NON-CONVENTIONAL ENGLISH LANGUAGE USE IN THE WRITING AND SPEECH OF THAI ACADEMIC WRITERS: A PRELIMINARY STUDY

This paper reports a preliminary study analyzing non-conventional language use in English manuscripts written by Thai academics and edited by the first author of the paper. The purposes were to classify the non-conventional language uses identified by the editor and to establish if there were common patterns of errors among the authors. The analysis identified the editor's reason for suggesting each change to a manuscript and a nomenclature was constructed based on 15 language structure categories plus five non-structure categories. The writers of the manuscripts sampled were also interviewed in English and a sample of their speech was analyzed based on the nomenclature in respect of structural errors. The numbers of each type and category were compared across writers, and within writers between their writing and speech. High and significant correlations between writers and moderately high and significant correlations within writers were found. The findings suggest directions for further study which may offer valuable insights into whether the use of language for academic purposes and its use as a spoken interpersonal medium are related or whether the two skills are acquired differently.