From a purposive sample of thirty (30) previously disadvantaged learners sponsored by the
Telkom Foundation and currently enrolled at an elite private secondary school in South
Africa. this study unde1iook a baseline survey of the participants writing and comprehension
skills. The pen and pencil survey. including a questionnaire, identified their competency
levels and the gaps in the participants· language skills.
Over a three-year period. the study examined and extended the participants· writing styles in
their comprehension and composition scripts on three genres - expository, narrative and
descriptive. From the three genre texts, it was established that their sentence structures ranged
from the simple, compound to the complex variety. Using the Hypotaxis Index as a
quantitative measure to analyse the written texts, which is the cow1t of subordinated clauses.
appropriate linking devices and the successful co-ordination of ideas in sentences calculated
as a percentage of the total clauses making the composition. it was established that the higher
the Hypotaxis Index, the more accomplished and successful the writing (Horning, 1998:
Balfour, 2007; Allison, 2002). Discursive and expository compositions that displayed the
characteristics of appropriately projected thoughts, and an awareness of the perceived
audience, were more successful than those that relied on simple subject and verb concord
sentence structures.
A major challenge in the analysis of the compositions stemmed from incidents where
incomplete clauses were used, with no evident subject-verb pattern or concord. There were
also some relatively successful compositions that depended on simple and compound
sentence structures only.
It was derived from this three-year longitudinal study that an attempt to improve the writing
quality and strength of the secondary school learners would be through a deliberate focus on
dc,·eloping their cognitive academic literacy (CALP) skills through the design. development
and implementation of a task-based syllabus based on the specifications of Breen ( 1999).
Long and Crookes (2006) and the ecological factors of the International School of South
Africa. Explicit grammar instruction, particularly the structural patterning of the sentences
that learners used in their writing. v•as decided upon as a practical reinforcement for language
skills that the learners needed in order to develop academic literacy proficiency skills in
English. The Hypotaxis Index, if correctly calculated, should be a significant indicator of
what intervention could be effected in order to improve learner's skills. / Thesis (PhD.(English) North-West University, Mafikeng Campus, 2012
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:nwu/oai:dspace.nwu.ac.za:10394/15656 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Hove, Muchativugwa Liberty |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
Page generated in 0.0021 seconds