Enhancing Authenticity in Composing Informative and Promotional Texts by Analysing Key Words in a Genre-based Writing Course

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Wen-hsien Yang

Abstract

This study aims to examine the lexis used in the texts of tourism English. 78
Printed authentic tourist attraction brochures together with 24 ESP learners’ productions. A computerised package was used to generate the wordlists of the used lexis as well as the keywords. Besides, non-Chinese readers’ evaluation of the students’ writings was treated as the qualitative data. The analysis show that the students’ choices of the lexis differed to some extent from the authentic ones. The possible reasons stem from contextualised differences, students’ fossilisation of English learning, and their unilateral lexical knowledge. The results of this study pedagogically imply that key words need to be prioritized. It also argues that “the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter” (Twain, 2011). ESP teachers are advised to draw learners’ attention onto lexis choices and constraints to enhance the authenticity and trust of the information.

Key words: genre-based writing instruction; tourist attraction brochures; key
words analysis

Article Details

How to Cite
Yang, W.- hsien. (2014). Enhancing Authenticity in Composing Informative and Promotional Texts by Analysing Key Words in a Genre-based Writing Course. Journal of Studies in the English Language, 6. Retrieved from https://so04.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/jsel/article/view/21852
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Vol. 6 (2011)
Section
Articles
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Author Biography

Wen-hsien Yang

Wen-hsien Yang is assistant professor in the Department of Applied English at National Kaohsiung University of
Hospitality & Tourism, Taiwan. He received his doctorate in ELT from the University of Exeter, UK. His main
research interests lie in the ESP aspects about second language writing, genre analysis and word analysis in specific
texts. He has also published a number of papers on ESP and corpus.