A Corpus Based Study of Morphosyntactic Features in Undergraduate Writing Samples

Abstract

In language acquisition, study of morphosyntactic features is one of fundamental requirements of language learning; because morphosyntactic structures are building blocks of language which recognize its correct composition. The current study aims to examine morphosyntactic features in the writing samples of undergraduate students to look at language competency of these students. Moreover, this research also intends to provide incoming and ongoing academic learners with conveniently manageable data to assist students in learning. The Mode of this study is qualitative while conducting textual analysis of collected data by using Antconc software for computational / corpus analysis and distributed morphology as theoretical framework. The collected data is analyzed and discussed in detail for assessing competency of target students in respective language. Consequently, students are observed to utilize linguistically incorrect patterns and structures in higher frequency with lots of errors of linguistic patterns, tenses and sentence compositions which immediately indicates that students need considerable practice for correct language production. Thus, competency of such students lies on moderate level with weak abilities of morphology, syntax, and grammar. Furthermore, majority of participants are estimated to have weak language competency whereas, one tenth of total population seems to have native-like abilities of language production.