A syntactic analysis of english short stories for children

Abstract

Given the increasing technological advancement and widespread use of the online resources for education in general and teaching of english as a foreign language in particular, this study is aimed to contribute to this endeavor, with particular reference to young learners. It is an investigation of the syntactic characteristics of the english short stories targeted at children. The mixed-method was manipulated to capture the picture of the structures at the sentence and clause levels across the three age groups -0-3, 4-6 and 7-12. The data constitute 30 short stories from the website http://storyberries.com/. The results from the analysis reveal that all three groups share all types of sentences and clauses except for verbless clauses. However, unequal proportions of different structures across three groups indicate age-specific characteristics. The findings demonstrate an increasing complexity in terms of syntactic structures as the targeted age-groups are more grown up. The close analysis upholds the pedagogical practicality of these resources, which should be harnessed to develop English proficiencyI of the young learners, especially in under-resourced settings.