Syntactic Analysis of ESL (English as a Second Language) Students’ Written Texts: Focus on Sentence and Clause

Abstract

In measuring EFL learners' adeptness in English syntax, it is necessary to analyze their writing texts. The significant grammatical features to be studied throughout this enquiry are whether they could construct comprehensible, meaningful sentences and write sentences with consistent tenses and aspects. This research analyzed two written English texts by ESL learners with different geographical backgrounds. The learners were classified into different stages of English proficiency: S2 (Stage 2) and S4 (Stage 4). The research went through both quantitative and qualitative syntactic analysis. The quantitative analysis focused on the types of sentences and clauses used by both learners and the favorable tenses and aspects that appeared in the texts. The qualitative one concerned with how well both texts could be comprehended. It was predicted that the S2 ESL learner used more simple sentences with inconsistent tenses and aspects, whilst the S4 learners used more complex sentences with consistent tenses and aspects. The results showed that the S2 learner preferred writing short, simple and compound sentences, but the S4 ESL learner favored long complex sentences. Interestingly, the short sentences of the S2 learner often gave clearer meanings than long ones. Moreover, neither the S2 nor the S4 learner had consistently used tenses and aspects. Thus, in an ESL classroom, it is necessary to highlight that good sentences are the most understandable, whether long or short, because the readers will only comprehend sentences with clear meanings.