Investigation C
Carry out the same analysis on the next phrase: ‘the operations they use to carry it out’. Then look again at passages A and B, noting how the complexity increases.
- What about ‘Known as fronds’ in passage B? What are known as fronds? How do people learn to understand what this refers to?
- We could not say ‘ferns are easy’, but we can say ‘ferns are easy to identify’. Why is that?
- ‘Ferns are usually very easy to identify from their leaves’: this means that we can usually identify ferns easily by looking at their leaves.
- In a piece of scientific writing, it is usual to put the topic being discussed at the beginning of the sentence. The writer didn’t want to start with ‘we’, because ‘we’ is not the topic. In order to have the topic, ‘ferns’, at the beginning, the writer had to turn the sentence back to front, with the phrases ‘easy to identify’ and ‘from their leaves’ trailing along at the end.
