Writing requires a suitable and strategic use of language with communicative potential and structural correctness. The use of coherence and cohesion helps create communicative potential and structural correctness in texts. This study aims to investigate the use of cohesive items in the abstracts of Pakistani research articles and thereby determine what type of cohesive items are frequently used by writers. In addition, the study aims to know what functions the said writers achieve through the most frequently used cohesive items. For this purpose, 50 abstracts were retrieved from two famous Pakistani research journals (25 articles per journal), which were developed into a corpus for the study and analysed through AntConc. 3.4.4.0. The results revealed that Pakistani research writers used reference items the most frequently to achieve “directive” as well as “referential” functions. On the basis of these findings, the study concluded that Pakistani research article writers organised information in abstracts using reference items the most frequently and they were mainly concerned with directive as well as referential functions of meaning. The results also showed that the said writers organised texts on a syntactic level only, which implied that they should organise texts on a semantic level also. This would be possible with the use of repetition devices.

Background: Writing means communication through words whereas academic writing means making careful use of words to communicate ideas to a range of readers and audiences. Therefore, academic writing reflects specificities related to audience, context/discipline and purpose of the use. These specificities result in ample differences in terms of language use. Purpose: This study investigates disciplinary variation in the use of different syntactic (i.e., clausal, intermediate and phrasal) features in academic writing produced by the Pakistani advanced writers of English as an L2 specializing in different disciplines of arts and humanities, life sciences, physical sciences and social sciences. Method: For the said purpose, the corpus has been developed from dissertation texts produced by the Pakistani doctoral candidates from 16 academic disciplines of four disciplinary divisions. The analysis has been performed using AntConc Software after tagging with Multidimensional Analysis, and TagAnt Taggers. Results: The results reveal mixed findings. On the one hand, the results show variation in the use of syntactic features that is observed to be marked by the difference in the frequency of the different types of the said features across disciplines. On the other hand, the results show a similarity in the use of syntactic features that has been evidenced by the finding that the most and least frequently used features are identical across disciplines. Conclusion: These results suggest both heterogeneity and homogeneity in the use of syntactic features by the Pakistani advanced L2 academic writers. The results of this study have implications for educators, policy makers, and syllabus designers to ensure discipline-specific instruction, and incorporation of the discipline-specific syntactic features into the academic curricula for supporting academic writing development skills in the students particularly at the advanced level of education.

The shift in the status of English as a lingua franca has challenged native-speaker culture in English language teaching and learning. That is why it is not enough to expose language learners through monoculture language teaching. Rather being communicatively competent, learners may require inter-cultural understanding. Therefore, the aim of this research is to investigate the representation of cultures through different senses in Oxford Progressive English (OPE), Level-10 (Rachel Redford, 2016). As OPE caters the needs of Pakistani language learners, it is hypothesized that learners’ source culture prevails more than other two cultures (i.e. international, and target). To confirm this hypothesis, a detailed content analysis of cultural senses (prevailed in OPE) is carried out through Adaskou, Britten and Fahsi (1990). The results show that the frequency of reading texts in OPE is highly imbued with learners’ target culture that is followed by the international culture, and least by learners’ source culture. Moreover, culturally neutral texts lack in inter-cultural understanding, and appear to be disseminated to marginalize L2 learners from target and international cultures.

This study analyses the use of modals as stance markers in newspaper editorials. Corpora of the study comprised of 500 editorials published in Pakistani English newspapers, that is, The Daily Dawn and The Daily News (250 editorials from each newspaper) which were analysed with the help of AntConc 3.4.4.0. Results show Pakistani editorial writers use all types of modals (i.e., prediction, possibility, necessity, modal adverbs, reporting verbs, knowledge verbs and generic phrases). The editorial writers use these modals to mark personal stance while commenting, reporting or informing about the state of affairs. Among these modals the use of prediction markers is the most frequent which indicates that prediction is a characteristic feature as well as function in the said newspaper editorials. Results also reveal that there is a difference in the use of modal adverbs in the editorials of both newspapers. In addition, the results reveal that the editorial writers of The Daily Dawn make less use of prediction markers as compared to the editorial writers of The Daily News. The study creates awareness of the stance of editorial writers’ and how it might affect readers’ opinions.

This study investigates the use of modal verbs as stance markers in Pakistani English newspaper editorials. For this purpose, corpora of 1000 editorials have been developed from the editorials published in The News, The Dawn, The Frontier and The Express Tribune (250 editorials from each newspaper) and analyzed using AntConc 3.4.4.0. Results reveal that prediction, possibility and necessity are the characteristic features of Pakistani English newspaper editorials and the writers of these editorials use modality to report, comment or inform about the state of affairs. Results also show that the main focus of Pakistani English newspapers’ editorials is on depicting ‘what will happen’, ‘what may happen’ and ‘what is needed to happen’. On the basis of these results, the study concludes that modality, being an important linguistic property, is used by the editorialists to maintain interaction with readers, establish authorial persona and present personal as well as institutional stance. To cipher readers’ negative perception about stance, the editorialists make a skillful use of intermediate-value modals. Study suggests the editorial readers to be aware of the writer’s stance marking. For, it may influence mind and manipulate opinions.

This study aimed to investigate the amount and type of teacher-talk, frequently asked questions and feedback provided by the teacher on learners’ performance in a language classroom. For this purpose, a lecture was recorded from a secondary level English language classroom of a public sector school and interpreted in the light of teacher-student interaction and classroom management model by David Nunan. Results revealed that the maximum amount of time (i.e. 80.1%) was consumed by the teacher which was appropriate. However, certain deviations from classroom management principles were also observed regarding frequently asked questions (i.e. 50% of the total questions were elicitation questions) and the feedback (it was ‘romantic’ in nature). Moreover, wait-time was sufficient but it was of no use to the learners. The study concluded that classroom practices did not conform to the principles therefore, it proposed to ask questions and provide feedback appropriately.