LIBRARY INfERNAllONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSlrY MALAYSIA

THE USE OF LINKING ADVERBIALS IN THESES OF HUM STUDENTS

BY

INTAN SY AHIDAH BINTI ZULKAFA

A thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Human Sciences in Teaching

English as a Second Language

Kuliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences

International Islamic University Malaysia

AUGUST2012

ABSTRACT

Linking Adverbials (LAs) are not only utilized to connect the functions between units of discourse but also to facilitate the logical flow of a presentation and significantly affect the ways meaning is organized and conveyed by speakers and interpreted by listeners. Used incorrectly, linking adverbials can confuse the reader of a text and hinder the cohesion and coherence of a text. In previous researches, second language users were reported to have a tendency to overuse Linking Adverbials to substitute for their lack of knowledge in writing comprehensibly. When L2 users fail to demonstrate knowledge ofLAs and the functions they carry, there is a possibility that LAs are used incorrectly and can be misinterpreted. In light of this possibility, this research was conducted for the purpose of investigating 60 Masters theses from International Islamic University Malaysia. The study examined if there was an inclination for postgraduates to overgeneralize the use of Linking Adverbials; and if there are underlying causes for such problems that did not bring about plausible communication. This analysis was conducted based on the framework developed by Liu (2008). This study described the analyses of LAs in Masters' theses across six humanities departments; IO theses from each department. The study examined the Masters students' use of Linking Adverbials in an attempt to reveal frequencies and occurrences of the grammatical feature in each department. Both quantitative and qualitative data were used in this study to scrutinize patterns of use. The analysis revealed that the students from the six departments shared a similarity in their choices of LAs in terms of categories and individual forms. It also identified a few specific cases of overuse and inaccurate use of certain categories and individual linkers. The findings have implications for both teachers and learners: ESL learners should be explicitly made aware of this feature during class instruction.

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APPROVAL PAGE

I certify that I have supervised and read this study and that in my opinion, it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a thesis for the degree of Masters of Human Sciences (Teaching of English as a Second Language)

Subramaniam Govindasamy Supervisor

I certify that I have read this study and that in my opinion it conforms to acceptable standards of scholarly presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a thesis for the degree of Masters of Hwnan Sciences (Teachin English as a Second Language)

This thesis was submitted to the Department of English Language and Literature and is accepted as a fulfilment of the requirement for the degre of Masters of Human Sciences (Teaching of English as a Second Language)

Zahariah Pilu Head, Departm of English Language and Literature

This thesis was submitted to the Kuliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences and is accepted as a fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Masters of Human Sciences (Teaching of English as a Second Language)

iii

r-

~oo,i ... ~iAbd ... Majid ... Dean, Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this dissertation is the result of my own investigations, except

where otherwise stated. I also declare that it has not been previously or concurrently

submitted as a whole for any other degrees at IIUM or other institutions.

Intan Syahidah binti Zulkafa

Signature ......... J~ .................... . Date .... ~~~.t.:.~.~·~············

iv

INTERNATIONAL ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY MALAYSIA

DECLARATION OF COPYRIGHT AND AFFIRMATION OF FAIR USE OF UNPUBLISHED RESEARCH

Copyright© 2012 by International Islamic University Malaysia. All rights reserved.

THE USE OF LINKING ADVERBIALS IN THESES OF IIUM STUDENTS

I hereby affirm that The International Islamic University Malaysia (HUM) holds all

rights in the copyright of this Work and henceforth any reproduction or use in any

form or by means whatsoever is prohibited without the written consent of HUM. No

part of this unpublished research may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or

transmitted, in any form of by means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

recording or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder.

Affirmed by Intan Syahidah binti Zulkafa

.............. ..1 .. ~ ............... . .J.:i . 8 - .'.M:, J.). • ............................ Signature Date

V

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

All praises, above and beyond, to Allah the Most Gracious Most Merciful, for giving me the will and strength to complete this thesis. First of all, my supervisor, Associate Professor Dr. Subramaniam Govindasamy, for his guidance, patience and understanding throughout the completion of my thesis. His words of advice and encouragement motivated me throughout this period. Without his help and consideration, I would not have succeeded in completing it. And for that, I am highly indebted. I would also wish to express my appreciation to all my lecturers in the Department of English Language and Literature who had inspired me throughout the graduate programme.

I would also wish to convey my appreciation to my beloved parents, Tuan Haji Zulkafa Zakaria and Puan Hajjah Anilah Mat Ali for their unconditional love and support. Not to forget my supportive siblings, Muhammad Zulfahmi Zulkafa and family, Patin Nadiah Zulkafa , Muhammad Lutfil Hadi Zulkafa and Mazuin Abdul Rahim for their endless advice and encouragement. You have kept my spirit alive and I'm sincerely thankful.

Last but not least, I wish to express gratitude to my faithful friends, Noor Alhusna Madzlan, Nurul Huda Hassan Bakri, Raziah Sultan Kabeer, Siti Aisyah Ramli, and others for their never ending support and encouragement. Thanks for keeping my sanity intact throughout our academic journey. Special gratitude also goes to Dr. Mohana Nambiarfor sparing time to validate my research data. Lastly, my appreciation goes to those who have contributed to this research. No matter how big or small the contribution is, I genuinely thank you.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract ................................................................................................................... i Abstract in Arabic .................................................................................................... ii Approval Page .......................................................................................................... iii Declaration Page ...................................................................................................... iv Copyright Page ........................................................................................................ v Acknowledgement ................................................................................................... vi

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ......................................................................... l Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 Statement of the Problem ............................................................................. 3 Significance of the Study ............................................................................. 4

Research Objectives ................................................................................................. 5 Research Questions ...................................................................................... 5 Definitions ................................................................................................... 6

CHAPTER 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE ...................................................... 8 Form-Focused to Meaning-Focused Approach ............................................ 8 Meaning-Focused in Communicative Based Approach ............................... 12 Formal Writing ............................................................................................. 15 Importance of Cohesion in Writing ............................................................. 18 The Importance of Linking Adverbials (LAs) ............................................. 22 Review of Previous LAs-Based Researches ................................................ 28 Conclusion ................................................................................................... 36

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ................................................ 37 Introduction .................................................................................................. 3 7 Theoretical Underpinning and Framework .................................................. 37 Research design ............................................................................................ 3 8 Data Collection ............................................................................................ 40 Data Analysis ............................................................................................... 41

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS ................................................ 45 Introduction .................................................................................................. 45 Result and Findings ofLAs Analysis .......................................................... 47

Frequencies of Occurrences ofLAs According to Departments .......... 47 Misuse of Linking Adverbials in IIUM Theses ................................... .49

The Distribution of Misused LAs According to Categories ........................ 50 Redundancies of Linking Adverbials in IIUM Theses ......................... 51 The Distribution of Redundancies of LAs According to Categories .... 52

Discussion of Findings ................................................................................. 53 Performances according to Department. ...................................................... 54

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Semantic Categories ..................................................................................... 55 Adversative/Concessive Category ........................................................ 58 Causal Connectors Category ................................................................. 59 Additive Category ................................................................................. 60 Contrastive Category ............................................................................ 62 Reformulation Category ........................................................................ 63 Correction Category .............................................................................. 64 Dismissal Category ............................................................................... 64 Similarity/Comparative Category ......................................................... 65 Other Categories (Simultaneous, Summative, Conditional Clausal and Transitional to Another Topic) ....................................................... 66

The Frequency and Use of Individual Linking Adverbials .......................... 66 Conclusion ................................................................................................... 68

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ............................................................................. 70 Introduction .................................................................................................. 70 Summary of the Findings ............................................................................. 71 Additional Findings ...................................................................................... 74 Conclusion ................................................................................................... 74 Implications of the Study ............................................................................. 75 Limitation of the Research ........................................................................... 76 Recommendations for Future Research ....................................................... 76

BIB LI OGRA.PHY .................................................................................................. 78

APPENDIX I: LIST OF LINKING ADVERBIALS ACCORDING TO CATEGORIES ......................................................................................................... 83 APPENDIX II: LINKING ADVERBIALS ANALYSIS: EXAMPLES ................. 85 APPENDIX III: COMPLETE DAT A OF LINKING ADVEBIALS ANALYSIS ACCORDING TO CATEGORIES ......................................................................... 90 APPENDIX IV: SUMMARY OF LINKING ADVERBIALS FREQUENCIES ... 99

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INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

To produce a piece of coherent writing, a writer should be familiar with

cohesive devices, especially with regards to their functions and their syntactic and

semantic restrictions. It should be noted that apart from the familiar linkers and

binders, there are also sentence connectors which assist in representing certain

relationships and are very advantageous in developing an argument or exposition.

There is a rich array of devices which connect ideas in writing, but among these, the

most important are Linking Adverbials (LAs). Linking Adverbials are cohesive tools

used in discourse to construct coherent texts. These tools help to guide the reader/

listener through the message by showing how successive units are related (Leech &

Svartvik (1994) as quoted in Liu, 2008). Some common Linking Adverbials (LAs)

that are frequently used include: although, however and on the other hand.

Aside from creating textual cohesion, the function of Linking Adverbials is ''to

make semantic connection between spans of discourse in varying length" (Biber et al.,

2002). This option to connect spans of discourse semantically at different lengths or

levels ( e.g. clause, sentence and paragraph) is an important feature that distinguishes

Linking Adverbials from conjunctions that are often used at or below the clausal level.

According to another researcher Liu (2008), Linking Adverbials connect and bind

ideas together. They are not used to add information but to help relaying the message

to the audience.This feature is assumed to assist students, especially ESUEFL

students (L2 learners), to acquire English rhetorical patterns easily and accurately.

1

Apart from being called Linking Adverbials, they are also known by various

names. Granger and Tyson (1996) use the term connectors, Tanko (2004) calls them

adverbial connectors and Makalela (1998) name them linking words. Biber et

al.(2002) and Liu (2008) use the term linking adverbials, whereas Halliday and

Matthiessen (2004) refer to these words as linking devices or cohesive conjunctions.

Nevertheless, each of these describes the same entity: words that work as significant

devices for constructing textual cohesion because they unambiguously indicate the

relations between certain text units. Miscommunications occur if these are used

spuriously especially in writing.

Although Linking Adverbials are important discourse elements, little research

has been focused on theme specially in the ESL field in Malaysia. There is a dearth of

work regarding the problems that non-native students have with Linking Adverbials.

ESL learners are expected to produce written and verbal outcomes like native

speakers. One or both of these skills are sometimes achieved but unfortunately, not at

all times. Most of L2 learners are still incompetent even in the speaking skills, let

alone be able to produce coherent written output. Due to this problem that ESL

learners face and given the importance of writing in English, a thorough and detailed

study of this rhetorical feature is warranted. Therefore, this study examines the various

functions ofLAs' and whether LAs are being used appropriately by graduate students

in their writing of Masters theses; in this case, at the International Islamic University

Malaysia (IIUM).

2

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

Several studies have examined and demonstrated the difficulties that ESL

learners experience in grasping the use of discourse markers in writing (Altenberg &

Tapper, 1998; Bolton et al., 2002; Granger & Tyson, 1996). Gilquin and Paquot

(2008) examined the written production of upper-intermediate to advanced foreign

learners of English to discover that whatever their mother tongues be, they tend to

overuse or underuse some items in the target language, in this case, English.

While LAs are features in English formal writing, they are not overtly included

in the language curriculum in Malaysia. Additionally, very few researches have been

conducted in Malaysia regarding their use. As a result, there is a scarcity of

knowledge about the use of LAs and in particular, the misuse of this cohesive feature.

Recently, Govindasamy (2009) examined the use of cohesive linkers which

fortuitously led to the discovery that theses' writers from the Department of English

Language and Literature (DELL) at IIUM tend to use adverbial linkers

inappropriately. The writers were either overusing (in contexts where such use is not

warranted) or utilizing colloquial ones instead of more formal linkers suited for the

academic register.

Although most graduated students eventually experience success, a number of

researches on ESUEFL graduate students report their inability to write discipline­

specific texts including theses and dissertations (Gentil, 2005; Silva et al.2003). If

language-based students' theses show such limited proficiency in the use of

adverbials, the problem may also exist among work from other humanities

departments as well. Since there is a dearth of such studies, this research, it is hoped,

will fill the gap and help both teachers and students.

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SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Shaw (2000) points out that in academic writing, it is imperative to develop

arguments, which then should be well supported. Shaw (2000) and Hunston (2001)

identify that researchers often organize arguments into long chains but neither authors

discuss how researchers do that. These scholars are right about the importance of

supporting and developing claims in academic articles, and in that context Linking

Adverbials might play a role in helping authors to achieve greater cohesion. More

research in this area would confirm this assertion. Unfortunately, research on Linking

Adverbials across disciplines and particularly in the humanities seems to be lacking.

Liu (2008) calls for "more detailed" corpus-based research on Linking Adverbials,

noting that this method is the only way to achieve accurate and reliable results. It is

because of the fact that the area has not received the attention it warrants that further

research is needed, to assess disciplinary variation across a number of science and

non-science discipline.

The results of the study will reveal spurious use of adverbial linkers, if any, in

theses completed by graduate students across various humanities departments at

HUM. It is thus expected that through the assistance of informative insights provided

by the finding of the present study, the problems encountered, particularly by second

language learners can be effectively addressed.

Armed with the findings of this study which aims to investigate the different

problems in the use of Linking Adverbials, writing instructors can design specific

writing pedagogy which fulfills learners' individual needs on the acquisitions of LAs.

Since this type of research is new, the research findings will be made available to all

the departments at the university, particularly the Foundation Studies Centre where

preliminary teaching on academic writing is conducted. The results of this research

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are also expected to raise consciousness among ESU EFL teachers and students

towards the LAs used in writing. By mastering LAs, both teachers and students will be

better in expressing their ideas coherently and convincingly. The research results,

based on actual language data, will help enhance students' language competency not

only in tenns of rules but also to be contextually relevant.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

By systematically analyzing the theses written by graduate students, this research aims to:

1. identify the extent of correct use of LAs by Humanities students in their

theses;

2. identify the frequency of spurious occurrences of LAs across various

deparbnents in the humanities;

3. identify the functional categories that have the most 'misuse' of LAs;

4. identify the functional categories that have the most 'redundancies' ofLAs.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The rationale of this study is to attain answers to the following research questions:

1. Are there misuse of Linking Adverbials in HUM theses from the

humanities?

2. Are there redundancies in using Linking Adverbials in IIUM theses?

3. Which functional category of Linking Adverbials records the most misuse?

4. Which functional category of Linking Adverbials records the most

redundancies?

5

CONCEPTUAL DEFINITIONS AND TERMS

1. Linking Adverbials

Linking Adverbials (LAs, e.g. however and in contrast) are instrumental in providing

cohesion in both speaking and writing. According to Liu (2008), the ability to connect

spans of discourse semantically at different lengths or levels ( e.g. clause, sentence,

and paragraph) is a key feature that differentiates LAs from conjunctions because the

latter can only make semantic connections at or below the clause level. In this

research, 13 categories of LAs with the total of 101 linkers have been identified (see

Appendix 1 ).

2. Native speakers

The native speaker may be defined in these six ways (Davies, 2003):

• The native speaker acquires the LI of which s/he is a native speaker in

childhood.

• The native speaker has intuitions (in terms of acceptability and productiveness)

about his/her idiolectal grammar.

• The native speaker has intuitions about those features of the Standard

Language grammar which are distinct from his/her idiolectal grammar.

• The native speaker has a unique capacity to produce fluent spontaneous

discourse, which exhibits pauses mainly at clause boundaries (the 'one clause

at a time' facility) and which is facilitated by a huge memory stock of complete

lexical items. In both production and comprehension the native speaker

exhibits a wide range of communicative competence.

6

• The native speaker has a unique capacity to write creatively (and this includes

literature at all levels from jokes to epics, metaphors to novels).

• The native speaker has a unique capacity to interpret and translate into the LI

of which s/he is a native speaker. Disagreements about the deployment of an

individual's capacity are likely to stem from a dispute about the Standard

Language.

3. Language-based students

There are students who pursue English Language (Linguistics and Literature) and

Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) courses as their major for their

Master's degree.

4. Discourse markers

Discourse markers signal relations between discourse units. As such, discourse

markers play an important role in the parsing of natural language discourse (Marcu,

2000), and their correspondence with discourse relations can be exploited for the

unsupervised learning of discourse relations (Marcu and Echihabi, 2002, as cited in

Hutchinson, 2005).

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CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

In order to address the issues pertaining to the use of Linking Adverbials (LAs) in

English, the researcher reviewed relevant literature that has significance for the topic.

This chapter begins with the importance of a meaning-based approach. This is

followed by a discussion of the issues pertaining to a communicative-based approach.

The importance of cohesion in writing and LAs in writing is probed next, followed by

a listing of LA semantic categories. Next, the use ofLAs by second language learners

(ESUEFL learners) is highlighted. Finally, the researcher reviews researches that have

been carried out regarding the use of LAs.

FORM-FOCUSED TO MEANING-FOCUSED APPROACH

The linguistic world has been dominated by the notion of analyzing language

according toits syntactic characteristics. Chomsky's Syntactic Structurewhich was

intended to inspect the syntactical patterns that a grammar provides will only enable a

writer to look at the plausibility features of a sentence. There should be a continual

process of studying what happens in a text when the grammatical meaning depends on

the linguistic features. Saussure (2008) confirms this by claiming that that all forms of

expressions must be taken into account in order to confirm the sentences in a text to be

linguistically correct and 'elegant'. A number of researches in grammar disclose that

most adult second language learners who can utilize grammatical rules and structures

in the classroom could not apply these rules as effectively in the real communication

outside of the classroom (Park, 2000). They can only produce 'bookish English'

8

which are by some means different with the communicative English outside the

classroom.

Because of that, Saussure (2008) introduced the concept of form and meaning

(signifier, signified) which has become the underpinning pillar for many modem

linguistic schools nowadays. One of the most prominent schools, the Columbia School

of Linguistics holds this idea and places great importance in carrying out linguistics

analyses using the Saussurian framework, i.e. a framework that draws attention to

various ways oflooking at meaning of words or objects. For example, when a learner

wants to acquire a second language, the grammatical categories such as 'noun', 'verb',

'adjective', and 'tenses' are not the elements that learners recognize immediately.

Instead, the learner will focus more on the meaning that sentences convey. As long as

they understand the gist of the sentences, they tend to overlook the rest of the

grammatical features appearing in those sentences (Reid, 2002). According to Reid,

meaning is not totally contained inside words and its grammatical structuring.

Meaning comes from language users and the way they express their ideas in the

sentences. Language only provides clues to visualizing/ realizing meaning (Reid,

2002).

Celce-Murcia, Domyei and Thurell (1997) proclaim that the meaning-focused

approach grew out of the dissatisfaction of the form-focused approaches such as

grammar translation and cognitive code methods. There were arguments which

showed that there was a discrepancy between classroom learning and the

communicative skills needed outside the classroom. The researchers claim that the

most suitable method to learning languages is by teaching language learners to utilize

appropriate signals in sending specific messages. As every sign in a language has its

own semantic value (to serve communicative ends), they believe that each sign

9

contributes to the formation of the intended message. This view is also shared by

another party: the functionalists. Halliday and Matthiessen (2004) contend that both

the meaning-based researchers and the functionalists are concerned with how

sentences are structured using different fonns and not how the forms are used in

forming a sentence.

There are other issues that always occur at certain points of time when learning

English. The learner's first language does influence second language developmental

process. The first language (LI) of a learner can, to some extent, help in preparing the

learners in some aspects of the learning process (such as materials and contexts of

use). These materials will assist the learners to revise the grammatical aspects of their

first language and then use them in the target language (L2). Although the learners are

prohibited to use their LI in the learning process, they can utilize grammatical features

similar to those from the first language. By doing so, they will become very familiar

with the English input, such as newspaper articles, news reports, short factual texts,

materials used as the beginning for L2 fluency tasks.

This flexibility will assist the language users to be more creative in generating

meanings by exploiting the language itself. They will go through numerous stages

before they can produce error-free sentences. They will use different styles in

conveying their ideas which will be interpreted differently by the readers or listeners.

It is apt to restate that the main source of meaning comes from outside the language;

language users are not merely considered as passive decoders, they are indeed the

creators of meaning (Reid, 2002). The real meaning depends on how the language

users collocate a string of words using semantic rules to guide the readers and listeners

to their intended meanings (Davis, Jovanovic, Stem, 2006).In addition, meanings will

be easier to be interpreted if the writers use linguistic signposts that help the flow of

10

thoughts in texts. Within the process, some attention must be given to separate fonns

through 'correction, direct explanation, negative feedback and recast' (Long &

Robinson, 1998 as cited in Poole, 2005). The focus on form is needed as it engages

both learners and teachers to pay attention to form when needed, but restricted only

within the tenets of the language classroom. Nevertheless, the entire focus should not

be on the fonn instruction; it may hinder the process of developing vocabulary

particularly for adult L2 learners in advanced education level. They must be able to

interpret meanings accurately based on to the contexts and produce the outcomes that

are familiar; this context instruction is important to prevent any idiosyncratic

productions.

Another issue worth discussing here is that as the functional grammarians

emphasize the communicative role of language, they claim that meaning "talces

linguistics toward sociology" as opposed to biology (Thomson, 2004). Thomson

elaborates that this is achieved through the systematic study of significant features in

the culture and society that 1) form the context in which language is used, and which

are at the same time 2) constructed by the way in which language is used. Both form­

and meaning-based approaches ponder on the same aspect of language: how can we

explain why language has the main features that it does? As the form-based approach

tries to search for the answer in the way our brains are structured, the meaning-based

approach used another way i.e. in the way our social context is structured.

The latter approach finds agreement in another researcher's work -

Govindasamy (1999:1) - who says that "language users are to manipulate grammatical

rules according to their contexts". This means that the exact meaning of a grammatical

unit relies on the intention and the message the language users try to transmit to the

audience. In other words, the weight of meaning is attributed more to language users'

11

intentions than to the language itself. Hence, the meaning-focused instructors believe

that the goal of language teaching is to develop learners' communicative competence

which encompassed not only grammar but also sociolinguistic, discourse and strategic

competence as well.

MEANING-FOCUSED COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH

In a meaning-based approach, "learners are usually not specifically taught the

strategies, maxims and organizational principles that govern communicative language

use but are expected to work these out for themselves through extensive task

engagement" (Celce-Murcia, Domyei & Thurrell, 1997, p. 141). Certain conditions

assisted language learning (Richards and Rodgers l 986as cited in Park, 2000):

• activities that comprisebof the in-context communication which promote

interactive learning;

• activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks

whichpromote learning;

• language that is meaningful to the learner which supports the learning process.

The main reason for using the communicative or meaning-based approach in

the language learning is that it augments the learning process itself. Language learners

can manipulate the language according to their wills and intentions. Language

instructors are asked to teach students according to the contexts, a feature that assures

their language adaptability outside the classrooms.

Nunan (2006:36) defines the communicative task as 'a piece of classroom

work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or

interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on

12

meaning rather than form'. However, Kowal and Swain's study(l997) used different

styles of learning; this study claimed that when used together with other approaches,

students will focus more on form as they follow the guidelines required by the tasks.

There are two major types of meaning focused instruction. The first one is the

Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) which includes the task-based learning.

The second is the Content-Based instruction (CBI) which includes immersion courses.

CBI has gained popularity since the early 1980s. CBI, which incorporates language

and content instruction, uses different sources depending on the necessities of the

students and the curricular. Davies (2003) says that all programmes which use CBI

achieve the same phenomenon: students are engaged in some way with the content

using non-native language. He also believes that CBI is an effective method of

combining language and content learning and that it will work well in ESL contexts.

Its usage will surge as teachers continue to develop innovative programmes in

response to students' needs and interests.

Approaches may be primarily content-driven or language-driven. In the

language-driven programmes, language is the priority, and content expedites language

progression. There is no assurance that students are able to grasp the language by

using the content-driven learning. This is to be expected because mastering the

language is not considered as a part of the curriculum in this approach.

Effective literacy programmes for students at risk focus on a meaning-based,

functional approach to literacy (Roth, 2002). Using meaning-based approach, students

feel motivated to learn early literacy skills because they see how literacy is personally

relevant to them. Educators with a focus on integrating meaning with literacy skills

combine literacy learning with concrete and engaging contexts that at-risk students

can relate to personally (DeTemple & Snow, 2001; Gee, 2001; Ruben, Liao, &Collier,

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2001 ). Through meaning-based activities, teachers can evoke personal relationships

with literacy topics and more readily address the needs of children from different

backgrounds (Gee, 2001). Effective instructors attempt to increase learning as well as

motivation by providing tasks that have a relationship with real-world experience, that

are interesting, and that are personally relevant for the students (Skehan, 1998).

According to Elley (2001), meaning-based activities enrich the current

curricula through theme-based instruction that emphasizes personal relevance and

hands-on learning. Common and compelling subjects make literacy learning

meaningful to the learners and relate instruction to the learners' prior knowledge.

Meaning is activated when they connect ideas and experiences with literacy to what

they already know or to what interests them.

There were a number of studies in the 60s and 70s that have since been

accepted as the 'classic' supports for the view that grammar teaching does nothing for

children's writing. By the late 60s, the dominant view, in both UK and USA, was that

"most children cannot learn grammar and ... even to those who can, it is of little

value." (Thompson, 2004:34). In line with the previous research by Thompson,

another researcher, Harris (1965) as cited in Hudson (2001) compared two groups:

five classes of high school students to study formal grammar and five classes of non­

grammar groups. One studied traditional grammar; the other worked on selected

essays. The latter group approached errors through meaning. Harris discovered that

after a period of two years, five classes of high school students who had studied

formal grammar performed significantly worse than a matched group of five non­

grammar groups on several objective criteria of sentence complexity and the number

of errors in their essays.

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The studies of students' written outcomes dominated the first survey of

experimental research on written composition. In Research in Written Composition,

Richard Braddock and associates analyzed 504 studies of writing instruction and of

student writing. By doing that, it had been proven to the readers in 1960s that

grammars were the emphasis of the students' writing outcomes. They unanimously

stated that "(i)n view of the widespread agreement of research studies based upon

many types of students and teachers, the conclusion can be stated in strong and

unqualified terms: the teaching of formal grammar has a negligible or, because it

usually displaces some instruction and practice in actual composition, even a harmful

effect on the improvement of writing" (as cited in Gleason, 2001 :32).

In another research, Elley, Barham, Lamb, and Wyllie (1979) studied 248

students in eight classes over three years. They were divided into three groups. One

group studied transformational grammar, one group studied rhetoric and literature and

also creative writing with writing conventions and spelling as the need arose and

another group studied heavy doses of traditional grammar. The purpose of the

research was to determine how much impact transformational grammar study had on

student language growth. Researchers concluded that it had a negligible impact and

that traditional grammar study had little or no impact on language growth.

FORMAL WRITING

Academic writings are different from the conversational language in many aspects. It

diverges significantly from the social language because of the form, style and its

decontextualized nature. Academic language has its own distinguishing semantic,

syntactical and pragmatic features from social conversational language (Tompkins,

2009). In any language, in order to be a good writer, one must acquire them; they are

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