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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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