T. R.

Girill
Society for Technical Communication/Lawrence Livermore National Lab.
trgirill@acm.org
Technical Writing: Unpacking Sequence Words the ESL Way
Sequence Words Differentiated
Glassman-Deal's explanation of the methods section is just like
everyone else's except that she also makes explicit--in a chart
in her section 3.2.1--the different words that fluent English
speakers use to express eight distinct stages in a technical
sequence. Here is a very abbreviated version of her list, just
two examples per stage, of English words highly relevant to
signaling readers about WHERE the writer thinks they are in a
sequence:
1. Before the beginning-earlier
in advance
2. At the beginning-to start with
at first
3. Steps-next
then
4. Early phase-soon
before long
5. Later phase-in time
later [on]
6. Simultaneous steps-as soon as
while
7.At the end-finally
lastly
8. After the end-afterwards
eventually
If you are a fluent English speaker you realize how easily you
deploy these verbal distinctions without conscious effort. Most
are also idioms (there is no logical reason why the correct
phrase is 'in advance' instead of 'by advance' or 'for advance',
for example, yet using those alternative strings entirely spoils

the intended meaning). This is precisely why ESL students-and low-literacy native speakers too--have trouble signaling
these distinctions effectively (or may not even notice them).
Someone needs to reveal the relevant English linguistic features
to them. For describing a sequence, this is Bergman's
"language frontloading" in action.
Ironically, few science students ever learn these moves in English
class--at least until the Common Core required it. That's because
these sequence words are too mainstream to turn up in traditional
vocabulary-building lessons and too nonfiction to get much
attention in literature lessons.
Beyond Plain Language
Note also that the linguistic scaffolding illustrated above is
compatible with, yet different from, what some writers call the
"plain language" movement. This is the push to replace needlessly
big, complex (and often Latin-based) words with synonymous
smaller, clearer (and often Anglo-Saxon) words whenever the
latter can to the communication job at hand just as well. An
example related to expressing a sequence would be replacing
'subsequently' with 'after'.
However, most of the signal words in the sequence-stages list above
are already pretty much "plain" and Anglo-Saxon. The specific
problem for students here is not that these words are pompous or
intimidating but that they embody important meaning distinctions
in ways that are invisible or confusing to anyone not already a
master of idiomatic English. So your pointing out how these basic
sequence terms work (as Glassman-Deal does) frees your students to
communicate well about the underlying science topic