ESL Adults --- STOP the Love of Pronouns in Academic Writing

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By Dr Jeff Hawkins, [email protected]

Introduction
Pronouns (I, me, he, she, herself, you, it, that, they, each, few, many, who, whoever, whose, someone, everybody, etc.) are quite common in spoken and written English especially for ESL and English as subsequent Language Learners (ESL) that are beginning to learn the language.  This blog post is for Intermediate to Advanced ESL learners that seek to improve their academic writing in order to succeed at College & University in Canada or Aardvark Learning Academy.  Simply stated, this articles designed to STOP the Pronoun. 

In my years of teaching ESL, I have found that ESL learners from all over the world; Asia, Europe, South America, Mexico have been taught to use pronouns as opposed to writing or thinking more critically to find the proper noun. That is to say, the CORRECT WORD / Vocabulary that actually describes WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE and WHY the writer is talking about.  

ESL teachers will soon recognize the following situation:

ESL Student:  Some international companies continue to lead innovation in the world 
Teacher:  What international companies?  Which part of the World?

DROP THE PRONOUN

ESL Student:  International companies in China, USA such as Google, Microsoft and Levono continue to lead innovation in the World.

You can see the second sentence has more force, strength and appears closer to the academic register of English. 

Pronoun Panacea? 
In high school classes in Japan, Korea or China, beginning ESL English language students are encouraged to utilize Pronouns as a way to construct sentences --- like a virtual ENGLISH language Panacea or catch all in every sentence.  This Pronoun Panacea becomes an ingrained habit for ESL learners that is difficult to break.  This is not to say you can never USE pronouns, in fact pronouns are fine if you do not plan to go to University and write Academic Essays.

Having said that, for ESL Adults that do plan to study at University in Canada, USA or Australia please allow me to STOP the LOVE AFFAIR with Pronouns right now.  YES that's right, STOP the PRONOUN, yes YOU ESL adults, please STOP using HE, SHE, THEY, SOME; instead use the correct noun (to describe) and remember the subject in the sentence.  Have a look at the Essays from Victor Han (China) & Olga (Ukraine) after 8 weeks of Academic English:  

Summary
Stopping the pronoun generally forces academic & advanced ESL students to think more critically about the vocabulary selected in academic writing.  More thoughtful papers that describe the subject, object and grammar correctly score better in University than one littered with Pronouns.  Test this out at your University and get back to me...

It is striking to me that International ESL students spend $30,000-$50,000 CAN dollars to attend University of Toronto / Queens University.  Why not spend a little extra money and learn to write the academic Essay correctly at Aardvark Learning Academy?

Register now:  ESL Academic Writing Course