English Grammar, Third edition (2011)

The grammar of academic English

Ordering and connecting your message

There are several ways of using language to hold your whole message together and to give it meaning. The first step is to arrange content into a recognizable pattern. When you are planning a piece of work or a talk, you can use the following pattern to sequence your ideas:

describe a situation outline any problems suggest a solution provide an evaluation.

The following sections describe techniques for ensuring that your writing or speech holds together well, and that both your intention and your message are clear:

using grammatical structures and vocabulary to signpost your intention

referring back and referring forward

providing connectors to hold sections together.

Using grammatical structures and vocabulary to ‘signpost’ your intention

There are several ways in which you can use grammatical structures and vocabulary within a section of text to express the following ideas:

the arrangement of events in time

procedure (= how something is done)

cause and effect

comparisons and contrast

advantages and disadvantages.

arrangement of events in time

If you want to show that one thing happened soon after the other, you can use a finite verb in the main clause, and an -ing participle in the subordinate clause:

They headed rapidly for the Channel ports, showing their passports at the barriers.

You can also indicate the order in which things happened using ordinals and adverbs such as first, then, later, etc.

Later, in December 1985, the committee decided …

procedure

You can use the same structure – a finite verb in the main clause, and an -ing participle in the subordinate clause – to show how something is done.

Researchers determined the size of each machine, taking into account the properties of the material.

cause/effect

The same structure can be used to show that one thing happened as a result of another.

Many of the men returned home, causing local unemployment.

Note that you can also indicate cause and effect in a main clause using a verb such as cause, lead to, or result in, or a noun such as effect, result, or outcome.

The consumption of an excessive number of sweets can cause obesity.
The effect of the famine in 1921–22 was devastating.

comparison and contrast

You can compare and contrast information in the following ways.

using a sentence connector

Conversely, the effect of intravenous administration of the drug is immediate.
By contrast, the more recent publication is more straightforward.

using a comparative adverb

Owner-controlled companies performed better than those subject to management control.

using a verb

The aim of this report is to compare and contrast these two business structures.
We will compare our own findings with those of Mortimore et al. (1988).
These findings contrast strongly with those from other tests.

for and against

You can provide an evaluation leading to a conclusion in the following ways.

using an adjective

This method of production is preferable.

using a verb

Consumers prefer our products for their quality and finish.

using a noun

This type of surgery has the advantage that no abdominal incision is needed.

using an adverbial clause of reason or purpose

This type of organization should be much smaller, since it will not need personnel concerned with line management.
You must take as much care as possible, in order to avoid accidents.

Referring back and referring forward

The most common way of making a text hold together is to refer back to something that you have mentioned earlier, by using pronouns, demonstratives, determiners, and adjectives (see 10.2 to 10.39). It is also common to refer forward, particularly in longer texts (see 10.40 to 10.47).

referring back

This and those are common in academic contexts:

…they had commissioned a specific piece of research. This came somewhat late.
There were, however, wide differences of opinion about party chances. Some of those differences…

Note that the demonstrative is often linked with a noun referring to:

spoken events

That’s a good question.

ideas

This view is also held by Rey and Stiglitz (1988).

actions and events

During this process, cracks appeared in the limestone.
This situation continued for almost two decades.

pieces of writing

As this research has shown, customer brand loyalty is very hard to achieve.

You use such as a determiner and predeterminer to refer back (9.29 and 9.30).

They generally agree on which aspects of police work they like and dislike. Such a consensus was originally explained as…
The report highlights the high level of overcrowding in some prisons. In such circumstances…

Other words and expressions used for referring back are previous, above, and the former … the latter.

The previous arguments have pointed to two ways in which the system might be improved.
What is said above gives the background to what follows.
The French have two words for citizenship: ‘citoyenté’ and ‘civisme’, the former describing the status, the latter, attitude and behaviour.

referring forward

To refer forward to sections of the text, you can use:

following as an adjective, or the following, to refer to texts, ideas, and pieces of writing (see 10.43)

Symptoms of the condition may include any of the following: chest pains, headache, difficulty breathing, and joint pain.
The following passage summarizes Schmidt’s views:…

the adverb below, normally after nouns referring to texts and pieces of writing (see 10.45)

The trade blockade with India, described below, resulted in severe energy shortages.

sentence connectors

Sentence connectors show the relationship between two sentences, clauses, or sections of text. The following are particularly common in academic speech and writing: