Rowena C. Nuera, Language & Literature Faculty/Contributor

Joy R. Risonar, a faculty member of the Language Department, College of Arts and Sciences, presented her research paper on The syntactic features of texts written by Filipino students at the International Conference on Doing Research in Applied Linguisitcs 3 / 19^th English in South-East Asia Conference 2017 (DRAL 3/ESEA 2017) on June 22-24, 2017 held at the School of Liberal Arts, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi, Bangkok, Thailand.

The research paper contributes the following syntactic features of texts written by Filipino students: for modifiers in phrases, any preposition and with or without determiners will do; and for verb clauses, any verb tense and with or without parallelism will do. Using the descriptive research design in analyzing the essays written by Filipino students who are studying at the University of Southeastern Philippines (USeP), these findings contribute to the bulk of researches conducted on Philippine English. The most cited one is Bautista’s (2008) list of grammatical features which are One of the + Singular Noun, Ø Majority, Such + Ø Singular Noun, Assure + Ø Indirect Object, and Wherein. The common syntactic features revealed in the essays would provide insights on the syntactic features of Philippine English. Specifically, the findings could inform materials design to be employed in USeP language classrooms and beyond. DRAL 3/ESEA 2017 International Conference aimed at sharing and learning about a variety of aspects of doing research in applied linguistics and the uses of English in ASEAN. Risonar’s study on the syntax is an example of a research into varieties of English and a research in the South East Asian Context, topics that DRAL/ESEA encourages linguists to engage in. Plenary speakers in the DRAL3/ESEA2017 were renown authors and linguists Prof. Ken Hyland, Dr. Andrew Sewell, and Prof. Andy Kirkpatrick.