Nominalization and Passive Voice Exercise
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Summary

Students arrive in class having read Lesson 3 from Joseph Williams’ Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace. The instructor reviews the material on passive voice with a couple of sentences starring Little Red Riding Hood, then goes around the room asking students to distinguish nominalizations from verbs in a selected list of terms. Next, students identify nominalizations and verbs in an exercise containing paired sentences, after which students revise the less effective, sentence using its superior partner as a model. Finally, the instructor reviews the passive/active distinction, and assigns homework involving the creation of a grid identifying common characteristics of three different passages about passive voice in science writing.

 

Target Courses I observed this lesson in a UWP 104E Science Writing course, although it has wide application in other UWP courses.

Amount of Time Required The lesson took the full 80 minutes of class time.

Software You’ll Use Word, the Pickup Folder, and possibly PowerPoint and Remote Desktop.

Prep The instructor should review Lesson 3 from Joseph Williams’ Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace and place the “Nominalization” document, “Exerices 3.4 and 3.5,” document, “Suggested Solutions” document, and “Passive Voice Identification” document in the classroom pickup folder. She should also make enough photocopies for all the students of the homework assignment, available below as the “Passive Voice Grid” document.

 

LESSON PLAN

Background

Students arrive in class having read Lesson 3 from Joseph Williams’ Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace.

Step 1: The Instructor Reviews Passive/Active Voice Distinction and Calls on Students to De-Nominalize a List of Words

The instructor brings down the overhead screen and opens a Word document, “Nominalization.”

She begins with the first example, which is a pair of sentences about Little Red Riding Hood, one using passive and one using active voice. She asks students to identify why the passive voice sentence sounds odd. Based on student responses, the instructor underlines all the verbs that have been changed into nouns in the passive example, then underlines all the verbs in the active example. Next, she underlines verbs in the passive example for comparison, and argues that overly nominalized sentences have fewer and less interesting verbs.

The instructor now scrolls lower in the Nominalization document and displays a list of words. She goes around the room and asks each student to identify whether the next word on the list is a nominalization or a verb; if it’s a nominalization, she asks that the student change it to a verb or an adjective.

She suggests students use the following test: If you can place “the” in front of the word, it means it’s a nominalization. If you can place “to” in front of the word, it means it’s a verb.

Within ten minutes, all the students have been called on.

 Tip: The introduction to passive and active voice sentences could be done using a PowerPoint presentation. Alternatively, you could give students the odd, passively phrased Little Red Riding Hood example and ask them to rephrase it as an active sentence (or vice versa) on their own computers.

 

Step 2: Students Bold Nominalizations and Underline Verbs in a Set of Exercises

Next the instructor asks students to open the classroom pickup folder and drag to the desktop Exercises 3.4 and 3.5 from Williams. She says, “Put all nominalizations in bold; underline all the verbs; then pick the better sentence. Please do not revise the sentence just yet.”

Note that in these exercises, the sentences have not only different styles in regards to passive and active voice, but different content.

The instructor turns off the overhead screen as students work. They spend about fifteen minutes on the exercise. Once students have finished, the instructor shows them her “Suggested Solutions” document on the overhead screen.

Step 3: Students Revise the Less Effective Sentences

Next, the instructor asks students to revise the less effective sentence of each pair, using the better sentence in the pair as a model. She guides them through the procedure on the overhead screen with the first two sentences, then assigns the class exercises 3, 4, and 5.

This step takes students less than ten minutes, after which she asks students to offer their revisions aloud.

Tip: Students’ revised sentences could also be volunteered on the overhead screen using Remote Desktop.

Step 4: The Instructor Reviews Passive/Active Voice Distinctions and Assigns the “Passive Voice Grid” Homework

Finally, the instructor opens “Passive Voice Identification” on the overhead screen and discusses why passive voice is usually preferred in science writing. In the example sentences on the overhead, she solicits student input as to which sentences are passive, then underlines the passive verbs. She takes a moment to distinguish between passive and past tense as well.

This demonstration leads into the homework assignment. The instructor hands out the “Passive Voice Grid” assignment, which she asks students to complete in group of three. The goal is to read three statements about passive voice in the sciences, the construct a grid mapping out their characteristics. In addition to the grid, students must also produce an explanatory paragraph.

The idea behind the grid approach originated in Writing in the Sciences: Exploring Conventions of Scientific Discourse by Penrose and Katz, page 91. In the class I observed, this exercise was meant to help students with the synthesis process they would soon be using for the upcoming assignment, a literature review.