Sentence combining technique to enhance the syntactic maturity, syntactic fluency and overall writing quality in EFL classes in Turkey

ABSTRACT SENTENCE COMBINING TECHNIQUE TO ENHANCE THE SYNTACTIC MATURITY, SYNTACTIC FLUENCY, AND OVERALL WRITING QUALITY IN EFL CLASSES IN TURKEY GULDEN TUM Ph. D. Dissertation, English Language Teaching Department Supervisor: Prof. Dr. F. Özden EKMEKÇİ December, 2002, 264 pages The basic premise of this study is that students usually lack the ability to express their ideas and thoughts clearly in writing compositions. In order to make them aware of writing skills, the following two questions should be taken into account: How does a sentence function?, How are simple sentences clustered into larger syntactic units to create complex sentences?, and How do these clusters or paragraphs logically communicate thoughts in order to influence the reader in some way? It is assumed that as a result of giving them the SC technique, students can present their ideas and improve their skills by paying attention to a variety of choices. Therefore, the purpose for this study is to investigate the effectiveness of the SC technique in raising awareness in students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) regarding their improvement in writing. Since the SC has a motivating influence on writing for higher level thinking mprocess for students, they were given an eleven-week training on sentence constructions (sentences, clauses, and phrases) focusing on sentence formation and combination of these syntactic units within paragraphs. The reason for studying on sentences, clauses, and phrases stems from the units of grammar in the grammatical hierarchy: sentences, clauses, phrases, words, and morphemes. Since the nature of the study was based on sentence-combining technique, only sentences, clauses, and phrases were taken into consideration for the analysis, not words, and morphemes - based on minimum unit of form. The evaluation of the effectiveness of the SC technique on writing was based on the data gathered from the participating students' writing samples İn two tests, namely Pre-test and Post-test. In this study, the results of the analysis of these tests, namely the Pre-tests and the Post-tests were observed from the point of the contribution of SC technique on the development of students' writing skills. The data analyzed demonstrated that a programmed instruction on the SC technique would enhance syntactic maturity and fluency in writing. In other words, it was observed that students developed a questioning, testing, and transforming emphasis based on critical thinking theory, and raised an awareness of the flowing style and unity in a composition. KEYWORDS Sentence Combining Technique, Syntactic Fluency, Syntactic Maturity, Overall Writing Quality, Coherence, Progress Sheet IV