Enhancing the use of inversion structures in academic writing for english majors at Thai Nguyen university of education

ENHANCING THE USE OF INVERSION STRUCTURES 
IN ACADEMIC WRITING FOR ENGLISH MAJORS 
AT THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION 
Tran Thi Yen
*
Thai Nguyen University of Education 
Received: 16/07/2018; Revised: 26/08/2018; Accepted: 30/08/2018 
Abstract: Inversion is one of the factors contributing to the structure and grammar variety of a piece 
of academic writing; however, as can be seen from the results academic writing tests at Thai Nguyen 
University of Education (TUE), English majors rarely employ different inversion structures. This 
research, therefore, was conducted to investigate the current situation of using inversion structures 
among English majors at TUE, to discover the common difficulties related to inversion structures that 
students have, to find out the causes of those difficulties as well as to give some suggestions to solve 
the problems. A mixed-method research design (both qualitative and quantitative) was carried out 
involving 5 English lecturers and 103 third-year and fourth-year English majors of TUE. The data 
were collected via a test on inversion structures, writing analysis and questionnaires. The results of the 
research reveal that English majors at TUE do not employ a variety of inversion structures in their 
academic writing. 
Keywords: Academic writing, grammar, inversion, inversion structures 
1. Introduction 
 At tertiary education, academic writing has always been essential for English majors. Learners wishing to 
do different academic writings have to achieve a mastery of concepts and content of their subject area. Besides, 
the need to write efficiently and properly is the requirement for any students majoring in English. As can be seen 
from the results of academic writing tests at Thai Nguyen University of Education (TUE), most of English majors 
at TUE have great problems in writing English - the learners have a lot of difficulties in using English grammar 
and structures properly, of which using inversion is one essential issue. In fact, if students use simple sentences, 
complex sentences or compound sentences, their writing essays may be good; however, if the learners employ 
several inversion structures in their essays, they can emphasise a statement, improve cohesion, improve flow and 
persuasiveness and will demonstrate their mastery of an advanced grammatical structure that many other students 
do not touch. Therefore, the research was conducted to investigate the current situation of using inversion 
structures among English majors at TUE, to discover the common difficulties related to inversion structures that 
students have, to find out the causes of those difficulties as well as to give some suggestions to solve the 
problems. This aim of research is to help English majors master and use inversion structures effectively to 
diversify their grammar and structures in academic writing. 
 The aims of this study were investigated through the following research questions: (i) What is the 
current situation of using inversion structures among English majors at TUE? (ii) What are the common 
problems related to inversion structures that English majors at TUE have? (iii) What are the causes of the 
problems related to using inversion structures in academic writing? (iv) What might be done to help 
English majors at TUE enhance the use of inversion structures in academic writing? 
* Email: yentran@dhsptn.edu.vn 
2. Literature review 
 This section discusses the key concepts of academic writing and inversion, and then summarizes 
the previous research related to the study. 
2.1. Academic writing 
 Academic writing relates to different writing methods which students need to complete in an 
academic setting. To write academic paragraphs or essays in a second language is really difficult for 
ESL/EFL students. In general, students are unfamiliar with rules of any kinds of academic writing. 
Therefore, to advance this kind of formal writing, firstly, students have to understand the concept clearly. 
In the area of academic writing, Tribble (1996) considers that learners who want to do different academic 
writing have to achieve a mastery of concepts and content of their subject area. Besides, they need to 
enhance their ability to express themselves efficiently and properly. 
 Academic writing needs to be exact, explicit, formal or semi-formal, impersonal and objective. In addition, 
learners pay attention to present information as correctly and obviously as possible. 
2.2. Inversion 
 Different linguists have their own definitions of inversion and each definition reflects different 
functions of inversion. First of all, according to Swan (1980), inversion means putting the verb before the 
subject. This happens in question and in a number of other cases. Next, Quirk and Greenbaum (1973) 
defines inversion as a phenomenon, which is associated with the thematic fronting of an element. He 
added that there are two types of inversion: subject - verb inversion and subject - operator inversion. As 
defined by Hartvigson and Jacobsen (1974) “inversion is a rearrangement of the subject and verb or 
operator from their normal order in statements.” These definitions, to some extent, help us understand the 
nature of inversion. 
2.3. Related studies 
 The inversion phenomenon has been mentioned with various degrees in many grammar books, 
curricula, and language learning materials from basic to advanced levels. However, it is almost a list of 
some of the most typical doctrinal expressions without systematizing the structural characteristics nor 
analyzing the semantic characteristics of the sentence types. 
 Over the past years, word-order and inversion in particular has been the subject of extensive 
linguistic research. In particular, they include comparative research on one or more languages (Swan, 
1980), typological studies (Thompson, 1978), and studies of word-order in specific languages 
(Yokoyama, 1986). 
 Likewise, from a functional perspective, there are numerous studies on word-order. These analyses 
are useful for clarifying the structural and pragmatic features of inversion, a construction which overrides 
the basic SVO word-order, and is thus considered marked. 
 However, little research has been done on a particular group of learners to investigate the frequency 
of using inversion structures among them, to discover the common difficulties related to inversion 
structures that students have, to find out the causes of those difficulties as well as to give some 
suggestions to solve the problems. 
 This is the reason why we conducted the research entitled “Enhancing the use of inversion structures in 
academic writing for English majors at Thai Nguyen University of Education”. 
3. Methodology 
3.1. The participants 
3.1.1. Students 
 The student participants of this study are third-year and fourth-year English majors at TUE ranging 
in the same age group of 20-21 years. The total number of student participants is 103. Most of these 
students’ level of English proficiency is intermediate although several students may have lower or higher 
levels. 
3.1.2. Lecturers 
 The lecturer participants of the study are all the lecturers who teach academic writing in Faculty of 
Foreign Languages Education at TUE. They have in-depth knowledge about academic writing and the 
level of their students. The total number is 5 lecturers. 
3.2. Research methods and data collection instruments 
 A mixed methods research design (both qualitative and quantitative) was carried out with the 
following data collection instruments: 
3.2.1. Questionnaires 
 To address the research questions, the researcher uses survey questionnaires as the first data 
collection instrument of this study. By employing questionnaires, the privacy of the participants is protected 
and both lecturers and students might provide a truthful response for the research. 
 The researcher designed two questionnaires, one for students and the other for the lecturers. The 
questionnaires were employed to discover data regarding the participants’ feedback on the current 
situation of using inversion structures in academic writing among English majors at TUE, the common 
problems related to inversion structures that English majors have, the causes of the problems related to 
using inversion structures in academic writing, and several remedial measures to tackle these problems. 
Each questionnaire consists of three kinds of questions: “factual”, “behavioral”, and “attitudinal” ones, 
which can be easily revealed. In the design of the questionnaire for the students, the researcher 
intentionally combined two kinds of questions: close - ended questions and open - ended questions to 
exploit more information from respondents. 
3.2.2. Writing analysis 
 Because some students did not turn in their essays, the researcher only analyzed 97 academic 
essays (instead of 103 as expected) which were written by 97 English majors in the diagnostic test in the 
IELTS format at the beginning of the 2016-2017 academic year. The exam copies we collected had 
already been marked by the lecturers. With the permission of the concerning authority, we collected the 
copies for our research investigation. The academic writings fell into “cause and solution” essays and 
were confined to 40 minutes to write. The aim of writing analysis is to identify how inversion structures 
are used, which types of inversion structures students often use and how often inversion structures appear 
in the students’ essays. 
 Besides, the researcher analyzed 100 essays band 8 and 9 in several materials such as IELTS 
Cambridge 1 to 11 composed by Cambridge University Press, Simon Writings or IELTS Fighter to 
identify whether the author used inversion structures or not and how often they used inversion structures. 
 After analyzing both students’ essays and the essays in the chosen materials, the researcher 
compared the results to find out whether using inversion structures in the writings contribute to improving 
the band score of the writings or not. 
3.2.3. A test on inversion structures 
 A test on inversion structures was also administered to the students to examine whether they master 
inversion structures or not. The test was designed in the format of sentence transformation. 
4. Findings and discussions 
4.1. Teachers’ evaluation of the students’ writing ability and frequency of using inversion in 
writings 
 The results of the survey with the lecturers reveal that more than half of the lecturers (60%) are not 
very satisfied with English majors’ writing ability. The rest of the teachers are not satisfied while none of 
the lecturers are very satisfied or not satisfied at all. Moreover, 80% of the lecturers agreed that very few 
or even no inversion structures are used in their students’ writings; only 20% reckon that their students 
sometimes use inversion when writing essays. 
4.2. The current situation of using inversion in students’ writings 
4.2.1. Students’ knowledge of inversion 
 On being surveyed, more than half of the student respondents (61% exactly) stated that they have a 
good knowledge about inversion thanks to being taught at high school and at university. Even 10% of 
them said they know inversion structures quite well. However, as many as 35% of the students stated that 
they know little about this structure. 4% of the surveyed students admitted that they do not know anything 
about inversion structures. It can be concluded from the questionnaire data that more than half of English 
majors at Thai Nguyen University have a good background knowledge about inversion. 
 The questionnaire results are quite consistent with those from the test analysis on inversion 
structures as can be seen in Table 1. 
 Table 1. Results of the test on inversion structures 
Question 
items 
Types of inversion 
Number of students 
having correct answers 
(out of 82 students) 
1 Inversion with the initial “here, there” 50 
2 Inversion in reported speech 37 
3 Inversion with initial adverbials (of place) 19 
4 Inversion in questions 82 
5 Inversion in Conditional Sentences 63 
6 Inversion after “so, as” 17 
7 Inversion after “Neither, Nor” 22 
8 Inversion after adverbials with initial “Only” 50 
9 
Inversion with initial negative adverbials 
46 
10 59 
11 
Inversion after adverbials containing the word 
“No” 
45 
12 33 
13 43 
14 41 
15 Inversion with “not only  but  also” 20 
16 Inversion with so and such 67 
17 Inversion with not until/ till (then/ later) 58 
18 Inversion with intro adjective 38 
19 Inversion with intro-ed 41 
20 Inversion with intro-ing 42 
 As can be shown in the table, more than half of the students had correct answers for most of the 
question items, which means that students have a good mastery of inversion structures. 
4.2.2. Students’ frequency of using inversion in writings 
 From the results of the questionnaire, it is interesting to note that all English majors stated that they 
use inversion structures in their writings: 10 students (12%) chose Frequently, 65% chose Sometimes and 
23% Rarely; none of the surveyed students chose the categories of Very Often and Never. 
 However, as analyzed in their writings, students could only use few of these inversion structures; 
among which was the structure with there, which is a common and simple one; some students attempted 
to apply different inversion structures in their writings but they failed. 
 The researcher analyzed 197 writing pieces, including 97 students’ essays and 100 sample essays. 
The figure below represents the number of essays using inversion and the frequency of the inversion 
structures used: 
 Table 2. The number of sample writings and students’ essays using inversion structures 
 Students’ writings Sample writings 
Total number of the analyzed essays 97 100 
The number of essays using inversion structures 60 89 
The number of inversion structures used 2 13 
 It is shown in the table that the number of writings using inversion structures is quite high: 60 for 
students’ writings and 89 for sample writings; however, the number of inversion structures used between 
the two groups is a big gap: 2 for students’ writing compared with 13 for sample writings. 
 Regarding the frequency of using inversion structures (see Table 3), in student’s writings, only two 
kinds of inversion structures were found with a very high frequency; students use only the inversion 
structure with “there” (59 times) and conditionals (one time), which are very common and easy structures. 
It means that although they employ inversion several times in their writings, only two kinds of inversion 
structure were used. Furthermore, although students are aware that one of the factors to raise band scores 
for the writings is diversifying structures, including inversion structures, few of them can do or they apply 
them wrongly. Specifically, five inversion structures were used but the students failed to write the 
inversion sentence correctly. 
Table 3. Frequency of inversion structures in sample writings and students’ writings 
No. Types of inversion 
Frequency 
No. Types of inversion 
Frequency 
Sample 
essays 
Students’ 
essays 
Sample 
essays 
Students’ 
essays 
1 
Inversion with the 
initial “here, there” 
60 59 10 
Inversion after 
adverbials containing 
the word “No” 
2 0 
2 
Inversion in reported 
speech 
0 0 11 
Inversion with “not only 
 but  also” 
1 0 
3 
Inversion with initial 
adverbials (of place) 
4 0 12 
Inversion with so and 
such 
4 0 
4 Inversion in questions 2 0 13 
Inversion with not until/ 
till (then/ later) 
1 0 
5 
Inversion in 
Conditional Sentences 
5 1 14 
Inversion with intro 
adjective 
2 0 
6 
Inversion after “so, 
as” 
0 0 15 Inversion with intro-ed 5 0 
7 
Inversion after 
“Neither, Nor” 
0 0 16 Inversion with intro-ing 3 0 
8 
Inversion after 
adverbials with initial 
“Only” 
3 0 17 Others 0 0 
9 
Inversion with initial 
negative adverbials 
0 0 Total 92 60 
 On the contrary, the authors of the analyzed sample writings used various kinds of inversion 
structures with high frequency. For example, in one sample essay on the topic “Some people think that 
hard work and determination are the keys to success in life. Some, on the other hand, think that there are 
other factors behind a successful life. Give your opinion.”, the author used 3 different inversion structures 
such as inversion with the initial “there”, inversion with negative adverbials of time (inversion after 
“rarely”) and inversion with initial adverbials of place. The essay is evaluated at band 9 - the highest band 
score. 
 Overall, the results of analyzing sample writings and students’ writings reveal that the English 
majors used only two simple inversion structures with there and conditionals in their writings; five 
students attempted to use another inversion structure but they failed to produce a grammatically correct 
sentence. In contrast, sample writings contain a variety of successful inversion structures with a high 
frequency. 
4.3. Difficulties students encounter in using inversion structures 
 Both teachers and students agreed that a lack of materials related to inversion structures, lack 
practice, lack teachers’ instruction, knowing about inversion structures but not understanding their nature 
and being confused among inversion structures are the difficulties that students encounter when they 
employ inversion in their writings. There are two primary difficulties for students in using inversion in the 
writing essays: a lack of materials related to inversion structures and a lack of practice, which were 
selected by 60% of the teachers and 87% of the students. 
4.4. Solutions for enhancing the use of inversion structures in academic writing 
 Regarding the measures to encourage students to use inversion structures more frequently and 
correctly, the results of the survey with the lecturers show that 40% of the teachers agreed that providing 
students with materials related to inversion structures is the best solution for them. Besides, 20% of the 
teachers will encourage students to use inversion by including them in the criteria for marking the writing. 
Moreover, they also have to help students master inversion structures. 20% of the teachers chose other 
ways to help their students. For example, teachers should require their students to compile their own 
handbooks of inversion structures, where students can present different inversion structures with all the 
theories, form, usage and examples of their own. 
 Most of the students (95%) agreed that doing exercises on inversion structures is the best way to 
employ good inversion structures in writing. About half of the students (55% exactly) would begin with 
simple inversion structures, and then practice the more difficult ones. 
 To sum up, there are many useful techniques which are used to help students use inversion 
effectively. Almost all students support more practice, and they regard that it is the most effective 
technique to help them employ inversion in academic writing and raise their writing band. In addition, 
students should find materials related to inversion structures to master them 
5. Recommendations 
 Based on the data analysis, findings and discussions, the following recommendations are made for 
both teachers and students to enhance the use of inversion structures in academic writing for English 
majors. 
 Firstly, teachers should provide English majors with an adequate explanation of inversion 
structures, including form, usage and examples of each inversion structure. Indeed, with comprehensive 
explanation provided by teachers,