Lesson 24 – nouns & noun phrases

By Berni | August 23, 2012

Lesson 24 – nouns & noun phrases

woman writing

Did you know that nouns are 4 times more frequent in academic writing than verbs? Yet we all worry more about verbs and tenses. IELTS is a mini-form of academic writing so it follows that you also need to think more in terms of nouns and noun phrases than of verbs and tenses – isn’t this good news?

Let’s begin with some tips and advice

Whenever you write a noun can you enhance it with adjectives or intensifiers – try to modify all your nouns
A rise in production becomes – a rapid rise in annual production. One argument against this view becomes One strong and widespread argument against this…..
Whenever you can add something to a noun to make it more interesting do this.
A little word of warning, don’t make it ridiculous by cramming too many words we are trying to raise the level of the writing not create something too fanciful so make sure that you retain the tone and the essence of what you are saying.
Make sure you have a wide range of adverbs and adjectives that you can use.
Check the Academic Wordlist and choose some words that you can use well and will enhance your writing
Find exercises on collocation – this means the words that naturally go together in English – you will need to know about this for IELTS writing
Make sure you re clear about singular and plural nouns (there is an exercise at the bottom of the page)
Pay attention to articles – whenever you write a noun think about the article – do yo need it? which one a, an, the? (there are lists of exercises on Gapfillers for articles – find some under Grammar and Usage if you need practice)
Nouns are your great friends in IELTS writing – learn some good ones, some synonyms and some other words to go with them!

Key skills to develop:

Make sure you can identify noun phrases

Go through your essays and underline the noun phrases do you have more of these than verbs? (if so you are on the right lines)

Look at model essays and do the same

Can you see which words have been used to create the noun phrase (adjectives, adverbs, prepositions etc..?)

Write out some of the noun phrases and then take away the extra words until you have the base of the sentence

Now do the opposite – here is an exercise to share – see if you can enhance these sentences by adding other words to make them more interesting and post your ideas in the Facebook Group

Here is more information:

Simon: on collocation

http://ielts-simon.com/ielts-help-and-english-pr/2011/08/ielts-grammar-collocations.html

Things to do to learn about noun phrases: