Phân tích cú pháp truyện ngắn tiếng Anh dành cho trẻ em

ed	to	investigate	whether	or	not	the	online	ESSKs	are	suitable	for	
the different age groups they are targeted at, in terms of syntactic structures. From the in-depth 
description	of	the	findings	in	the	above	section,	we	can	now	look	at	the	underlying	significance	
of the similarities and differences.
There	is	no	doubt	that	children	aged	0	-	3	are	at	the	first	stage	of	language	formation;	hence,	
the	writers	of	ESSKs	in	this	group	have	a	tendency	to	employ	mostly	short,	simple	sentences	to	
get the very young readers start on their road to reading and grasping the moral lessons of the 
stories easily and quickly. In addition, it is worth noting that most of the SSs in this group are the 
ones containing a subject and a verb. The predominance of such simple structures emphasizes 
single actions of the characters, facilitating the young readers’ understanding and memorizing 
the contents. It is likely out of the same pedagogical reasons that the story writers utilize fewer 
complicated sentence structures, namely compound, complex, and compound-complex structures 
in	 the	ESSKs	 for	0	 -	3	 age	group.	At	 the	clause	 level,	 the	finite	 clauses	 take	 the	 top	priority,	
conveying	explicitly	the	states	and	actions	in	terms	of	tense	and	aspect.	The	non-finite	structures	
are much less frequent, just contributing to clarify extra details about the actions. Then, because 
verbless clauses take syntactic compression one stage further, which may present young readers 
with	difficulties	in	inferring	the	missing	information	in	those	clauses,	they	are	virtually	absent.	
As	for	ESSKs	for	the	age	group	4	-	6,	although	SSs	are	the	most	frequent,	its	proportion	
decreases by 22.3% in comparison to those for the younger group. Then, though the proportion 
of	finite	clauses	slightly	decreases,	it	remains	the	most	common	clause	type	in	ESSKs	for	this	age	
group. It is also noticeable that verbless clauses begin to be used as well. This way, the children 
aged 4 - 6 both get access to the new clause structure and master the basic types. 
As	regards	the	ESSKs	of	the	age	group	7	-	12,	the	percentage	of	SSs	plunges,	giving	rise	to	
the compound-complex and complex sentences, which are far much higher. This strategy of using 
sentence types in the group 7 - 12 seems to result from the intention that too many simple structures 
tend to make their stories appear childish, immature and boring to read. This high percentage of 
the complicated structures at the sentence level	is	coupled	with	a	larger	proportion	of	the	nonfinite	
structures	at	the	clause	level.	Furthermore,	the	writers	of	all	three	groups	of	ESSKs	use	a	mixture	
of all sentence types in their own stories. This assists them in communicating and conveying the 
messages	in	those	stories	more	flexibly	and	effectively.	However,	each	sentence	type	is	used	with	
its	own	purposes	of	expressing;	as	a	result,	the	distribution	of	each	sentence	type	in	the	ESSKs	of	
the three age groups is not the same. 
In fact, the simple sentences are recognized as the most popular types in all three groups. 
By using a large number of SSs, writers	 of	ESSKs	 facilitate	 the	 young	 children	 in	 their	 first	
attempts to reading. Then, once the children grow older, it is likely that they may lose their 
interests in reading if they are faced with stories with mostly choppy simple sentences. Therefore, 
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 Tập 13, Số 2, 2019
there is a preference for compound sentences to connect ideas of equal importance and relevance 
in	ESSKs	instead	of	 just	simple	sentences	for	readers	of	4	-	6	and	7	-	12.	Besides,	 it	 is	worth	
noting that the distributions of the complex sentences do not widely vary across three age groups. 
The	justification	for	this	may	be	that	complex	sentences	play	an	essential	part	 in	smoothening	
the	flow	of	 information	 in	 stories,	helping	 the	 readers	 focus	on	 the	main	or	 subordinate	 ideas	
and	 contributing	 variety	 to	 the	ESSKs.	 In	 the	 stories	written	 for	more	 grown-up	 readers,	 the	
occurrence frequency of the complex sentences increases stably, helping children be acquainted 
with this sentence structure step by step, without inhibiting their understanding. What’s more, the 
proportion	of	the	compound-complex	sentences	the	ESSKs	for	the	oldest	age	group	is	nearly	five	
times and twice as high as that in the group for the youngest and younger age groups, respectively. 
This suggests that the story writers carefully observe the readers’ cognition ability and language 
proficiency.
Similarly,	 at	 the	 clause	 level,	 ESSKs	 also	 display	 a	wide	 range	 of	 clause	 types,	which	
enables the writers convey their ideas effectively while attentive to the age of the various groups. 
Finite	clauses	make	up	over	four-fifths	of	the	whole	corpus,	resulting	from	the	fact	that	they	may	
be used in both main and subordinate clauses. Besides, being the second most popular clause type 
used	 in	ESSKs,	nonfinite	clauses	add	variety	 to	 the	 range	of	clause	structure,	 thereby	helping	
writers conveying meanings in their stories in a more economical way. In addition, it is worth 
discussing	the	fact	that	of	all	four	subtypes	of	nonfinite	clauses,	the	to-V	clause	and	V-ing	clause	
are	the	dominant,	whereas	the	V-ed	and	the	bare	infinitive	are	quite	rare.	This	finding	is	in	line	
with the general tendency of use of these different structures of the clause, as observed by Quirk, 
et al. (1985). Finally, the smallest proportion of the verbless clauses in the whole data may be 
attributed to its minimum structure of either a noun phrase, an adjective phrase or an adverbial 
phrase, which may pose incomprehensibility to the young readers.
The	findings	of	this	study,	which	concern	short	stories	for	young	children,	are	to	some	extent	
contradict to those revealed from Wulandari’s (2015) study on sentence structures in the story 
About Barbers written by Mark Twain. The results of Wulandari’s analysis shows that compound 
sentence structure takes the lead in this short story, followed by compound-complex sentence 
structure, complex sentence structure and simple sentence structure in the order of the frequency 
percentages. The difference is highly likely due to the age of the readers targeted at. In Upreti’s 
(2012) study on the challenges and issues of making use of short stories as supplementary resources, 
he	states	that	teachers	face	a	lot	of	difficulty	due	to	long	structures	and	difficult	vocabulary.	On	
this basis, some suggestions which are put forward to reduce the challenges in teaching short 
stories such as trainings, workshops, refreshers courses are given regarding teaching short stories. 
Therefore, the results of the analysis uncover an encouraging fact that in terms of ‘syntactic 
complexity’, the stories under analysis, though selected by a native speaker of English for children 
around	the	world,	are	classified	appropriately	to	be	exploited	in	order	of	age	and	accordingly	in	
order of grades of the YLs of EFL. Due to their prominent role, English stories have continually 
attracted extensive research. They have long been investigated from different perspectives, 
providing in-depth and comprehensive descriptions of this genre, such as in terms of semantic and 
syntactic features (Nguyen, 2012; Wulandari, 2015), of discourse markers (Altikriti, 2011; Youran, 
26
Amoli & Youran, 2013), of conjunctions (Suswati, Sujatna, & Mahdi, 2014), or of meta-functions 
(Vu,	2014;	Widayat,	2006).	Concerning	 the	practice	of	TEFL,	studies	have	been	conducted	 to	
explore the effectiveness of the using short stories in developing reading skill (Handayani, 2013; 
Pham, 2016), in immersing young children in moral values (Rahim & Rahiem, 2012), as well 
as to gauge the challenges and issues of making use of short stories as supplementary resources 
(Upreti, 2012). The present study is hoped to extend this fruitful area of research, contributing 
some practical insights into this ever-rich resource. 
5. Conclusion
This paper reports part of our endeavor to investigate the potential practicability of the 
online	resources	of	English	short	stories	to	the	benefits	of	YLs	of	EFL.	The	findings	confirm	the	
age-specific	appropriateness	of	these	quality	free	resources	in	terms	of	syntactic	structures	and	
thus point to the feasibility of immediate use, and preferably of further research of the inherent 
linguistic characteristics in tandems with the practice of exploiting them in various settings. 
The	major	 limitation	of	 this	 study	 lies	with	 the	 small	 size	 of	 the	 data	 confined	 to	 only	
one website https://www.storyberries.com/. Besides, this research focuses on only the syntactic 
structure of the sentence and the clause. An investigation with a larger corpus comprising stories 
form	other	websites	popular	and	most	commonly	accessed	by	children	in	a	specific	context	in	
terms of the grammatical points and lexical loads covered in their formal English classes would 
have	practical	significance.	Secondly,	the	websites	which	provide	both	the	scripts	and	the	voice	
may serve as another source of data to investigate the prosodic aspects for the same pedagogical 
purposes. Finally, a study into the teachers’, learners’, and parents’ attitude and practice, if any, 
and/or	effectiveness	of	harnessing	 these	online	 resources	 to	 the	TEFL	for	YLs	may	also	yield	
substantial	benefits.	
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APPENDIX: List of Samples in Data (GI:	Age	0	-	3;	GII:	Age	4	-	6;	GIII:	Age	7	-	12)	
Code Title of story & Name of author
GI-1 The Story of Miss Moppet (Beatrix Potter)
GI-2 Londi the Dreaming Girl	(Lauren	Holliday	&	Nathalie	Koenig)
GI-3 The Happy Hat (Jade Matre)
GI-4 The Best Thing Ever (Melissa Fagan)
GI-5 What Is It?	(Kate	Sidley)
GI-6 Hippo Wants to Dance (Sam Beckbessinger)
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GI-7 Little Ant’s Big Plan	(Candice	Dingwall)
GI-8 Jimmy the Cat and Bobik’s Birthday	(Katty	Melnichenko)
GI-9 Little goat (Mirna Lawrence)
GI-10 Whose Button Is This?	(Paul	Kennedy)
GII-1 Monsieur-le-dot (Jade Matre)
GII-2 The Princess and the Pea	(Hans	Christian	Andersen)
GII-3 Dolly Dimple (H.W. Mabie, E. E. Hale and W. B. Forbush)
GII-4 The Mouse and the Sausage (H.W. Mabie, E.E.Hale and W. B. Forbush)
GII-5 Fox and the Pine (Danielle Noakes)
GII-6 The Tale of Two Bad Mice (Beatrix Potter)
GII-7 The Tale of Mrs Tittlemouse (Beatrix Potter)
GII-8 The Tale of Mr Jeremy Fisher (Beatrix Potter)
GII-9 The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Beatrix Potter)
GII-10 The Tale of Tom Kitten (Beatrix Potter)
GIII-1 Rabbit’s Eyes	(Katharine	Pyle)
GIII-2 The Faithless Parrot	(Charles	H.	Bennett)
GIII-3 The Musicians of Bremen	(Brothers	Grimm)
GIII-4 The Little Match Girl	(Hans	Christian	Andersen)
GIII-5 The White Stone Canoe (H. W. Mabie, E. E. Hale and W. B.Forbush)
GIII-6 In Search of a Baby (H.W. Mabie, E. E. Hale and W. B.Forbush)
GIII-7 The Three Little Pigs (Joseph Jacobs)
GIII-8 The Maiden Who Loved a Fish (H.W. Mabie, E. E.Hale and W.B. Forbush)
GIII-9 Fundevogel	(Brothers	Grimm)
GIII-10 Old Sultan	(Brothers	Grimm)
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