Analyse de la construction de phrases écrites par les pré-lycéens et les lycéens en FLE

Abstract

The study was based on the following research question: Whether and to what extent pre-sixth formers and sixth formers studying French as a foreign language encounter difficulties in constructing written complex sentences? After discussing the issues emerging from the literature on the pedagogical aspects of the teaching of writing and the acquisition of sentence structure, an analysis of students' written work is presented. The corpus substantiating the discussion throughout this dissertation is composed of essays written by participants studying French as a foreign language at three different levels: 25 Form 5 students; 25 Intermediate level students; and 25 Advanced level students. A descriptive analysis of this corpus was carried out. A self-administered questionnaire was carried out amongst ten teachers of French who were asked questions concerning their insight into this phenomenon: the possible reasons which are likely to cause difficulties amongst students of French when it comes to constructing complex sentences and their suggestions to minimise the common errors made by students. The findings of the study show that despite having gone through at least five years of learning French in school environment, the learners are still having difficulty in using French grammar in their writings. The most striking data that emerged concerned Intermediate level learners. The number of errors here indicates a real difficulty for the learners to express themselves in writing in French. Frequent errors include the use of conjunctions, different tenses and grammatical mood. The study concludes with a number of practical suggestions.