PORTFOLIO 13: CANCELLED CLASS

PORTFOLIO 13: CANCELLED CLASS

Writing process increases students ‘ confidence when they write in classroom. They could follow the steps that teachers show them to increase the efectiveness of well structured and coherent draft. Firstly, the selection of a topic that will be interesting to the reader, students could choose the subject matter to write about. Secondly, the ordering of ideas (it is important to make a brainstoming in order to select the ideas that are useful for your writing) and finally, the conclusión or closing sentence.

PORTFOLIO 12: NOMINALIZATION: FOR or AGAINST?

Nominalizations are nouns that are created from adjectives (words that describe nouns) or verbs (action words). For example, “interference” is a nominalization of “interfere,” “decision” is a nominalization of “decide,” and “argument” is a nominalization of “argue.”

Below are some of the more common nominalizations (on the left) and their original forms (on the right):

Nouns	Verbs
Intention	Intend
Intervention	Intervene
Distortion	Distort
Evolution	Evolve
Interference	Interfere
Discrimination	Discriminate
Decision	Decide
Assumption	Assume
Collection	Collect
Investigation	Investigate
Expansion	Expand
Disagreement	Disagree
Discussion	Discuss

Below are some of the more common nominalizations (on the left) and their original forms (on the right):

Nouns	Verbs
Intention	Intend
Intervention	Intervene
Distortion	Distort
Evolution	Evolve
Interference	Interfere
Discrimination	Discriminate
Decision	Decide
Assumption	Assume
Collection	Collect
Investigation	Investigate
Expansion	Expand
Disagreement	Disagree
Discussion	Discuss

video n°1 

video n°2

    Samples of video n°1

•  I handed my essay in late because my kids got sick
• The reason for the late submission of my essay was the illnes of my children

Both of the utterances have the same content, the same set of actions or events in the real world but they have lexical differences. Each of the two sentences describe processes expressed by verbs and they are turning to nouns (quality thing, process thing , etc).

Written language in academic texts tends to be highly nominalized, content words like verbs or adjectives turn to noun groups. By turning verbs and other parts of speech into nouns we increase the possible content of our text, that is, its lexical density.

  In the first video there are samples of two utterances which have the same message but there are linguistic differences between them.
    In the first one it is presented the process thing : Because the jobs are more complex, programs to train people will take longer. In the second sentence it is presented the quality thing : The increased complexity of tasks will lead to the extension of the training programs. 
In the second sentence the process thing is turned to the thing extension, that is to say the latter sentence has changed of register,the writer will use noun groups in formal texts. As regards the two utterances, the second utterance is a clear sample of academic text writing as it is lexically dense and content words are turned to noun groups (complex, train, longer)

In the second video, nominalization is considered a cannibalism of verbs and adjectives.

"The proliferation of nominalizations in a discursive formation may be an indication of a tendency towards pomposity and abstraction", In this sample there are seven nominalizations. In the video one of the hypothesis is that writes who overload their sentences with nominalizations tend to sound pompous and abstract, they impide us to have a clear conversation and maybe they will make the readers go to sleep.