This study aims to examine the types and positions of finite adverbial clauses which are one of the frequently used adverbial forms in English communication. It also aims to analyze the types, positions and frequency of finite adverbial clauses that appear in the texts of high school English textbooks and suggest effective teaching-learning methods of English adverbial clauses for EFL students in Korea.
This paper presents the types and positions of adverbial clauses as its theoretical background. There are 12 types of adverbial clauses presented in this paper which are clauses of time, place, condition, concession, contrast, exception, cause, purpose, result, manner, proportion and preference. In addition, the positions of adverbial clause examined in this paper was divided into 3 types largely, which are initial, medial and end position and 7 types of position in detail.
The textbook analysis is based on current 10 different highschool English textbooks. The result showed that the total appearance of adverbial clauses amounted to 809 times from the 10 textbooks, and various types of subordinate conjunctions were used for each of 12 adverbial clauses. Temporal clause, conditional clause and causal clause represented a major part of total frequencies. Moreover, clause of purpose, contrast, result, manner, preference, proportion and other different types of adverbial clauses were presented even though their rate of frequency was much lower than that of major three types. Adverbial clauses also have been analyzed with positional distribution according to their types. Initial position of adverbial clauses accounted for 49.81% of the overall proportion and end position 49.56%. Medial position only constituted 0.63% of the total. proportion.
Communicative Language Teaching regards interest, relevance, function in that it is based on learner-oriented education. This paper suggests two teaching methods which are task-based instruction and theme-based instruction so that teachers instruct learners in adverbial clauses effectively. Those two teaching methods are subsumed under Communicative Language Teaching.