Conjunctions in Malaysian Secondary School English Language Textbooks

Jayakaran Mukundan

doi:10.7575/ijalel.v1n1p1

Abstract

The present research aims to investigate the distribution pattern of conjunctions and their ranking in two different corpora, namely the Malaysian school English language Textbook Corpus (Textbook Corpus) and the British National Corpus (BNC). An additional objective of the study was to find out how conjunctions had been presented in the Malaysian school English language textbooks (Forms 1-5). The method applied was qualitative content analysis. The findings indicated that coordinating conjunctions were the most frequent conjunctions that occurred in the five textbooks followed by subordinating and correlative conjunctions. The ranking of the different types of conjunctions in the Textbook Corpus was similar to that of the reference corpus, BNC. The results also indicated that the textbooks failed to present conjunctions effectively. The findings are expected to help textbook developers or language teachers in developing or adapting learning materials.

Highlights

One of the important skills to be mastered in the acquisition of the English language is grammar
The purpose of this study is to investigate the presentation of conjunctions in Malaysian secondary school English language textbooks
The present study investigated the presentation of conjunctions in the Malaysian textbooks Forms 1 to Form 5

Summary

Introduction

One of the important skills to be mastered in the acquisition of the English language is grammar. Very brief notes and examples of conjunctions: Introduction of compound sentences and, but, so Indirectly focusing on conjunctions: but, so Introduced through a poster. Very brief explanation on the usage of conjunctions in sentences coordinating conjunctions are highlighted implicitly. As it is evident from our findings, the textbooks fail to present conjunctions effectively. Most of the grammar notes or tasks merely provided lists of conjunctions with their semantic functions without further explanation on the semantic functions and syntactic restrictions in the use of each conjunction. According to Tomlinson (1998), most of what our students learn in controlled practice is only retained in short term memory As he suggests, meaningful activities should be provided in textbooks that encourage outcome feedback and give a chance for the learners to check their language achievement. Students might learn the correct usage of conjunctions and understand the necessity to choose the appropriate conjunctions to develop coherence and cohesive sentences

Objectives

Results

Conclusion