Asynchronous CMC : Forum
Web URL : http://learnenglishonline.yuku.com/topic/6690/t/What-do-you-do-when-you-re-feeling-stressed.html
Topic : What do you do when you’re Feeling Stressed?
Discourse Analysis : FORMAL and INFORMAL LANGUAGE USED in Forum.
The languages used in the forum are very informal and all of the users seem to do not really care about punctuation and capitalization and the structure of their sentences. What important is that their message can be delivered across and people can understand it even though he or she did not use the formal way of writing English language. Example from the forum; “Wish you always happy, smiles always on you face.
That is things that I do when I feel stress. What about you? Please, share us”
The above example shows clearly how informal the sentences are. Instead of saying “I wish you”, the author just opts to say “wish you”. Moreover, the phrase “please, share us” is wrong but then the message the author wants the readers to get is perfectly clear, “please share with us what makes you happy”.
Another user hlu89 wrote this sentence without caring about punctuation and capital letter; “yes eatting bananas also make me feel good”. It is the same for knight as he or she too did not really care about the use of punctuation; “I take a shower, then reading small book, or call one of my best friend (one of the funny friend), to help me getting well”. Both users know that this is not a formal discussion among academician. It is just a forum where people talk about their daily life. Therefore, formal English is not necessary. Notice that hlu89 also make a mistake when typing eating; he or she typed “eatting” instead.
Another example is from luxx2050 where he or she did not capitalise the I as in pronoun; “when i feel stress, i always drawing something which is weird.” Virginie also tends to make the same errors as his or her fellow forum-friends by misspelling “wacth” instead of “watch”. He or she also typed finding wrongly; “all the problems we have because even if we think about a lot for findind a solution”. The structure of his or her sentence is also quite confusing and some reader especially the non-native English speakers might find it hard to understand what the author is trying to say.
Darkoftime used slang in his writing. It is clearly Americanised slang in “It's a lotta faster”. For some people who did not understand American way of speaking, he or she might get confuse with this kind of slang because it is not normally used widely in the whole world. Besides, American slang is too informal some say they are a disgrace to the English world.
The user, tveve, makes a lot of errors in her sentences. For example; “when Im feeling stress I usually looking for somebody to consult with him and to share with his opinion for getting advice Or Im going to sleep until my stress is cure and usually it's working” .
Notice how tveve did not capitalise her first letter and she did not put the apostrophe in “Im” and she also did not punctuate her sentences. She supposed to put a stop after the word advice to indicate that she is talking about a new idea there.
This again shows that almost all of the users did not really care about how they use the language. Sure, native speakers might perhaps understand what the author is trying to say but then again they have to remember that not all people who joins this forum is a native speaker. They should be more considered when writing their sentences.
The only person who seems to use the correct form of English language is the user that goes by the name Lynne Hand. The reason that she used formal English language and in correct forms to is perhaps she is the moderator for the forum. She not only uses formal and correct form of English language, she also corrected other users’ English.
Examples of her usage of English; “When I'm stressed and I can't do anything to prevent it, I clear my mind and imagine that I'm walking along a country lane, there's a small brook bubbling next to the lane, the sun is shining and dust motes are dancing in the air. I'm running my fingers through the long grass ...”
The differences between her usages of English language are obvious when compared to other forum users. She uses the correct form of English language, stressing on the capitalization, punctuation and correct spelling of the words.
This is what the other users should do, because the forum that they joined is about learning to use the correct forms of English language and if they continue to make the same errors then their effort of joining the forum to enhance their language skill is useless.
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