Interlanguage in Undergraduates' Academic English: Preliminary Results from Written Script Analysis

The following article aims to revisit Selinker's theory of Interlanguage by analysing a group of undergraduates' written scripts in L2. The initial outcomes of the study establish a linguistic parallelism between students' Interlingua and English as a lingua franca in the academic world. In the light of this comparison, certain theoretical standpoints can be determined for the analysis of students' written production in English. Consequently, the practice of scaffolding by the teacher can be more productively directed towards their individual needs. Appended are: (1) Words containing the most common errors produced by the students in their exams of English Applied Linguistics at the University of Malaga; and (2) Chart showing a basic Error Analysis in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at Malaga University. (Contains 1 footnote.) [This research was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Education within the FPU programme (grant reference AP2007-03689).]