The role of clausal embedding in the argumentative writing of adolescent learners of English

Linguistic Challenges in CLIL Assessments: A Perspective from Systemic Functional Linguistics

“…Within the clause, there was one clause postmodifying the Head 'carbon dioxide', one embedded clause postmodifying the Head 'carbon' and one more clause postmodifying 'dinosaur'. These kinds of dense writing are believed to be difficult for students, in particular low proficiency learners, to process (Fang & Schleppegrell, 2008;Maxwell-Reid, 2015). The extensive use of embedded clauses can be daunting and hence hinder some students to provide accurate responses during the examination.…”

“All These Nouns Together Just Don’t Make Sense!”: An Investigation of EAP Students’ Challenges with Complex Noun Phrases in First-Year College-Level Textbooks

“…However, despite their lexicogrammatical complexity, CNP are hitherto virtually an uncharted territory in the teaching practice in preparatory EAP programs designed to improve academic English listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills and to prepare international college and university students for undergraduate programs in the Englishspeaking world (Maxwell-Reid, 2015;Ward, 2007). A thorough review of commercially available textbooks published in North America did not yield any mentioning of CNP or complex nominals (see Beatty, 2015;Oshima & Hogue, 2014, Rosenberg, 2015Williams, 2013, among others).…”

“…The only textbooks found that focus on noun phrases (but not CNP) explicitly are by Marshall (2018). However, there is a significant body of research that acknowledges the challenges of CNP for EAP students (Chan, 2004;Herczeg & Himelfarb, 2008;Maxwell-Reid, 2015;Montero, 1997). For example, syntactic interference from L1 may be a factor in the processing of CNP for Mandarin-speaker (Chan, 2004) and Spanish-speaker (Carrio Pastor, 2008;Herczeg & Himelfarb, 2008) ELLs.…”