Revising Sentences

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Del curso dictado por Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

Academic Literacy

106 calificaciones

Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

Academic Literacy

106 calificaciones

Curso 1 de 5 en Specialization English for Research Publication Purposes

This is the first course of the English for Research Publication Purposes Specialization. The course is an introduction to what you need to know about academic discourse. You’ll gain important critical reading skills to help you develop as a self-critical scientific writer. You will learn practical tools and effective strategies for increasing your academic vocabulary and grammar so that you will write well-structured coherent academic texts.

De la lección

MODULE III : FUNDAMENTALS OF ACADEMIC GRAMMAR

This module covers issues related to the pragmatics of academic English. The module presents an overview of the English verb system, including most frequent tenses, three aspects, and two voices. The module highlights the use of correct punctuality, which is of immense help in meeting the goal of the writing process: to ensure clear communication of ideas. The module also explains the role of modality and register in academic writing. Another important issue discussed in the module is the use of parallel constructions for words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs of an academic text.

Using Parallel Structure8:56

Revising Sentences6:40

Sentence Combining and Punctuation5:58

Conoce a los instructores

Elena Bazanova
Director of the Language Training and Testing Center
Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology

[MUSIC]

The key to well-written academic text is it's first few sentences.

In particular, the first 7 or 8 words of a sentence.

When readers grasp those first 7 or 8 words easily,

they read what follows faster, understand it better, and remember it longer.

To write good sentences, follow these 5 principles.

Avoid introducing more than a few sentences with long phrases and clauses.

Get to the subject of your sentence quickly.

Make subjects short and concrete, ideally

naming the character that performs the action expressed by the verb that follows.

Avoid interrupting the subject and the verb with more than a word or two.

Put key actions in verbs, not in nouns.

Put information familiar to the reader at the beginning of a sentence, and

new information at the end of the sentence.

Avoid long introductory phrases and clauses.

Have a look at the following examples.

Most readers find the first sentence harder to read than the second

sentence because it makes them work through a 13-word phrase

before they reach its subject, eat.

In the second sentence, readers immediately start with a subject,

these general concepts.

The principle is this, start most of your sentences directly with their subject.

Begin only a few sentences with introductory phrases or

clauses longer than ten or so words.

You can usually revise long introductory phrases and subordinate or dependent

clauses into separate independent sentences, as in the second sentence.

Make subjects short and concrete.

Readers must grasp the subject of a sentence easily, but

they cannot when the subject is long, complex and abstract.

Compare these two sentences.

The whole subjects in each are italized and

the one word simple subject is bold-faced.

In the first sentence, the whole subject is 12-words long, and

its simple subject is a nominalised word, adoption.

In the second sentence, the whole subject of every verb is short, and

each simple subject is relatively concrete, university system,

each department head, he or she, and teaching staff.

Moreover, each of those subjects performs the action in its verb.

System will adopt, department head demonstrates he or

she is committed, teaching staff cooperate.

This principle is this, readers tend to judge a sentence to be readable when

the subject of it's verb names the main character in a few concrete words.

Ideally, a character that is the doer of the action expressed by the verb

that follows.

To fix sentences with long abstract subjects, revise them in 3 steps.

Identify the main character in the sentence.

Find its key action and if it is nominalised, make it a verb.

Make the main character the subject of that new verb.

Avoid interrupting subject and verbs with more than a word or two.

Avoid splitting a verb from its subject with long phrases and clauses.

The noun phrase which contains nine words, separates the subject, scientists,

from the verb, are creating, forcing readers to suspend their mental breath.

To revise, move the interrupting clause to the beginning or

end of the sentence, then you may have this sentence.

Put key actions and verbs, not in nouns.

Readers want to get to a verb quickly, but

they also want that verb to express a key action.

So avoid using general purpose or empty verbs such as have, do, make,

conduct, perform, carry out to introduce an action smothered by a nominalisation.

Make the noun a verb.

Compare these sentences.

In every crystal,

we have the manifestation of a particular state of space.

Instead you may say, every crystal manifests a particular state of space.

Put information familiar to readers at the beginning of a sentence and

new information at the end.

Readers understand the sentence most readily

when they grasp its subject easily.

And the easiest subject to grasp is not just short and concrete, but

also familiar.

Compare how the second sentence in each of the full-length passages does or

does not contribute to a sense of flow.

In sentence a, the first words of the second sentence

express new information, black holes in space.

The collapse of a dead star into a point perhaps no larger than a marble creates.

Those words about collapsing stars seem to come out of nowhere.

But in sentence b, the first words echo the end of the previous sentence.

Black holes in space, a black hole is created.

Moreover, once we make that change,

the end of that second sentence introduces the third more cohesively.

The collapse of a dead start into a point no larger than a marble.

So much matter squeezed into so little volume changes.

Compared with sentence a at the end of its second sentence,

doesn't flow into the beginning of the third sentence as smoothly.

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