A Correlative Study
between Creative Sentence Combining Ability and Syntactic Maturity in Free Writing
among Students of AKABA 17, Semarang
Suwanto
It is known that the more advanced
the ESL/EFL student, the greater the ability and complexity of his/her writing.
Research in the United
States has shown that one of the factors
which contribute to syntactic maturity in free writing is controlled practice
in sentence combining. In Indonesia,
where sentence combining has long been popular approach to the teaching of writing, no such correlation has been
determined. This present study seeks to establish this relationship of EFL
students in Indonesia based
on 90 EFL subjects from AKABA 17, Semarang.
Results of a 5-step statistical analysis of the data confirm the findings of
American researchers: the quality and syntactic complexity of the free writing AKABA
17 EFL students also correlates significantly with practice in controlled
sentence combining. The same data was also used to seek and answer to a
secondary research question. How does the free writing syntactic maturity of
AKABA 17 EFL students compared with the same for native-speakers of English. Analysis
showed that the syntactic quality and complexity of the free writing of the AKABA
17 subjects was inferior to that of their native-speaker counterparts. It was
determined that second year AKABA 17 students were writing at a syntactic level
somewhere between Grade 6 and Grade 8 of native-speaker school children. The
author concludes with a recommendation on the applicability of these findings
to the teaching of writing at AKABA 17. He also suggests to types of follow-up
(experimental) research to further support the present study’s findings.
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Suwanto. (1994). A
correlative study between creative sentence combining ability and syntactic
maturity in free writing among students of AKABA 17, Semarang.
TEFLIN Journal, 6(2).
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