Investigating The Influence of Spoken Grammar on Students’ Writings : The Case of Third Year Students at the English Department of MMUTO.

Abstract

The present study is mainly concerned with the investigation of the influence of spoken grammar on third year students’ writings at the Department of English at Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou. It attempts to identify the extent to which these students are influenced by their oral language. As for the analytic categories of the study, they are borrowed from two theories put forward by McCarthy, (1998), The Criteria of Spoken Grammar and Pit Corder, 1967, cited in David Crystal (2003), Error Analysis. A mixedmethod approach is adopted, combining quantitative and qualitative procedures for data gathering and data analysis. In terms of data collection, the study takes a sample of a textual corpus made up of fifty third year examination papers, the module of reading and writing. In addition, the research work relies on a structured interview conducted with ten third year students. To analyze the data collected, we use the statistical method and SPSS computer software to process the quantitative data and Qualitative Content Analysis (QCA) for the analysis and interpretation of the qualitative data. The findings of our study indicate that third year students, at the Department of English at MMUTO, are to some extent affected by spoken grammar. The results reveal that the features of spoken grammar are partially present in students’ writing. The research work includes with a classification of errors made by learners into spoken grammar errors and general errors.