EFL Students’ Deviation from Academic to Informal Writing: The Case of Third-year Students in the Department of English at Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-ouzou
Loading...
Date
2020-11
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Université Mouloud Mammeri Tizi Ouzou
Abstract
The present research aims at investigating third-year students’ deviation from academic to informal writing in the department of English at Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-ouzou. Three main objectives have motivated this research. First, it strives to identify the informal features that third-year students use in their academic writing. Second, it intends to identify the major types of errors that students make. As for the third objective, it consists in discovering whether the language used in social networking sites has any impact on students’ academic writing. In order to meet the objectives of the study, Chang and Swales (1999) and Abu Sheikha and Inkpen (2010) criteria of informal writing as well as Corder’s (1974) Error Analysis theory are adopted as the two analytical frameworks. The data are gathered from the analysis of eighty exam papers written by third-year students in the civilisation module and from an online questionnaire addressed to the same students in order to get more reliable data. A mixed-method research combining both qualitative and quantitative methods is used to analyse the obtained data. The qualitative data are analysed using Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) while the quantitative data are treated with the Google Forms. The outcomes of this research reveal that the features of informal writing are present in students’ essays. Hence, learners constantly deviate from one style to another within the same context. In addition, many errors are extracted from their exam papers which demonstrate their poor mastery of writing mechanics. Accordingly, the results of the questionnaire indicate that the language of social networking sites affects negatively students’ academic writing to some extent. Indeed, their answers show that the language of chatting through these online platforms is intended to be informal and that almost all the features they use in their chat messages are present in their essays, including sentence initial conjunctions, abbreviations, vague expressions, contractions, run-on expressions, first person pronouns, broad reference, direct questions and sentence final prepositions as for split infinitives, sentence fragments, exclamations and slangs, they are not used in their essays.
Description
30cm ; 91p. ; ill. en coul,
Keywords
Academic writing, Informal writing, Error Analysis, Social Networking Sites.
Citation
Language and Communication