Lexicogrammatical Features of College Admission Essays in English: A Discourse Analysis

Abstract

An admission essay or application essay is an essay written by a prospective student as a part of admission processes of many colleges and universities in the world. The admission essay is an effective tool that allows the applicants to distinguish  himself/herself from the thousands of other applicants with similar scores and backgrounds because its purpose is to convey a sense of the writer’s unique character to the admissions committee and to demonstrate his/her writing skills as well as his/her ability to organize thoughts coherently. In the light of Discourse Analysis, this study deals with  lexico-grammatical features of admission essays in English. We apply Functional Grammar as a tool to analyze the data of 40 samples which were accepted admissions essays collected from some reliable books in English. Through a variety of methods, the research describes lexico-grammatical features used in these essays. This study is also significant in providing some linguistic as well as pedagogical contributions. Linguistically, the results yields some insights into admission essays in English. Pedagogically, they can be useful to ESP teaching and learning English, especially writing skill.