VELS Level 4 – Increasing Technicality: Compressing Information

This section includes information on the importance of helping students to understand noun groups and includes two activities which illustrate the key points.

Understanding the grammatical resources of noun groups is crucial for enhancing both student comprehension and student composition in the middle years.

Noun groups compress information using pre-modifiers and post-modifiers with the head word.

Head word

This refers to the central or core word, that is, the noun or ‘thing’ that is central to the noun group e.g. pot

Pre-modifiers

Pointer: this is often an article (e.g. a, the) and it functions to point to or select what is the core focus of the noun group: e.g. ‘the’ pot.

Descriptive adjective: this commonly describes the physical appearance of the noun e.g. the ‘blue’ pot. It can also add expression or emotion to the head word e.g. the ‘exquisite’ blue pot. You can add none, one or more descriptive adjectives to the noun. Descriptive adjectives can also be intensified.

Classifying adjective: these adjectives function to classify the type of noun or head word e.g. the exquisite blue ‘ceramic’ pot. You can also add none, one or more classifying adjectives to the noun group e.g. the hand-crafted ceramic kitchen pot. Classifying adjectives tell us ‘what kind of’ thing the noun is.

Post-modifiers

Noun groups also have another resource for compressing information, the Post-modifier. Post-modifiers follow the noun. They appear groups of words such as ‘from Port Douglas’. They can also be embedded clauses (e.g. which can be found in Far North Queensland).

Noun groups

Noun groups can become ‘overburdened’ with information so careful selections need to be made.

An important part of students’ learning involves being apprenticed into subject disciplines such as the arts, English and other languages, history, economics, geography, mathematics and science. As part of apprenticing students into the language demands of this technical discourse, definitions need to be provided for students as well as supporting them in using these terms.

Compressing information

To complete this activity you will need to download the following transcript:

Uranium mining discussion (PDF - 18Kb)

This transcript is a text produced by an upper primary student involved in a unit of work on uranium mining that the teacher and class were engaged in for a period of three weeks.

A significant feature of the language used by the student who had written the discussion text was their control over noun group structure. Look at the list below of commonsense and technical terms. Do they both use noun groups? (Yes).

Commonsense language

Power
Half a billion dollars
Oil
Gas
Coal

Some people
Other people
Both sides

Technical language

Power
Fossil fuels
A nuclear power station
Radioactive waste materials
Uranium
A fossil-fired power station
A fossil-fuelled power station
Radioactivity
Nuclear waste
Radiation

Can you see any visible differences in the ways they use noun groups? The technical noun groups from the written discussion clearly ‘squeeze in’ more content.

Increasing technicality and increasing compression

To complete this activity you will need to download the following handout:

Increasing technicality and increasing compression (PDF - 18Kb)

In this activity you will be labelling the parts of a noun group using the following definitions of the elements that can go into the noun group to assist you.

After completing the labelling activity, discuss the effects of the use of language that demonstrates both increasing technicality and increasing complex noun groups. Does it make the text sound more powerful or more authoritative? Does it seem as though it has been written by somebody who is knowledgeable on the issue?

Another important point to discuss is what may have motivated the student’s choices. In particular, why did the student mainly choose to use classifying adjectives as pre-modifiers and not describing adjectives? This choice of language is tied to the subject discipline. Scientists and geographers are involved in classifying and reclassifying the world, and this is reflected in the ways they organise their noun groups through the predominance of classifying adjectives. It can be seen that this student is well on the way towards gaining control, not only of the discussion genre, but also the register of scientific writing.

The predominance of classifying adjectives also helps the student to appear objective and unbiased as they present two conflicting points of view in the body of their text.

Related Materials

Previous key concept - Commonsense versus specialised/technical language

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