Mozambican PSL University Student’s Path Forward in Writing: Better na Egg Today Than a Hen Tomorrow

Abstract

Resorting to data taken out of corpora from doctoral dissertations in linguistics, which have recently been completed at the UEM, the present article analyses infelicitous discourse segments in Portuguese Second Language (PSL) writing composed by Mozambican university students. The nature of discourse infelicity related to rhetorical devices (discourse markers), and other idiomatic and cultural elements is especially discussed. It is assumed that advanced learners of a given language need to acquire the necessary conventions as well as discourse and rhetorical preferences, so that their linguistic-discursive processing is increasingly determined by the practices of textual cohesion and discourse coherence. Idiomaticity, which is personalized and idiosyncratic, has to do with formations which are peculiar to users of a determined language and culture, and which are normally recognized by its native or quasi-native writers. It is argued that the average PSL writer does not normally miss the message content, although he may, at times, tend to miss the way in which the message content is structured. He equally shows problems with text typology and idiomaticity, either by default—by being under-idiomatic, or by excess—by being over-idiomatic, when compared with native writing. In order to overcome this kind of problems, we believe that the teaching-learning process is best served when it is learner-centred.