Sentence Relations in the Writing of EFL Students at University Level

Cohesive
Devices
Table3-
Frequencies of Cohesive Devices
Incorrect Percentage
of
Incorrect
Correct Percentage
of Correct
Total Percentage
of
Incorrect
and
correct
Reference 207 %40.27 72 %14.72 279 %27.81
Conjunction 205 %39.88 55 %11.24 260 %25.92
Lexical 81 %15.75 352 %71.98 433 %43.17
Ellipsis 16 %3.11 4 %0.81 20 %1.99
Substitution 5 %0.97 6 %1.22 11 %1.09
Total 514 %100 489 %100 1003 %100
Below are the different types of errors made by the students in each
category:
7.1.1 Reference
In some of the students’ paragraphs there are some examples where the
correct reference item is not used to refer to an item in the paragraph. The
dominant reference type is demonstratives (%59.85 of total occurrences of
reference)followed by personal forms(%40.14 of total occurrences of
reference) The prominent use of pronouns appears to be due to their role
as head nouns, primary information for reference ,whereas definite articles
and demonstratives are modifiers.
3.Early marriage creates problems for parents and children.
Girls should reach a suitable age to marry .Because if she
could not understand her desire and her way she could not
make a good family.
4. A typical day in the year 2006.
I have not seen a friend for a long time when I saw her, I was
really happy, because I loved her and she brought some
presents for me. So I kept it till now.
In(3)and(4) the reference items “she” and “it” respectively refer to the
preceding plural items “girls”, “some present” but the correct reference
items to be used are “ they” in (3) and “them” in (4)
Table- 4-
The Classification of Incorrect and Correct Use of Reference
Types of Incorrect Percentage Correct Percentage
Reference
of Incorrect
of Correct
Demonstrative 116 %56.03 51 % 70.83
Personal 91 %43.96 21 % 29.16
Total 207 %100 72 % 100
7.1.2 Substitution
Substitution is found to have fewer occurrences in the students’
compositions. Accordingly, substitution seldom occurs in these writings,
except that several students demonstrate incorrect use of substitution.
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