Investigation into Common Errors in English Writing among Non-Academic Staff at a Malaysian Public University

The Malaysian government has long recognized the significance of mastering the English language among its citizenry. The government has planned, and subsequently, implemented many policies to ensure Malaysians master the English language. Although civil servants have a strong desire to master the English language to perform their duties more efficiently, poor English communication skills have become a major concern in this regard. Therefore, this research aims to investigate common errors in writing the English language among non-academic staff at Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA), a public university in Malaysia. The study employed an Error Analysis approach by conducting document analysis where every respondent was required to write a paragraph in the English language in about 150-200 words on the topic“My greatest challenge as a UniSZA officer”. The findings revealed that a sizeable number of non-academic staff committed different types of errors in writing the English language, including errors related to subject-verb agreement, passive voice, plurality, choice of word, omission of word, use of article, tense sequence, word ordering, gerund, addition of word/redundancy, and comparison of adjective. It was observed that lack of linguistic skills, lack of exposure, and inadequate practices in written English were the main factors contributing to the English writing errors among the non-academic staff. These findings could help the university management to develop appropriate programs that can assist the non-academic staff to develop English writing competence. However, this study is limited to English writing errors. Further research may focus on other language skills such as speaking and listening.

TEACHING ACADEMIC WRITING IN ENGLISH TO STUDENTS OF ECONOMICS THROUGH CONCEPTUAL METAPHORS

The article addresses EFL students’ academic writing competence by fostering and evaluating their writing practices through conceptual metaphors. The research dataset comprised 102 Russian students majoring in economics. The students received the instruction based on the framework of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory during their EAP, ESP and EMI courses in economics. Metaphor Identification Procedure VU University Amsterdam (MIPVU) and the method of metaphoric modeling were used to assess EFL writing competence in economic knowledge domains – knowledge of terms and specific concepts, represented as conceptual metaphors. The statistical analysis did not show significant changes in the writing competence level of students when their EAP and ESP writing was compared. However, statistical differences were revealed in the use of metaphors when the students progressed from their EAP to EMI course and from their ESP to EMI course. The qualitative analysis demonstrated main differences within the conceptual metaphor domains in ESP and EMI writing. On the whole, the results reported here suggest the dynamics of FL writing competence of the Russian students specializing in economics when attending an EAP course, an ESP course and an EMI course in economics at the university.

Integrating Machine Translation Into EFL Writing Instruction: Process, Product and Perception

Although there is a great demand for machine translation (MT) among language learners, its potentials as a computer-assisted language learning aid remain under-explored. Against this backdrop, this study adopted a mixed research method and conducted a semester-long empirical investigation into how EFL learners in mainland China used MT to assist their writing, whether MT helped improve their writing competence and how they perceived MT in EFL writing instruction. The major findings comprise: 1) By using MT students made more lexical and grammatical changes in essay revision; 2) MT helped improve the learners’ overall writing competence, and particularly had a greater effect on writing accuracy and lexical complexity than on other dimensions; 3) Students generally held a positive attitude towards incorporating MT into EFL writing instruction.

Investigation into Common Errors in English Writing among Non-Academic Staff at a Malaysian Public University

The Malaysian government has long recognized the significance of mastering the English language among its citizenry. The government has planned, and subsequently, implemented many policies to ensure Malaysians master the English language. Although civil servants have a strong desire to master the English language to perform their duties more efficiently, poor English communication skills have become a major concern in this regard. Therefore, this research aims to investigate common errors in writing the English language among non-academic staff at Universiti Sultan Zainal Abidin (UniSZA), a public university in Malaysia. The study employed an Error Analysis approach by conducting document analysis where every respondent was required to write a paragraph in the English language in about 150-200 words on the topic“My greatest challenge as a UniSZA officer”. The findings revealed that a sizeable number of non-academic staff committed different types of errors in writing the English language, including errors related to subject-verb agreement, passive voice, plurality, choice of word, omission of word, use of article, tense sequence, word ordering, gerund, addition of word/redundancy, and comparison of adjective. It was observed that lack of linguistic skills, lack of exposure, and inadequate practices in written English were the main factors contributing to the English writing errors among the non-academic staff. These findings could help the university management to develop appropriate programs that can assist the non-academic staff to develop English writing competence. However, this study is limited to English writing errors. Further research may focus on other language skills such as speaking and listening.

Exploring the College EFL Self-access Writing Mode Based on Automated Feedback

The present study is intended to construct a college EFL self-access writing mode based on automated feedback under the guidance of Formative Assessment Theory and Autonomous Learning Theory and attempts to apply it into college EFL teaching practice. Findings of this empirical-based study suggest that this self-access writing mode contributes to the enhancement of students’ English writing competence, English writing motivation as well as their autonomy in self-revision.

Effects of Trained Peer vs. Teacher Feedback on EFL Students’ Writing Performance, Self-Efficacy, and Internalization of Motivation

This study investigated the longer-term impacts (i.e., into the next semester) of trained peer feedback in comparison with teacher feedback on students’ writing development and writing motivation. Sections of an EFL writing course were randomly assigned to either teacher feedback or trained peer feedback conditions across two semesters. In the first semester, during their writing class, students either received training in how to implement peer feedback or simply studied models of writing (that were also used in the training work). In the second semester, students either received teacher or peer feedback across multiple assignments. Writing competence, writing self-efficacy, and writing self-regulated learning were assessed at the beginning and end of the second semester. Trained peer feedback and teacher feedback had similar positive effects on the improvement of writing competence and writing self-efficacy. However, trained peer feedback led to a significant enhancement of students’ autonomous motivation relative to no such growth from teacher feedback.

The Writing of university students in a Venezuela in crisis

The goal of this investigation is to present the writing competence of Venezuelan college students considering the particular academic and extra-academic situations it is going through and surrounded by. This is a qualitative and descriptive study, based on a field research that took place in Caracas at the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB) during 2018. 37 students enrolled in the first semester of either the Mass Communication, Psychology, or Education majors were the subjects of the mentioned groundwork. This investigation was realized in a period of 15 weeks total, divided in three phases: diagnostic, intervention and verification of changes in writing. In conclusion, there were advances in pragmatic notions or factors that must be considered in moments prior to writing and during the process itself, referring to metacognitive, cognitive and axiological aspects. It is suggested to continue working on all these aspects in order to achieve the consolidation of what has been achieved, preventing or reducing the chances of regression.

Vlog-Based Multimodal Composing: Enhancing EFL Learners’ Writing Performance

For most learners of English as a foreign language (EFL), there has long been a lack of effective opportunities to practice English writing skills. However, the recent development of social networking services (SNS) provides new possibilities for these learners to practice writing English in a meaningful way. Meanwhile, with the popularity of social media in language learning, writing is unnecessarily in the form of plain text, and multimodal composing based on text and additional modes such as audio, video or images has been a new form of writing activity instead. This study integrated SNS-based multimodal composing activities into secondary and higher education, with the aim of determining its effects on learners’ writing performance. Two classes in senior high school Grade 10 and four in college were recruited, three as the control groups without using SNS-based multimodal composing, and others as the experimental groups. While all classes’ writing performance improved between pretest and posttest, the gains in overall writing competence by experimental groups and the gains in three detailed aspects (readability, lexical complexity and syntactic complexity) by college students were significantly larger. Progress in detailed aspects, on the other hand, was different across different groups. These findings are discussed in relation to specific characteristics of multimodal composing and SNS-based learning that enables learners to improve writing performance.

Facilitating and Assessing Academic Writing to Graduate Students in a Pilot English for Academic Purposes Course: An Activity Theoretical Perspective

This paper reports on a pilot course responding to facilitating academic writing for an academic writing program implemented at a provincial key university in China. Taken from an activity theoretical perspective, it discusses the practical experience collected during a pilot process of designing, implementing, and assessing a genre-based approach to facilitating graduate students’ academic writing and assessing their academic writing competence. It argues that it is essential to take varied student interests into account in the structuring, delivery, and assessment to ensure academic success and that EAP programs are fruitful places for nurturing academic writing.

Strange Attractors in Writing Competence Development from the Perspective of Complexity Theory Based on Sensor Data

Writing competence is crucial for second language learners. Studying strange attractors in the development of writing competence is essential in understanding the laws of language development of foreign students. This study is aimed at investigating the state and laws of the development of Chinese as a second language (CSL) writing competence. Mathematical modeling and phase space construction methods in sensor research were used to investigate strange attractors in high-level Chinese learners studying in China in the development of CSL from the perspective of complexity theory based on the measurement framework of complexity, accuracy, and fluency. The results showed the following: (1) there are trends in the concentration and volatility of trigonometric function in different dimensions; (2) the group dynamic characteristics of writing development in CSL are simulated precisely by mathematical modeling; and (3) there are strange attractors with lexical density in CSL writing development. The development of CSL writing tends to maintain the state of strange attractors. The strange attractor reflects regularity in the dynamic, complex, and chaotic development of Chinese for international students, revealing the probabilistic prediction competence of different states in the development of CSL.