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.
No comments:
Post a Comment