T1 112010062 Full text
INVESTIGATING AMBIGUITY IN EFL STUDENT WRITING
Rio Giovano Setiawan
Abstract
Various interpretations are the indication that ambiguity happen in communication
process. At time EFL students‟ writing indicating various interpretations, it is possible
for the reader to misinterpret the meaning of EFL student writing. This current study
focus on investigating ambiguity types in EFL student writing. In order to achieve the
goal, 66 English Teacher Education Program students of Satya Wacana Christian
University were involved in this study. The participants' writing assignments were
copied and analyzed using Norton's (1975) Ambiguity Classification. The data
obtained further being classified in to Scopes of Ambiguity proposed by Sennet (2011)
and described in qualitative. The findings revealed that EFL students tend to make
ambiguous statement especially in uncertainty as the most ambiguity types. Based on
the results of this study, teachers are recommended to emphasize students with more
intensive writing assignment together with peer feedback to measure their writing
understanding. Further implication of this study lies on finding the method to teach
ambiguity to EFL learner and reduce ambiguity especially in EFL context.
Key words: Ambiguity, Types of Ambiguity, Scopes of Ambiguity, Ambiguity Analysis
INTRODUCTION
As Indonesian students are categorized as EFL learners, the chance of students
facing ambiguous situation in language learning commonly happens. On the other
hand, students are highly required to be able to survive during teaching learning
condition, expected to fulfill different expectations from friends and lecturers
surrounds them, and further they need to get the knowledge in order to finish their
assignment. By this condition, the occurrence of ambiguous situations in language
learning can become the barrier understanding the knowledge.
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Ambiguous condition occurs when speakers utter ambiguity statement during their
conversation. Norton (1975) summarizes causes of ambiguity into: 1) Multiple
Meanings 2) Vagueness, Incompleteness, and Fragmentation 3) A Probability 4)
Unstructured 5) Lack of Information 6) Uncertainty 7) Inconsistencies and
Contradictions 8) Unclear. This condition may randomly and unconditionally occurs
and create confusion towards the learners since they cannot process the information
correctly.
This study focuses on investigating the ambiguity done in writing assignment
by EFL learners. Writing assignment become the subject of this research since EFL
learners should take Guided Writing class to develop their writing skill and according
to Church and Patil (1982), sentences are far more ambiguous due to the various
interpretation that might occur because of the natural language processing when EFL
learners working on their writing assignment. For example, consider the example
below with two prepositional phrases:
(1) Put the block in the box on the table.
This has two interpretations:
(2a) Put the block [in the box on the table]
(2b) Put [the block in the box] on the table.
This example shows the ambiguous sentence in using prepositional phrases, which can
be more various in interpreting the sentence when EFL learners using another function
in building their sentence in writing assignment. Creating more than one interpretation
is the barrier of EFL learners in making unambiguous sentence in writing assignment
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which can be investigated through the ambiguity classification as being proposed by
Sennet (2011).
This research main question is what ambiguous types occur in EFL students writing.
Ambiguous types will be analyzed through investigating and finding the most
occurrence of ambiguous type in student writing. The frequency will be used to see
which part of English cause the students confused and caused them creating
ambiguous sentence .Further this research can be used as a tool to create better
teaching material and teaching reflection for teacher in teaching English to reduce
ambiguous sentence made by the students.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Sennet’s (2011) Scopes of Ambiguity
This study will classify ambiguity in writing into 3 scopes of language analysis
according to Sennet (2011) analysis: Lexical Ambiguity, Syntactic Ambiguity, and
Pragmatic Ambiguity. Related to Norton‟s classification, Sennet‟s scope of
classification will be used to classify the ambiguity according to function of
ambiguous element in making sentence. This scope is needed to filter the ambiguity
into the bigger scope of analysis and further can be used to create a strategy to deal
with the element of ambiguity.
Ambiguity Analysis
The core of language function is supposedly the representation of information,
commonly for communication purpose. Wasow (2005) describe that the process of
communication is involving at least two participants. The process of successful
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communication is categorized when the signal produced by the participants of
communications cycle can be interpreted correctly through denoting the assigned
meaning of the signal by the other participants in that communication cycle. The job
of the reader as the interpreters may be easy when the signal given by the participant
assigns a unique denotation to each signal. However, when the signal assigns multiple
denotations, the reader must try to disambiguate to infer the producer‟s intentions.
This process needs extra effort for interpreters to guess denote, moreover when the
interpreters picks the wrong denote for the signal surely the chances of
miscommunication occur widely between this process of communication especially in
written form of language.
Chances of miscommunication happens‟ in many situations during language
learning process, whether it is in classroom situations (Ely, 1995) or individually when
people engage in self-instructed language study (White; 1999). The reason of this
occurrence is simply because both linguistic and cultural knowledge is very limited.
When the students are facing a new chapter of lexical and grammar knowledge, simply
they will not understand since they need to adjust with their present knowledge of
lexical and grammar knowledge, which cause further ambiguous situations such as
lack of information, multiple meanings, vagueness, and so on to understand the
communication process (Erten and Topkaya ; 2009).
Norton’s (1975) Types of Ambiguity
As Norton (1975) has classifies ambiguity into 8 types, here is the description
of each type. Multiple Meanings are words which have more than several meanings
depending upon how they are used in a sentence. The meaning of those words can be
guessed by using contextual clues, which refer to adjusting the word with the context
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of the sentence. For example, light can be used as adjective in sentence “She wore
light colors because it was going to be a hot day” which defined as pale colors; as
noun “The light of the sun” which defined as the natural agent that stimulates sight
and makes things visible; as verb “I will light you down to the gate” which defined as
provide a light for someone so they can see where they are going.
Vagueness, according to Sorensen (2012), is standardly defines as the
possession of borderlines. Borderline case is cases where it is unclear whether or not
the predicate applies. For example, a word tall is not clear to what extent a thing is
classified as tall, not clearly tall, or not clearly not tall. Vague predicates apparently
lack well-defined extensions. Keefe (2000) specifically describe that it is the
possibility of borderline cases that counts for vagueness and blurry boundary. This
become very vivid since there is a gradable adjectives to measure the sentence level.
Incompleteness and Fragmentation are types of ambiguity which haven‟t fulfill the
requirement of a sentence to stand. A sentence need three requirements to stand; a
subject, a verb, a complete thought and can stand on its own or independently.
Fragmentation is divided into 3 types; no subject; no verb; a dependent clause without
an independent clause. Merchant (2004) implicitly shows that this condition often
occurs in form of short answers is proposed to have fully sentential syntactical
structures, subject to ellipsis. Incompleteness, occurs when the fragmentation
happened in a sentence, then the sentence become incomplete.
A Probability is a state of condition when a choice is given between two
otherwise equivalent options. Dubois (2007) briefly stated that a probability is
generally used for representing two kinds of phenomena, randomness and belief.
Randomness is related with the occurrence of some variability during several
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observations. Belief is briefly described as opinion within an event. Below is the
example of a probability:
(1) Turn right here
This phrase can represent 2 kinds of phenomenon; the speaker state that phrase request
to turn on that spot, or the speaker state that phrase request to turn the direction to the
right.
Unstructured is type of ambiguity when a writer is unable to arrange the order
of grammatical pattern accordingly.
Lack of Information is type of ambiguity which cannot fulfill the information
needed to make the sentence stand. Dubois (2007) infers that lack of information or
knows as incomplete information, occurs when the writers writing is subjective which
cause only several people understand their utterances. Some other people need to get
further information to predict the utterance of the speaker. For example if the writer
only wrote:
(1) The birth date of Indonesian President
This example cause the reader only has rough idea about the birth date of Indonesian
President, only few reader know precisely, some have no idea about the birth date of
Indonesian President.
Uncertainty is type of ambiguity in which events / states of being uncertain or
unpredictable is happened. Dubois, Lang and Prade (2004) explained that uncertainty
is happened due to the incompleteness of the evidence and the partially inconsistent
knowledge within a speaker‟s writing. For example if the writer only wrote:
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(1) John saw the man on the mountain with a telescope
This example cause the reader hardly decides who has the telescope. Is that John, the
man on the mountain, or the mountain who has the telescope was unclear.
Inconsistencies and Contradictions is type of ambiguity which specifically uses
negation within the writing. Khawalda and Al-Saidat (2012) briefly explain that
negation has a possibility to create ambiguous sentence. Related with grammar pattern
in the utterances, the use of negation cannot predict which part of the sentence is being
negated by the negation itself. For instance, in a sentence like:
(1) Everyone hasn‟t finished the assignment yet
The sentence is ambiguous according to scope of negation. If the scope of „not‟ is not
the subject „everyone‟ the sentence has the reading:
(a) „Everyone is in the position of not having finished the assignment yet‟
If the scope of „not‟ is „everyone‟, the sentence will have the reading:
(b) „Not everyone is yet in the position of having finished the assignment‟.
Unclear is type of ambiguity which caused by grammatical error specifically in
the use of pronoun reference. A sentence is ambiguous when the pronoun used in a
sentence is not referring to a particular noun in a sentence. In “Both Isabel and
Barbara loved her children”, her is categorized as pronoun but it cannot tell whose
children they are.
The elements of ambiguity as listed above will be used to classify the
ambiguous sentence done by the EFL learner. Then, Sennet‟s frame work of
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ambiguous statement will be used to classify the occurrence of ambiguous statement
into three big scope of ambiguous type of language learning.
Sennet (2011) analyzes the ambiguity of statement into 3 big scopes of
ambiguous statement according to the language function: Lexical Ambiguity,
Syntactic Ambiguity, and Pragmatic Ambiguity. These scopes will represent the
categories of ambiguity listed above and further the data taken will be presented in
form of most occurrences categories of ambiguity based on these scopes.
Lexical Ambiguity is dealing with the ambiguous homophones which different
in meaning and syntactic categories. (Doing Semantic; 1998) Lexical Ambiguity
might occur in form of a single word response in a conversation, which the meaning of
that word having more than one possible meaning. Lexical Ambiguity will cover
Multiple Meanings in word-choice and idioms, and Vagueness, Fragmentation and
Incompleteness.
Syntactic Ambiguity, according to Sennet (2011), is dealing with the
ambiguous words specifically when there are many language functions that correspond
to the same sentence. This ambiguity is dealing with the phrasal usage, quantifier and
operator scope, and pronouns preference. Syntactic Ambiguity covers the ambiguous
meaning of phrase like in a Probability, Unstructured, Uncertainty, and Unclear.
Pragmatic Ambiguity, according Doing Semantics (1998), is dealing with the
ambiguous sentence specifically from the use of third person pronouns and special
generic noun such as one and another. If the context contains two nouns that could
both be co referential with the pronoun, the reader / hearer is often puzzled as to which
one is meant. Pragmatic Ambiguity covers Lack of Information, Inconsistencies and
Contradictions.
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THE STUDY
Context of Study
This research has investigated the ambiguous sentence and language usage in
writing assignment. This research is conducted in English Department since this
faculty requires students to use English in writing assignment. Through the
investigation, the finding of the study have filtered the ambiguity occurred in EFL
students writing assignment and have classified into several types of ambiguity.
Participant
The participant of this study is the 1st year students of English Department
from Satya Wacana Christian University. They are chosen to be the participant
because as non-native speaker of English, they have learnt and studied in English
Department which requires all students to be able to communicate using English and
they are still under the progress of adjusting themselves with the rule of the faculty,
which use 90% of English in class communication, especially in writing assignment, it
is predicted that the occurrence of the ambiguous sentence is likely high.
Method of research
The purpose of this research is to investigate the ambiguity sentences in
students writing assignment among ED students. Therefore, this research is classified
into a Descriptive Qualitative Research, because this study provides an area to
investigate a phenomenon and behaviour of EFL students which will focus on see the
frequency of the students responding phenomenon (Bogdan, 1982). This research
explores the phenomenon of EFL students in using English in working on their writing
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assignment by using Random Sampling Method because, according to Bogdan (1982),
random sample can represent the whole population of the participant.
Instrument and Data Collection
The writing assignments of ED Students from Guided Writing Class were
collected and copied. The total of students‟ writing assignment that were involved in
this research is 66 students‟ writings, taken from 5 classes of Guided Writing. By
using Norton‟s Ambiguity Classification (1975), this research found 155 data to
support this research from students writing assignment and the data was divided into 8
ambiguity types and classified into 3 general scopes of ambiguity.
Data Analysis
Each writing assignment of ED Students in Guided Writing Class was
analyzed and the ambiguity which occurs in the writing assignment was investigated.
The ambiguity has been classified into 8 ambiguity types analysis by using Norton‟s
analysis of causes on ambiguity. After that, the researcher categorized the 8types into
3 scopes of ambiguity analysis by using Sennet‟s (2011) classification on ambiguity
scopes. The second classification is used to identify what is the biggest problem of
EFL Learner in ED when they deal with ambiguous sentence in writing assignment.
Ambiguity Category from Norton (1975) will be used to classify the ambiguity
performed by the students during their writing. After used this chart, then the result is
filtered by using Scopes of Ambiguity from Sennet (2011) to see the most occurrences
from the ambiguous situations faced by EFL learners in English Department.
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FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
This study focuses on finding the ambiguity types done by the students by
investigating their writing assignment and further noting sentences that are classified
as ambiguous sentence. This research collected 66 writing assignments taken from
Guided Writing class in ED. The data shows that all 8 ambiguity types appear in the
data. Table 1 is the finding of the ambiguous statement based on Norton‟s (1975)
Table 1. Table of Ambiguity Analysis
Types of
Ambiguity
Multiple
Meaning
Scopes of
Occurrence
Ambiguity
10
Vagueness,
Inconsistencies
and
Occurence
Lexical
10
Ambiguity
21
Contradictions
Probability
1
Unstructured
21
Uncertainty
58
Unclear
4
Lack of
Information
Syntactic
Ambiguity
42
Pragmatics
Inconsistencies
and
83
Ambiguity
9
Contradictions
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51
Norton‟s Ambiguity Classification (1975) is divided into 8, which are Multiple
Meaning, Vagueness, Incompleteness, and Fragmentation, Probability, Unstructured,
Uncertainty, Unclear, Lack of Information, and Inconsistencies and Contradiction.
Multiple Meanings, Probability, and Vagueness, Incompleteness and Fragmentation
are categorized in Lexical Ambiguity. Unstructured, Uncertainty, and Unclear are
categorized in Syntactic Ambiguity. Lack of Information and Inconsistencies and
Contradictions are categorized in Pragmatics Ambiguity.
Based on these findings, it is interesting that most of the students are not aware with
Syntactic Ambiguity in their writing assignment. According to the data, 83 out of 155
are categorized under Syntactic Ambiguity. Syntactic Ambiguity is dealing with the
ambiguous words specifically when there are many language functions that correspond
to the same sentence, especially in phrasal usage, quantifiers, and pronoun reference.
Most of the students use their local dialect and oral communication style in writing
their assignment, therefore their writing looks informal and not well structured. Some
others also didn‟t follow the requirement to make a sentence stand, for example a
sentence with no verb or no subject, which cause the reader find it ambiguous
especially with the structure conveyed by the students through their writing.
In contrast with that, 51 out of 155 data are categorized under Pragmatic
Ambiguity. Pragmatic Ambiguity deals more with the incompleteness of the
information, unclear context of discussion, and the use of negation that cause the
sentence contradict between the main sentence and the supporting details of that
sentence which causes ambiguity in determining the meaning of the statement.
Students under this ambiguity usually made ambiguous statement when they use
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negation in their sentence without knowing the meaning of using negation and how to
build a sentence with proper comparison between the main sentences with the
supporting details.
Lastly, 21 out of 155 data are categorized under Lexical Ambiguity. Lexical Ambiguity
deals more with the ambiguous homophones which cause multiple interpretations
when EFL learner is not aware with explaining the meaning of the word and the
context of the statement. Students under this ambiguity are not recognizing that some
words that they used have more than one literal meaning when it was used in a
sentence. Some of the students also unable to differentiate adverb and noun which
further cause the meaning of the sentence changed.
Lexical Ambiguity
Multiple
Meaning,
Probability,
and
Vagueness,
Incompleteness
and
Fragmentation are categorized in Lexical Ambiguity. Types of ambiguity in Multiple
Meaning occur in these examples,
“I get a spirit when I look at his picture”
This sentence can cause the reader interpret the phrase “get a spirit” as gaining
motivation by seeing the picture or gaining unseen creature by seeing the picture.
When the reader gets more than 1 kind of interpretation in reading a sentence, this can
cause the reader to interpret the sentence wrongly. To avoid ambiguity, this sentence
needs to be corrected by using either „getting more motivation or catching an unseen
creature during the time the writer look at his own picture‟.
“In addition, Po could win against a leopard, Tai Lung, only in one touched”
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This example also ambiguous because the writer can cause the reader interpret the
phrase “in one touched” as hit the enemy with one touch or probably can win the battle
easily without any significant effort to beat his enemy. In order to reduce the chance of
ambiguity, the writer should explore more their ideas and explain it descriptively by
giving another supporting details.
Types of ambiguity in Probability occurs in this example,
“I don’t know why, but maybe it is because Charlotte is small than Wilburn”
This example shows probability ambiguity because the word small cannot explain
which small condition that the writer wants to emphasize. Therefore, the reader might
interpret that small is related with the body size between Charlotte and Wilburn, or
small is related with the connection built between them. In order to reduce chance of
ambiguity, the writer should add more detail information about the word small, for
example, the writer might say probably it is because Charlotte‟s body is smaller than
Wilburn; or Charlotte‟s connection is smaller than Wilburn.
Example of Vagueness, Incompleteness, and Fragmentation occur in these examples,
From that point, Po starts the most hardest training ever with his teacher, Master
Shifu. (Vagueness)
This example show vagueness ambiguity that occurs in “the most hardest (supposed to
be the hardest)” phrase. The reader might think that the most hardest training is not
specific. Not only that the reader might interpret that the process is extremely difficult,
but also that the phrase cannot specify to what extent the „most hardest‟ training is.
Since there is no specific detail about what is „the most hardest training‟, this phrase is
rather ambiguous.
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But he keep train until he get though. (Fragmentation and Incompleteness)
This example shows sentence fragmentation that causes incompleteness of a sentence
to stand. The incompleteness occurs when the component of a sentence to stand is not
being added in that sentence, for example when a sentence has no subject, no verb, or
a dependent clause which need independent clause to stand. This sentence is
ambiguous because this sentence is dependent clause which needs more information to
make the sentence stand. By recognizing this requirement, this sentence will reduce
random interpretation for some particular information that might be not the real
message of the writer. For example, maybe the writer may add more information about
what kind of training that the subject took and why the subject need to be tough
according to writer.
Lexical Ambiguity may cause confusion, especially with some certain words which
cannot be clearly explained. Readers may be students that learn English writing style
which need to learn from their peer also. If students are not guided well especially in
dealing with Lexical Ambiguity, students will get the impact of not knowing the
meaning of certain words and the use of words in that sentence. Even though the
finding shows only 21 data of participant conducting Lexical Ambiguity, Lexical
Ambiguity cause confusion when the readers gets more than 1 kind of interpretation in
reading a sentence and they might interpret the sentence wrongly. Moreover, certain
words cannot be explained well will also increase the chance of misinterpretation to
readers in dealing with Lexical Ambiguity. Especially when Lexical Ambiguity occurs
in several types, it will causes the readers interpret the meaning of the words wrongly.
Syntactical Ambiguity
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Uncertainty, Unstructured and Unclear are categorized in Syntactic Ambiguity.
Example of Uncertainty occur in these examples,
“Moreover, my father is not as boring as other fathers”
This example show uncertain ambiguity occurs in the basic form of the sentence. The
reader possibly might interpret that writer‟s father is boring, but compared to another
father, the writer‟s father is not that boring; or the reader might interpret that writer‟s
father is more than one, since the writer mention other fathers as the parameter of „the
boring‟. By recognizing this ambiguity, the writer shall reduce the chance of
ambiguity by giving more information that give specific details about the meaning of
the sentence. For example, the writer might not use comparison especially the use of
comparison, or probably just simply say that writer‟s father is more than one and one
of them is not boring.
“Po was a brave panda, he told the truth to his father and faced Tai Lung”
This example also shows uncertain ambiguity in the basic form of the sentence. The
reader might interpret that to be a brave panda, the panda have to tell the truth to his
father and face his natural enemy, or wonder the reason for a panda to be brave is
through telling the truth which is unclear and face his natural enemy which is
unnecessary. In order to reduce the ambiguity, the writer need to explore their idea and
describe it in sequence according to their idea. For example, the writer might explore
their idea of a brave panda and find related reason to support that idea such as being
bold during their difficult time, tough in his daily exercise, and so on.
Types of ambiguity in Unstructured occur in these examples,
“I think it is like a miracle to have a “crazy” and wisdom friend”
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This example shows unstructured ambiguity because the writer cannot arrange
grammar pattern accordingly. This sentence is ambiguous because the writer uses
adverb and noun to explain the writer‟s friend. The ambiguous part of this sentence
lies on the dual interpretation of the adverb and noun used by the writer which may
confuse the reader to classify which word is classified as adverb and which one as
noun. For example, the writer may reduce the chance of ambiguity by saying „it is a
miracles to have a crazy and wise friend‟, or the writer might say it is very difficult to
have an extraordinary friend with wisdom inside him.
“She adviced her children to positive thinking if we have problems and didn’t gave
up”
This example also shows unstructured ambiguity because the writer cannot arrange
grammar pattern accordingly. This sentence is causing multiple interpretation
especially in the use of verb and adverb and confusing the reader to classify the word
used from the sentence. In order to reduce the ambiguity, the writer might say that she
gave her children an advice to think positively during their hard time and not to give
up easily.
Types of ambiguity in Unclear occurs in this example,
“She made it from her web, and it is so amazing”
This example shows unclear ambiguity because the use of pronoun reference is not
clear. The word “it” in phrase “it is so amazing” was not clear whether it refers to the
web she made or the activity of making the web itself. In order to reduce the
ambiguity, it is better to explain the information in more detail. For example, they can
write that the spider made the word from her web and the word she made was so
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amazing, or that the spider made the word from her web and the process of making the
web was so amazing. Another consideration is that not to put two pronoun references
„it‟ in a sentence like what occurs in the example.
Syntactic Ambiguity may cause confusion since Syntactic Ambiguity occurs in the
basic form of the sentence, cannot arrange grammar pattern accordingly which cause
dual interpretation of the adverb and noun, and unclear use of pronoun reference.
What becomes the problem is, readers are might not that aware in understanding the
focus of ambiguous meaning of a sentence seen from the syntactic structure. Most of
the finding shows that students writing assignment is ambiguous because they cannot
relate their idea in structure. This issue is being supported by the finding that shown
most of the students trapped in Uncertainty ambiguity which can be concluded that
students are not well structured in writing down their idea. If this problem continues,
their mistake will affect their peer understanding and teacher understanding in
assessing their writing related to the writer‟s idea.
Pragmatic Ambiguity
Lack of Information and Inconsistencies and Contradictions are categorized in
Pragmatic Ambiguity. Types of ambiguity in Lack of Information occurs in these
examples,
“The last things that make Po is the smartest panda ever is because he can find unique
way to do something”
This example shows that lack of information might cause ambiguous sentence because
only the writer can understand the sentence. Further, the writer write that Po is the
smartest panda and the writer tries to make the reader suppose that there is any other
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smart panda. This statement is the example of Pragmatics Ambiguity in
Presuppositional Ambiguity. In order to reduce the chance of ambiguity, the writer
might write that Po is smart because he can find unique way in doing certain activity
such as eating or sleeping.
“Another reason why I said that he is a humble person is because both of us have the
same hobby, that is playing card games”
This sentence is lack of information which confuse the reader and only the writer that
can understand the meaning of this sentence. The writer write that his friend is humble
because both of them have the same hobby, which might confuse the reader whether a
parameter of a person to be humble is by having the same hobby with the reader, or
might be playing card, or any other interpretations. In order to reduce the chance of
ambiguity, the writer might write that my friend is humble because even though he is
rich but he wants to play card games with me and other common friends.
Types of ambiguity in Inconsistencies and Contradictions occurs in this example,
“I like to feed my child, but Po like kungfu”
This example shows that the information given is inconsistent and cause the reader
wonder the relation in comparing feeding the writer‟s child to kungfu. This sentence
needs more detail explanation in order to make the reader understood the meaning of
the writer writes the sentence. For example, the writer might write that the daily
routine of a panda is feeding their child but Po as a panda in Kungfu Panda movie has
different daily routine which is doing kungfu everyday.
Pragmatics Ambiguity may cause problem for the readers because Pragmatics
Ambiguity occurs when only the writer can understand the sentence and the
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information given is inconsistent and cause the reader interpret wrongly. Readers may
found it difficult in understanding the writing because what the writers wrote is what
they thought and might don‟t understand with their idea development in the sentence.
Moreover, Pragmatics Ambiguity deals more with the perception of the students, so it
will be very difficult for other students to follow or to give peer feedback in order to
develop the students. Further, teachers also will find difficulties in assessing students
writing since teacher might not expect that students giving ambiguous expression and
sentence within their works, but we cannot deny that they are new students in this
faculty which need more guidance in understanding the material and focus of the
study. Therefore, it is very crucial for teachers to be aware with this ambiguity.
This is interesting that EFL learner has a chance to do dual ambiguity because some of
the data taken may be categorized into more than one kind of ambiguity classification.
For example,
“He is not afraid to leave his house, he knows that he can’t defeat Tai Lung but
because of his father advice he go to the place where he can find Tai Lung, and
because he has a strong will he can defeat Tai Lung alone”
This example can be analyzed through Uncertainty ambiguity classification and Lack
of Information ambiguity classification. Under Uncertainty ambiguity classification,
this sentence is ambiguous because the sentence structure is not clear, which part is the
main part of the sentence, which part is the supporting detail of the sentence. This
sentence also ambiguous under Lack of Information ambiguity analysis because only
the writer who might understand the meaning of the sentence and the purpose of the
sentence. This is interesting since this research expect the data taken from the
participant will only be classified into one category of ambiguity classification. This
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finding might indicate that EFL learners are need more drill and monitory from their
lecturer in order to avoid the occurrence of ambiguous sentence in their writing
assignment.
CONCLUSION
This research main question is what are the ambiguity types done by EFL
students in writing and the result is what occurs the most is Syntactic Ambiguity.
Pragmatic Ambiguity and Lexical Ambiguity also occur but not as often as Syntactic
Ambiguity. These researches have discussed the problem of EFL learner in making a
sentence in English especially dealing with scopes of ambiguity. Sentence ambiguity
happen to EFL students is because they need time to adjust and learn about basic
structure of syntactic structure and further apply it in their writing assignment.
According to the finding, some students are unable to differentiate meanings of words
used in a sentence that can cause confusion to the readers.
In Syntactic Ambiguity, Uncertainty type is the type that likely most happen.
The interesting part is students are not well structured in developing their idea, even
though they can make their writing assignment. In Pragmatic Ambiguity, Lack of
Information type mostly occurs in students writing. The interesting part is only
students are able to understand the meaning of their writing. In Lexical Ambiguity,
Multiple Meaning and Vagueness, Fragmentation and Incompleteness types occurs in
the same frequency. The interesting parts are students cannot show specific details of
information in their writing assignment and cause the readers to have more than one
kind of interpretation according to their writing.
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Suggestion to overcome ambiguity problem might in be in form of developing
the teachers in order to emphasize syntax understanding in students writing and the
use of multiple meaning in a sentence to make students understand with the meaning
of words and further able to avoid ambiguity. Further students also might be assigned
to have peer feedback to measure their friends understand with their writing.
Further research might find the effective way to teach ambiguity among
students and check to what extent the new way is effective to reduce the ambiguity
from students. Since ambiguous sentence is commonly happen and most of the
students also deal with this problem, it will be useful if there is any certain method that
can be used to teach them and make them understand about using English without
leaving any ambiguous meaning left in their assignment.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I believe the completion of this thesis writing is not because of my effort, but it comes
from His grace alone. I would like to thank to Jesus for His grace and guidance that
give me strength and endurance in finishing my thesis. I also thank to Mom, Dad,
Roni, Kevin and my entire family that always support me through their motivational
words and prays. Besides, I also got sustainable guidance from my supervisor, Mr.
Christian Rudianto, S. Pd. M. App. Ling, and it is an honour to be guided by him
because of his patience, advice and enjoyable atmosphere during the consultations. In
addition, I‟d like to thank Mrs. Athriyana Santye Pattiwael, M. Hum. that was willing
to examine my paper and give significant feedback. Last but not least, the biggest
thanks to all people surrounds me: Kak David, Kak Wulan, Yediya, Yehuda, Jack,
Chrisna, Rea, and all Youth Pondok Daud Family, for the motivations, prays, and
helps that make me able to finish my study soon and step on the next milestone of my
life! Thank you fellas!
23
REFERENCES
Bogdan, R. C., & Biklen, S. K. (1982). Qualitative research for education. Boston: Allyn and
Bacon
Church, K., & Patil, R. (1982). Coping with Syntactic Ambiguity or How to Put the Block in
the Box on the Table. American Journal of Computational Linguistics , 139-149.
Dubois, D., Lang, J., & Prade, H. (2004). Possibilistic Logic
Dubois, D., (2007). Uncertainty Theories: A Unified View
Ely, C.M. (1995). Tolerance of ambiguity and teaching of ESL. In Reid, J. M. (ed.). Learning
styles in the ESL / EFL classroom. Boston: Heinle & Heinle.
Erten, I. H., & Topkaya, E. Z. (2009). Understanding tolerance of ambiguity of EFL learners
in Reading Classes at tertiary level. Novitas-Royal, 3(1), 29-44
Gillon, B. S. (1990). Ambiguity, Generality, and Indeterminacy : Test and Definitions.
Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publisher.
Keefe, R. (2000). Theories of Vagueness. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Khawalda, M. I. & Al-Saidat, E. M., (2012). Structural Ambiguity Interpretation: A Case
Study of Arab Learners of English. Global Journal of Human Social Science, 12(6),
1-7
Merchant, J., (2004). Fragment and Ellipsis. Kluwer Academic Publisher, 27, 661-738
Marzban, A., Barati, H., & Moinzadeh, A. (2012, January). An Investigation into Ambiguity
Tolerance in Iranian Senior EFL. English Language teaching , pp. 76-85.
Norton, R. W. (1975). Measurement of ambiguity tolerance. Journal of Personality
Assessment, 39, 607-619.
Sennet, A, "Ambiguity", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition),
Edward
N.
Zalta (ed.),
http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/entries/ambiguity/
24
URL
=
Sorensen, Roy, "Vagueness", The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
http://plato.standford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/vagueness/
Wasow, T., Perfors, A., & Beaver, D. (2005). The Puzzle of Ambiguity. Morphology and the
web of grammar: Essays in memory of Steven G. Lapointe, 265-282.
White, C. (1999). Expectations and emergent beliefs of self-instructed language learners.
System, 27, 443-457.
25
APPENDIX
Appendix 1. Table of Ambiguity Analysis
Table of Ambiguity Analysis
Scopes of
Ambiguity
Ambiguity Classification
Multiple Meanings
Lexical Ambiguity
Vagueness
Probability
Unstructured
Syntactic Ambiguity
Uncertainty
Unclear
Pragmatic
Ambiguity
Lack of Information
Inconsistencies and Contradictions
26
Ambiguous Statement
Rio Giovano Setiawan
Abstract
Various interpretations are the indication that ambiguity happen in communication
process. At time EFL students‟ writing indicating various interpretations, it is possible
for the reader to misinterpret the meaning of EFL student writing. This current study
focus on investigating ambiguity types in EFL student writing. In order to achieve the
goal, 66 English Teacher Education Program students of Satya Wacana Christian
University were involved in this study. The participants' writing assignments were
copied and analyzed using Norton's (1975) Ambiguity Classification. The data
obtained further being classified in to Scopes of Ambiguity proposed by Sennet (2011)
and described in qualitative. The findings revealed that EFL students tend to make
ambiguous statement especially in uncertainty as the most ambiguity types. Based on
the results of this study, teachers are recommended to emphasize students with more
intensive writing assignment together with peer feedback to measure their writing
understanding. Further implication of this study lies on finding the method to teach
ambiguity to EFL learner and reduce ambiguity especially in EFL context.
Key words: Ambiguity, Types of Ambiguity, Scopes of Ambiguity, Ambiguity Analysis
INTRODUCTION
As Indonesian students are categorized as EFL learners, the chance of students
facing ambiguous situation in language learning commonly happens. On the other
hand, students are highly required to be able to survive during teaching learning
condition, expected to fulfill different expectations from friends and lecturers
surrounds them, and further they need to get the knowledge in order to finish their
assignment. By this condition, the occurrence of ambiguous situations in language
learning can become the barrier understanding the knowledge.
1
Ambiguous condition occurs when speakers utter ambiguity statement during their
conversation. Norton (1975) summarizes causes of ambiguity into: 1) Multiple
Meanings 2) Vagueness, Incompleteness, and Fragmentation 3) A Probability 4)
Unstructured 5) Lack of Information 6) Uncertainty 7) Inconsistencies and
Contradictions 8) Unclear. This condition may randomly and unconditionally occurs
and create confusion towards the learners since they cannot process the information
correctly.
This study focuses on investigating the ambiguity done in writing assignment
by EFL learners. Writing assignment become the subject of this research since EFL
learners should take Guided Writing class to develop their writing skill and according
to Church and Patil (1982), sentences are far more ambiguous due to the various
interpretation that might occur because of the natural language processing when EFL
learners working on their writing assignment. For example, consider the example
below with two prepositional phrases:
(1) Put the block in the box on the table.
This has two interpretations:
(2a) Put the block [in the box on the table]
(2b) Put [the block in the box] on the table.
This example shows the ambiguous sentence in using prepositional phrases, which can
be more various in interpreting the sentence when EFL learners using another function
in building their sentence in writing assignment. Creating more than one interpretation
is the barrier of EFL learners in making unambiguous sentence in writing assignment
2
which can be investigated through the ambiguity classification as being proposed by
Sennet (2011).
This research main question is what ambiguous types occur in EFL students writing.
Ambiguous types will be analyzed through investigating and finding the most
occurrence of ambiguous type in student writing. The frequency will be used to see
which part of English cause the students confused and caused them creating
ambiguous sentence .Further this research can be used as a tool to create better
teaching material and teaching reflection for teacher in teaching English to reduce
ambiguous sentence made by the students.
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Sennet’s (2011) Scopes of Ambiguity
This study will classify ambiguity in writing into 3 scopes of language analysis
according to Sennet (2011) analysis: Lexical Ambiguity, Syntactic Ambiguity, and
Pragmatic Ambiguity. Related to Norton‟s classification, Sennet‟s scope of
classification will be used to classify the ambiguity according to function of
ambiguous element in making sentence. This scope is needed to filter the ambiguity
into the bigger scope of analysis and further can be used to create a strategy to deal
with the element of ambiguity.
Ambiguity Analysis
The core of language function is supposedly the representation of information,
commonly for communication purpose. Wasow (2005) describe that the process of
communication is involving at least two participants. The process of successful
3
communication is categorized when the signal produced by the participants of
communications cycle can be interpreted correctly through denoting the assigned
meaning of the signal by the other participants in that communication cycle. The job
of the reader as the interpreters may be easy when the signal given by the participant
assigns a unique denotation to each signal. However, when the signal assigns multiple
denotations, the reader must try to disambiguate to infer the producer‟s intentions.
This process needs extra effort for interpreters to guess denote, moreover when the
interpreters picks the wrong denote for the signal surely the chances of
miscommunication occur widely between this process of communication especially in
written form of language.
Chances of miscommunication happens‟ in many situations during language
learning process, whether it is in classroom situations (Ely, 1995) or individually when
people engage in self-instructed language study (White; 1999). The reason of this
occurrence is simply because both linguistic and cultural knowledge is very limited.
When the students are facing a new chapter of lexical and grammar knowledge, simply
they will not understand since they need to adjust with their present knowledge of
lexical and grammar knowledge, which cause further ambiguous situations such as
lack of information, multiple meanings, vagueness, and so on to understand the
communication process (Erten and Topkaya ; 2009).
Norton’s (1975) Types of Ambiguity
As Norton (1975) has classifies ambiguity into 8 types, here is the description
of each type. Multiple Meanings are words which have more than several meanings
depending upon how they are used in a sentence. The meaning of those words can be
guessed by using contextual clues, which refer to adjusting the word with the context
4
of the sentence. For example, light can be used as adjective in sentence “She wore
light colors because it was going to be a hot day” which defined as pale colors; as
noun “The light of the sun” which defined as the natural agent that stimulates sight
and makes things visible; as verb “I will light you down to the gate” which defined as
provide a light for someone so they can see where they are going.
Vagueness, according to Sorensen (2012), is standardly defines as the
possession of borderlines. Borderline case is cases where it is unclear whether or not
the predicate applies. For example, a word tall is not clear to what extent a thing is
classified as tall, not clearly tall, or not clearly not tall. Vague predicates apparently
lack well-defined extensions. Keefe (2000) specifically describe that it is the
possibility of borderline cases that counts for vagueness and blurry boundary. This
become very vivid since there is a gradable adjectives to measure the sentence level.
Incompleteness and Fragmentation are types of ambiguity which haven‟t fulfill the
requirement of a sentence to stand. A sentence need three requirements to stand; a
subject, a verb, a complete thought and can stand on its own or independently.
Fragmentation is divided into 3 types; no subject; no verb; a dependent clause without
an independent clause. Merchant (2004) implicitly shows that this condition often
occurs in form of short answers is proposed to have fully sentential syntactical
structures, subject to ellipsis. Incompleteness, occurs when the fragmentation
happened in a sentence, then the sentence become incomplete.
A Probability is a state of condition when a choice is given between two
otherwise equivalent options. Dubois (2007) briefly stated that a probability is
generally used for representing two kinds of phenomena, randomness and belief.
Randomness is related with the occurrence of some variability during several
5
observations. Belief is briefly described as opinion within an event. Below is the
example of a probability:
(1) Turn right here
This phrase can represent 2 kinds of phenomenon; the speaker state that phrase request
to turn on that spot, or the speaker state that phrase request to turn the direction to the
right.
Unstructured is type of ambiguity when a writer is unable to arrange the order
of grammatical pattern accordingly.
Lack of Information is type of ambiguity which cannot fulfill the information
needed to make the sentence stand. Dubois (2007) infers that lack of information or
knows as incomplete information, occurs when the writers writing is subjective which
cause only several people understand their utterances. Some other people need to get
further information to predict the utterance of the speaker. For example if the writer
only wrote:
(1) The birth date of Indonesian President
This example cause the reader only has rough idea about the birth date of Indonesian
President, only few reader know precisely, some have no idea about the birth date of
Indonesian President.
Uncertainty is type of ambiguity in which events / states of being uncertain or
unpredictable is happened. Dubois, Lang and Prade (2004) explained that uncertainty
is happened due to the incompleteness of the evidence and the partially inconsistent
knowledge within a speaker‟s writing. For example if the writer only wrote:
6
(1) John saw the man on the mountain with a telescope
This example cause the reader hardly decides who has the telescope. Is that John, the
man on the mountain, or the mountain who has the telescope was unclear.
Inconsistencies and Contradictions is type of ambiguity which specifically uses
negation within the writing. Khawalda and Al-Saidat (2012) briefly explain that
negation has a possibility to create ambiguous sentence. Related with grammar pattern
in the utterances, the use of negation cannot predict which part of the sentence is being
negated by the negation itself. For instance, in a sentence like:
(1) Everyone hasn‟t finished the assignment yet
The sentence is ambiguous according to scope of negation. If the scope of „not‟ is not
the subject „everyone‟ the sentence has the reading:
(a) „Everyone is in the position of not having finished the assignment yet‟
If the scope of „not‟ is „everyone‟, the sentence will have the reading:
(b) „Not everyone is yet in the position of having finished the assignment‟.
Unclear is type of ambiguity which caused by grammatical error specifically in
the use of pronoun reference. A sentence is ambiguous when the pronoun used in a
sentence is not referring to a particular noun in a sentence. In “Both Isabel and
Barbara loved her children”, her is categorized as pronoun but it cannot tell whose
children they are.
The elements of ambiguity as listed above will be used to classify the
ambiguous sentence done by the EFL learner. Then, Sennet‟s frame work of
7
ambiguous statement will be used to classify the occurrence of ambiguous statement
into three big scope of ambiguous type of language learning.
Sennet (2011) analyzes the ambiguity of statement into 3 big scopes of
ambiguous statement according to the language function: Lexical Ambiguity,
Syntactic Ambiguity, and Pragmatic Ambiguity. These scopes will represent the
categories of ambiguity listed above and further the data taken will be presented in
form of most occurrences categories of ambiguity based on these scopes.
Lexical Ambiguity is dealing with the ambiguous homophones which different
in meaning and syntactic categories. (Doing Semantic; 1998) Lexical Ambiguity
might occur in form of a single word response in a conversation, which the meaning of
that word having more than one possible meaning. Lexical Ambiguity will cover
Multiple Meanings in word-choice and idioms, and Vagueness, Fragmentation and
Incompleteness.
Syntactic Ambiguity, according to Sennet (2011), is dealing with the
ambiguous words specifically when there are many language functions that correspond
to the same sentence. This ambiguity is dealing with the phrasal usage, quantifier and
operator scope, and pronouns preference. Syntactic Ambiguity covers the ambiguous
meaning of phrase like in a Probability, Unstructured, Uncertainty, and Unclear.
Pragmatic Ambiguity, according Doing Semantics (1998), is dealing with the
ambiguous sentence specifically from the use of third person pronouns and special
generic noun such as one and another. If the context contains two nouns that could
both be co referential with the pronoun, the reader / hearer is often puzzled as to which
one is meant. Pragmatic Ambiguity covers Lack of Information, Inconsistencies and
Contradictions.
8
THE STUDY
Context of Study
This research has investigated the ambiguous sentence and language usage in
writing assignment. This research is conducted in English Department since this
faculty requires students to use English in writing assignment. Through the
investigation, the finding of the study have filtered the ambiguity occurred in EFL
students writing assignment and have classified into several types of ambiguity.
Participant
The participant of this study is the 1st year students of English Department
from Satya Wacana Christian University. They are chosen to be the participant
because as non-native speaker of English, they have learnt and studied in English
Department which requires all students to be able to communicate using English and
they are still under the progress of adjusting themselves with the rule of the faculty,
which use 90% of English in class communication, especially in writing assignment, it
is predicted that the occurrence of the ambiguous sentence is likely high.
Method of research
The purpose of this research is to investigate the ambiguity sentences in
students writing assignment among ED students. Therefore, this research is classified
into a Descriptive Qualitative Research, because this study provides an area to
investigate a phenomenon and behaviour of EFL students which will focus on see the
frequency of the students responding phenomenon (Bogdan, 1982). This research
explores the phenomenon of EFL students in using English in working on their writing
9
assignment by using Random Sampling Method because, according to Bogdan (1982),
random sample can represent the whole population of the participant.
Instrument and Data Collection
The writing assignments of ED Students from Guided Writing Class were
collected and copied. The total of students‟ writing assignment that were involved in
this research is 66 students‟ writings, taken from 5 classes of Guided Writing. By
using Norton‟s Ambiguity Classification (1975), this research found 155 data to
support this research from students writing assignment and the data was divided into 8
ambiguity types and classified into 3 general scopes of ambiguity.
Data Analysis
Each writing assignment of ED Students in Guided Writing Class was
analyzed and the ambiguity which occurs in the writing assignment was investigated.
The ambiguity has been classified into 8 ambiguity types analysis by using Norton‟s
analysis of causes on ambiguity. After that, the researcher categorized the 8types into
3 scopes of ambiguity analysis by using Sennet‟s (2011) classification on ambiguity
scopes. The second classification is used to identify what is the biggest problem of
EFL Learner in ED when they deal with ambiguous sentence in writing assignment.
Ambiguity Category from Norton (1975) will be used to classify the ambiguity
performed by the students during their writing. After used this chart, then the result is
filtered by using Scopes of Ambiguity from Sennet (2011) to see the most occurrences
from the ambiguous situations faced by EFL learners in English Department.
10
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
This study focuses on finding the ambiguity types done by the students by
investigating their writing assignment and further noting sentences that are classified
as ambiguous sentence. This research collected 66 writing assignments taken from
Guided Writing class in ED. The data shows that all 8 ambiguity types appear in the
data. Table 1 is the finding of the ambiguous statement based on Norton‟s (1975)
Table 1. Table of Ambiguity Analysis
Types of
Ambiguity
Multiple
Meaning
Scopes of
Occurrence
Ambiguity
10
Vagueness,
Inconsistencies
and
Occurence
Lexical
10
Ambiguity
21
Contradictions
Probability
1
Unstructured
21
Uncertainty
58
Unclear
4
Lack of
Information
Syntactic
Ambiguity
42
Pragmatics
Inconsistencies
and
83
Ambiguity
9
Contradictions
11
51
Norton‟s Ambiguity Classification (1975) is divided into 8, which are Multiple
Meaning, Vagueness, Incompleteness, and Fragmentation, Probability, Unstructured,
Uncertainty, Unclear, Lack of Information, and Inconsistencies and Contradiction.
Multiple Meanings, Probability, and Vagueness, Incompleteness and Fragmentation
are categorized in Lexical Ambiguity. Unstructured, Uncertainty, and Unclear are
categorized in Syntactic Ambiguity. Lack of Information and Inconsistencies and
Contradictions are categorized in Pragmatics Ambiguity.
Based on these findings, it is interesting that most of the students are not aware with
Syntactic Ambiguity in their writing assignment. According to the data, 83 out of 155
are categorized under Syntactic Ambiguity. Syntactic Ambiguity is dealing with the
ambiguous words specifically when there are many language functions that correspond
to the same sentence, especially in phrasal usage, quantifiers, and pronoun reference.
Most of the students use their local dialect and oral communication style in writing
their assignment, therefore their writing looks informal and not well structured. Some
others also didn‟t follow the requirement to make a sentence stand, for example a
sentence with no verb or no subject, which cause the reader find it ambiguous
especially with the structure conveyed by the students through their writing.
In contrast with that, 51 out of 155 data are categorized under Pragmatic
Ambiguity. Pragmatic Ambiguity deals more with the incompleteness of the
information, unclear context of discussion, and the use of negation that cause the
sentence contradict between the main sentence and the supporting details of that
sentence which causes ambiguity in determining the meaning of the statement.
Students under this ambiguity usually made ambiguous statement when they use
12
negation in their sentence without knowing the meaning of using negation and how to
build a sentence with proper comparison between the main sentences with the
supporting details.
Lastly, 21 out of 155 data are categorized under Lexical Ambiguity. Lexical Ambiguity
deals more with the ambiguous homophones which cause multiple interpretations
when EFL learner is not aware with explaining the meaning of the word and the
context of the statement. Students under this ambiguity are not recognizing that some
words that they used have more than one literal meaning when it was used in a
sentence. Some of the students also unable to differentiate adverb and noun which
further cause the meaning of the sentence changed.
Lexical Ambiguity
Multiple
Meaning,
Probability,
and
Vagueness,
Incompleteness
and
Fragmentation are categorized in Lexical Ambiguity. Types of ambiguity in Multiple
Meaning occur in these examples,
“I get a spirit when I look at his picture”
This sentence can cause the reader interpret the phrase “get a spirit” as gaining
motivation by seeing the picture or gaining unseen creature by seeing the picture.
When the reader gets more than 1 kind of interpretation in reading a sentence, this can
cause the reader to interpret the sentence wrongly. To avoid ambiguity, this sentence
needs to be corrected by using either „getting more motivation or catching an unseen
creature during the time the writer look at his own picture‟.
“In addition, Po could win against a leopard, Tai Lung, only in one touched”
13
This example also ambiguous because the writer can cause the reader interpret the
phrase “in one touched” as hit the enemy with one touch or probably can win the battle
easily without any significant effort to beat his enemy. In order to reduce the chance of
ambiguity, the writer should explore more their ideas and explain it descriptively by
giving another supporting details.
Types of ambiguity in Probability occurs in this example,
“I don’t know why, but maybe it is because Charlotte is small than Wilburn”
This example shows probability ambiguity because the word small cannot explain
which small condition that the writer wants to emphasize. Therefore, the reader might
interpret that small is related with the body size between Charlotte and Wilburn, or
small is related with the connection built between them. In order to reduce chance of
ambiguity, the writer should add more detail information about the word small, for
example, the writer might say probably it is because Charlotte‟s body is smaller than
Wilburn; or Charlotte‟s connection is smaller than Wilburn.
Example of Vagueness, Incompleteness, and Fragmentation occur in these examples,
From that point, Po starts the most hardest training ever with his teacher, Master
Shifu. (Vagueness)
This example show vagueness ambiguity that occurs in “the most hardest (supposed to
be the hardest)” phrase. The reader might think that the most hardest training is not
specific. Not only that the reader might interpret that the process is extremely difficult,
but also that the phrase cannot specify to what extent the „most hardest‟ training is.
Since there is no specific detail about what is „the most hardest training‟, this phrase is
rather ambiguous.
14
But he keep train until he get though. (Fragmentation and Incompleteness)
This example shows sentence fragmentation that causes incompleteness of a sentence
to stand. The incompleteness occurs when the component of a sentence to stand is not
being added in that sentence, for example when a sentence has no subject, no verb, or
a dependent clause which need independent clause to stand. This sentence is
ambiguous because this sentence is dependent clause which needs more information to
make the sentence stand. By recognizing this requirement, this sentence will reduce
random interpretation for some particular information that might be not the real
message of the writer. For example, maybe the writer may add more information about
what kind of training that the subject took and why the subject need to be tough
according to writer.
Lexical Ambiguity may cause confusion, especially with some certain words which
cannot be clearly explained. Readers may be students that learn English writing style
which need to learn from their peer also. If students are not guided well especially in
dealing with Lexical Ambiguity, students will get the impact of not knowing the
meaning of certain words and the use of words in that sentence. Even though the
finding shows only 21 data of participant conducting Lexical Ambiguity, Lexical
Ambiguity cause confusion when the readers gets more than 1 kind of interpretation in
reading a sentence and they might interpret the sentence wrongly. Moreover, certain
words cannot be explained well will also increase the chance of misinterpretation to
readers in dealing with Lexical Ambiguity. Especially when Lexical Ambiguity occurs
in several types, it will causes the readers interpret the meaning of the words wrongly.
Syntactical Ambiguity
15
Uncertainty, Unstructured and Unclear are categorized in Syntactic Ambiguity.
Example of Uncertainty occur in these examples,
“Moreover, my father is not as boring as other fathers”
This example show uncertain ambiguity occurs in the basic form of the sentence. The
reader possibly might interpret that writer‟s father is boring, but compared to another
father, the writer‟s father is not that boring; or the reader might interpret that writer‟s
father is more than one, since the writer mention other fathers as the parameter of „the
boring‟. By recognizing this ambiguity, the writer shall reduce the chance of
ambiguity by giving more information that give specific details about the meaning of
the sentence. For example, the writer might not use comparison especially the use of
comparison, or probably just simply say that writer‟s father is more than one and one
of them is not boring.
“Po was a brave panda, he told the truth to his father and faced Tai Lung”
This example also shows uncertain ambiguity in the basic form of the sentence. The
reader might interpret that to be a brave panda, the panda have to tell the truth to his
father and face his natural enemy, or wonder the reason for a panda to be brave is
through telling the truth which is unclear and face his natural enemy which is
unnecessary. In order to reduce the ambiguity, the writer need to explore their idea and
describe it in sequence according to their idea. For example, the writer might explore
their idea of a brave panda and find related reason to support that idea such as being
bold during their difficult time, tough in his daily exercise, and so on.
Types of ambiguity in Unstructured occur in these examples,
“I think it is like a miracle to have a “crazy” and wisdom friend”
16
This example shows unstructured ambiguity because the writer cannot arrange
grammar pattern accordingly. This sentence is ambiguous because the writer uses
adverb and noun to explain the writer‟s friend. The ambiguous part of this sentence
lies on the dual interpretation of the adverb and noun used by the writer which may
confuse the reader to classify which word is classified as adverb and which one as
noun. For example, the writer may reduce the chance of ambiguity by saying „it is a
miracles to have a crazy and wise friend‟, or the writer might say it is very difficult to
have an extraordinary friend with wisdom inside him.
“She adviced her children to positive thinking if we have problems and didn’t gave
up”
This example also shows unstructured ambiguity because the writer cannot arrange
grammar pattern accordingly. This sentence is causing multiple interpretation
especially in the use of verb and adverb and confusing the reader to classify the word
used from the sentence. In order to reduce the ambiguity, the writer might say that she
gave her children an advice to think positively during their hard time and not to give
up easily.
Types of ambiguity in Unclear occurs in this example,
“She made it from her web, and it is so amazing”
This example shows unclear ambiguity because the use of pronoun reference is not
clear. The word “it” in phrase “it is so amazing” was not clear whether it refers to the
web she made or the activity of making the web itself. In order to reduce the
ambiguity, it is better to explain the information in more detail. For example, they can
write that the spider made the word from her web and the word she made was so
17
amazing, or that the spider made the word from her web and the process of making the
web was so amazing. Another consideration is that not to put two pronoun references
„it‟ in a sentence like what occurs in the example.
Syntactic Ambiguity may cause confusion since Syntactic Ambiguity occurs in the
basic form of the sentence, cannot arrange grammar pattern accordingly which cause
dual interpretation of the adverb and noun, and unclear use of pronoun reference.
What becomes the problem is, readers are might not that aware in understanding the
focus of ambiguous meaning of a sentence seen from the syntactic structure. Most of
the finding shows that students writing assignment is ambiguous because they cannot
relate their idea in structure. This issue is being supported by the finding that shown
most of the students trapped in Uncertainty ambiguity which can be concluded that
students are not well structured in writing down their idea. If this problem continues,
their mistake will affect their peer understanding and teacher understanding in
assessing their writing related to the writer‟s idea.
Pragmatic Ambiguity
Lack of Information and Inconsistencies and Contradictions are categorized in
Pragmatic Ambiguity. Types of ambiguity in Lack of Information occurs in these
examples,
“The last things that make Po is the smartest panda ever is because he can find unique
way to do something”
This example shows that lack of information might cause ambiguous sentence because
only the writer can understand the sentence. Further, the writer write that Po is the
smartest panda and the writer tries to make the reader suppose that there is any other
18
smart panda. This statement is the example of Pragmatics Ambiguity in
Presuppositional Ambiguity. In order to reduce the chance of ambiguity, the writer
might write that Po is smart because he can find unique way in doing certain activity
such as eating or sleeping.
“Another reason why I said that he is a humble person is because both of us have the
same hobby, that is playing card games”
This sentence is lack of information which confuse the reader and only the writer that
can understand the meaning of this sentence. The writer write that his friend is humble
because both of them have the same hobby, which might confuse the reader whether a
parameter of a person to be humble is by having the same hobby with the reader, or
might be playing card, or any other interpretations. In order to reduce the chance of
ambiguity, the writer might write that my friend is humble because even though he is
rich but he wants to play card games with me and other common friends.
Types of ambiguity in Inconsistencies and Contradictions occurs in this example,
“I like to feed my child, but Po like kungfu”
This example shows that the information given is inconsistent and cause the reader
wonder the relation in comparing feeding the writer‟s child to kungfu. This sentence
needs more detail explanation in order to make the reader understood the meaning of
the writer writes the sentence. For example, the writer might write that the daily
routine of a panda is feeding their child but Po as a panda in Kungfu Panda movie has
different daily routine which is doing kungfu everyday.
Pragmatics Ambiguity may cause problem for the readers because Pragmatics
Ambiguity occurs when only the writer can understand the sentence and the
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information given is inconsistent and cause the reader interpret wrongly. Readers may
found it difficult in understanding the writing because what the writers wrote is what
they thought and might don‟t understand with their idea development in the sentence.
Moreover, Pragmatics Ambiguity deals more with the perception of the students, so it
will be very difficult for other students to follow or to give peer feedback in order to
develop the students. Further, teachers also will find difficulties in assessing students
writing since teacher might not expect that students giving ambiguous expression and
sentence within their works, but we cannot deny that they are new students in this
faculty which need more guidance in understanding the material and focus of the
study. Therefore, it is very crucial for teachers to be aware with this ambiguity.
This is interesting that EFL learner has a chance to do dual ambiguity because some of
the data taken may be categorized into more than one kind of ambiguity classification.
For example,
“He is not afraid to leave his house, he knows that he can’t defeat Tai Lung but
because of his father advice he go to the place where he can find Tai Lung, and
because he has a strong will he can defeat Tai Lung alone”
This example can be analyzed through Uncertainty ambiguity classification and Lack
of Information ambiguity classification. Under Uncertainty ambiguity classification,
this sentence is ambiguous because the sentence structure is not clear, which part is the
main part of the sentence, which part is the supporting detail of the sentence. This
sentence also ambiguous under Lack of Information ambiguity analysis because only
the writer who might understand the meaning of the sentence and the purpose of the
sentence. This is interesting since this research expect the data taken from the
participant will only be classified into one category of ambiguity classification. This
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finding might indicate that EFL learners are need more drill and monitory from their
lecturer in order to avoid the occurrence of ambiguous sentence in their writing
assignment.
CONCLUSION
This research main question is what are the ambiguity types done by EFL
students in writing and the result is what occurs the most is Syntactic Ambiguity.
Pragmatic Ambiguity and Lexical Ambiguity also occur but not as often as Syntactic
Ambiguity. These researches have discussed the problem of EFL learner in making a
sentence in English especially dealing with scopes of ambiguity. Sentence ambiguity
happen to EFL students is because they need time to adjust and learn about basic
structure of syntactic structure and further apply it in their writing assignment.
According to the finding, some students are unable to differentiate meanings of words
used in a sentence that can cause confusion to the readers.
In Syntactic Ambiguity, Uncertainty type is the type that likely most happen.
The interesting part is students are not well structured in developing their idea, even
though they can make their writing assignment. In Pragmatic Ambiguity, Lack of
Information type mostly occurs in students writing. The interesting part is only
students are able to understand the meaning of their writing. In Lexical Ambiguity,
Multiple Meaning and Vagueness, Fragmentation and Incompleteness types occurs in
the same frequency. The interesting parts are students cannot show specific details of
information in their writing assignment and cause the readers to have more than one
kind of interpretation according to their writing.
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Suggestion to overcome ambiguity problem might in be in form of developing
the teachers in order to emphasize syntax understanding in students writing and the
use of multiple meaning in a sentence to make students understand with the meaning
of words and further able to avoid ambiguity. Further students also might be assigned
to have peer feedback to measure their friends understand with their writing.
Further research might find the effective way to teach ambiguity among
students and check to what extent the new way is effective to reduce the ambiguity
from students. Since ambiguous sentence is commonly happen and most of the
students also deal with this problem, it will be useful if there is any certain method that
can be used to teach them and make them understand about using English without
leaving any ambiguous meaning left in their assignment.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I believe the completion of this thesis writing is not because of my effort, but it comes
from His grace alone. I would like to thank to Jesus for His grace and guidance that
give me strength and endurance in finishing my thesis. I also thank to Mom, Dad,
Roni, Kevin and my entire family that always support me through their motivational
words and prays. Besides, I also got sustainable guidance from my supervisor, Mr.
Christian Rudianto, S. Pd. M. App. Ling, and it is an honour to be guided by him
because of his patience, advice and enjoyable atmosphere during the consultations. In
addition, I‟d like to thank Mrs. Athriyana Santye Pattiwael, M. Hum. that was willing
to examine my paper and give significant feedback. Last but not least, the biggest
thanks to all people surrounds me: Kak David, Kak Wulan, Yediya, Yehuda, Jack,
Chrisna, Rea, and all Youth Pondok Daud Family, for the motivations, prays, and
helps that make me able to finish my study soon and step on the next milestone of my
life! Thank you fellas!
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APPENDIX
Appendix 1. Table of Ambiguity Analysis
Table of Ambiguity Analysis
Scopes of
Ambiguity
Ambiguity Classification
Multiple Meanings
Lexical Ambiguity
Vagueness
Probability
Unstructured
Syntactic Ambiguity
Uncertainty
Unclear
Pragmatic
Ambiguity
Lack of Information
Inconsistencies and Contradictions
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Ambiguous Statement