A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions

A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first year English majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions

1 ABSTRACT The present study examined some common grammatical errors in speaking of first -year English- majored students at Thuongmai University In this study, the author combined the use of quantitative and qualitative methods to gain good results The participants of the study were eighty students of K56 Research results illustrate that most of the freshmen in English Faculty at Thuongmai University suffered from errors related to verb tense, prepositions, articles, subject-verb agreement, and plural, and singular as well Meanwhile, errors in the use of prepositions, errors in the use of articles, and verb tenses were the most common grammatical errors Besides, the author said that the main cause of these errors is lacking practice speaking, the influence of the mother tongue, and the performance pressure In order to minimize these errors, the researcher recommended some solutions to help the students improve their problems At last, limitations of the study and some recommendations for future research were presented ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In fact, we cannot deny that every success is associated with support or assistance, whether more or less, directly or indirectly by others I would like to express my many thanks to the people who have supported me to complete the research First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Ms Pham Minh Hong for her whole-hearted guidance and support Without her invaluable recommendations and advice, I could not finish this study I would like to convey my gratitude to all first-year students from K56 English Faculty for their participation and cooperation during the time I surveyed I also would like to express my special thanks to the teachers in the English Faculty at Thuongmai University for their dedicated knowledge years ago which is not only a foundation for the research but also a precious knowledge for me to step into life in a solid and confident way Last but not least, I would like to give my heartfelt thanks to my family, my friends who always encourage and inspirit me to complete this graduation paper Sincerely thanks! Hanoi, April 2021 Thuy Nguyen Thi Phuong Thuy TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS TMU: Thuongmai University LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale Within the context of significantly growing globalization, language plays an important role in building bridges to interconnect people around the world It is known that the English language is considered an international language or lingua franca and it is also the third common language in the world, after Chinese and Spanish Up to now, there are more than 350 million people around the world speaking English as a first language and over 430 million speaking it as a second language This figure shows that the English language is used widely over the world and Vietnam is not an exception In the country, English is mainly used as a mean of communication in trading and exchanging goods with foreign countries and served as one of the most important subjects in many schools There are four essential skills in learning languages which are speaking, listening, reading, and writing Nonetheless, learners especially the students at high school seem to focus on reading and writing rather than speaking and listening They spend a lot of time on learning grammar for official English tests and ignore the others Then, after entering university, students are afraid of speaking English in class, they get difficulties in conveying messages and making mistakes is unavoidable It is the fact happening in almost every school across the country Most of the first-year students at Thuongmai University (TMU) in general and majored students at English Faculty in detail also have the same situation They are confused by speaking English or communicating with foreign teachers at school and easy to make mistakes when making a grammatical sentence There are many factors that affect speaking English such as pronunciation, intonation, linking, rhythm, context, grammar and so on In this study, we will discuss grammatical errors during speaking English Although this error may not affect too much on speaking, it will help students realize their errors and overcome them to be competent speakers and get academic achievements Being conscious of the need of correcting mistakes for the first-year student of English major at TMU, the author decided to conduct the study entitled: “A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first -year English- majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions." It is hoped that the study will help students find out their problems in speaking and there are some solutions to handle the issues 1.2 Previous study In this part of the study, we will review some previous studies related to this research These studies have been conducted to identify errors in grammar when students speaking Dan Van Dao (November 2019) conducted a study on English grammatical errors entitled: “Some Vietnamese Students’ problems with English grammar: A preliminary study” The study focused on some common problems faced by Vietnamese learners of English grammar The study involved twenty-five first -year English majors and forty-seven first-year non-English majors at Kien Giang college in Vietnam The result illustrated that the common grammatical errors made by students were tense and aspect, particularly the simple and progressive aspect, the copula “be”, and adverb positions in verb and adjective phrases After finding out the errors, the author proposed some suggestions for teaching in Vietnam In another study made by Nguyen Minh Phuong (2019) entitled: “A study on common grammatical errors in speaking skill of 11th-grade students at high school in Vietnam.” This study was aimed to investigate some common grammatical errors in speaking by students of grade 11 at Yen Khanh A high school, also the reasons that students make grammatical errors when speaking and then suggest some solutions for a teacher could find out the common mistakes students make The participants of the study were one hundred and twenty students of grade 11 th at Yen Khanh A high school The author combined both quantitative and qualitative methods to gain the highest result The result showed that most 11 th grade students faced with some grammatical errors related to verb form, prepositions, articles, subject –verb agreement as well The researcher said that the reasons were the direct impact on students’ psychology, the influence of Vietnamese grammar while speaking, and not good grammatical knowledge Besides, the author gave some solutions for both teachers and students at Yen Khanh school to improve speaking skill This study was necessary and useful for any students who suffer from grammatical errors when speaking because the author gave clearly the reasons, analyzed grammatical errors in very detail, and recommended some solutions to handle this problem Nguyen Minh Nhut (June 2020) conducted a study entitled “An Analysis of Grammatical Errors by Vietnamese Learners of English” The study focused on examining the reasons for interlingua errors committed by Vietnamese learners of English There were forty students at Tra Vinh University in Vietnam who participated in this study The author mainly analyzed the errors following four categories: inflectional morphosyntax, article, word order, and copula “tobe” This study identified potential grammatical errors in more categories faced by Vietnamese students Then this study would be a valuable material for teachers or students who want to find grammatical errors then seek out effective methods to handle this issue In a study conducted by Hervina (November 2014) entitled “Grammatical Errors in Speaking Made by the Third Year English Department Students STKIP Abdi Pendidikan Payakumbuh”, the author aimed to investigate the grammatical errors of English Department junior of STKIP Abdi Pendidikan Payakumbuh The researcher used qualitative research as the main research methodology to get the data by observation, interview, and documentation The study was conducted on eight students taken randomly in the attendant list The results of this study revealed that the students have not mastered the use of verb groups, because the author thought that in Bahasa Indonesia they not have verb conjugations and agreement between subject and verb Then, Hervina recommended students need more practice speaking English, record and find out the errors in these records, meanwhile teachers also need to motivate their students, help them understand the mistakes, and evaluate them fairly The study was analyzed in very detail and had a lot of demonstrations The author used the qualitative method making readers easy to understand and have deep insight into the topic Bambang Sugeng (August 2016) conducted a study about “Common grammatical errors in the use of English as a foreign language: a case in students’ undergraduate theses” to find out the multitude of grammatical errors made by students in their undergraduate theses and the necessary learning materials to handle this issue This study was conducted on 228 undergraduate theses from 28 English study programs from out of the 34 provinces in Indonesia Data collated from grouping, counting, and ranking the data reveals that the errors made by students rank as follows: verb groups, finite verbs, subject –verb concords, predicates, concords of nouns, concords of numbers, clauses, passive voice, and word choices Besides showing the errors, the author suggested the way to improve the quality of undergraduate thesis writing for students of the English study program, that is common-core grammar materials The study was nice and valuable when showing concretely the errors of students and gave some possible solutions for this problem However, this study should show the figure by chart and use the number In another study, Su-Hie Ting –University Malaysia Sarawak (January 2010) conducted a study entitled: “Grammatical errors in spoken English of university students in oral communication course” The author aimed to find out the types of errors and the changes in grammatical accuracy focusing on oral communication The participant of the study is 42 students who are less proficient in English joining in role-play situations in the oral communication course The result from error analysis revealed that there are five common grammatical errors are preposition, question, article, plural form of nouns, subject-verb agreement, and tense Moreover, the author showed that at the end of the course, students speak more accurately in grammar Nesreen Saud Alahmadi (2014) conducted a study entitled: “Errors Analysis: A Case Study of Saudi Learner's English Grammatical Speaking Errors” This study aimed to determine more about the most common speech errors made by learners who are in the early stages of learning a second language The author carried out oral interviews personally 30 Saudi students who live in Saudi Arabia and have study English for six years and then transcript them to analyze easily The result showed that verb tenses were made by most students especially “perfect tense”, then the errors in the use of pronouns, and errors in regular and irregular verbs, which are less common among the others The author said the reason for this 10 languages not need articles and Vietnamese is not an exception Therefore, an error in articles is one of the most common English grammatical errors made by the majority of second language learners while speaking the language Students usually added "the" before nouns or omitted “an”, “a” even used the wrong articles For example: - “So, that is place I want to visit in the future.” Instead of “So, that is a - place I want to visit in the future.” “I think it is a when I have travel in Da Lat with my family and my cousin.” Instead of “I think it is when I travelled in Da Lat with my - family and my cousin.” “I had the dinner on the beach.” The correct sentence should be: “I had dinner on the beach.” The second grammatical error made by most of the students was the preposition Indeed, the number relating to errors with prepositions was quite substantial, about 30% All three students had a problem with this type of error when speaking Students often made mistakes about the wrong usage of prepositions and unnecessary prepositions between these prepositions: of, about, for, at, in, on, to, and with As seen in the examples: - “Because I could study a lot things around me from traveling.” Instead of - “Because I could study a lot a lot of things around me from traveling.” “I’m excited in exploring the moon.” Instead of “I’m excited about exploring the moon.” The last errors that most students made are the usage of verb tense in different circumstances, accounting for 23% Most the students use the infinitive verb in the sentences which reveals a gap in knowledge about how to use the correct form of grammatical tenses, particularly when they must be related to the past tense During speaking, the majority of students did not use the correct tense, for example: - “At that time, I pass the university, so my mum gave me that travel like a present.” The situation here is in the past The error is: “pass” Then the correct sentence should be: 34 “At that time, I passed the university, so my mum gave me that travel like a present.” Or: “I travel to Ha Long Bay last summer with my family.” This sentence should be: “I travelled to Ha Long Bay last summer with my family.” Because this action occurred in the past Another example for using the wrong verb tense: - “I eat a lot of sea food and meet many friendly people here.” The sentence should be: “I ate a lot of sea food and met many friendly people here.” In this study, 5% errors of the subject-verb agreement were identified from the interview data of students While, the number of students who made errors in plural form was considered as the least common error of students, when only student made, occupied nearly 3% 3.5 Discussion Grammatical errors in speaking English are the subject throughout the research The scope of the study is English majors at Thuongmai University By using both quantitative method and qualitative method with questionnaire and recording, the researcher found that there are three common English grammatical errors that the learners should focus their attention on to see the most improvement in their speaking skill- errors in production verb tense, errors in the use of article and errors in the use of preposition Then, from the result of the survey, the researcher has some solutions for students in order to avoid their grammatical errors 35 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS After conducting the survey questionnaire, recording and analyzing the collected data, the most common grammatical errors are determined It can be seen that this issue needs to be solved as soon as possible Therefore, in this chapter, the author will provide some suggestions so as to avoid student’s grammatical errors; especially verb tense, article, and preposition In addition, limitations and suggestions for further studies are also referred 4.1 Summary of the study The purpose of the study was to find out some common grammatical errors made by first-year English Faculty students at Thuongmai University and suggest some possible solutions After observation and analysis from the survey, the study found out the frequent grammatical error types made by students in the speaking process which are verb tense, articles, prepositions Errors in production verb tense happened when talked about the past mainly is omitted in the ending sound of the verb In terms of articles errors, students often used incorrect articles, added unnecessary articles, or omitted articles Preposition errors related to missing incorrect prepositions, and adding unnecessary prepositions The result helps to realize the specific errors students made as well as define their difficulties learning English In addition, the main reasons cause these errors are lack of practice, the influence of the mother tongue, and the performance pressure Among them, lack of practice is the prevailing causes To sum up, making errors in the process of learning new languages is unavoidable Finding errors that students made is extremely essential and mandatory for students learning a language As a consequence, error analysis may assist them in recognizing particular forms of errors and their causes in speaking Then, they can find some suitable methods to improve for themselves As a result, students can make fewer errors while speaking and boost their speaking ability dramatically Besides, teachers also know their students’ errors when speaking and help them find the way to improve this skill 36 4.2 Some solutions for first -year English- majored students at Thuongmai University to avoid grammatical errors when speaking • Reinforce the knowledge of grammar Grammar is important to any languages It is the foundation for the speaker to express his thoughts, the piece that helps people express a message accurately, clearly, and easily to understand Proficient use of English grammar rules will help you build a habit of organizing the language from the moment your ideas are just formed Help learners know how to arrange language so that it is structured to form a precise and easy to understand expression In addition to being able to accurately express their thoughts to others, it also helps to improve thinking in a completely different way from the way of thinking that they have You can learn grammar in the class, listen carefully to what the teacher says then take notes in the notebook Or you can learn by myself via books or apps on a mobile phone For example: English Grammar in Use – Raymond Murphy Image 4.1: English Grammar in Use This is the most popular book for any student when starting to learn English grammar The book contains 145 common grammar headings, clearly presented, easy to understand on each left page is an explained grammar point and on each right page, there are exercises to test comprehension In addition, the book has many practice exercises that synthesize all previous grammar points 37 Oxford English Grammar - Sidney Greenbaum Image 4.2: Oxford English Grammar Oxford English Grammar - another masterpiece of the prestigious Oxford University is considered one of the world's most trusted books (the world’s most trusted reference books) This grammar book will re-systemize the basic grammar topics and specific examples to help you learn and practice easily Understanding and Using English Grammar - Betty Schramfer Azar Image 4.3: Understanding and Using English Grammar This course includes audio to help you practice your listening skills in addition to learning grammar The accompanying exercises are extremely diverse and rich The syllabus offers sample essays in the Speaking and Writing sections This will be the right choice for beginners 38 • Practice at home and record yourself speaking After having good knowledge about grammar rules, you need to practice speaking as much as possible In this way, your speaking skills can get better day by day However, so as to avoid feeling shy caused by making errors, you can practice your speech at home When you practice speaking, it is necessary that you should record yourself either on video or camera so that you can go back and watch yourself to listen for your mistakes It may feel uncomfortable to listen to your own voice, but this is a simple way to pinpoint the words you need to study harder and the grammatical errors when speaking What you need to is simply read a page from a book or a newspaper, or choose any topics on the internet to practice speaking in English Then listen carefully again to see if you can hear what you said clearly, or if you make any grammatical errors After that, you record it again, listen carefully, and compare it with the previous recording, see if you fixed the previous grammatical errors as well as pronunciation errors You can record yourself as many times moving forward and notice how you improve • Improve your speaking skill and listening skill online BBC Learning English The BBC Learning English site is designed for intermediate and advanced English learners to study English by learning BBC- style videos as well as radio broadcasts Every day they have a new video They concentrate on topics like stories in the news, the latest English words and phrases, and even a series of videos that focus on English pronunciation in incredible detail Although there is no interactive speaking feature, each of their podcasts and videos includes postlistening activities for you to check understanding Overall, this is a great resource for practicing listening skills British Council The British Council actually has three separate sections on their website for different ages: kids, adults, and teens Each section features a huge variety of interactive lessons, videos, games, and podcasts to learn just about any skill This 39 means that no matter what level you are at or what topic interests you, you’ll always find something on British Council After you are finished listening or watching, each video and podcast has an exercise for you to complete so you can make sure you understood everything Also, there are discussion boards under many of their activities so you can talk about what you learned with other students Duolingo Duolingo helps you learn new vocabulary and grammar through interactive games and quizzes both online and on their easy-to-use mobile app Duolingo separates each lesson by category (food vocabulary, family vocabulary, the verb “to be,” etc.) and includes helpful tips and notes in case you need more explanation Duolingo also lets you set goals and shows your progress as you use the program You also have to complete lessons to “unlock” new lessons All of this is great for lazy language learners who need a little extra motivation 4.3 Limitations and suggestions for further studies 4.3.1 Limitations of the study In the process of completing research, there still exist a number of limitations regardless of the contribution of time and effort First of all, the limited number of participants with only 80 students could not best represent the whole English Majors at TMU, hence it is not really objective and many students not have a chance to express their opinions Therefore, the results may be less convincing Secondly, being Vietnamese so that while writing the thesis, the researcher inevitably cannot avoid the wrong structure, grammar, and vocabulary despite great efforts to complete the study 4.3.2 Suggestions for further studies Firstly, being aware of the restriction on the number of participants, future research should be implemented in a larger range in order to make the research more objective Secondly, since the study was conducted in a short amount of time, it was unable to cover all forms of speaking mistakes As a result, further studies on grammatical errors could be done in a suitable amount of time to gain a certain result 40 CONCLUSION We can deny the importance of grammar rules in learning any language Grammar is the foundation of a language and, from this, we can share or express our thoughts, ideas correctly and easily understand Learning English is not an exception The effective application of English grammar rules will assist you in developing a habit of organizing language from the moment your thoughts are created However, making grammatical errors is inevitable when speaking English, especially to some freshmen This study was aimed to find out some common grammatical errors made by first-year English Faculty students at Thuongmai University and suggest some possible solutions The summary can be concluded that the students have not been good at verb tenses, articles and prepositions We can see them from the number of errors made via survey questionnaires and interviews Though students all had been taught about grammar before, they were still confused about how to apply grammar rules in speaking It could be caused by lacking of practice speaking and the performance pressure which makes students shy when making errors And another reason is that the mother tongue influents a lot on how to making a sentence Because the Vietnamese structure is different from English structure From the analysis above, the author gave some solutions for students of English Faculty at Thuongmai University to avoid some grammatical errors and improve their speaking skill as well 41 REFERENCES International references Bambang Sugeng (2016), “Common grammatical errors in the use of English as a foreign language: a case in students’ undergraduate theses” Brown, H D (1994), “Teaching by Principles-An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy” Prentice Hall Regents Burns, A., & Joyce, H (1997), “Focus on Speaking” Sydney: National Center for English Language Teaching and Research Dulay, Heidy Mariana Burt and Stephen Krashen (1982), “Language Two” Gerrot and Wignell (1994), “Making Sense of Functional Grammar” Cammeray: Gerd Stabler Goh, C., & Burn, A (2012), “Teaching Grammar and spoken language” "Applied Linguistics, 16" (2), 141-158 Harmer, J (2004), “How to teach writing” New York: Longman Hendrickson, J.M (1987), “Error correction in foreign language teaching: Recent theory, research, and practice In M.H Long & J.C Richards (Eds.), Methodology in TESOL: A book of readings” Boston: Heinle & Heinle p 357 Hervina (2014), “Grammatical Errors in Speaking Made by the Third Year English Department Students STKIP Abdi Pendidikan Payakumbuh” 10 Hybel, D (2001), “Understanding Speaking Interaction” New York: Cambridge University Press 11 Jack C Richards and Willy A Renandya (eds) (2008), “Methodology in Language Teaching: An Anthology of Current Practice” Cambridge University Press 12 Nesreen Saud Alahmadi (2014), “Errors Analysis: A Case Study of Saudi Learner's English Grammatical Speaking Errors” 13 Parupalli Srinivas Rao, (2019), “The importance of speaking skills in English classrooms.” 14 Richards, J C & Schmidt, R (2002), “Dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics (3rd Ed.)” London: Longman 15 Spratt, Pulverness, & Williams (2005), “The TKT Course” 16 Su-Hie Ting (2010), “Grammatical errors in spoken English of university students in oral communication course” 17 Thornbury, S (2005), “How to teach speaking” New York: Pearson Longman 18 Ur, P (1996), “A course in Language Teaching Practice and Theory” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press National references 19 Dan Van Dao (2019), “Some Vietnamese Students’ problems with English grammar: A preliminary study” 20 Nguyen Minh Nhut (2020), “An Analysis of Grammatical Errors by Vietnamese Learners of English” 21 Nguyen Minh Phuong (2019), “A study on common grammatical errors in speaking skill of 11th grade students at high school in Vietnam.” Sources of from the Internet 22 https://examples.yourdictionary.com/bad-grammar-examples.html 23 https://www.thoughtco.com APPENDIX Survey questionnaire Dear first-year students, My name is Thuy I am a final year student in English Faculty of Thuongmai University and I am writing my Graduation Paper entitled “A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first -year English- majored students at Thuongmai University and some possible solutions” This survey aims at finding out common grammatical errors in speaking English I decided to conduct this questionnaire to collect information to contribute to my graduation paper Your assistance in completing this survey is highly appreciated and the data collected are used in the graduation paper only I assure you that your information is confidential and not be identified in any discussions Thank you so much for your cooperation! *Compulsory Part 1: Students' English background information speaking skill Please tick(s) (✓) to choose the suitable answer(s) for the following questions: Question 1: How long have you been learning English? *     Over 10 years years years Less than years Question 2: What you think about the role of speaking skill? *     Very important Important Not very important Not important Question 3: Are you interested in learning grammar? *  Yes  No Question 4: How often you make grammatical mistakes when speaking English? *      Always Often Sometimes Rarely Never Question 5: What you think about the role of grammar in speaking skill? *     Very important Important Not very important Not important Part 2: Common grammatical errors in speaking English Question 6: What are the common grammatical errors you make when speaking? * Errors in production of verb tense Errors in agreement between subject and verb Errors in the use of article Errors in the use of preposition Errors in singular and plural Question 7: What types of errors based on surface structure descriptions? * Omission Addition Misinformatio n Misordering Errors in production of verb tense Errors in agreement between subject and verb Errors in the use of article Errors in the use of preposition Errors in singular and plural Question 8: Why you make these above mistakes? * Strongly agree Being bad at grammar Performance pressure Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree Influence of the mother tongue Lack of practice Others Part 3: Solutions to improve speaking skill of majored students Question 9: What are your errors correction strategies regarding speaking?* Strongly agree Practice speaking as much as possible Asking teachers and friends for help in making sentences Imitating native speakers speaking Attending English speaking courses Listening English as much as possible Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree Question 10: How to limit grammatical errors in speaking English?* Strongly agree Being good at grammar Using simple language Being slow and careful If you are not sure how to say something, don't say it Preparing carefully what you want to speak Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree APPENDIX Speaking Test (Recording audio) Question 1: Do you like traveling? Why/ Why not? Question 2: Tell me about the place that you enjoy the most? Question 3: Which places would you like to visit in the future? ... I am a final year student in English Faculty of Thuongmai University and I am writing my Graduation Paper entitled ? ?A study on common grammatical errors in speaking of first -year English- majored. .. charts, and bar charts, which are easier to read and analyze the data 3.4 Findings and discussion 3.4.1 The reality of speaking skill of first -year English- majored students at Thuongmai University. .. mistakes when making a grammatical sentence There are many factors that affect speaking English such as pronunciation, intonation, linking, rhythm, context, grammar and so on In this study, we will