Writing and Writing Instruction in Different Academic Contexts Writing in and across Disciplines SocioCultural Context of Writing
"WE LEARN FROM MISTAKES" THE MOST FREQUENT GRAMMATICAL, FORMAL AND STYLISTIC DIFFICULTIES CZECH STUDENTS FACE WHEN WRITING IN ENGLISH: AN ANALYSIS OF ESSAYS WRITTEN BY STUDENTS OF PHILOSOPHICAL FACULTY, PALACKY UNIVERSITY IN OLOMOUC, THE CZECH REPUBLIC.
1 2 Veronika Glogarova , Alena Kasparkova
1
Palacky University in Olomouc, Olomouc, Czech Republic VSBTechnical University of Ostrava, Ostrava, Czech Republic
2
For Czech university students, writing in English is becoming more and more essential. Research focusing on Czech and English writing styles (e.g. Cmejrkova 1996) described significant difficulties for Czech students and academics which arise from their sociocultural background, influenced mainly by German and Russian cultures. However, because the AngloSaxon influence has been gaining on importance in the Czech Republic since the Velvet Revolution in 1989, the question emerged whether the above mentioned difficulties still persevere and what role the sociocultural aspect plays in academic texts written by Czechs in English. The method chosen for the research was an analysis of 60 essays written by undergraduate students of the Philosophical Faculty, Palacky University, across disciplines, within a semestral Academic English course. According to the analysis, the main difficulties which Czech students face concern structuring, citing skills and referencing, argumentation, modality and metadiscourse. Because students wrote the essays having been taught the principles of Englishstyle academic writing, the problematic commonalities may be concluded to be deeply rooted in the Czech cultural background. Changing the writing habits in English will not only need more practice, but also require broadening the students’ way of thinking, i.e. incorporating lessons on critical thinking, argumentation styles and other general academic skills into curricula. The results shown by the research and the syllabus adapted according to them may be useful either for Central/Eastern European teachers of Academic Writing who have students from similar cultural backgrounds, and also for West European teachers coming to the postCommunist countries.
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