Sentence Relations in the Writing of EFL Students at University Level

Table- 6
The Classification of Incorrect and Correct Use of Ellipsis
Incorrect Percentage Correct
of Incorrect
Types of
Ellipsis
Percentage
of Correct
Nominal 16 %100 4 %100
Total 16 %100 4 %100
7.1.4 Conjunction
1-Incorrect Use: some of the students’ compositions show that the students
are unable to use the correct conjunctive when linking two sentences, such
as the following:
9. Getting to college on time is a problem.
Traffic jam is also another problem. We live outside city and
this makes us have problem, if I get before hour and half
before usual time of starting lectures I seldom be there. Every
day I try my best to reach at college early. Thus I fail.
10.Getting to college on time is a problem.
When we get up we must take a taxi to go to college .As we
know today we have problem with petrol. However the drivers
want too much money. When we ask them to take us.
In (9) the fourth sentence expresses a contrast (that the student tries
his best to reach at college early thus he fails). Therefore, the correct
conjunctive that should be used to show this contrast is ‘but’ or
“however”. In (10) the third sentence respectively expresses a result (that
the drivers want too much money) for causes indicated earlier in the
second and first sentences respectively (that we have problem with petrol).
Therefore, the correct conjunctive that should be used to show these
cause/effect successions is “therefore” instead of “however” The types of
conjunctions and their relative frequencies of errors observed in the
writing samples are given in the following table:
Table -7-
The Classification of Incorrect and Correct Use of Conjunction
Types of Incorrec Percentage of Incorrect Correct Percentage
Conjunctions t
of Correct
Causal 78 %38.48 25 %45.45
Adversative 53 %25.85 15 %27.27
Addition 49 %23.90 7 %12.72
Temporal 25 %12.19 8 %14.54
Total 205 %100 55 %100
7.1.5 Lexical cohesion
Lexical cohesion far outstrips reference, substitution, ellipsis and
conjunction and comes to the conclusion that at least forty percent of
textual ties are lexical. In fact, lexical ties are impossible to quantify
accurately, because there is nothing to prevent a lexical item forming a
relationship with more than one other item. Our observations of students’
@@@@@@@@@@@Journal of Zankoy Sulaimani. Part B. No. 29 June 2010@ 220@