An Investigation of Sociolinguistic Competence in ESP Exams Case Study of ESP Exams at the Department of Economics at Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-Ouzou

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Date

2017

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Publisher

University Mouloud Mammeri of Tizi-Ouzou

Abstract

The current investigation is an attempt to analyze the ESP exams in relation to sociolinguistic competence. It seeks to identify the different activities included in the ESP exams in the Department of Economics at Mouloud Mammeri University of Tizi-ouzou in order to determine whether the exams of ESP test students’ grammatical or sociolinguistic competence. In addition, this study goes further to uncover if these exams actually give an opportunity for learners to try out their language competence. To achieve this aim, this work relies on Canale and Swain’s theory of sociolinguistic competence presented in their analytical framework of communicative competence (1980) as a theoretical plinth. For the sake of investigating the issue, the mixed-methods research is adopted. It combines quantitative and qualitative procedures of data collection and data analysis. It is based on analyzing a corpus made up of fifteen (15) ESP exams. In addition to the corpus, this study relies on a questionnaire administered to ten (10) teachers of ESP. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) is used for the statistical data analysis of the closed-ended questions of the questionnaire whereas Content analysis has served to interpret the results of the openended questions as well as the corpus. The conclusion to be drawn from the findings of this study is that the ESP exams include tasks that focus more on grammatical competence rather than sociolinguistic competence. Therefore, they do not determine the students’ actual level of performance in communication. Finally, a set of suggestions have been provided to improve the ESP exams.

Description

68p.:ill;30cm.(+cd)

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Citation

Langage et Communication