A Study of the Use of Conjunctions In Senior High School Students’ Essays in Ghana

Abstract

The researcher observed that his students used certain conjunctions very often in their essays regardless of the topic under discussion. This motivated this study to explore the use of conjunctions for cohesion in Senior High School (SHS) students‘ essays in Ghana. The study also investigated the possible existence of this phenomenon in schools other than the schools in which such patterns of conjunctions usage in students‘ essays was first observed. Finally, the study also sought to find out some plausible reasons for the patterns observed. The study analysed 128 essays from four schools. The theory of Conjunctive Relations in Systemic Functional Linguistics as explicated by Halliday and Hasan (1976) was the theoretical basis employed in analysing the data. The SPSS software was used in analysing the data. It was found that the students used more additive and temporal conjunctions than the adversative and causal conjunctions. The students also showed a propensity for the use of the temporal conjunctions in relating information from one paragraph to another while the additive, adversative, and causal conjunctions were used more frequently in relating information between clauses. The students lacked an appreciable repertoire of conjunctions and for that matter, they used a few conjunctions more frequently than many others that are available in English. The students need more tuition in their use of conjunctions to turn them into better writers.