A comparative study of nominalisation in IELTS writing test papers

Adopting the Functional Grammar advanced by Halliday (1985a), this paper investigates the nominalisation of two IELTS writing test papers of candidates achieving band 7 and band 5. The study aims to identify the frequency of nominalisation employed in these texts and the distribution of verbal and adjectival nominalisations. The study also looks at the other aspects that contribute to the complexity of writing: lexical density and readability. The result shows that the numbers of nominalisation in the writing test paper at band 7 doubled the amount of the writing test paper at band 5. In the two texts, verbal nominalisation is mainly used while adjectival nominalisation is low. With reference to lexical density and readability, it is revealed that the text with higher marks was denser and more difficult to read whilst the lower]graded text was less dense and easier to comprehend. Two conclusions are drawn from the findings. Firstly, nominalisation packed the information in a text and made it denser and