Libyan EFL Undergraduate Students' Inability in Distinguishing Dependent Clause Structures

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the difficulties encountered by 4th- year students at the department of English/ Faculty of Education in Ajelat in distinguishing and using the three main types of dependent clauses. Moreover, this study examines the extent to which the students' errors can be attributed to the teachers' lack of knowledge about the dependent clauses. To collect the required data a quantitative method was used, and a test was distributed to (100) 4th-year students at the Faculty of Education in Ajelat and (10) of their teachers. The participants were selected through a purposive sampling strategy. The obtained data were analyzed by using Microsoft Excel. The findings of the test showed that 4th-year students encountered difficulties in distinguishing and using the three types of dependent clauses, whereas most of their teachers were able to distinguish them. Moreover, from the results of the last question of the test which is about noun clause with its function in the sentences, most of the teachers and students faced the same problems in finding out the noun clauses and their functions; therefore, one of the reasons that make students not able to distinguish the types of dependent clauses are the teachers. In light of the results of the test, some conclusions were drawn and several suggestions and remedial work are presented for the students to overcome the problems they encountered in distinguishing and using the three types of dependent clauses.