In the international context of concerns about standards in writing, this article addresses the role of grammar in the teaching of writing. It considers both current and historical perspectives on the teaching of grammar and offers a critique of research which attempts to determine the impact of grammar teaching on writing, but which does not investigate how the grammar teaching was pedagogical...

There appears to be little research on the standard of post-16 students’ writing and how it can be improved. In respect of such students, the focus of teaching professionals seems to be on content rather than on the writing process; arguably this leads to weaknesses in written expression. This article examines some current research and follows one teacher’s attempts to put in place some strateg...

Writing well in English is a challenge for non-native English speakers. When readers are unable to comprehend what they read they just give up reading and fail to get to the content. In this paper we describe problems encountered in the English writing of scientific abstracts by Brazilian Portuguese speakers. We collected and analyzed a corpus of 115 abstracts in which we identified specific la...

A Taylor Still, MD, DO, dissatisfied with the lack of efficacy of the orthodox medicine of his day, sought a better approach to treat disease and essentially maintain wellness. And, based on his efforts and formulation of a philosophy with an emphasis on the relation between structure and function and on principles of the unity of the body and the body’s ability to be self-regulatory and self-h...

There has long been a growing interest in journal articles (JA) abstract writing, and this pervading interest has boosted the exigency for further instructive research. This current study aims to investigate both the variant application of the verb tense as well as the rhetorical structure within JA abstracts. A 9.9 million word corpus of 1000 JAs was collected based on four prestigious journal...

DOI: 10.5935/abc.20140019 In their professional practices, physicians often face unexpected situations or chance on innovative proposals and ideas. As a result of their training and competence, they usually come up with hypotheses to be tested and research is conducted. This research is completed and their results submitted for presentations at conferences as free communications. Nevertheless, ...