The Common Use of Connecting Ideas in Writing Paragraphs of Two Saudi Contexts

Abstract

This study investigated the undergraduate use of specific English coordinating and subordinating conjunctions based on Azar’s & Kolln’s and Funk’s textbooks, which is (and, but, or, so, because). Also, this research intended to compare students who studied in two EFL contexts to explore how the given instructions regarding the use of conjunctions were applied in students’ writing. The data was collected from 26 students studying in two different Saudi universities. First, the data was gathered from (group one), which consisted of 13 participants, who studied at a university in the north-central part of Saudi Arabia, and their major was English Language. However, the second group was inclusive of 13 participants who studied at the Applied Linguistics Department at a university in the middle of Saudi Arabia. The participants were asked to write two to three paragraphs using specific coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. Thus, the researcher collected 26 sampled data containing 13 written paragraphs from each context to compare the participants of the two contexts in the use of the learned conjunctions. The data were analyzed based on the introduced coordinating and subordinating conjunctions in Azar’s & Kolln’s and Funk’s textbooks. The analysis was accomplished by identifying the frequent occurrence of those conjunctions in students’ written data and how those conjunctions were used in joining two or more clauses. The results showed that there were no significant differences in students’ use of those conjunctions, and several participants had challenges in recognizing the function of those simple or common conjunctions. It has been found that those participants of the two contexts had committed the same types of errors when trying to combine their clauses.