The Grammar That Governs
Grammar: Nominalisation
A Level 6 English lesson exploring society.
What's in this lesson
A Level 6 (proficiency) ESL lesson on society, practising nominalisation. The worksheet has a reading, target vocabulary, a grammar reference with practice and discussion questions.
From the reading: The Grammar That Governs
A linguist at University College London once counted the nominalisations in a single paragraph of EU competition law: 23 noun phrases derived from verbs, zero named human agents, and one sentence spanning 94 words. The paragraph announced that a multinational had been fined €2.4 billion. Nobody, grammatically speaking, had done anything wrong. The fine had simply occurred — an event without actors, responsibility distributed so thinly across abstraction that accountability dissolved entirely.
Vocabulary
- argument structure
- attributive modifier
- derivational suffix
- determiner phrase
Grammar: Nominalisation
- Verb → Noun derivation
- The government decided → The government's decision — suffix ‑ion strips tense, agency, and assigns a possessive determiner
- Gerund nominal
- The governing of public institutions remains contested. — process treated as an entity; no named actor required
Discussion questions
- If you could rewrite one law in plain everyday language, which would it be?
- Imagine all government documents had to be understood by a 14-year-old — what would change?
- Would you trust a contract more or less if it contained no technical vocabulary?
The Grammar That Governs
Grammar: Nominalisation
What's in this lesson:
Full lesson plan with reading, grammar, vocabulary, and discussion.
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