A Study on the Use of English in Second Language Writing Tasks

Abstract

Today informal writing has become very common in writing emails, text messages, and advertisements and in internet discourses. Language used in journals, short stories and in other literature is found to be more informal. Through the familiarisation of informal English, the second language learners tend to use the vocabulary, grammar and even spelling in more informal English. This study intended to explore the use of English in the writing task of the first year students from the Faculty of Arts, University of Jaffna. The objective of the study is to gauge whether the participants used informal English for writing tasks. The essays written by fifty randomly selected participants from the first year Faculty of Arts were analysed. The findings reveal the fact that majority of the participants used informal English in their essays. The study recommends that the target group should be given enough supply of formal learning materials to make use of formal English for writing tasks. The study has an implication of incorporating adequate knowledge of second language linguistic components such as vocabulary and structure, grammar and pronunciation which are used in formal writing.