Investigation B

If passages A or B above were written for adults, the two sentences in each passage would probably be combined into one longer sentence. Try this out.

On the other hand, passage D uses one sentence to describe three separate things that learners do, which are all part of the notion of orientation. Passage C also covers several separate ideas. Try rewriting these more simply as several sentences.

Analysis

Look at the following clause from passage D: ‘the nature of the goals they form in order to perform it’. This way of writing is typical of academic material:

1. The meaning centres on goals – the learners’ goals.
2. ‘the nature of’ tells us that we are interested in what the goals are like.
3. ‘they form’ explains what goals we are talking about – the goals that learners form.
4. We could insert ‘that’ to make the meaning clearer – ‘the goals that they form’.
5. Normally, we would say ‘they form goals’, but here ‘goals they form’ is used because this reversed word order is how descriptive clauses about a noun are constructed in English (but not in all languages).
6. The phrase ‘in order to perform it’ tells us why the learners form goals.
7. The word ‘goals’ has three separate phrases attached to it, making one whole complex clause around goals.

This complex clause is itself only one part of a longer sentence. Everybody has to learn how to understand language like this.