Written Reflections as Penned by Native B&rsquo;laan Speakers: Writing Style in Focus

Francisco Jr.  Z. Lorenzo,

Written Reflections as Penned by Native B’laan Speakers: Writing Style in Focus

Abstract:

This dissertation explored the use of discourse markers and the styles of writing of the selected group of indigenous people expressing their thoughts in a language not their own. The group was selected from fourth year B’laan education students currently enrolled at South East Asian Institute of Technology, Inc., located in Tupi, South Cotabato. The corpora of this study were 14 one-page essays by B’laan students reflecting on their experiences during their one semester student-teaching experience. The study was qualitative utilizing Corpus-Based Approach (CBA). Coding and audit trail were performed in the conduct of the analysis. The individual reflection papers were analyzed in terms of their use of discourse markers and elements of the style. Results showed that the native B’laan students correctly used three different classes of discourse markers such as elaborative, inferential and contrastive. The writing style analysis was made in terms of a set of grammatical and syntactical rules and a set of elementary principles of composition. Results indicated a major deficiency in the student’s ability to express themselves in the English language.