Bell work: Put the following questions on the board for discussion upon entry:

Who do you know who speaks very formally or very informally?

How do we know if a text is formal?
Why might we choose to speak of write formally or informally?

5This is designed just to get them in the zone for thinking about the lesson topic. Take feedback.
Learning objective:

To be able to use nominalisation in your writing so that you can create a confident tone
and be more convincing.
(They will need to live with some uncertainty at this point, because they will need to see
10examples of nominalisation in order to understand what it is.)
Starter: Ask students to compare the following statements.
Crime was increasing rapidly

The rapid increase in crime was causing concern

and the police were becoming concerned.

among the police.

Germany invaded Poland in 1939.

Germanys invasion of Poland in 1939

This immediately caused World War Two to break out.

was the immediate cause of the outbreak of World War Two.

We engaged staff in the initiative

The engagement of staff in the initiative was encouraged

by encouraging them to attend lunchtime meetings.

by attendance at lunchtime meetings.

Once they have highlighted and discussed the basic grammatical differences, they should have
noticed the following:
Crime was increasing rapidly
and the police were becoming concerned.

The rapid increase in crime

was causing concern among the police.

Germany invaded Poland in 1939.

Germanys invasion of Poland in 1939

This immediately caused World War Two to break out.

was the immediate cause of the outbreak of World War Two.

We engaged staff in the initiative

The engagement of staff in the initiative

by encouraging them to attend lunchtime meetings.

was encouraged by attendance at lunchtime meetings.

At this point, it is worth revising the LO and start to establish students confidence with the key term
nominalisation and a definition of it, making sure they understand which column has the
nominalised sentences in.
Nominalisation
The process of nominalisation turns verbs (actions) into nouns (concepts/ideas)

It makes your writing sound more formal and authoritative.

Activate:

Introduce the text below. Model finding a sentence and denominalising it. Remind
10students that you are looking for a noun, presented as an important idea or concept. For
example, you could identify promiscuity and change it to getting involved in
promiscuous behaviour.
Demonstrate:

Students find three examples of nominalisation in the text below and denominalise the
15sentences, considering the change in effect.

20

Teen lifestyle is health time bomb

The party lifestyles of teenagers today could be destroying their health later in life, warn
doctors.
The British Medical Association describes their obesity, binge drinking and promiscuity
as a potential public health time bomb. It is calling for swift action to reverse the
5worsening trends in adolescent health. This follows a prediction from Englands Chief
Medical Officer that children could face death before their parents. Official health
statistics suggest a growing threat to child health on a number of fronts, says the BMA.
The number of children with weight problems has doubled in the last two decades, with
nearly one in five fifteen year-olds now classes as obese. Alcohol consumption among
10the young is also on the rise some under sixteens admitting drinking an average of ten
units of alcohol per week, five pints of beer or ten normal glasses of wine. Six out of ten
sixteen to twenty-four year olds admit to not using condoms and rates of certain sexually
transmitted diseases are soaring among this age group. In addition, almost a quarter of
fifteen year-olds are regular smokers and cannabis has been tried by one in three.
15Vivienne Nathanson, the BMAs Head of Science and Ethics said: Young people in

Britain are increasingly likely to be overweight, indulge in binge drinking, have a sexually
transmitted infection and suffer mental health problems. It is high time we provided
education and health care services that target the specific needs of young people. We
need to ensure that young people do not fall in between the gap between services for
20children and those designed for adults.
Doctor Russell Viner from Great Ormond Street Hospital in London was one of the
authors of the BMA report. He told a newspaper: The report paints a bleak picture. Its
not until you take all these figures together that you realise how worrying the situation is.
It seems that adolescents are the only age group whose health is actually getting worse.
25BBC News Channel

This is the sort of thing they are likely to come up with:

The party lifestyle of teenagers today could be destroying

Doctors warn that teenagers today go to parties

their health later in life, warn doctors.

all the time which means they could be less healthy later in life.

It is calling for swift action to reverse

It is calling for someone to act swiftly

the worsening trends in adolescent health.

to reverse the way adolescent health is getting worse.

This follows a prediction from Englands Chief Medical Officer

This follows Englands Chief Medical Officer predicting

that children could face death before their parents.

that children could die before their parents.

Pair/Share: Get them to compare answers as a practice run for giving you well developed feedback
if asked.
At this point, they know enough to be able to analyse the effect of each and consider why the

5nominalised sentences create a greater sense of confidence and authority. The kind of thing
students come up with are as follows.

party lifestyles suggests a wide range of activities and seems more potentially harmful than
simply go(ing) to parties

calling for swift action suggests that they know it could happen and hints even that they may
have some power in making it happen. In contrast, calling for someone to act swiftly makes

10

the speaker/writer seem a bit lost and hints they dont know who someone is

Englands CMO predicting sounds as if he uses guesswork for important issue its also
written in the present tense, whereas follows a prediction from Englands CMO suggests its
something more important, a bit like an announcement.

15You have a choice of where to go now, depending upon how confident you think your students are.
They could either attempt a paragraph of their own, including some nominalised sentences, or the
opportunity to edit for nominalisation. You could provide further text transformation opportunities.
Lastly, you could decide they have done enough and leave it there.