Demystifying Academic Written Grammar

Simon Mumford,Turkey

Simon Mumford teaches EAP and works in the Academic Writing Centre at Izmir University of Economics. His current interests include designing classroom activities for EAP and researching written academic register. E-mail: simon.mumford@ieu.edu.tr

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What is academic grammar?
Why native speaker standards?
Raising awareness of academic grammar
Activity 1
Activity 2
Activity 3
Conclusion
References

What is academic grammar?

In my work in an academic writing centre with L2 academic writers, I noticed I was not only correcting grammar mistakes, but editing text. I also noticed that I was rewriting in similar ways, making the same kind of changes across a wide range of texts.

Curious as to why I was making these changes, I consulted Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (LGSWE). This draws on corpora of native-speaker conversation, fiction, newspaper reports and academic writing, and reveals the tendencies of each, making clear the contrasts between spoken language and academic prose. I narrowed down the main grammatical differences to the following tendencies:

1. The use of nouns, especially complex abstract noun phrases
   e.g. The man was proved guilty. → Proof of guilt was established. (the noun phrase Proof of guilt becomes the subject)
2. The pre-modification of nouns
   e.g. the policy of the school → the school policy (school premodifies policy)
3. The post-modification of nouns with prepositional phrases rather than clauses
   e.g. children who lost one parent → children with only one parent (a prepositonal phrase replaces a clause)
4. The use of non-finite rather than finite clauses
   e.g. The students were disappointed when they learned that the school would close.→The students were disappointed to learn that the school would close. (a non-finite verb replaces a finite clause)
5. The use of subordination instead of coordination
   e.g. Several countries disagreed, and they vetoed the motion. → Several countries disagreed, vetoing the motion. (the second clause is dependent on the main clause)

These categories were used in a study, a collaboration between myself and an L2 academic writer, to research the changes made L2 academic writers by a native-speaker editor (Koyalan & Mumford, 2010). The focus was on revising texts towards a more academic, and therefore, less spoken register. Although the categorisation makes it relatively easy to highlight the differences between L1 and L2 academic text, we do not claim that this means that the writing or editing process itself is simple, because the changes made often involved more than one category and, occasionally, all five. Here are two examples from our research. The first is a relatively simple single category change, in which a finite clause (underlined) is replaced by a prepositional phrase (underlined).

Original: Turkey has been affected from time to time by the dissolution of political parties on the grounds that they infringed upon the constitution.

Revision: Turkey has been occasionally affected by the dissolution of political parties for infringing the constitution.

The second example is more complex. An important focus of the sentence is revised into a non-finite form “to confuse and frighten potential attackers”, and relocated in the sentence. This revision involves simultaneous changes in three of the categories, pre-modification, prepositional phrase and non-finite categories, while also reordering the information.

Original: “Inspiration from military and police body armour by the use of clever detailing, which may confuse and frighten potential attackers, recall defensive armour suits.”

Revision: “Clever use of detailing to confuse and frighten potential attackers, inspired by military and police body armour, recalls defensive armour suits.”

Why native speaker standards?

As seen in the second example above, academic grammar can be extremely complex. In the face of such complexity, some argue that intelligibility alone should be the standard for determining what gets published, rather than demanding adherence to native-speaker academic register norms. In very general terms, the argument is as follows: as long as L2 academics’ writing can be clearly understood, strict adherence to native-speaker academic register is unnecessary. The insistence on academic register is seen by some as a way of excluding L2 academics from publication, especially those without the time, resources or opportunity for native speaker editing.

There is certainly no doubt that in many EFL contexts, especially in less well resourced developing countries such as Turkey, the academic researcher is at a considerable disadvantage when it comes to writing for international publication. However, there may be good reasons for insisting on native speaker academic register. Academic language exists for a purpose; it is impersonal, formal, and concise. Readers have certain expectations of style. Overly personalised, informal and lengthy writing may deter the reader, even if the grammar is accurate.

In my experience, L2 academic writing in EFL contexts is likely to be influenced by grammar more typical of spoken register. This may be because much of (General Purpose) English teaching focuses on verb grammar rather than noun grammar. Alternatively, it may be because spoken language is more accessible to L2 writers (many students/academics speak English more than they write), and, correspondingly, because academic prose is more difficult to produce, because it is denser and more complex, and needs more thinking time.

How much, then, does register really matter in academic writing? It makes an important difference; as Halliday observes, ‘Registers... are not different ways of saying the same thing, they are ways of saying different things. Prototypically, therefore, they differ in content’ (1994: 137). The following made-up example illustrates this:

1. Visual desigers influenced by pop art dominated in the sixties. This caused a total revolution in the field.
2. The influence of pop art on visual design dominated in the sixties, totally revolutionising the field.

Both are grammatically well-formed, but the second is clearly a more academic style than the first. Athough the content is very similar, the underlying message is different; the subject of the first is designers, the subject of second is the influence of pop art on design.

Given the need to raise awareness on academic written register, what can be done?

Raising awareness of academic grammar

It may be difficult to teach academic register in the same way as general English, simply because it is so complex. However, through analysis of texts, and activities comparing registers, EAP students can become more aware of the role of grammar in creating academic register. Here are three activities designed to highlight the differences between conversational and academic written register:

Activity 1

Write the first sentence on the board. Erase it and write the second sentence, and ask students to remember what has changed, and discuss how the change makes the sentence more formal. Continue like this until the final sentence, and then ask if students can remember the first sentence. The process shows, in a series of steps, how a sentence in spoken register can be made more formal and impersonal. Note how nouns dominate the final version.

Activity 2

In this activity, an original academic sentence has been rewritten in a more spoken style. The students task is to restore the original, using the instructions as a guide. The colour code represents words as follows: red: to be deleted, yellow: to be moved, green: to be added, (+ denotes an affix), blue: spaces to be filled with yellow words. Students are to rewrite the text as a single sentence.

Solution : Traditionally, the term ‘Scientific revolution’ is used to describe the spectacular intellectual triumphs of sixteenth and seventeenth century European astronomy and physical science. (Source of original version: Introduction to the Scientific Revolution: http://dotydocs.com/archives/660)

Note how all information in the second sentence has been incorporated into pre-modifying positions (i.e. as adjectives before nouns) in the first sentence.

Activity 3

Ask students to perform the dialogue in pairs, and then ask for feedback. B uses a completely inappropriate, overly formal, written academic register which focuses only on conveying information, rather than contributing to the development of the conversation. In the same way, grammar typical of spoken language in academic writing sounds out of place, and may be incompatible with the purpose of the communication.

Conclusion

A focus on academic written register will increasingly become a need as the number of L2 learners studying in English grows in both English and non-English speaking countries. While there is no doubt that academic written grammar is challenging for learners, it has clear tendencies which have been recorded, described and quantified in Corpus grammars, especially LGSWE. This has helped to increase our understanding of, and thus demystify, academic grammar. Academic grammar almost like formula, with the reoccurence of certain grammatical structures, particularly non-finite clauses, nominalisation, pre-modification, post-modification by prepositional phrases, and subordination.

Understanding these tendencies will be important for the L2 academic writer, (and indeed, the novice L1academic writer). Teachers and other language professionals who work with EAP students and writers, such as writing centre staff, editors and proofreaders will also benefit from a conscious understanding of how academic grammar works. In my opinion, promoting greater awareness of register among L2 writers and those who help them represents a way forward that avoids the potential dangers of allowing changes in the acceptable standards of academic prose.

References

Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., and Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of spoken and written English. Harlow: Longman Pearson Education

Halliday, M.A.K. (1994). The Construction of knowledge and value in the grammar of scientific discourse. In M. Coulthard (ed). Advances in written text analysis. London: Routledge

Koyalan, A., and Mumford, S. (2010) Changes to English as an Additional Language writers’ research articles: From spoken to written register. English for Specific Purposes. doi:10.1016/j.esp.2010.10.001

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