Relative clauses and conjunctive adjuncts in Syrian University student writing in English
Initial investigations into English essays written by Syrian university students triangulated Syrian and British teachersâ evaluations of the essays and the lexico-grammatical features they identified as affecting the overall quality of writing, with text analyses of the sources, types and frequency of all grammatical errors. Following this, and a review of relevant literature, the thesis presents an in-depth study of relative clauses and conjunctive adjuncts as under-researched features in Arabic speaking university student writing that can enrich their writing syntactically and semantically. The relative clause (RC) analysis shows that the 'full' form RC occurred much more frequently than the 'reduced' form, and that confusion between these two forms was a prominent source of student error. 'Pronoun retention' errors indicating L1 interference were among the most frequent RC errors â as most studies of RC use by Arab learners find. Moreover, RC constructions with 'head noun' (or antecedent) in the non-subject position and 'gap' (or relativized NP/sentence) in the subject position were dominant, while other, and more complex, construction types were much less common. This supports the AHH and PDH hypotheses
Fakhra, Amani
PE English
Relative clauses and conjunctive adjuncts in Syrian University student writing in English. Initial investigations into English essays written by Syrian university students triangulated Syrian and British teachersâ evaluations of the essays and the lexico-grammatical features they identified as affecting the overall quality of writing, with text analyses of the sources, types and frequency of all grammatical errors. Following this, and a review of relevant literature, the thesis presents an in-depth study of relative clauses and conjunctive adjuncts as under-researched features in Arabic speaking university student writing that can enrich their writing syntactically and semantically. The relative clause (RC) analysis shows that the 'full' form RC occurred much more frequently than the 'reduced' form, and that confusion between these two forms was a prominent source of student error. 'Pronoun retention' errors indicating L1 interference were among the most frequent RC errors â as most studies of RC use by Arab learners find. Moreover, RC constructions with 'head noun' (or antecedent) in the non-subject position and 'gap' (or relativized NP/sentence) in the subject position were dominant, while other, and more complex, construction types were much less common. This supports the AHH and PDH hypotheses
relative_clause conjunctive adjunct syrian university student_write english initial investigation english essay write syrian university_student triangulate syrian british teacher evaluation essay lexico_grammatical feature_identify affect overall quality writing text_analysis source type frequency grammatical error following_review relevant_literature present depth_study relative_clause conjunctive adjunct under_researched feature arabic speak university_student write enrich write syntactically semantically relative_clause analysis_show full form occur much frequently reduced form confusion form prominent source student error pronoun retention error indicate interference among frequent error study use arab learner find moreover construction head_noun antecedent non subject_position gap sentence subject_position dominant complex construction type much_less common support hypothesis