awej 5 no.4 full issue 2014

AWEJ Volume.5 Number.3, 2014Explication of Conjunction Errors in A Corpus of WrittenArabi & Alithe same. In this case, errors do not occur. Therefore, positive (unlike negative) transferfacilitates the language learning process.Intralingual/Developmental ErrorsIntralingual errors are defined as “similar errors committed by SL learners, regardless of theirfirst language” (Freeman and .long, 1991:58). They are also known as developmental errorsbeing defined as “errors similar to those made by children learning the target language as theirfirst language (Dulay et al, 1982:195). Richards (1974: 174) views intralingual errors as thosereflecting aspects of rule learning instantiated by incomplete mastery of rules and failure to learnin the first place. He further explains that these developmental errors occur when the learner triesto build up hypotheses about the English language on the basis of his limited experience in theclassroom or textbook. According to the sorts of strategies employed by the learner, Richard(ibid) puts developmental errors into four main groups: (1) overgeneralization, (2) Ignorance ofrule restrictions, (3) incomplete application of rules, and (4) False concepts hypothesized.Previous StudiesZamel (1983) points out the importance of conjunctions to interpretation of ideas, since theyprepare readers to anticipate the ideas that follow. It logically follows, according to McCarthy(1991), that the mastery of use of conjunctions is an essential skill for EFL students to writeeffectively. Consequently, a plethora of studies has been devoted to the investigation of the useof cohesive devices by EFL students (e.g. Ostler, 1987; Hamoushi,1999; Khuweileh and Al-Shoumali,2000; Ting, 2003; Olateju, 2006; Mohammed-Sayidina, 2011). More specifically,some international studies have inquired into the mastery of conjunctions by EFL students (e.g.Crewe, 1990; Field and Yip, 1992; Khuwaileh and Al Shoumali, 2000; Chen, 2006; Heino,2010). On account of lack of space, due mention will be made of only a few studies that, likeour study, deal with problems of conjunctions faced by Arab learners.Khuwaileh and Shoumali (2000) conducted a study about the writing skills of Jordanianacademic students in Arabic and English.They depended on text-analysis of students in bothlanguages. They found out that the students who wrote a poor composition in English have thesame poor writing in their mother tongue since their writing lacks coherence and cohesion. Oneof the reasons of this deficiency was that the poor texts lack the logical connectors or conjunctiveadjuncts, as 36% of students did not use signal words to guide the discussion of their argumentsin English, though they had good ideas.Hinkel (2001) calculated the median frequency rates of explicit cohesive devices employed inacademic texts of native and non-native speakers who spoke different mother tongues (Japanese,Korean, Indonesian and Arabic). She used corpus-based comparative study and found out thatlinking adverbials or sentence transitions are used by all non-native groups at significantly highermedian frequency rates more than those of native speakers. Non-native speakers 22 overusedthese adverbials and they did not use them effectively as advanced learners. This was due to "thefocus on transitions in writing and composition instructions for university level students."Abusharkh (2012) studied the use of conjunctive adjuncts among three groups of Palestinianstudents at the college level. He used Halliday and Hasan's (1976) cohesion theory in his analysisof argumentative essays of the students. He found that additive adjuncts 23 were overused by thebeginners and intermediate learners, especially the additive 'and'. He also found that the leastused conjunctive adjuncts were causal and temporal among the three groups. They alsounderused other conjunctive adjuncts. Adopting a performance analysis approach, this studyfocuses on EFL learners' use of conjunctions. A total of 60 essays written by Arabic-speakingArab World English JournalISSN: 2229-9327www.awej.org115