The correlation between a sociolinguistic variable and the use of some punctuation marks

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the correlation between level of education and the use of some punctuation marks. In order to collect the data for this study, 90 EFL learners were selected from three classes (30 per class), which include Quatrième, Premiere and Level Two of Geography Department of the University of Yaounde I. They were assigned a series of sentences to be punctuated and the task to write an essay. The analysis of the data revealed many findings. It was, in fact, revealed that there was no significant difference in the performance of the three categories of students investigated. For instance, in the use of the comma, Quatrième students scored as high as 55%, Premiere and Level Two students scored only 53.5 % and 58.3 %, respectively, thereby showing no significant difference in their ability to use this punctuation mark. Furthermore, in the use of the semicolon, the results of Quatrième, Premiere, and Level Two were 11.7%, 10%, and 13.3%, respectively. These results and many others do not show any significant difference in the ability of the three categories of students in using punctuation marks. These results, coupled with the fact that many of the informants from the three classes showed lack of knowledge of some of the punctuation marks imply that the mastery of punctuations in the Francophone subsystem of education does not depend much on educational attainment.