scholarly journals English Language Component of the Mature Students’ Entrance Examinations into Ghanaian Universities: Placement, Diagnostic or Both?

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 201
Author(s):  
Ramos Asafo-Adjei ◽  
Ernest Kwesi Klu ◽  
Albert Agbesi Wornyo
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Communication Skills ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Entrance Examinations ◽  
Mature Students ◽  
Survey Approach

One way that Ghanaian universities admit undergraduate students is an examination organised for candidates who are twenty-five years and above. This examination is known as the Mature Students’ Entrance Examinations (MSEE). This paper argues that the English language component of the MSEE should not only be used for placement purposes, but, also, for diagnostic purposes. A desk survey approach to research was adopted involving 43 relevant literature which were reviewed and synthesised. The study indicates that academic writing, referred to as Communication Skills, falls under the domain of English for Academic Purposes in an English as a Second Language setting like Ghana. It is further advanced that Communication Skills is essential for the performance of students in school. The paper, therefore, argues for the English language component of the MSEE to be used not only for placement purposes but for diagnostic purposes. The study recommends that the latter approach should be included since it will help improve the performances of students in Communication Skills.   Received: 4 March 2021 / Accepted: 6 May 2021 / Published: 8 July 2021

scholarly journals The Writer, the Text and the Reader: An Exploration of  Identity in Second Language Academic Writing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kirsten Reid
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Second Language Writing ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Student Writers ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
The Relationship

<p>Students studying in university contexts often find learning to write English for academic purposes especially challenging. Some of the challenges reside in acquiring the necessary skills and strategies to be successful academic writers. A less tangible consideration which has received recent attention from first and second language writing researchers is the relationship between writing and identity. How do student writers become part of a situated community in which some discourses may be privileged over others? While all writing can be a potential site of struggle, this may have particular significance for second language students who bring their own unique backgrounds and literacy histories to their academic writing and may find becoming part of a new and heterogeneous discourse community profoundly unsettling. Using case study methods, this dissertation explores the experiences of four undergraduate students as they become academic writers in a second language. It also carries out an analysis of some of the linguistic features one particular student essay to examine how writers simultaneously construct their texts and are constructed by them.</p>

scholarly journals The Writer, the Text and the Reader: An Exploration of  Identity in Second Language Academic Writing

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kirsten Reid
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Second Language Writing ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Student Writers ◽  
Language Writing ◽  
The Relationship

<p>Students studying in university contexts often find learning to write English for academic purposes especially challenging. Some of the challenges reside in acquiring the necessary skills and strategies to be successful academic writers. A less tangible consideration which has received recent attention from first and second language writing researchers is the relationship between writing and identity. How do student writers become part of a situated community in which some discourses may be privileged over others? While all writing can be a potential site of struggle, this may have particular significance for second language students who bring their own unique backgrounds and literacy histories to their academic writing and may find becoming part of a new and heterogeneous discourse community profoundly unsettling. Using case study methods, this dissertation explores the experiences of four undergraduate students as they become academic writers in a second language. It also carries out an analysis of some of the linguistic features one particular student essay to examine how writers simultaneously construct their texts and are constructed by them.</p>

British Council’s English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Students’ Manual: A Critical Analysis of the Coursebook Taught at Pakistani Universities for Academic Purposes (EAP) Students’ Manual: A Critical Analysis of the Coursebook Taught at Pakistani Universities

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Teaching Principles

English for Academic Purposes course focusing on the academic language needs of students is a subfield of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). It is a type of specialized course to integrate specific subject matter, language content, and material based on learners’ needs. The study aims to evaluate the British Council’s English for Academic Purposes (EAP) coursebook in terms of content, sequencing, learners’ autonomy, motivation, feedback and focus on language skills. Furthermore, the study tries to provide a general perception of the usefulness and effectiveness of the coursebook for undergraduate students. The EAP Students’ Manual coursebook is used as a primary source for the data collection. The researcher has chosen Nation & Macalister (2010) model of language teaching principles to analyze and discuss the data. The study found the coursebook a useful, effective and an appropriate source of English language learning in terms of the investigated aspects of the book. The findings report that the coursebook provides practice and practical usage in all domains of the academically required English language skills. It helps the students to build language competency and to be more independent learners. In addition, it provides an opportunity to the learners to think in the target language, use the language more practically and learn it in a natural type of environment. The study concludes and suggests that the content needs to be supplemented with English language audios and videos presenting the students relevant documentaries and helping material in order to make the coursebook and the learning process more useful, effective, interesting and motivating. Furthermore, the study recommends that while choosing /designing a coursebook for a certain course, it needs to be evaluated following the various criteria and language-teaching-principles suggested by different language researchers.

British Council’s English for Academic Purposes (EAP) Students’ Manual: A Critical Analysis of the Coursebook Taught at Pakistani Universities

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Target Language ◽  
Teaching Principles ◽  
Language Needs

English for Academic Purposes course focusing on the academic language needs of students is a subfield of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). It is a type of specialized course to integrate specific subject matter, language content, and material based on learners’ needs. The study aims to evaluate the British Council’s English for Academic Purposes (EAP) coursebook in terms of content, sequencing, learners’ autonomy, motivation, feedback and focus on language skills. Furthermore, the study tries to provide a general perception of the usefulness and effectiveness of the coursebook for undergraduate students. The EAP Students’ Manual coursebook is used as a primary source for the data collection. The researcher has chosen Nation & Macalister (2010) model of language teaching principles to analyze and discuss the data. The study found the coursebook a useful, effective and an appropriate source of English language learning in terms of the investigated aspects of the book. The findings report that the coursebook provides practice and practical usage in all domains of the academically required English language skills. It helps the students to build language competency and to be more independent learners. In addition, it provides an opportunity to the learners to think in the target language, use the language more practically and learn it in a natural type of environment. The study concludes and suggests that the content needs to be supplemented with English language audios and videos presenting the students relevant documentaries and helping material in order to make the coursebook and the learning process more useful, effective, interesting and motivating. Furthermore, the study recommends that while choosing /designing a coursebook for a certain course, it needs to be evaluated following the various criteria and language-teaching-principles suggested by different language researchers.

scholarly journals A Discourse Analysis: Cohesion of the Introduction Section of Research Article

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Anis Firdatul Rochma ◽  
Sulis Triyono
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Language Teaching ◽  
Research Articles ◽  
Semantic Meaning ◽  
Lexical Cohesion ◽  
Research Article ◽  
English Academic Writing ◽  
Writing Competence

<em>As an effort to give contribution to the existing knowledge, it is expected for the undergraduate students to compose an engaging research article in order to convince the readers about the importance of the research article. However, there is only a little attention given to the articles written by the undergraduate students although it is considered very critical to examine whether the exposure of English academic writing has significantly enhances the writing competence of the students. Furthermore, as it is also very crucial to build a meaningful semantic meaning among the sentences in order to disclose the worthiness of the research article, it is essential to analyze the cohesion of the research article written by the undergraduate students. Henceforth, the present research is projected to investigate the cohesion of the research articles written by the undergraduate students of English Language Teaching. As the introduction section of research article is likely to be an area to portray the logical explanation of the research, the present research solely focuses on examining the cohesion of the introduction section of research article. By adopting a qualitative design and involving several steps to analyze the introduction section, it is revealed that the grammatical cohesion is considered to be the most utilized type of cohesion in writing the introduction section. Still, the lexical cohesion is also necessary to build an eloquent semantic meaning about the topic as well the importance of the research article.</em>

Refusal and Politeness Strategies of Malay Speakers of English As A Second Language

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norma Saad ◽  
Siti Jamilah Bidin ◽  
Ahmad Affendi Shabdin
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Teachers ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
University Selection ◽  
Politeness Strategies ◽  
Linguistic Behaviour ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
Refusal Strategies

Politeness is an essential part in human communication. It plays a pivotal role in establishing and maintaining good relationships and social harmony. It is reflected by linguistic and non-linguistic behavior through which we indicate that we take others’ feelings of how they should be treated into account.  The present study investigated the application of politeness strategies through the linguistic behaviour of twelve Malay English as a second language (MSE) undergraduate students when refusing their higher status interlocutor’s scholarship offer to pursue their studies at an overseas university. Selection of participants was based on a purposive sampling and on the students’ MUET results.  The study examined how these students employed politeness strategies as they struggled to find an equilibrium between defending their stance of not accepting the scholarship and at the same time maintaining civility towards a persistent university officer. Data on refusal interactions between the students and the university officer were obtained through an open role-play which were transcribed, classified into semantic refusal strategies, categorized into the types of sequence orders of the strategies and finally classified according to Brown and Levinson’s politeness strategies. The repertoire of MSE refusal strategies reveals positive politeness to be dominant followed by bald-on-record while negative politeness was employed minimally. Using a combination of these three types of politeness, the MSE refusal interactions show variation of politeness ranging from less to more polite. The study revealed that the degree of politeness depend very much on participants’ effort to adapt to the context of situation. The variation of strategies which reflect different degree of politeness generated by the study would be useful as pragmatic input. This input could be utilized by English language teachers to raise pragmatic awareness and to develop their students’ ability to use socially appropriate language for the situation they encounter.

scholarly journals Exploring Factors of Speech Anxiety in Second Language Classroom

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 97
Author(s):  
Abdul Malik Abbasi ◽  
Samreen Riaz Ahmed ◽  
Alia Farooqi ◽  
Stephon John
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
English Language ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Speech Anxiety ◽  
Factors Affecting ◽  
Language Classroom ◽  
The World ◽  
Language Classrooms ◽  
Esl Learners

This study aims to investigate the factors affecting on English speech of undergraduate students at the SMIU, Karachi. The study prospects two aspects as outcomes of the study, one to discover what are the major issues and hindrances and another one to find their solutions for developing techniques and skills to gain confidence while speaking English as a second language in ESL classroom and in public. It will further investigate as how to help develop a wonderful speech free from speech anxiety. The study administered Likert Scale as a tool for data collection. Forty participating students were recruited from the department of Computer Science, Sindh Madressatul Islam University, Karachi. Speech anxiety is a common phenomenon amongst the students in the second language classrooms. Second language i.e., English, however, has become the lingua franca of the world. It is no longer the language of only native Britishers and Americans, rather, it is a widely spoken language by most people living in every nook & corner of the world. This study investigates as to how ESL learners turn out as nervous speakers while speaking English. Findings of the study suggest that speech anxiety seems to be an unavoidable phenomenon for ESL learners as the data reveal. In addition, this study is associated with the previous studies that there is a moderate level of Foreign Language Speech Anxiety (FLSA) amongst the Pakistani English speakers. Since English is taught from the primary level and every literate person almost understands and speaks English. Pakistani English language speakers should speak without speech anxiety, though it seems to be a part of human nature being nervous while speaking English as a second language. The students should learn how to manage speech anxiety by welcoming it and try to overcome it not by mindless imitation but by being natural in English speech.

scholarly journals A STUDY ON ALBANIAN STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF THE ESP COURSES CONTRIBUTION TO THEIR ENGINEERING/ARCHITECTURE KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION AND COMMUNICATION COMPETENCE

2021 ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Mirela Alhasani
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Communication Skills ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Global Market ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
Soft Skill ◽  
Tailored Communication ◽  
Beneficial Impact ◽  
Research Findings

Currently, soft skills mainly communication skills of engineering/architecture graduates have been considered as essential as their hard skills for the 21st century competitive global market. Given the cramped curricula of engineering/architecture programs, the research examines the beneficial impact that ESP undergraduate courses have on the tailored communication of engineering/architecture students at a case study analysis - EPOKA University in Tirana, Albania. In order to obtain feedback and unbiased perceptions on the tangible improvement in advanced English communication skills and disciplinary content knowledge acquisition, a questionnaire survey  was conducted with the undergraduate students of EPOKA University at the Faculty of Architecture and Engineering upon successful completion  of the two mandatory ESP courses at undergraduate level. A mixed method was utilized to collect the statistical data from questionnaires and the semi-structured interviews with students of engineering majors and architecture at the Faculty of Architecture and Engineering of EPOKA University who took English for Academic Purposes and Engineering English during 2018-2020 academic years. Research findings revealed the growing appreciation and high interest that students are placing into ESP courses as significant contributors to knowledge acquisition and soft skill betterment alongside the classic disciplinary courses of their disciplines. Key words; engineering/architecture major, ESP courses, needs analysis survey, EPOKA University 

scholarly journals How recorded audio-visual feedback can improve academic language support

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 71-90
Author(s):  
Michelle Cavaleri ◽  
◽  
Satomi Kawaguchi ◽  
Bruno Di Biase ◽  
Clare Power ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Visual Feedback ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Academic Language ◽  
Language Support ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Quality Feedback ◽  
The Impact

Providing effective, high quality feedback that students engage with remains an important issue in higher education today, particularly in the context of academic language support where feedback helps socialise students to academic writing practices. Technology-enhanced feedback, such as audio and video feedback, is becoming more widely used, and as such, it is important to evaluate whether these methods help students engage with the feedback more successfully than conventional methods. While previous research has explored students’ perceptions of audio-visual feedback, this paper seeks to fill a gap in the literature by examining the impact of the audio-visual mode on undergraduate students’ engagement with feedback compared to written-only feedback. Evidence from an analysis of feedback comments (n = 1040) and corresponding revisions as well as interviews (n = 3) is used to draw conclusions about the value of providing audio-visual feedback to help students revise their writing more successfully. In line with multimedia learning theory (Mayer 2009), it is argued that the multimodal format, conversational tone, verbal explanations and personalised feel of audio-visual feedback allows for a more successful engagement with the feedback, particularly for students with a lower level of English language proficiency.

scholarly journals ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES: KEEPING UP WITH THE TIMES

2020 ◽  
pp. 40-57
Author(s):  
Olga Ilchenko ◽  
Natalia Kramar
Keyword(s):  
Writing Instruction ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
English Language ◽  
Language Education ◽  
Thinking Skills ◽  
English For Academic Purposes ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Academic Publishing ◽  
Lingua Franca ◽  
Methodological Principles

English language education, especially in light of the status of English as present-day lingua franca, has become a prolific field of research, and no less prolific area of practical application internationally. Through a critical literature review, the current study addresses one of its most prominent subfields – English for Academic Purposes – with special emphasis on academic writing. We briefly touch upon its evolution and identify the terminological ambiguities involved in EAP conceptualization within the broader framework of ESP (English for Specific Purposes). By examining the changes that academic English is undergoing today due to the overwhelming influence of L2 speakers’ varieties (termed “similects” by Anna Mauranen), we elucidate how English as a Lingua Franca movement can benefit and enrich EAP pedagogic practice. We also discuss how EAP fits within the latest CEFR guidelines, paying close attention to mediating skills, critical thinking and integrative thinking skills, which, as we argue, need to be more extensively incorporated into academic writing instruction. We discuss the rationale and the methodological principles of English for Research Publication Purposes as a new offshoot of EAP, which combines genre-based instruction with the exploration of multiple non-linguistic issues, involved in academic publishing, such as interaction with editors and gatekeepers, choosing a suitable journal, navigating the review process. We hope to demonstrate that EAP teaching, and especially academic writing instruction, is in need of major revision to overcome the yawning gap that currently exists between theory and practice.

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