Page 149 - English for Writing Research Papers

131

about his own findings. But when I reach the end of the sentence I have to

revise my thoughts because I now realize that these are Coleridge’s fi ndings.
• I am now completely confused. Initially, I have no idea if it was found refers
to Wordsworth or to Coleridge. When I see the reference to Table 2, I assume

that these are Wordsworth’s findings, though it might be possible that Table 2
refers to Coleridge’s findings.

Below is a clearer version. The changes from the OV are underlined.

revised version : Bilingual children show ( 1) a greater adaptability to new situations (e.g.
change of school, change of diet) and demonstrate a greater ease in communicating confi -
dently with adults [Blake, 1995]. Blake investigated children from the US and Canada. As
mentioned previously, the focus of our study was Europe and a result of an extensive search
for bilingual children in ten European countries, 149 children were identifi ed (2) (Table 1).
One hundred and twenty two children with parents of different nationalities were assigned
(3) to a group (hereafter Group A). It was found (4) that those children with parents of the
same nationality but who lived in a foreign country (for example, a child with English par-
ents living in Italy) had (5) a greater level of adaptability than those children with parents
of different nationalities living in the native country of one of the parents. Similar adapt-
ability levels have been found (6) in trilingual children of parents of different nationalities
living in a third country [Coleridge, 2011], for example the child of a Dutch/Russian couple

living in France. However, in many such cases our findings revealed (7) that one of the three
languages was not as strong as the other two (Table 2).
The main difference with the original version, is that now the reader knows imme-
diately from the beginning of the sentence whether these are Wordsworth’s or
another author’s findings. In the original version, the reader is forced to wait till the

end of the sentence before discovering whose findings are being discussed. Also, in

the original version readers constantly have to make readjustments in their under-
standing as they move from sentence to sentence.

Now, let’s analyze in detail the differences between the two versions.

• The use of the present tense ( show ) indicates to the reader that this is general

knowledge, i.e. this is Blake’s finding and not Wordsworth’s. An alternative

here would be to write Blake [1995] showed that … However, this is an
extract from a beginning of a section and it would be unusual to begin with
an author rather than the main topic of the section (bilingualism). To make
doubly clear that this is not his own finding, Wordsworth could have begun:

It is well known that bilingual children. However this would delay the key
word ( bilingual ).
• One problem in the OV was that there was no real connection between the
first and second sentences, and this added to the confusion about whose

work was being discussed. In the revised version a new sentence has been
added to explain the connection and to introduce Wordsworth’s work. Some
information here was also contained in Wordsworth’s Methods section (i.e.