The syntactic development of grade 12 ESL learners

TL;DRAbstract

The primary aim of this study is to determine the level of syntactic development in English of South African matriculants.The ESL standard in South Africa has been criticised, but no objective data are available.This study provides relevant data, based on an index, and indicates shortcomings in learners' syntactic competence.Poor school-leaving standards in English are a cause of great concern in South Africa, and complaints about school leavers' standard of English have increased over the last few years.Yet, apart from generally being labelled as "poor", little is known about the actual level of development reached by ESL learners.Comments are often based on subjective impressions.This study focuses on syntactic development in writing and aims to determine the level of syntactic development of Grade 12 ESL learners in an objective way.Interlanguage, the concept of 'stages of development7 and fossilization are discussed.The need for an index that can measure language development object

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