An Analysis of Senior High School Students’ English Compositions in Terms of Conjunction

Abstract

論文提要內容 : 連接詞對於高中生膫解句子與句子間或句子內的字意及文法的邏輯關係上，扮演非常重要的角色。如果能夠指導學生熟悉連接詞的功能及用法，對於學生英文寫作能力必然會有很大幫助。目前一般學生最大的挑戰，便是能如何得體地使用這四種遞加性(additive)，逆轉性(adversative)，因果性(causal)，時間性(temporal)的連接詞。當大部分學生把連接詞用到寫作上時，便顯示出他們對連接詞的認識不足，然而目前市面上，並沒有完整的高中生英文作文指導書籍， 即使有的話，寫作技巧的介紹也被分散在各冊的教科書中，造成了目前學生學習英文寫作最大的不便。\r\n 作者想用篇章語法，以連接詞角度，分析高中生作文，分析時\r\n 應用Halliday與 Hasan所分類的四種連接詞及 Stalter所建議的 “and”， “but”，“therefore”，and “then” 這幾種連接詞。希望在將來的英文寫作中，學生能使用連接詞做為槓桿，來改善作文的結構。

Abstract\r\n Conjunctions play a very important role in helping senior high students gain a semantically intersentential comprehension of logical cohesion between sentences. If they are properly manipulated in guiding students to be familiar with their functions and usages, better quality of compositions could be achieved in the end. The practical use of the four types of conjunctions, i.e., additive, adversative, causal, and temporal poses a real challenge to students on the average. When applying conjunctions to their writing, most students turn out to be timid and unsophisticated, which indicates their inadequate knowledge of conjunctions. Furthermore, there being no complete writing guide books available for senior high students, if there is, the materials of the writing skills are separated into each volume of the English textbooks. Those are the current problems students have encountered.\r\n This writer would like to apply the discourse analysis to analyze senior high students’ compositions in terms of conjunction, doing a descriptive task to find out what kind of errors are troubling them and reasons in order to help them out of their snags.\r\n Using the four types of conjunctions by Halliday and Hasan toghter with the conjunctions of “and”, “but”, “therefore”, and “then” suggested by Stalter the teacher could give students a whole picture of what roles conjunctions are playing in their writing, thus proving that comprehension of conjunctions could enhance\r\n\r\n intersentential cohesion . Students could use conjunctions as a leverage to better compose their English writing. Finally an optimum way to better compose compositions will be suggested.