We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Academic Writing and Culture.
- Authors
Scott, Nick
- Abstract
When language learners write an academic essay in a foreign language, they frequently make use of text conventions and discourse patterns from their native language. However, this may sometimes lead to a breakdown in communication due to different cultural expectations about the way information is presented. This paper explores these processes of sociolinguistic transfer and languaculture dissonance with a special focus on German-speaking learners of English. Using previous research from the field of contrastive rhetoric as an analytical framework, it investigates the extent to which a group of 22 Austrian EFL learners attending an advanced-level university writing course are influenced by their German-language writing culture. An analysis of the learners‘ beliefs and written work at the start of the course is followed by a period of targeted instruction informed by the findings of contrastive rhetoric research on English- and German-speaking writing cultures. A second set of essays, written later in the course, is then analysed to ascertain whether the amount of sociolinguistic transfer observed in the students‘ work was reduced after targeted instruction.
- Subjects
LANGUAGE &; culture; SOCIOLINGUISTICS; ENGLISH essays; DISCOURSE analysis; ENGLISH as a foreign language; GERMAN language -- Social aspects; ACADEMIC discourse
- Publication
AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 2015, Vol 40, Issue 1/2, p75
- ISSN
0171-5410
- Publication type
Article