Comma as Punctuation Device in Czech Secondary School Students’ English Essays
Comma as Punctuation Device in Czech Secondary School Students’ English Essays
Author(s): Věra Sládková, Lee MackenzieSubject(s): Language studies, Education, Foreign languages learning, School education
Published by: Vysoká škola evropských a regionálních studií, z. ú.
Keywords: comma; coordinating conjunctions; introductory phrases; subordinate clauses; relative clauses;
Summary/Abstract: This paper studies comma usage in Czech secondary school Maturita essays with a view to determining to what extent Czech punctuation rules based on syntactic aspects are transferred into English. For this reason corpus-informed research on the comma use in compound, complex and simple sentences was carried out; the vagueness of rules regarding English punctuation was investigated, and the disambiguating function of the comma in English highlighted. The authors tentatively conclude that secondary school teachers, in addition to teaching pedagogical rules of thumb regarding punctuation conventions, should focus more on contextualised, meaning-making potential of the comma.
Journal: Auspicia
- Issue Year: 2017
- Issue No: 3-4
- Page Range: 109-142
- Page Count: 34
- Language: English