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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 Occurrence

Scopes of

Ambiguity Occurence

Multiple

Meaning 10

Lexical

Ambiguity 21

Vagueness,

Inconsistencies

and

Contradictions

10

Probability 1

Unstructured 21

Syntactic

Ambiguity 83 Uncertainty 58

Unclear 4

Lack of

Information 42

Pragmatics

Ambiguity 51 Inconsistencies

and

Contradictions

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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!

24

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the Box on the Table. American Journal of Computational Linguistics , 139-149.

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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

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Merchant, J., (2004). Fragment and Ellipsis. Kluwer Academic Publisher, 27, 661-738

Marzban, A., Barati, H., & Moinzadeh, A. (2012, January). An Investigation into Ambiguity

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Sorensen, Roy, "Vagueness", The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013

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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.

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26

APPENDIX

Appendix 1. Table of Ambiguity Analysis

Table of Ambiguity Analysis

Scopes of Ambiguity

Ambiguity Classification Ambiguous Statement

Lexical Ambiguity

Multiple Meanings

Vagueness

Probability

Syntactic Ambiguity

Unstructured

Uncertainty

Unclear

Pragmatic Ambiguity

Lack of Information

Inconsistencies and Contradictions