Investigating the Use of English Conjunctions during Speaking among Iranian Medical Students: Frequent Usage and Errors

Hamidi, Hadi; Nasrollahi Mouziraji, Alieh; Gholampour, Razieh; Fekri, Neda; Najafi Sarem, Saeid

doi:10.22080/iselt.2025.29953.1118

Investigating the Use of English Conjunctions during Speaking among Iranian Medical Students: Frequent Usage and Errors

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

¹ Department of English Language, School of Health Management and Information Sciences, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran

² Department of English Language, Bab. C., Islamic Azad University, Babol, Iran

³ Department of English Language, Shahr-e-Qods Branch, Islamic Azad University, Shahr-e-Qods, Iran

⁴ Department of English Language, Ali.C., Islamic Azad University, Aliabad Katoul, Iran

⁵ Department of English, Ha.C., Islamic Azad University, Hamedan, Iran

10.22080/iselt.2025.29953.1118

Abstract

Given the significant role of conjunctions in ensuring clarity and precision in medical communication, this study aimed to examine the recurring patterns of conjunction use and conjunction-related errors in the spoken English of non-English-speaking medical students. The present study, conducted at a medical university in Iran, was a cross-sectional, descriptive, and comparative applied research design focused on learner-produced spoken data. The participants were 123 students aged between 20 and 21, enrolled in Technical English 1. They were asked to deliver a lecture of no more than five minutes on two specific diseases: fatty liver and asthma. The recordings were then transcribed and analyzed by the researchers, and the frequency of errors in each type of conjunction was identified and calculated. Regarding coordinating conjunctions, and, but, so, or, and yet appeared with frequencies ranging from highest to lowest. Among subordinating conjunctions, if, when, while, as, though, because, since, whereas, after, and before were observed from highest to lowest frequency. Considering conjunctive adverbs, also, however, additionally, in addition, therefore, as a result, thus, moreover, and nevertheless were the most to least common. The results of the Chi-square test showed no statistically significant difference in the use of coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, and conjunctive adverbs (p> .05) between males and females. It was concluded that explicit training in conjunctions is not a requisite based on gender; instead, it should prioritize areas of common difficulty for all learners. Incorporating authentic input and direct feedback in teaching conjunctions can help improve students' professional communication skills, which are critical for their future medical practice.

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Main Subjects

Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). Published by the Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages at the University of Mazandaran. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) license.

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