Grammar: 🚀 Advanced Grammar Concepts (C1) - Lesson 3: Nominalization - Turning verbs/adjectives into nouns for formal/academic style

Writing: Formal & Academic Style

C1 Lesson 3: Using Nominalization

What you will learn: By the end of this lesson, you will be able to recognize and use nominalization to transform verbs and adjectives into nouns, creating a more formal and academic writing style.

Model: Informal vs. Formal Style ✍️

Nominalization shifts the focus from people doing things to abstract ideas and concepts. This creates a more formal and objective tone, which is common in academic and professional writing.

Informal Style (Verb-focused)

Because so many tourists visit Siem Reap, it is important that the community protects the ancient temples.

Formal Style (Noun-focused)

The protection of the ancient temples is of great importance, given the high number of tourist visitations to Siem Reap.

Breaking Down the Transformation

The formal sentence sounds more academic because the actions (verbs) and descriptions (adjectives) have been turned into concepts (nouns).

The verb visit becomes the noun visitation.

The adjective important becomes the noun importance.

The verb protects becomes the noun protection.

Your Writer's Toolkit 🛠️

Common Nominalization Patterns

Becoming familiar with these patterns (adding a suffix) will help you write in a more academic style.

Verb / Adjective	Common Suffix	Resulting Noun
investigate (v)	-ion	investigation
develop (v)	-ment	development
aware (adj)	-ness	awareness
able (adj)	-ity	ability
important (adj)	-ance	importance

A Word of Warning: Overusing nominalization can make your writing very dense and difficult to read. Good writing uses a balance of different sentence structures.

Practice & Application 🎯

Quiz: Transform the Words

Rewrite the sentences to be more formal using nominalization.

1. Informal: "We need to analyze the data carefully."
   → Formal: "A careful _______ of the data is required."
   Answer: analysis
2. Informal: "The company grew quickly, which was impressive."
   → Formal: "The rapid _______ of the company was impressive."
   Answer: growth
3. Which sentence is more typical of academic writing?
   a) "Because the government invested in infrastructure, the economy improved."
   b) "Governmental investment in infrastructure led to an improvement in the economy."
   Answer: b. It uses nominalization ('investment', 'improvement').

Your Writing Mission ⭐

Writing Task: Adopt a Formal Style

Rewrite these informal, verb-based sentences into more formal, noun-based sentences.

1. Because the team collaborated effectively, the project was successful.
2. We need to understand why the policy failed.

Show Example Answers

1. The team's effective collaboration led to the project's success.
2. An understanding of the policy's failure is necessary.

Key Vocabulary

• Nominalization (Noun) | នាមកម្ម
  The process of creating a noun from a verb or an adjective (e.g., decide → decision).
• Objective (Adjective) | អព្យាក្រឹត
  Not influenced by personal feelings or opinions; based on facts.
• Abstract (Adjective) | អរូបី
  Existing as an idea or concept, not as a material object.
• Suffix (Noun) | បច្ច័យ
  A letter or group of letters added to the end of a word to form a new word.