1 Understanding main verbs
Study the following sentence and underline the two main verbs.
The government has consistently encouraged entrepreneurship through
courses in schools and colleges, and has considerably reduced the barriers to
starting a business by eliminating bureaucratic requirements.To follow the writer’s meaning, the reader needs to be clear that ‘encouraged’ and ‘reduced’
are the main verbs in the two parts of the sentence.
Academic writing tends to use rather formal verbs to express the writer’s meaning accurately:
In the last decade the pace of change has accelerated.Could Darwin have envisagedthe controversy his work has caused?In spoken English, we are more likely to use ‘speed up’ and ‘imagined’.
Academic
Vocabulary
Verbs and prepositions
UNIT
3.4
When reading a text, it is useful to identify and understand the main verb: this is
often the key to understanding the whole sentence. This unit looks at the more
formal verbs used in academic writing, the verbs of reference used to introduce
summaries, and outlines the use of adverbs.