Analysis and Design of Written Texts for Banking Professionals in Sudan

Abstract

The present study aims to research into the use of ESP and English for Workplace in the context of Sudanese banking. Little research has been conducted in texts analysis for pedagogical language use. Having this in mind, the present study has put into its consideration to investigate into the area of authentic workplace texts and to analyze the discourse of the written texts for pedagogical language use. In order to gain a comprehensive picture of this particular variety of English register, the researcher used the Corpus Linguistics Approach (CLA) to investigate authentic banking texts as "data collection" that have been downloaded from websites and personally collected from various resources. The method used to analyze authentic banking texts is WordSmith Tools Version (6) which is a software lexical analysis that uses a computerized analysis of a large number of texts. Based on the needs analysis survey, the annual reports (ARs) and irrevocable letters of credit (LCs) represent the daily language use for banking discourse. Therefore, (48) annual banking reports and (12) letters of credit were collected to investigate the characteristics and functions of written banking texts. The analysis concentrated mainly on the frequency of lexical bundles and collocation phrases. Results of written banking collocation analysis have found significant differences from which other ESP texts and corpus. Finally, the analysis showed the tendency of repetitive habit of fixed collocation phrases used frequently in written banking texts for communication. Findings have provided a clear understanding that banking professionals have difficulties writing abstract noun phrases and passive verb phrases.