Linguistic and discourse features of students' academic texts in selected Philippine Teacher Education Institutions (TEIs)

• Main Author: Amarles, Arceli M.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2013
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_doctoral/355
• Institution: De La Salle University

The present study is descriptive and analytical in nature as it sought to look into the linguistic and discourse features of students academic texts in selected teacher education institutions (TEIs) in the National Capital Region. It primarily focused on the perceived lexical, syntactic, and discourse features, which may be possible features of Philippine English, in compositions written by education students. It also examined writing teachers assessment of these compositions as indicative of their knowledge of and attitude towards Philippine English. Qualitative and quantitative research methods were employed in the investigation. The former was useful in the analysis of the macrostructures of students essays, and in the description of the meta-discourse strategies the latter was adopted in order to analyze significant differences in macrostructures of students essays and in the use of metadiscourse strategies. In analyzing the macrostructures of students essays, the unit of analysis was the organizational move which refers to the semantic unit that is driven by its function in the text. The unit of analysis for the meta-discourse strategies, on the other hand, was the sentence. Results of the present study revealed that some linguistic and discourse features were employed by Filipino students when they write argumentative essays in their academic writing classes. These features indicate both language and cultural background of students which constitute their linguistic repertoire needed in writing. Results of acceptability judgment test among experts, however, show that some lexical and syntactic features found in students essays are not considered possible features of Philippine English. The present study also investigated the response of writing teachers to linguistic features of Philippine English which were employed in the argumentative essays of the students. Interviews revealed that writing teachers were informed by the standards of the native speakers of English as the only acceptable features in academic writing. Any deviations from the standards are considered as errors and will definitely affect the grades of the students. This claim was explained by the fact that teachers orientation was affected by several factors like teachers background information/language awareness, institutional context and type of tasks in the writing classrooms. It can be deduced that there was no space given to Philippine English in academic writing classrooms in selected teacher education institutions in the National Capital Region. From the results of the present investigation, this paper proposes a pedagogical model of Philippine English in academic writing classrooms. Three important components were identified, namely, context, academic writing and assessment. A convergence of these three components is proposed to properly situate Philippine English in the writing classrooms.