What Is Nominalization?
Nominalization means expressing an action or quality as a noun instead of a verb or adjective.
| Spoken / informal (verbs) | Formal / academic (nouns) |
|---|---|
| Prices rose sharply, so people bought less. | The sharp rise in prices led to a decline in consumption. |
| We analyzed the data carefully and found that... | Careful analysis of the data revealed that... |
| Because the city is so dense, traffic is a problem. | The city's high density contributes to traffic congestion. |
Academic and professional English is full of nouns. This makes texts:
- More concise: a whole clause becomes one noun phrase.
- More objective: the "doer" often disappears (the rise in prices — who raised them? It doesn't matter).
- Better connected: a noun can sum up the previous sentence and start the next one.
Common Noun-Forming Suffixes
| Suffix | Verb / Adjective → Noun |
|---|---|
| -tion / -sion | reduce → reduction, decide → decision, expand → expansion, implement → implementation |
| -ment | develop → development, improve → improvement, invest → investment |
| -ance / -ence | perform → performance, depend → dependence, differ → difference |
| -al | approve → approval, propose → proposal, refuse → refusal |
| -ity | available → availability, complex → complexity, flexible → flexibility |
| -ness | aware → awareness, effective → effectiveness |
| -ure | fail → failure, close → closure |
| -th | grow → growth, strong → strength, long → length |
| no change | increase, decrease, rise, fall, change, decline, drop, cost, use |
How to Nominalize a Sentence: Step by Step
Original: The government reduced taxes, and as a result companies invested more.
- Find the verbs: reduced, invested.
- Change them into nouns: reduction, investment.
- Connect the ideas with a verb of cause or result: led to, resulted in, caused, contributed to.
- Add prepositions: the reduction in taxes, an increase in investment.
Result: The reduction in taxes led to higher corporate investment.
Useful "Linking Verbs" for Nominal Style
Once your actions are nouns, you need verbs that express relationships between them:
| Relationship | Verbs |
|---|---|
| Cause → effect | lead to, result in, cause, bring about, give rise to, contribute to |
| Effect ← cause | result from, stem from, be attributable to, be due to |
| Show / prove | demonstrate, indicate, reveal, suggest |
| Require | require, necessitate, call for |
| Allow / prevent | enable, facilitate, hinder, prevent |
- The closure of the factory resulted in the loss of 400 jobs.
- The delay stemmed from a shortage of materials.
- The introduction of flexible hours facilitated the retention of experienced staff.
Building Noun Phrases
Formal noun phrases often combine several elements:
(determiner) + (adjective) + (noun modifier) + HEAD NOUN + (prepositional phrase)
- a significant long-term increase in household debt
- the rapid expansion of online retail in rural areas
- a lack of access to affordable childcare
Prepositions after common nouns (learn them as chunks):
- increase / decrease / rise / fall / drop / change in something
- increase / rise / fall of + number (a rise of 5%)
- demand for, need for, reason for
- effect / impact / influence on
- access to, solution to, approach to
- lack of, cause of
Nominalization for Cohesion
A noun can summarize the previous sentence and connect it to the next — this is called a summary noun or encapsulation:
- Online sales tripled between 2019 and 2022. This growth forced many high-street shops to close.
- Several employees raised concerns about safety. These concerns were addressed in the new policy.
- The council voted to ban cars from the city centre. The decision was controversial.
Useful summary nouns: this trend, this development, this increase, this approach, this problem, this change, this decision, this shift.
When Not to Nominalize
Too much nominalization produces "zombie nouns" — heavy text that is hard to read:
The implementation of the recommendation for the reduction of expenditure by the management was subject to a delay.
Better:
Management was slow to implement the recommendation to reduce spending.
Guidelines:
- In reports and academic writing, use nominalization to summarize and connect ideas — but keep some clear verbs.
- In emails, presentations and speech, prefer verbs. Say We decided to... rather than A decision was made to...
- If a sentence has three or more -tion/-ment nouns in a row, rewrite it.
In Exams
- IELTS Academic Writing Task 1: nominal style lets you vary your sentences: "Sales rose sharply" → "There was a sharp rise in sales." Examiners reward this flexibility.
- IELTS Task 2 and TOEFL Academic Discussion: summary nouns (This trend..., Such a policy...) improve Coherence and Cohesion.
- Reading sections: academic texts are nominal, so recognizing that "the expansion of the program" = "the program expanded" speeds up comprehension.
Common Mistakes
- Wrong preposition:
an increase of prices→ an increase in prices;impact to health→ impact on health. - Wrong noun form:
the analyse→ the analysis;the maintain→ the maintenance;the pronounciation→ the pronunciation. - Keeping the verb too:
There was a decrease reduced in costs.→ There was a decrease in costs. - Zombie nouns: see "When Not to Nominalize" above.
Practice Tips
- Take a spoken summary of a graph ("Sales went up a lot in May, then dropped") and rewrite it in nominal style.
- Keep a list of noun + preposition chunks (increase in, impact on, access to) and add five new ones each week.
- Edit for balance: after writing a report paragraph, check that each sentence still has a clear, active verb.