Representing actions with nouns
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Teaching implications | page 3 of 8 |
Helping students to develop strategies for reading
How can teachers help students to develop strategies for reading, focusing on unpacking 
texts which contain a lot
of nominalisation? The following are some suggestions:
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Students can be given excerpts from science books, etc, which contain a
lot of nominalisation, and asked to rewrite selected passages making clear who are the
people or things involved, and what they actually do. |
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More advanced students can be given text in which the nominalisation has
been unpacked and asked to rewrite it as concisely as possible, using nominalisation
wherever possible. |
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Some nominalisation will lend itself to being presented in the form of a
flow diagram, so teachers can ask students to construct flowcharts to present the
information contained in heavily nominalised text. |
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When helping students develop an awareness of nominalisation, teachers should begin with well-written texts as models, ie texts composed with the beginner in mind. When a sensitive writer is introducing a new and complex topic it is usual to find verb forms used first, and then any nominalisations in the next clause or sentence: |
In a car engine, petrol is mixed with air in the carburettor, then a spark from the spark plug explodes the petrol-air mixture. The resulting explosion forces the piston down.
In a car engine, petrol is mixed with air in the carburettor, then a spark from the spark plug explodes the petrol-air mixture. The resulting explosion forces the piston down.
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A natural follow-on from such texts is to introduce naturally occurring language containing a lot of nominalisations. Newspaper headlines are notorious for containing strings of nominalisations. |
Introduction
Helping students to develop strategies for reading
