AN INVESTIGATION OF ADJUNCTS IN THE ENGLISH OF STUDENTS IN SELECTED TERTIARY INSTITUTIONS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

The study investigated the acquisition of adjuncts by students in selected tertiary institutions in Southwestern, Nigeria with a view to examining the problems encountered by students in the usage of these structural components and its effects on their mastery of English. The data for the study were drawn from an essay writing assignment given to selected 675 first year students across nine tertiary institutions in Southwestern Nigeria. Stratified random sampling technique was adopted in selecting the participants. Seventy-five students were drawn from each institution using purposive random sampling procedure. The findings revealed that out of the 12,573 instances of adjuncts, process adjuncts accounted for 6,844 (54.43%), place adjuncts 4,066 (32.34%) and time adjuncts 1,663 (13.23%). In spite of the high frequency rate of process adjuncts, there were deviant usages such as inappropriate choice of process adjuncts, semantic and orthographic errors and some instances of the influence of Nigerian languages on their usage of place and time adjuncts. The study concluded that the students’ poor mastery of adjuncts has a lot of influence on their communicative repertoire. The study is therefore, a focus for the teachers of English and curriculum designers of the use of English course in Nigerian tertiary institutions.