Syntactic Competence in EFL Teacher Education and English Studies Programmes

Abstract Book of the 11th International Conference on Advanced Research in Education, Teaching and Learning

Year: 2026

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Syntactic Competence in EFL Teacher Education and English Studies Programmes

Michaela Sepešiová

ABSTRACT:

This study investigates syntactic competence in two groups of EFL university students in Eastern Slovakia: pre-service teachers enrolled in a teacher education programme (n = 209) and students majoring in English Language and Anglophone Cultures (n = 109). The aim is to examine differences in syntactic accuracy and complexity and to observe developmental changes between mid-course and final testing over three academic years. The data were collected from institutionally developed mid-course and final written examinations designed to assess grammatical accuracy, sentence transformation skills, clause structure, and the use of complex subordinate constructions. Quantitative analysis included overall accuracy scores, error frequency, and selected measures of syntactic complexity such as mean length of T-unit and subordination ratio. Independent and paired samples tests were used to compare groups and measure development over time. The findings indicate that English Studies students demonstrate greater structural variety and higher use of subordinate clauses, while pre-service teachers achieve slightly higher accuracy in controlled grammatical tasks. Both groups show statistically significant improvement between mid-course and final testing, although difficulties persist in clause embedding and tense consistency. The results suggest that curricular orientation influences syntactic development and highlight the need for a more systematic integration of advanced syntax within EFL teacher education.

Keywords: Clause Embedding, Grammatical Accuracy, Longitudinal Assessment, Subordination Ratio, University Curriculum