English Demonstratives in Argumentative Essays by Vietnamese EFL Students and Native English Speakers

Abstract

 In teaching English as a foreign language to non-native learners, English demonstratives (this, these, that, those) are introduced as a syntactic concept. However, they also have an important role in enhancing text coherence by making reference in writing compositions. Important as it is, the proper use of demonstratives remains a problem to several EFL students due to the absence of detailed instructions on how demonstratives function in written discourse. This research looks at the differences in the use of English demonstratives in argumentative essays written by Vietnamese EFL learners and native English speakers. Adopting a combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis, the research finds that learners with low level of writing proficiency use proximal this (these) statistically less than native English writers, which can be considered one of the contributing factors to weaker arguments in low score essays. This finding leads to the suggestion for English teachers in Vietnam that the role of demonstratives in making text reference needs to be considered important, and official instructions on demonstratives with their pragmatic use should also be introduced to
EFL learners.