Comma as punctuation device in Czech secondary school students’ English essays
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Auspicia |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | https://vsers.cz/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/auspicia2017-34.pdf |
| Keywords | comma; coordinating conjunctions; introductory phrases; subordinate clauses; relative clauses; |
| Description | 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. |
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