It is known that using comma in a proper manner can be troublesome to students as well as adults in Slovenia, however this area is not very well researched. Within this masters thesis we dealt with teaching about the use of the comma in Primary School (PS) (which starts in the third grade with the rule about the use of the comma while enumerating in the sentence, and continues until the end of PS) and studied what PS teachers, who teach Slovenian language, and students think about the use of the comma.
The main source of the theoretical part was the definition of the comma and the rules about its use based on Slovenian Orthography (2001). Later we focused on the teaching of the rules about the use of the comma based on the teaching plan for Slovenian language class from the year 2008, with the focus on the class of PS in which a specific rule is taught and in what quantity, which ways of teaching about the use of the comma are recommended for PS and what, according to rare research, causes problems for PS students when it comes to the use of the comma.
The threefold research was conducted with the help of qualitative and quantitative research methods: a) we analysed three approved textbooks for each primary school grade, specifically the chapters in them which deal with the use of the comma; b) with the help of videos and the evaluation list we analysed four hours of Slovene language classes (one in fourth, fifth, eighth and ninth grades) in which the students got familiar with the use of the comma; c) we analysed opinions of PS teachers and students expressed in and gathered with the help of the conducted survey.
We found out that: in textbooks, the comma is discussed independently but also with other topics; in most textbooks, the comma is discussed in a transactional way; the most common exercise that appears in textbooks is inserting the comma in sentences; exercises in textbooks are presented on different taxonomic bases and that some exercises for practising the use of the comma appear in other chapters as well.
While observing the lessons we discovered that: comma is taught independently as well as with other topics; teachers use both teaching styles: traditional and transactional; students write abstracts of the taught content in their notebooks and practise using comma with exercises in the textbooks or on printed handouts and that, while practising the usage of the comma, they mostly have troubles with understanding the instructions of the exercises.
By interviewing students and teachers we realised that comma is mostly taught with other topics, especially while dealing with coordinate and subordinate clause and that most teachers think that learning about the comma is important or very important, because it changes the meaning of the sentence and because of the knowlege of orthography itself. Students think that mastering the use of the comma is important because it indicates when to take a breath while reading a sentence. According to teachers the troubles of students with the use of the comma begin after the initial test in which their knowledge on the proper use of the comma is checked. Students struggle most with proper placement of commas in stacked clauses and in front of conjunctions due to the little exercises they do. Interviewed students believe they do not struggle with the proper comma placement at all.
|
