Secret Agents: Teaching Complex Noun Phrases & Nominalisation to Developing Academic Writers

Research into the grammar of written texts (e.g. Biber et. al., Hinkel, Carter & McCarthy, Coffin et. al.) highlights both i) the importance of abstract noun phrases in academic writing and ii) the relative paucity of such phrases in the writing of L2 writers of English. L2 text therefore often “appears to be far less academic than may be expected in college and university settings” (Hinkel, 2004). Drawing on this research, the curriculum developers of the EAP course at the English Language Centre, City University of Hong Kong, have designed a variety of classroom/self-study materials and tasks to heighten students' awareness of this feature of academic writing, and of its rhetorical functions. This session will outline these materials and tasks, and will report on an action research project conducted with a group of Year One undergraduates, exploring the effectiveness of this teaching material in helping students as academic readers (i.e. increasing their ability to navigate lexically dense texts) and as writers (i.e. increasing their ability to use complex noun phrases and nominalisation accurately and appropriately in their own written texts).