Assessment of Arabic/English Style Differences Effects’ on the Enhancement of the EFL Academic Writing Syntactical Style: Subordination over Coordination

Abstract

Being at the tertiary level, advanced productivity levels are expected from students in terms of spoken as well as written discourse. Just as correctness of productions is demanded, these productions are also expected to be as authentic and palatable as possible. Yet between what is expected and what is delivered is quite a large gap. Next to correct writing, attending more to the writing style might fill at least a portion of the gap. The present study assessed the Arabic/English style differences effects’ on the enhancement of the EFL academic writing syntactical style: subordination over coordination. Relevantly to the investigation’s interest, the study was conducted with Master’s 1 university students producing essays for the academic writing course during the academic year 2022-2023. The study chief aim was to assess the effectiveness and practicality of additional style-oriented material (subordination over coordination) to the current EFL academic writing syllabus. To the fulfillment of this aim, a close-knit quasi-experimental study was conducted through the methods of questionnaire and pre and post-tests for data collection with implementation of the appropriate procedures. After the interpretive analysis of the obtained results, the experimental group exhibited significant improvement in performance style-wise compared to their performance before experimentation. The inclusion of the additional style-oriented material to the current academic writing syllabus proved to be both practical and beneficial. Therefore, including such style-oriented materiel to the existing EFL writing curriculum is highly recommended.