The Taxonomy of the Functional and Structural Uses of Adverbs in Business Letter Writing in English

Abstract

This research analyses the types of the functional and structural uses of adverbs in letter writing in English revealing the linguistic and non-linguistic implications in both teaching and learning in the South Asian countries like Sri Lanka. It synthesizes, classifies and describes the types, functions, positions, quantity and quality and deviations. This is a case study of the texts produced by the students from Tamil and Sinhala language communities of Vavuniya Campus of the University of Jaffna in Sri Lanka. The analysis is both quantitative and qualitative. The findings distinguish the patterns and pragmatic uses typical of a non-native ESL learning context. It finds out that structurally prepositional phrase and single-word and functionally, time, place and manner dominate as adverbs in the use. The inefficient and ineffective use of noun phrase, adverb particle, adverbial clause, and sentence adverb, the learner incompetence of the distinction between adverb and the rest of the linguistic units, within their types and within their functions were identified and suggests a curriculum design or teaching methodology to incorporate this distinction.