THE INFLUENCE OF LINGUISTIC VARIATION IN ACADEMIC TEXTS AMONG STUDENTS AT ZAMBEZE UNIVERSITY – FACULTY OF AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES

Abstract

This article analyzes constructions extracted from academic texts produced by higher education students at Zambeze University, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, in Mozambique. According to statistics from Wache's (2018) studies, Mozambique has over 40 Bantu languages, making it a multilingual country. This linguistic diversity influences all levels of the Portuguese language. Therefore, in this work, we aim to understand the influences of these varieties on the written language of higher education students. To this end, we use the critical text production technique. The choice of this genre is justified by the reflection they would make during the text production process based on their cognitive capacities. In the end, we had a total of one hundred (20) texts, from which 16 sentences were extracted for each text, resulting in 326 linguistic constructions. After analyzing the data, we found that students (1) do not have knowledge of the correct way to write some lexicons, (2) interfere with oral expression in writing, and (3) make direct translation from the Bantu language to Portuguese. According to Siopa (undated), these problems can be associated with the lack of adequate preparation of students in secondary school due to overcrowding in classrooms, the lack of community libraries, which he called a “school deficiency,” as well as the constant contact between Portuguese and the Bantu languages spoken in Mozambique.