scholarly journals Use of Core Modal Verbs in Academic Writing of Thai EFL Students

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 277-291
Author(s):  
Saowadee Kongpetch
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Public University ◽  
Modal Verbs ◽  
The Third ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Thai Students ◽  
Efl Students

Modal verbs, as one of modality devices, play an important role in academic writing and argument. To gain insights into the use of modal verbs in academic writing of Thai EFL students, the in-depth analysis of 15 discussion essays written by the third-year English majors at one public university in Thailand was carried out. It focused specifically on the nine core modal verbs (can, could, may, might, will, would, shall, should and must) and examined their frequencies and semantic functions. The data analysis employed Sketch Engine, a corpus concordance, and drew on categories of semantic functions. The analysis revealed that can, will, may and should were the top four frequently favored items, respectively while must, could, would and might were found to be exceptionally underused. As for semantic functions, the most dominant meaning was “possibility” expressed by can. The results indicate that Thai students’ academic writing skills need to be significantly improved, particularly their ability to use modal verbs strategically in their essays. The curriculum design for academic writing needs to emphasize both syntactic structure and semantic functions of modal verbs and encompass activities urging students to practice using these modals systematically and purposefully.

scholarly journals An Attempt at Promoting Undergraduate Sudanese EFL Students’ Performance in Academic Writing Skills

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ammar Mohammed Ahmed Mudawy
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Extensive Reading ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
Efl Teachers ◽  
Holy Quran ◽  
Post Test ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
University Level

The study aims at suggesting effective methods and techniques that could improve English as a foreign language EFL students’ performance in writing skills. The researcher uses the descriptive, analytical method. Four tools were adopted pretest, post-test, supporting program, and a questionnaire for teachers for collecting data. Twenty-five students in Holy Quran University, Sudan, were chosen purposively, and thirty EFL teachers at a university level were randomly selected as a sample for the study. Ninty percent of the teachers agree on the suggested program and techniques. The findings of the study indicate that: using varied techniques and activities in pre-writing stage promotes students’ performances in writing, integration of reading and writing skills in the classroom improves students’ writing skills, as well as encouraging extensive reading outside the classroom promotes students’ performance in writing skills. Accordingly, the researcher recommends that: teachers should focus on the prewriting stage through different activities as well as reading and writing should be used in an integrated way in-class writing to guide the writing process.

scholarly journals Teaching Writing in EAP Contexts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Viorica Condrat
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Process Development ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Teaching Writing ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Discourse Community ◽  
State University ◽  
Efl Students

Academic writing is a particular type of scholarly interaction which signals the writer’s affiliation to a specific discourse community. Developing academic writing skills should become a priority for higher education. This paper describes a small-scale study which investigates the role of blogging in developing academic writing skills in undergraduate students. Blogging is viewed as a platform where the scholarly interaction between members of the same discourse community can take place. The paper is based on the survey data and observation during the experiment conducted at Alecu Russo Balti State University of Moldova. It reports on how EFL students reacted to the use of blogs for academic writing tasks. The findings suggest that students seem to have a positive attitude to blogging pointing out to such benefits as: enhanced self-efficacy, awareness of the writing process, development of reader awareness, increased responsibility for the quality of the writing. We argue that blogging can yield significant improvement in undergraduate students’ academic writing.

Effects of Teaching Lexical Bundles on EFL Students’ Abstract Genre Academic Writing Skills Improvement: Corpus-Based Research Design

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 585
Author(s):  
Amare Tesfie Birhan
Keyword(s):  
Computer Science ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Lexical Bundles ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Genre Writing ◽  
Lexical Bundle ◽  
Informed Instruction ◽  
Positive Effect

Lexical bundles are two or more string of words that co-occur frequently in a corpus. Hence, this corpus-based research design study examines the effects of lexical bundles on English as a foreign language learner’s abstract genre academic writing skills, and it also investigates students’ perception towards lexical bundles instruction to enhance their academic writing skills. Hence, frequent lexical bundles were selected from 70 computer science articles. These articles were selected from 7 journals that were published in reputable, indexed, and through representative criteria. Accordingly, sixteen frequent lexical bundles were selected through corpus analysis software (Laurence Anthony’s Antconc software) for the purpose of classroom instruction. The bundles are intended to help computer science students to develop their abstract genre academic writing skills. Students have instructed their academic writing through corpus informed instruction for two months, and the data were gathered through pre and post-tests and questionnaire. The findings indicated that lexical bundles have a positive effect on students’ academic writing skills, particularly abstract genre writing. Besides, the students have a positive perception of the lexical bundle and the instruction to enhance their academic writing skills. Finally, this research calls attention to discipline-oriented lexical bundles since they are crucial for academic writing. 

scholarly journals THE IMPLEMENTATION OF CONTENT-BASED APPROACH IN IMPROVING ACADEMIC WRITING SKILLS OF EFL STUDENTS

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dwi Fita Heriyawati ◽  
Teguh Sulistyo ◽  
Agus Sholeh
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Writing Class ◽  
Grammatical Errors ◽  
Efl Students

This study aimed at investigating the benefits of the implementation of Content-Based Approach (CBA) in academic writing of EFL settings. Therefore, the approach was implemented in writing class in which 35 students participated as the respondents of the study. They were treated with CBA and their essays were then analyzed to examine the effects of the implementation of the approach on their writing products. Besides, this study investigated further the grammatical errors made by the students as reflected on their essays. The findings of this study proved that CBA is beneficial to improve students’ writing skills even though the students still produced grammatical errors.

scholarly journals Learner Corpus and Academic Writing: Identifying the Error Patterns of Taiwanese EFL Students

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Hsiao-I Hou
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Writing Curriculum ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Learner Corpus ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Grammatical Errors ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Lexical Errors

<p>The purpose of this study is to find practical implications for improving academic writing curriculum design by exploring lexical and grammatical errors produced by EFL learners in a vocational institution in Taiwan. To satisfy this purpose, a small learner corpus was compiled in this study. The data were obtained from 58 undergraduate students of a public vocational university from September 2012 to June 2013 in Taiwan. There are 112 essays in the corpus that include 34,426 tokens. Learner errors were annotated based on the error categories found in (Dagneaux et al, 1996). Transfer errors and intralingual errors were analyzed. Lexical Tutor and AntConc software were used to conduct the analyses. Lexical errors, including incorrect word choices, misspellings, and word insertions, deletions or replacements occurred primarily due to students’ insufficient mastery of vocabulary. The top three grammatical errors were verb forms, article errors, and preposition errors. Based on the research results, pedagogical implications that focus on teaching EAP writing to vocational university students in Taiwan are discussed.</p>

scholarly journals EFL Students’ and Lecturer’s Perceptions on Collaborative Writing

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Ade Ismail ◽  
Ninuk Lustyantie ◽  
Emzir Emzir
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Understanding ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Qualitative Method ◽  
Collaborative Writing ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Research Data ◽  
Positive Perception ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
Efl Students

The study aims to explore in-depth students' and lecturer’s perceptions of collaborative writing. There are four perceptual focuses; conceptual understanding, forms of cooperation, writing skills, and classroom atmosphere. This study used a qualitative method involving 31 students who took academic writing courses and an English Lecturer. The research data were collected through questionnaire and analyzed descriptively. The results showed that students and lecturer had a positive perception of the collaborative writing model in terms of understanding concepts, forms of cooperation, writing skills, and a pleasant learning classroom atmosphere. One of the most dominant aspects of students' perceptions about collaborative writing is the development of cooperation between them in the learning process (Storch 2018), which improves their writing abilities and skills (Zhang 2018).  

scholarly journals The Success of an EAP Programme in Tertiary Education: Using a Student-Centric Approach to Scaffold Materials in an EAP

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. p213
Author(s):  
Misty So-Sum Wai Cook
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Curriculum Design ◽  
Tertiary Education ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Content Development ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
Scaffold Materials ◽  
The Impact

Researchers and practitioners who focus on academic writing in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) courses have reported on the need to equip students with the necessary knowledge and skills to deal with academic writing across different disciplines in tertiary education (Rinnert & Kobayashi, 2005; Shi, 2011; Thompson, 2013). Previous research (e.g., Crosthwaite, 2016) has predominantly measured students’ progress in an EAP by comparing students’ pre- and post-course scores of individual language/writing skills. Much less has been reported on the effectiveness of a detailed EAP curriculum design that scaffolds skills in stages. This study contributes to the current EAP research by examining holistically the impact of a 12-week EAP course that adopts a reading-to-write, student-centric approach to scaffold progressively difficult writing skills/knowledge to help students acquire academic writing skills by focusing on three core skills: language, text organisation, and content development. The data of this study show students’ perceptions of their writing abilities and the significant improvement in academic writing skills before and after completing the course.

scholarly journals Effects of Using Corpus-Based Instructional Mediation on EFL Students’ Academic Writing Skills Improvement

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-153
Author(s):  
Amare Tesfie Birhan ◽  
Mulugeta Teka ◽  
Nibret Asrade
Keyword(s):  
Academic Writing ◽  
Engineering Students ◽  
Writing Skills ◽  
Sampling Technique ◽  
Simple Random Sampling ◽  
Control Group ◽  
Writing Courses ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Efl Students ◽  
Experimental Group

This study aimed at examining the effects of corpus-based instructional mediation on EFL learners’ academic writing skills improvement. To conduct the research, a quasi-experimental research design was employed. A total of 72 EFL mechanical engineering students participated in the study, and they were selected through a simple random sampling technique.  Among them, 25 students were assigned to the experimental group and 47 students to the control group. The data were gathered by means of pre- and post-tests. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was used to observe the statistical differences between the control and the experimental groups in their academic writing skills. The results showed that the students who were instructed through corpus-based instructional mediation outperformed than the students who were instructed in the conventional instructional approach. Particularly, the students who participated in the experimental group improved their content, communicative achievement, organization, grammar, and vocabulary usage than the students who participated in the control group. Therefore, this research calls for inclusion of corpus-based authentic linguistic elements in their teaching material when teaching academic writing courses in the EFL context.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document