Comparative study of the spoken language features in the academic writings of Chinese and Sudanese undergraduates

Employing spoken language characteristics in written language could potentially generate confusion for readers, as these features rely on the speaker’s physical presence to express the speaker’s precise intentions beyond the usage of these elements. However, prior research often adopted a qualitative study of differences between the spoken and written languages, and scarcely conducted contrastive studies comparing learners of English as a foreign language and a second language. Therefore, the study employed both qualitative and quantitative methods to investigate the specific spoken language features in academic writing of Chinese and Sudanese university students writing in response to the same prompt, with the aim of identifying the types of spoken language features when they are incorporated into formal and academic writing of the two groups of students. The students were assigned the same academic writing task and they were required to finish within 30 min. It was discovered that some spoken-language features such as deixis, adjacency pairs, dialect, hedges and vague language were present in the responses. Based on this discovery, numerous recommendations were made to address the issue and propose appropriate solutions.