study and teaching. 2. English language—
Study and teaching—Foreign speakers 3. Academic writing—Studying
and teaching. I. Title.
PE1404.H57 2003
808'042'071—dc21 2003046234
CIP
Books published by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates are printed on acid-
free paper, and their bindings are chosen for strength and durability.
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 21
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To RH with love and gratitude
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Contents
Preface ix
Part I Academic Text and Teaching Second Language Writing
1 The Importance of Text in Written Academic 3
Discourse: Ongoing Goals in Teaching ESL Skills
2 Student Writing Tasks and Written Academic Genres 17
3 Curriculum for Teaching the Language Features 33
of Academic Writing
Part II Sentences and Their Parts: Lexis and Grammar
4 Sentences, Phrases, and Text Construction 65
5 Nouns and the Noun Phrase 95
6 More on the Noun Phrase: Pronouns 125
7 Teaching Verb Tenses and Voice in Text Cohesion 143
8 Lexical Classes of Verbs: Meanings and Text Functions 177
9 Adjectives and Adverbs in Academic Discourse 209
vii
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viii CONTENTS
Part III Text and Discourse Flow: The Sentence and Beyond
10 Backgrounding Discourse and Information: 241
Subordinate Clauses
11 Rhetorical Features of Text: Cohesion and Coherence 279
12 Hedging in Academic Text in English 313
References 337
Author Index 353
Subject Index 357
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Preface
Language is power.
—Angela Carter
Power to the people.
—A slogan from the 1960s
Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, a great deal of time, energy, and re-
sources have been devoted to teaching non-native L2 writers the rhetorical
features of written academic discourse in English. In addition, to meet mar-
ket demands and the expectations of professional training and preparation
for English as a Second Language and English for Academic Purposes
teachers, teacher-training and graduate programs have set out to address
teachers' on-the-job skills that pertain to teaching L2 academic writers how
to generate and organize ideas into coherent essays and compositions, as is
expected of practically all students at undergraduate and graduate levels.
There is little doubt that L2 writers need to be familiar with many rhetor-
ical and discourse features of written English and that the teaching of col-
lege- or university-level writing cannot do without them. In teaching L2
writing to academically bound learners, what has become of smaller impor-
tance, however, is the language tools (i.e., the grammar and vocabulary that
L2 writers must have to construct academic text, which in turn can be orga-
nized into a coherent written academic discourse). To put it plainly, no mat-
ter how well discourse is organized or how brilliant the writer's ideas may be,
it would be hard to understand them if the language is opaque.
The purpose of this book is to bridge an important gap that exists in
teacher training today: the teaching of the second language and its gram-
matical and lexical features that are essential for any L2 writing teacher and
student writer to know. The teaching of rhetorical and discourse properties
of academic writing in English can be made far more effective and efficient
if L2 learners have language tools with which to build the text. The ultimate
ix
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