FREQUENCY AND GRAMMATICALITY OF CONDITIONAL CLAUSES IN ESSAYS WRITTEN BY IUS FRESHMAN STUDENTS

This research paper is a descriptive study that analyzes the use
of conditional clauses in 170 argumentative essays written by freshman
students at the International University of Sarajevo (IUS) in the spring semester
of 2023. The essays were written as part of their assessment in the ELIT200
Critical Reading and Writing course, which is a mandatory freshman course at
the IUS. The aim of the paper is to investigate the frequency at which
conditional clauses occur, their different types, and their grammaticality.
Moreover, the paper examines the link between the frequency and
grammaticality of the used conditional clauses and the assigned essay topics.
The results show that the overall accuracy/grammaticality when it comes to the
usage of English conditional clauses is high. As expected, the most frequently
used conditional type is the first conditional.