awej 5 no.4 full issue 2014

AWEJ Volume.5 Number.3, 2014Explication of Conjunction Errors in A Corpus of WrittenArabi & AliCausal Conjunction ErrorsTable.4 Types of Causal Conjunction ErrorsType of Errors No. of Errors Percentage Meana) misuse 53 60.9% 1.06b) addition 23 26.1% 0.46c) replacement 10 10.9% 0.2d) omission 2 2.1% 0.04Total 88 100% 1.76Causal conjunction errors come second in frequency, accounting for 22.4%, followingadditive conjunctions. Like additives, causal conjunction errors are sub-classified into four majortypes: addition, replacement, misuse and omission. Table [4] reveals that the causal conjunctionerrors involving misuse are the highest in frequency, comprising 53 occurrences or 60.9%. Tofind out which causal conjunction poses the greatest difficulty for the subjects of this study, theerrors are further put into the following smaller groups according to the conjunction each groupsubsumes. Misuse errors including because and so are the most prominent, having the samefrequency of 31 occurrences ( 35.7% each).With regards to causal because, errors take place when students use it in textual contextswhere its meaning / function does not apply. The following sentences displays because misuseerrors.[12] …if he *study *the law in Arabic, he *failure, and he*come back to his countrybecause the lack of foreign language.[29 / AW]Apart from the serious syntactic problems in example , a sentence containing four clauses isprobably too difficult to command, particularly for EFL students. Before identifying the causalconjunction error, it is important to explain that the writer expresses the importance of learning aforeign language (especially, English) for Arab students. Generally speaking, the way the writerforms subordinate clauses (together with numerous syntactic errors his/her sentence contains)impedes the coherent flow of meanings, if not break down the communication altogether.Using because to link the segment the lack of foreign language to the previous part of sentenceseems to be incorrect. This is due to th fact that the constituent the lack of foreign language is notthe cause of failing to study law in Arabic since there is no relation between studying law inArabic' and learning a foreign language.Another incorrect use of because is illustrated by the following:[13] through the revolution of communication, so all the world becomes like or need to speakone language, because of the direct link of all world countries. [31/ AW]It is difficult to find out what the writer wishes to convey, not only due to the incorrect use ofcausal conjunction because, but also because of the redundant use of so, or and through; allcompounded by the syntactically and semantically incorrect manner of encoding the intendedArab World English JournalISSN: 2229-9327www.awej.org123