by Alaa Al-Musalli and Ibtihaj Al-Harthi
Sultan Qaboos University (Muscat, Oman)
Keywords: grammar, oral production, perception, sentence types
Abstract
This case study investigates whether students’ perceptions regarding the level of difficulty of different sentence types are reflected in their productions. Omani EFL learners’ views concerning the sentence types they believe are easy or difficult to produce are compared with the types of correct and erroneous sentences they actually produce orally and in writing. A comparison of the frequency and types of mistakes made in the students’ productions will be presented. Recommendations shed light on the structures that need more attention in the classroom.
Introduction
In this paper, we investigate the connection between students’ perceptions regarding the difficulty level of different sentence types and the types of correct and erroneous sentences they actually produce orally and in writing. The main reason for conducting this case study is to pinpoint the problem areas that a sample of Omani EFL students have with respect to producing grammatical sentences both orally and in writing. The rationale behind comparing their oral and written productions is to identify the sentence types that the students believe are easy or difficult to produce as compared to what they actually produce, which would lead to a better understanding of the limitations the students have in sentence construction. Identifying erroneous sentences can also help direct more attention to them in the classroom. Furthermore, comparing what students believe to be easy to produce with what they actually produce can shed light on some of the reasons why one sentence type is easier or more difficult than the other from the students’ viewpoint. In this paper, after a brief literature review, we proceed with a description of the research, including the methodology, participants, findings and conclusions.
Background
The level of syntactic complexity of written and spoken discourse has been debated in the field of language. Written discourse is known for being syntactically more complex than spoken discourse because written texts show more subordinate relationships (like ‘who,’ or ‘whose’ in complex and compound complex sentences), while spoken texts show more coordinate relationships (like ‘and,’ or ‘or’ in simple and compound sentences) (Kroll, 1977). Halliday (1979), however, contends that “spoken language is on the whole more complex than written language in its grammar; and informal spontaneous conversation … is the most grammatically complex of all.” Halliday thinks that this is because spoken discourse is dynamic while written discourse is static and this is why spoken texts are in fact syntactically more complex (Beaman, 1984, p. 46). Nevertheless, Beaman (1984, p. 79) contends that spoken and written discourse are equally complex. She suggests that syntactically complex spoken discourse may be a result of the spontaneity and the existence of extralingustic factors in speech, while syntactically simple written discourse may be a result of the emphasis on simplicity and conciseness by writing teachers. Generally speaking, these arguments focus on L1. One of the concerns of the current study, however, is to investigate this aspect in L2 by comparing the oral and written productions of L2 students.
The debate on the complexity of spoken and written discourse provides a context for research on the effect of sentence complexity on production. Taking into consideration the fact that in L1, subordinate sentences (complex and compound-complex) are syntactically more difficult to process than coordinate structures (simple and compound sentences) (King & Just, 1991), examining the discrepancy between the sentence production patterns in speech and writing in L2 can shed light on the complexity of and difficulties in these two skills for learners of
English. To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, the only study conducted in this area is on written sentence patterns. Marefat (2004) examines two corpora of 30 essays written in English by graduate students with an advanced level of English and intermediate undergraduate students at Shiraz University to find out the frequency of the use of the four sentence types in their writing. She finds a common pattern of production of the four sentence types between the two groups despite the difference in their level of competency. Both groups produced a similar pattern of frequency in use, with complex sentences comprising the highest level of frequency compared with compound sentences, which had the lowest level of frequency. It is important to note here that the level of frequency did not match the level of syntactic complexity of these sentence types. Both graduate and undergraduate students in Marefat’s study chose to produce more complex sentences than simple or compound ones despite their syntactic complexity. Marefat concludes that more subordinate sentences are used by L2 students than coordinate sentences, yet students show a tendency to make more grammatical errors in complex sentences than compound ones – a point that is related to the syntactic complexity that King and Just put forward, mentioned earlier.
The Research
The main focus of this research as stated above is to identify any connection between students’ perceptions of the difficulty level of sentence types and what they can actually correctly produce. For practical and administrative reasons, we chose to limit our participants to six students. The focus in this study is on the quality of the students’ productions; therefore, the quantity of the data collected from each participant was quite high. Also, standardizing the actual administration of the data collection was believed to be difficult to control for a larger sample. Below is a discussion of the participants and the methods of data collection.
The Participants
The participants involved in this study were six Omani EFL learners, all English majors, taking Advanced Speaking Skills at the English Department at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU). Before joining the English Department, the participants had had courses in English in the Language Center (LC) at SQU, where they were taught four skills at different proficiency levels. Their age group ranges from 19 to 21 and they are all Omani speakers of Arabic as a first language.
The fact that we have a small sample in this study should not be considered a disadvantage, for this is generally a qualitative investigation accompanied by some quantitative results. In qualitative research, a small sample can form a reliable representation of the population; thus, the generalizations found are indeed valid (LeCompte & Preissle, 1993) (See also Slekar, 2010). Borg and Gall (1989, p. 236-237) support this argument stating that small samples are “more appropriate” than large samples in educational research. They add,
A study that probes deeply into the characteristics of a small sample often provides more knowledge than a study that attacks the same problem by collecting only shallow information on a large sample.
Methods
The study was conducted in week 12 of the semester. Since the students’ written and oral productions were to be investigated, we believed that using a familiar topic for the essays and discussions would firstly encourage students to produce a variety of sentence types, following
Davis’s (1995) study which gave evidence on the link between extensive reading and the production of more varied sentence structures, and secondly would help investigate the sentence types the participants can produce successfully regardless of the ideas they produce. Therefore, a familiar theme to the students was chosen from their textbook for the essays and oral discussions. The theme was pollution.
The study follows three lines of investigation: 1) a questionnaire of students’ perceptions on the difficulty level of sentence types, 2) recordings of their opinions on a drawing about pollution, and 3) essays of 250-300 words long expressing their views on the unit theme in order to examine their linguistic productions. The study was administered by the participants’ course instructor so as to provide a familiar face that would allow students to feel comfortable. This was also to guarantee that their linguistic productions would not be affected by dealing with an unfamiliar face in the interviews during which the recordings were made.
The students were made aware they were involved in a study during the administration of the questionnaire; however, for fear of disturbing their normal linguistic productions, they were only informed that their recorded interviews and essays would be used in a study after the administration of the interviews and collection of the essays; none of the students had an objection (See Hartley & Cameron, 1967, and Howe & Godfrey, 1978 for similar data collection procedures). In the interviews, which were conducted with their course instructor, the students were simply instructed to talk about a drawing related to the theme. Following that, they were asked to write an opinion essay about the unit’s theme. The students were not asked to use any sentence type in particular. Below are more details about each line of investigation:
a) Questionnaire
The questionnaire was developed to study the participants’ perceptions regarding the sentence types they feel are easier or more difficult to produce than others. The participants were given examples of the four sentence types (simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex) and asked to rank them from the easiest to the most difficult for them to produce in speech and writing (See Appendix 1). They were also asked to state where they were first taught these sentence types in order to study the relationship between how much time they have been familiar with each sentence type and whether they have mastered each.
b) Recordings
The participants’ course instructor interviewed each student individually for three to five minutes. The interviews were explained to the participants as being part of an exercise to help them improve their speaking skills. First, students were given two minutes to study a drawing that represented the theme of pollution which they had recently covered in class. The idea was to present a topic they are familiar with in order to provide them with a comfortable experience exhibiting their linguistic skills. The task of having students describe the drawing was used as a means of encouraging students to produce different sentence types; it was especially designed to show cause and effect and argumentative ideas for which the students needed diverse sentence types. The students were then asked to talk for two uninterrupted minutes about their opinions regarding what the picture was communicating, with only encouraging gestures from their instructor. Transcripts were made for the recordings, which were then analyzed for the types of sentences produced and the most frequent mistakes made, as will be discussed below.
c) Essays
The students were asked by their course instructor to write an essay describing their opinions regarding pollution – the topic covered in their course book unit. It is a customary procedure for the participants to write the first draft of each essay in class; therefore, they were not informed that their essays would be used in an experiment until after they finished writing in order to guarantee that their linguistic production would not be affected, as stated above. The essays were photocopied by the instructor for the researchers who analyzed the types of sentences produced and the most frequent mistakes made, as will be discussed below.
Marking Framework
The transcripts and essays were analyzed by making an inventory of the number of times each sentence type was produced and the kind of mistakes found in each type. The marking framework (Table 1) below was devised to organize the marking process. The framework acted as a means of accounting for the number of correct sentences of each type in order to compare the frequency of the different types in the students’ productions as opposed to their perceptions. At the same time, the erroneous sentences were studied in detail to investigate the type of mistakes made in each. The final three aspects: spelling, capitalization and punctuation marks were relevant to marking the written productions as they are features appearing only in writing.
Table 1: Marking Framework
The types of mistakes identified in the participants’ productions were based on a marking criteria used in an advanced writing course in the LC at SQU, which is where most of the participants reported to first have been introduced to the four basic sentence types, as will be discussed below. The list was compared with an inventory based on teachers’ comments of common mistakes in Omani students’ writings appearing in an in-house book produced in the LC based on objectives set by its Curriculum Development Unit. Mistakes in both form and function were noted; for instance, students’ mistakes could be in word choice (word form) or subject/verb agreement. Hence, the frameworks were designed in a way to facilitate marking and counting different mistakes.
The way the frameworks work is simple. The markers, in this case the researchers, marked every sentence individually by first categorizing it as “Correct/Incorrect” through ticking under the appropriate box; then, if the sentence was correct, the markers would move on to the next sentence, but if the sentence was erroneous, the marker would tick the appropriate mistake type (See Appendix 2 for an inventory of the symbols in the marking framework and Kosur, 2011 for mistake types).
Results
Before we begin the discussion regarding the participants’ perceptions and productions of each sentence type, it is important to give a background on the history they had with the sentence types, i.e. where they first learned each type. In the questionnaire, the students were asked to identify where they had first learned each sentence type. Results indicate that the entire sample first learnt simple sentences at high school. In light of that experience, one might expect that students would be more prone to use simple sentences correctly. As for compound sentences, the participants reported that they had learnt this sentence type first at school, and later it was reintroduced to them at the LC. This also indicates that the participants have had a good opportunity to master this sentence type before moving to the English Department where this study was administered. In contrast, the entire sample reported that they first learnt complex sentences at the LC; however, this argument is quite surprising taking into consideration that sentence structures such as conditionals and cause and effect relationships are practiced and tested at high schools in Oman. The only justification we can give for the late introduction of this sentence type is that the students may have not felt they had understood it completely at high school, and therefore, felt that they had only understood it at the LC. Also, the students may have been simply confused by the name, despite the fact that an example was given for each sentence type in the questionnaire. As for compound-complex sentences, five of the six participants, 83.3% of the sample, reported that they first learnt this type at the LC, while only one student reported that s/he first learnt this type at the English Department which is where the participants were studying at the time of the study. It is clear that the participants have had less contact with the latter two sentence types, i.e. complex and compound-complex, than they had with the former two types, i.e. simple and compound. This suggests that the participants would be more in control of simple and compound sentences as opposed to complex and compound-complex sentences. Therefore, the time pattern that the participants reported, i.e. the amount of time the students stated they have been familiar with the four sentence types before using them in this study, is as follows (the pattern gets more recent from left to right):
Simple < Compound < Complex < Compound-complex
Perception
As far as the participants’ perceptions regarding what they believe to be easy or difficult to produce in writing is concerned, the majority of the sample (83.3%) reported that they perceive simple sentence as the easiest sentence type to produce followed by compound sentence as being less easy. Also, the entire sample agreed that complex sentences are less difficult to produce than compound-complex sentences. In other words, students perceive the difficulty between the sentence types ascending in the following direction (the pattern gets more difficult from left to right):
Simple < Compound < Complex < Compound-complex
As for their perceptions concerning what they believe is easy or difficult to produce orally, the majority of the sample agreed that compound-complex sentences are the most difficult to produce. One the other hand, only 50% of the sample believed that simple sentences are easier to produce orally than compound sentences, which were in turn considered easier than complex sentences. This means that 50% of the sample perceives the same ascending pattern for what they can produce orally as that for the sentence they produce in writing. Nonetheless, 33.3% of the sample reported a different picture. These students believed that complex sentences are orally easier to produce than simple sentences, and compound sentences are a little difficult to produce orally. The rest of the sample reported that compound and complex sentences are the easiest to produce rather than compound-complex and simple sentences. Therefore, with respect to perception of what is easy or difficult to produce orally, we have the following three perception patterns (the patterns get more difficult from left to right):
50%: Simple < Compound < Complex < Compound-complex
33.3%: Complex < Simple < Compound < Compound-complex
16.7%: Compound < Complex < Compound-complex < Simple
It is clear from the above that with respect to students’ beliefs concerning the difficulty levels of sentence types, there is a general pattern that favors simple sentences as the easiest sentence type, followed by compound then complex and ending with the most difficult sentence type which is compound-complex. This pattern is validated by the time pattern reported for the sentence types, discussed in 4 above. The general pattern is therefore logical since students would naturally find the sentence types that they have had less contact with more difficult to produce than the ones that they have had more contact with. Hence, time is a crucial factor dictating the direction of the perception patterns for both the written and oral productions.
The disparity between the students’ perceptions in the two productions can be best understood in light of the students’ comments on each sentence type. The following are some of the most interesting arguments the students made to justify their perceptions. With respect to perceptions of the difficulty level in written production, some students argued that simple sentences are the easiest because they have one verb and no conjunctions; they also have had more contact with them since school, which is why they believe them to be easy to produce.
However, one student argued that using simple sentences in writing “can be judged as a weakness” by the reader because they are “too simplistic.” Thus, he seemed to believe that using simple sentences in writing without sounding too broken or choppy is difficult. This explains why only 83.3% of the sample agreed on the pattern; the remaining 16.7% represents the student who gave compound sentences an advantage over simple sentence in terms of ease of use. Punctuation is also seen as a challenge, which is why two students reported that compound sentences are more difficult to produce than simple sentences. A student explained that complex and compound-complex sentences are difficult because he had less contact with them than the others. Two other students explained that these two sentence types are “confusing” for they involve using conjunctions, punctuation and different ideas.
With respect to perceptions of the difficulty level in oral productions, students gave contradictory comments, which explain the diverse perception patterns reported for oral productions. It is worth noting that what students reported here reflects their beliefs about speaking in formal situations, i.e. in front of their teachers as well as in presentations when they feel they need to produce correct and complete sentences which is different from informal speech. Concerning the relative difficulty of complex and compound-complex sentences as compared with the other sentence types, some students argued that since these require the use of adverbs, they need more concentration and effort; also, organizing ideas in these sentence types is a problem. Students also reported that they are afraid of making mistakes when they speak, so they avoid using these sentence types. A student also stated that he is not encouraged to use these sentence types. On the other hand, another student reported that using simple sentences in oral productions is extremely difficult, which is why she prefers the other three sentence types when she speaks. This might be to avoid sounding choppy or robotic. Another student supported this by arguing that complex sentences are the easiest to use in speech because he feels that he needs to explain himself more when he speaks, something that he can only do using complex sentences.
Actual Production
The students’ written and oral productions with regard to the number of times each sentence type was produced yielded a picture completely different from the above. Generally speaking, there is an overt disparity between the type of sentences the participants perceive as easy or difficult to produce and the frequency of the sentence types they actually produce. This disparity can be further examined through investigating the number of correct versus erroneous sentences produced for each sentence type in the two productions.
Tables 2 and 3 below show the number of times each sentence type was used in the two productions together with the percentages of correct and erroneous sentences produced. It is important to note at this point that deciding on what constitutes correct sentences as opposed to erroneous ones is simply based on the accuracy with which the components of each sentence type was produced.
Table 2 – Correct versus Erroneous in Written Productions
Table 3 – Correct versus Erroneous in Oral Productions
In general, the patterns of production for the correct and erroneous sentences produced by the participants in both productions do not match. From Table 2 above, we can see that in the written productions, complex and simple sentences have the highest frequency; 40.6 % and 38.75 % sentences were produced respectively. The fact that students produced more complex sentences than any other sentence type is quite an interesting finding, for the entire sample had perceived that complex sentences are of some difficulty. This also comes despite the sample’s perceptions regarding the relative ease of the simple sentences as compared with complex sentences. This finding agrees with Marefat’s (2004) results concerning the high frequency of complex sentences over compound sentences, which in the current study had a low frequency of 12.5% of what was produced. As for compound-complex sentences, only 8.12% of the sentences the sample produces were of this category of sentence types. This low frequency comes as no surprise, for the entire sample had perceived this type as the most difficult for them to produce. Compound sentences, on the other hand, were perceived as being within the “easy” range, yet this was not realized in the production. On the other hand, Table 3 shows that of the sentences the participants produced orally, compound-complex had the highest frequency: 34.84%. This comes despite the fact that the participants had perceived compound-complex sentences as being within the “difficult – very difficult to produce” range.
This finding agrees with Halliday’s (1979) suggestion that spoken discourse is complex and involves the use of more subordinate structures than coordinate ones. The next sentence type of high frequency in oral productions is compound sentences. 30.30% of what the participants produced was of this sentence type, which comes as no surprise since the majority had perceived it within the easy range. As for simple and complex sentences, only 21.21% and 13.63% sentences were produced respectively.
Therefore, the highest frequency sentence types in the written and oral production as compared with the sentences of low frequency are as follows (the sentences are more frequent from left to right):
Written: Compound-complex < Compound < Simple < Complex
Oral: Complex < Simple < Compound < Compound-complex
It is important to mention at this point of the discussion that ease of production is defined by correct rather than erroneous production. In other words, if a sentence type is perceived as easy to produce yet is incorrectly produced, this is a sign of difficulty rather than ease, and thus, the perception is unsubstantiated by practice. Tables 2 and 3 above show that only a third to a quarter of the sentences produced were actually correct. In their written productions, of the 160 sentences produced by the participants, only 30.6% of the production was correct; and in the oral production, of the 66 sentences produced by the sample, only 24.24% of these sentences were correct. This indicates that students have not mastered the use of the four sentence types despite the fact that they readily gave perceptions as to which sentence type is easier to produce than others.
The above clearly shows that there are patterns of correct production frequencies in both forms of production. In Table 2, the number of correct simple sentences is higher than that for complex sentences; hence, despite the use of more complex sentences in writing as compared with simple sentences, students made fewer mistakes in simple sentences than they did in complex sentences. This suggests that although students find complex sentences more useful in writing to express their ideas, simple sentences are actually easier to produce correctly. Also, students made fewer mistakes in compound sentences than they did in compound complex, which is understandable since the former was perceived as easier to produce than the latter. As for oral productions, Table 3 shows that again simple and complex sentences had the highest frequency of correct sentences among the four sentence types; 57.14% and 22.22% correct sentences were produced for each respective sentence type. And here again, students produced more correct compound sentences than compound-complex; this comes despite the fact that the most frequent sentence type in the oral production is compoundcomplex, which the students had perceived as the most difficult. In both productions, therefore, simple sentences were the most frequently correctly produced sentence type followed by complex, then compound and compound-complex. Hence, the overt discrepancy in the frequency of sentence types among the written and oral productions hides beneath it the following matching correct frequency production pattern (the sentences are more frequent from left to right):
Compound-complex < Compound < Complex < Simple
Comparing the participants’ perceptions of what is easy or difficult for them to produce in writing and orally (discussed above) with the correct production pattern above shows a general agreement regarding the relative ease of simple sentences as compared with the difficulty of compound-complex sentences. As for compound and complex sentences, the participants seem to generally perceive compound sentences as the easier of the two, yet this is reflected neither in the general nor the correct productions. These findings suggest that students’ perceptions regarding what is easy or difficult for them to produce are accurate to some extent, for the correct production pattern for both written and oral productions agrees only in some parts with the participants’ perception patterns.
Mistake Types: Implications for the Classroom
A comparison of the frequency and types of mistakes made in the sample’s written and oral productions can draw attention to the types of problem areas the students have in both productions, which can be focused on more in class. The highest frequencies of errors made by the participants in the written productions, as shown in Graph 1 below, were for spelling followed by word form; 14.8% and 12.8% of the mistakes went to the categories respectively. The fact that the participants made a high number of mistakes in spelling is not a surprising result especially since they were not allowed to use dictionaries as it was an in-class writing assignment. Closely related to spelling is punctuation as students are weak in these mechanics; 11.2% of the mistakes made were in punctuation. Similarly, plural/singular agreement is also an evident problem area with 11.2% of the mistakes made in this aspect. Also, subject/verb agreement had a high frequency mistake percentage: 10.8%. In contrast, in the oral productions, articles had the highest frequency of mistakes: 25.26%; these were followed by subject/verb agreement and prepositions, 17.8% and 14.7% of the mistakes were made in these two aspects respectively. Other mistakes of high frequency were made in tense and word form; 11.5% of the mistakes were made in each of these two categories (See Graph 2 below).
Graph 1: Frequency of Mistakes in Writing
Graph 2: Frequency of Mistakes in Speech
It is clear from the above that the common high frequency mistakes in both productions are subject/verb agreement and word form. Thus, these two error types need more attention in the classroom. The difference between the two production types, i.e. written vs oral, may have brought about the disparity between the frequency in the other types of mistakes. In writing plural/singular agreement was an evident problem which was not the case in speech. In speech, however, tense was a problem area, but this was not the case in writing. The reason for this variation could be the fact that students have more time to think in writing than they do in speech, so they may write and rewrite a sentence, thinking about the different structures they need to use.
After totalling the percentages of the mistakes made in both written and oral productions, we find that in writing the participants made more mistakes in function than form or mechanics; 43.4% function mistakes were made as opposed to 33.2% and 28.8% for form and mechanics respectively. As for the oral production, the participants made more mistakes in form than in function; 55.66% of the mistakes made were in form (See Table 4 below). This directs our attention to what needs to be concentrated on more in writing and speaking courses.
Table 4: Totals of Mistake Frequencies
While form and function are important aspects in English classes, evidence from this study’s sample productions show that in English writing in an Omani university, function mistakes are more frequent than those in form or mechanics, while in speaking, form mistakes are more frequent. Therefore, taking into consideration that both form and function are important in any course, in writing courses especially, more attention might be given to function than form or mechanics, while in speaking courses more attention could be put on form than function. In both classes, however, students need to be asked to reflect on the types of sentences they produce.
It is clear that the more time the students in this study had to practice and use a certain sentence type, the easier they believed it to be regardless of whether they ended up producing it accurately or not. Simple sentences were the only sentence type students confidently and accurately produced due to the fact that it is the basic sentence pattern used and practiced in Omani schools. The next easiest to produce were complex sentences. A departure from these sentence types is needed as students come into the university. Teachers are advised to introduce all four sentence types and ask that they are all used in every production to encourage practicing these sentence types.
Conclusions and Recommendations
While there is a disparity between the types of sentences the students in this study perceive as easy or difficult to produce and the frequency of the sentence types they actually produce in both writing and speech (explained earlier and in Tables 2 and 3), there is a clear similarity (not a match) between their perceptions on the one hand and the frequency of the correct sentences they produce on the other hand.
Thus, students’ perceptions regarding what is easy or difficult for them to produce are accurate to some extent and are echoed in their productions. Consequently, rather than religiously following the curriculum, teachers are advised to engage students in deciding what aspects to tackle in class depending on what the students believe they need more work on. Giving students a voice empowers them, for it provides them with a chance to be involved in deciding what they learn. Hence, students not only improve in the skills they are learning but also feel more motivated to acquire them. In such a context, teachers would also be empowered by identifying students’ strengths and building on them.
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Acknowledgment
We would like to express our deepest gratitude to Ms. Fatema Al-Rubai’ey of the English Department at Sultan Qaboos University for assisting in this study.
Appendix 1
APPENDIX 2
The symbols in the marking frameworks represent the following mistake types:
- Function mistakes are in ‘s/v’ for ‘Subject/Verb Agreement’, ‘p/s’ for ‘Plural/Singular Agreement’, ‘t’ for ‘Tense’, ‘vf’ for ‘Verb Form’, and ‘wo’ for ‘Word Order’;
- Form mistakes are in ‘wf’ for ‘Word Form’, ‘art’ for ‘Articles’, ‘pron’ for ‘Pronouns’, and ‘prep’ for ‘Prepositions’;
- Mistakes in mechanics are: ‘s’ for ‘Spelling’, ‘cap’ for ‘Capitalization’, and ‘punc’ for ‘Punctuation’.
About the Authors
Alaa Al-Musalli is an assistant language lecturer in the Language Center at Sultan Qaboos University. She holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Wales, Bangor, UK. Her areas of specialization are testing, listening and note taking in lectures.
Ibtihaj Al-Harthi is a language instructor in the Language Centre at Sultan Qaboos University. She teaches English to undergraduate and adult students. Her interest areas include visual and non-verbal aspects of language, E-learning, materials design and writing, and literature.