A Terminological Approachin ESL/EFL Writing Instruction- Case Study of Clause-related Terms

Document Type : علمی - پژوهشی

Authors

Shahid Beheshti University

Abstract

From a linguistic perspective, one of the most challenging aspects of writing is sentence construction. While some sentences are made up of only a single clause, to be more effective in writing, authors often need to combine clauses together to make longer sentences, with the ultimate aim of writing a composition or a coherent text.Taking a terminological approach, the present study made an attempt to scrutinize a total of 23 grammatical terms often used to teach clauses in writing classes. For this purpose, a corpus of 14 grammar books was developed, and all the 23 terms were looked up and counted in the corpus. In addition, a test of grammatical terminology, made of the same target terms, was administered to 72 BA students of English language and literature at ShahidBeheshti University.Based on the frequency of the terms in the corpus (frequency counts), the results of the terminology test (student familiarity factor), and the analysis of the qualitative data obtained from both the meaning/usage of the terms and the interviews with students, the researchers came up with a modified network of grammatical terms used for teaching clauses, which, if used consistently, could minimize ambiguities and confusions over clause-related terms in ESL/EFL writing instruction.

Keywords

References

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