A Level English Lang and Lit Writing and SPG | Page 13

Reproduction with variation is a major characteristic of life. Without reproduction, life would quickly come to an end. The earliest single-celled organisms reproduced by duplicating their genetic material and then dividing in two. The two resulting daughter cells were identical to each other and to the parent cell, except for mutations that occurred during the process of gene duplication. Such errors, although rare, provided the raw material for biological evolution. The combination of reproduction and errors in the duplication of genetic material results in biological evolution, a change in the genetic composition of a population of organisms over time.

W. K. Purves, D. Sadava, G. H. Orians & H. C. Heller, Life: The science of biology, W. H. Freeman, 2004

All organisms reproduce and sometimes when they reproduce, the children vary. This is an important characteristic of life. If organisms did nor reproduce, life would quickly come to an end. How did the earliest single-celled organisms reproduce? They duplicated their genetic material and then they divided in two. Two daughter cells resulted from this process; they were identical to each other and to the parent cell. But sometimes as the genes duplicated, they changed or mutated. These errors are not very common but they provide the basic material for life to evolve. So when the genetic material duplicates, they reproduce and they make errors. As a result, there is a change in what the genes are composed of. When these processes combine, life evolve.

After reading the two extracts above, which is the most academic and why?

Now apply nominalisation to these verbs: