A corpus linguistics study of English in written essays by third-year students in the Department of Wildlife Management and Ecotourism at the University of Namibia Katima Mulilo Campus

Abstract

This study sought to investigate the influence of nativisation in the written essays by third-year students in the Department of Wildlife Management and Ecotourism at University of Namibia (UNAM) Katima Mulilo Campus. The study population comprised of 15 students, from which a sample of 14 students was drawn. The research identified and examined words that are nativised by the third-year students, examining their frequency of occurrence, the structures of sentence patterns and other grammatical patterns. A mixed research methodology was adopted in the analysis of the word frequencies, structures of sentence patterns and grammatical patterns. The results from the enquiry indicate that a total of 2290 words were nativised by the students. The structures of sentence patterns also evinced that students used five structures of syntactic patterns in their writings, while their patterns of grammar were more phrasal, with noun phrases being the most frequently preferred phrase structure followed by prepositional phrases. It is envisaged that the findings from this study will help facilitate the teaching of English to the students in the Department of Wildlife Management and Ecotourism at Katima Mulilo UNAM Campus. On the basis of these results, recommendations for further research have been suggested. Pedagogical implications to assist language lecturers in assisting students develop proficiency in the English language have also been proposed.