TOEIC Link Writing — Nominalization Overuse and Verb-Driven Clarity Recovery

Many test-takers believe that formal writing means abstract writing, and that the way to sound serious on a TOEIC Link Writing response is to swap plain verbs for weighty nouns. So "the company decided" becomes "the company reached a decision," "we improved the process" becomes "we made an improvement to the process," and "managers evaluate performance" becomes "the evaluation of performance is carried out by managers." Each swap feels more official. Each one also buries the action, adds words, and slows the sentence down. This pattern is called nominalization, and its overuse is one of the quietest ways a response loses clarity while its writer thinks it is gaining polish.

This article covers what nominalization actually is, why a rater reads a noun-heavy response as harder to follow rather than more advanced, how to detect the habit in your own drafts, and a four-week routine to recover the verb-driven sentences that read cleanly and score well.

What nominalization is and how it hides the action

A nominalization is a noun made from a verb or an adjective: decide becomes decision, analyze becomes analysis, able becomes ability. There is nothing wrong with these nouns in themselves — English needs them. The problem is structural. When the main action of a sentence is trapped inside a noun, the verb slot has to be filled by something weak and general — make, carry out, conduct, provide, is — and the real event of the sentence disappears from the position where a reader looks for it.

Compare "The implementation of the new system resulted in a reduction in errors" with "The new system reduced errors." The first sentence has three nominalizations (implementation, reduction) propped up by empty verbs (resulted in), and the reader has to reassemble the action from the pieces. The second says the same thing in four words, with the actor, the action, and the object in plain order. A rater processing dozens of responses reads the second as controlled and the first as clogged. Nominalization does not make writing more sophisticated; it makes the action harder to find.

Why raters penalize the noun-heavy response

It is tempting to assume that heavier vocabulary earns a higher band, but a TOEIC Link Writing rater is judging communication, not weight. A noun-heavy sentence costs the reader effort: they must locate the buried verb, hold the abstract nouns in memory, and figure out who is doing what to whom. When several such sentences stack up, the response reads as vague and effortful even when every word is grammatically correct. The rater's impression is not "this writer is advanced" but "I am working hard to follow this."

There is a second cost. Nominalization lets a writer drop the actor entirely — "an evaluation was conducted" hides who evaluated — which produces exactly the agentless, floating prose that reads as evasive. Keeping verbs live forces the writer to name actors and commit to claims, which is the same discipline that governs deliberate use of the passive: choosing structure on purpose rather than by habit, as covered in passive voice strategic deployment for agent suppression and process focus. A response full of buried verbs and missing actors scores below one that says plainly who did what.

Detecting the pattern in your own drafts

Nominalization is hard to see because it feels correct as you write it. Three detection signals make it visible on a revision pass. First, scan for the empty verbs that nominalization requires — make, carry out, conduct, provide, achieve, give, reach — and check whether the real action is sitting as a noun right after them. "Make a decision," "conduct an analysis," "provide assistance," and "reach an agreement" are all recoverable to single strong verbs (decide, analyze, help, agree).

Second, look for words ending in -tion, -ment, -ance, -ence, and -ity that carry the sentence's meaning. Each is a candidate to convert back into a verb or adjective. Third, notice sentences where you cannot immediately point to the actor; a buried verb often takes the actor down with it. Detection is a mechanical scan, not a judgment call, which is why it pairs naturally with the broader habit of trimming inflated phrasing covered in concision and redundant-expression elimination for word economy. Once you can see the pattern, the repair is almost automatic.

Recovering the verb — and when to keep the noun

Recovery is a single move: find the noun that holds the action and turn it back into a verb, then give that verb a real subject. "There was a significant increase in customer complaints" becomes "customer complaints increased significantly." "The committee's consideration of the proposal took place over two weeks" becomes "the committee considered the proposal over two weeks." Each rewrite shortens the sentence, names the actor, and puts the action where the reader expects it.

This does not mean nominalization is always wrong. Some nouns are the natural subject of a sentence — "inflation," "the analysis," "this decision" — especially when they refer back to something already established and become the topic of the next sentence. The skill is not to eliminate every noun but to stop the habitual conversion of live verbs into dead nouns propped up by empty ones. A single well-placed nominalization that carries a topic forward is precise; a paragraph of them is fog. Knowing which nouns earn their place is part of the same collocation judgment discussed in vocabulary precision and collocation discipline.

A four-week routine to make verb-driven writing automatic

Week one is diagnosis. Take three past responses and highlight every noun ending in -tion, -ment, -ance, -ence, or -ity, then mark the empty verbs (make, conduct, provide) that support them. The density of highlights is your baseline; most writers are surprised by how much of the action is buried.

Week two drills recovery in isolation. Take twenty nominalized phrases — "make an assessment," "carry out an investigation," "provide protection" — and rewrite each as a strong verb with a named actor. Week three moves to sentences: rewrite ten sentences from your own drafts, converting the buried action back to a verb and adding the actor the nominalization dropped, then check that each rewrite is shorter and clearer. Week four integrates under timing. Write full responses at exam pace, and reserve sixty seconds of the revision window for a single targeted scan — find the empty verbs, recover the buried actions, restore the actors. By the fourth week the instinct to write "the new policy reduced turnover" instead of "the new policy resulted in a reduction in turnover" should be automatic, and that instinct is exactly the verb-driven clarity a TOEIC Link Writing rater reads as control.