22 April 2016

THE USE OF DISCOURSE CONNECTIVES IN THE ACADEMIC WRITING OF PROFESSIONAL STUDENTS


ABSTRACT 
The present study attempts to inquire the use of conjunctions in descriptive paragraphs written by first year professional ESL undergraduates. The data comprises of a set of 30 descriptive academic paragraphs collected from an engineering college, in order to explore the use different types of conjunctions based on Swan’s (2002) classification of connectives. The findings reveal that the learners used conjunctions inappropriately and they also used coordinating conjunctions very frequently than subordinating conjunctions as part of their writing. The participants encountered problems while using conjunctions to be attributed to various reasons. Initially, the use of their first language may result from a negative transfer. Though, it leads to the overgeneralization in the second language writing production. The learners produced connectives in their writing involuntarily lacking a proper intellectual capacity of its intended use. 

Keywords: Conjunctions, Coordinating Conjunctions, Subordinating Conjunctions, linking words, discourse connectives. 

For full paper click here


No comments:

sh

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...