A STUDY ON IMPROVING THE ABILITY TO USE ARTICLES IN WRITING ESSAYS FOR SECOND YEAR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY

THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH FACULTY - - GRADUATION PAPER A STUDY ON IMPROVING THE ABILITY TO USE ARTICLES IN WRITING ESSAYS FOR SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY Supervisor: Dr Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen Name: Tran Thi An Class: K54N1 Student’s number: 18D170001 Hanoi, 2022 ABSTRACT These days, because of the development of globalization, English is used at every corner of the world including Vietnam It is seen that studying English is a dispensable mission for students at every school, university or college Despite its popularity, English is not an easy cake to eat Apart from speaking skill, writing is also a challenging task that learners are always afraid of and second-year English majored students of Thuongmai University are no exception Among common mistakes caught by them, the mistakes about using articles are concerned the most The author conducted a survey at Thuongmai University's English Department, mainly second-year students, in order to figure out how to enhance their capacity to use articles The information was gathered from 40 essays written by second-year English majors in Writing class This research examines the most common errors made while utilizing articles in essays, such as omission, misuse, and overuse of articles in a phrase The study attempts to identify the reasons of these issues as well as present approaches, answers, and ideas to assist second-year English majors in improving and perfecting their ability to use articles in essays i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT First of all, I want to thank my supervisor, Mrs Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen, for her encouragement, direction, and support in helping me to get a better grasp of the subject and complete the final version of the thesis on time My profound gratitude goes out to my Thuongmai University classmates who are second-year English majors They enthusiastically took part in my survey and provided me with useful and insightful responses In addition, I owe a debt of gratitude to my friends and family, particularly my supportive parents, who helped me complete this project I was able to go through the difficult moments and finish this thesis thanks to their unwavering support Finally, I'd want to express my gratitude to everyone who helped me complete the research in any way Hanoi, April 15, 2022 Student Tran Thi An ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS vii CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Previous studies 1.3 Aims of the study 1.4 Research subjects 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Research methodology 1.7 Organization of the study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .8 2.1 What is article? 2.1.1 Definition 2.1.2 System of article usage 10 2.1.3 Generic reference 10 2.1.4 Specific reference 12 2.2 The importance of learning English Article 17 2.2.1 The importance of learning English grammar 17 2.2.2 The importance of learning English Articles 18 iii 2.3 The problems caught when using articles to write essays 19 2.3.1 Omission 19 2.3.2 Substitutions 20 2.3.3 Addition 21 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS 22 3.1 Setting 22 3.2 Participants 22 3.3 Data collection 22 3.4 Data analysis 24 3.4.1 The students’ reality of using articles when writing English essays 24 3.4.2 The self-learning situation of Thuongmai University students at home 25 3.4.3 Difficulties in using the articles when writing essays 26 3.4.4 The common errors in writing English essays 28 3.4.5 The student’s attitudes toward using articles in writing skill 35 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS .37 4.1 Limitations of the study 37 4.2 Suggestions for further studies 37 4.3 Recommendations and suggestions for students 37 4.3.1 Self-practice 37 4.3.2 Help from classmate 38 4.3.3 Others 38 4.4 Recommendations and suggestions for teachers 38 4.5 Recommendations and suggestions for managers 39 CONCLUSION .41 iv REFERENCES .42 APPENDIX 44 v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS No Abbreviations English meaning Vietnamese meaning Second language, not Ngôn ngữ thứ hai, L2 mother tongue tiếng mẹ đẻ L1 EFL First language, native Ngôn ngữ đầu tiên, language, mother ngôn ngữ mẹ đẻ, tiếng tongue mẹ đẻ English as a Foreign Tiếng Anh Language ngoại ngữ Students (whose first Sinh viên (có ngơn language is not English) ngữ khơng phải EFL student learn English while tiếng Anh) học tiếng living in their own Anh sống đất country nước họ Test of English for TOEIC International Communication STT IELTS giao tiếp quốc tế Surface Structure Phân loại cấu trúc bề Taxonomies mặt International English Bài kiểm tra tiếng Anh Language Testing System vi Hệ thống kiểm tra Anh Ngữ Quốc tế LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS Chart 3.1 The skills that students thought they were lack of confidence……………24 Chart 3.2 The time students spend learning writing in a week………………………25 Chart 3.3 The difficulties that the second-year English majors got when using articles in writing essays………………………………………………………………………… 27 Chart 3.4 The common article errors in English writing……………………….……28 Table 3.1 Students’ common article errors………………………………………… 29 Table 3.2 Recommendations for improving articles knowledge……………………36 vii CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale English is recognized as a tool for communicating in today's modern world and for bridging the gap between countries and cultures Particularly, all industries are becoming globalized, and economic interaction is robust People with good English skills have various options to introduce their items to a new wide market The most challenging component of studying English is writing, among the four competencies because it is used extensively in higher education and in the workplace (As Walsh 2010) Learning English as a foreign language is still a major challenge in our nation, Vietnam, because it is not utilized in daily life, both in written and spoken form However, because of its importance as an international language, students are motivated to study it If students wish to utilize English effectively, they must be proficient in writing It might be an excellent means of marketing with partners in nations since it will be a beneficial method of connecting and communicating That’s why the writing skill is especially focused on in the curriculum at every university including Thuongmai University In fact, students mainly learn how to connect the sentences, complicated grammars, and something complex, they sometimes forget about the tiny but important grammar like articles, so the result of their writing is not good at all Not only writing lessons, the skill to use articles is essential when they learn other subjects such as Commercial Correspondence, Business English, British Culture, etc If the students can not use the articles correctly, they will have to cope with difficulties in writing tasks and affect the whole exercise Thus, it is necessary to research the skill of using articles when writing Due to above reasons, the author picked the research topic " A study on improving the ability to use articles in writing essays for second-year students at Thuongmai University " The study's focus is on second-year English majored students at Thuongmai University who has studied the writing skill subjects and they will have opportunity to apply the knowledge earned from these lessons to the next subjects in the curriculum The study's goal is to identify student faults and their causes, then come up with remedies to help English students at Thuongmai University improve their ability to use articles when writing essays 1.2 Previous studies There have been more and more studies on the grammar error analysis, especially the ones on article analysis  In the world In a study of K Kim and U Lakshmanan “L2 article semantics and second language processing” , they conducted some online and offline tasks for Korean adults who use English as a second language and English native people Through the reading and rating experiment of using “a” and “the”, the study found that Korean L2 learners of English initially tend to organize English articles on the basis of specificity rather than definiteness However, as their proficiency level increases, they begin fluctuating between the two article choice parameter settings: the specificity parameter setting and the definiteness parameter setting Another study “An analysis of article errors among Saudi Female EFL students: A case study” M Alhaysony (2012) examined written samples of 100 first-year female EFL students at the Department of English in the University of Ha’il as they had to write on one of six different descriptive topics related to their life and culture Analysis of errors in students’ written samples revealed that while students made a considerable number of errors in their use of articles according to SST, omission errors were the most frequent, while substitutions were the least frequent Additionally, among all types of omission errors identified, the omission of the indefinite article ‘a’ was the most frequent In sharp contrast, the omission of the indefinite article ‘an’ was the least frequent error Findings showed that 57 % of the errors were interlingual ones, indicating the influence of the native language Thus, interlingual errors are the most commonly occurring types On the other hand, intralingual errors represented 42.56% of For example: “It would be a honor of Mrs Hanh to be her supervisor this semester.” In this sentence, “honor” starts with “h” – consonant sound, however, the pronunciation is completely different, it is pronounced as ['ɔnə] (a silent sound in this situation) , thus in this situation “an” is used instead The correct sentence is “It would be an honor of Mrs Hanh to be her supervisor this semester.” Another error that new English leaners usually caught is the use of “hour”, similarly to “honor”, we must use “an” instead of “a” Incorrect sentence: “Half a hour is not an ideal duration for processing” Correct sentence: “Half an hour is not an ideal duration for processing” Use “an” instead of “a” Similar to the error above, this is not a big deal but writers need to focus on the special situation of article grammar more carefully, For example: Incorrect sentence: “ An university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees at all levels in a variety of subjects.” “U” in “University” is pronounced as /ju/, so “a” is used in this situation, the sentence is rewritten as “A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees at all levels in a variety of subjects.” 3.4.4.3 Addition Besides the substitution and omission errors, addition is also a common error that leaners need to notice when writing English essays These errors happened mostly due to the carelessness and lack of knowledge of learners, sometimes it’s because of the 33 limited time when writing Through 40 essays, the author found out some typical sentences having these errors, let take a deep look on it Add “the” instead of “zero article” Some students still have confusion in distinguishing the use of “the” and zero article, as a result, they made up to 10 errors (account for 25%) during their writing For example: “By protecting wild animals and their habitats, we maintain the natural balance of all life on the Earth.” When “on Earth” is used, it can not contain “the” before “Earth” However, when there is no preposition before Earth, “the” is needed For example: “The Earth moves around the Sun.” We can rewrite as ““By protecting wild animals and their habitats, we maintain the natural balance of all life on Earth.” Another error of “the” is shown as below: Incorrect sentence: “For example, nursing courses tend to attract the more female applicants, and it would be difficult to fill these courses if fifty percent of the places needed to got to males.” Correct sentence: “For example, nursing courses tend to attract more female applicants, and it would be difficult to fill these courses if fifty percent of the places needed to got to males.” Add “a” instead of “zero article” The final error found is adding “a” instead of “zero article” which accounts for 32.5% with 13 errors There are many reasons leading to this kind of error, but the main thing is the lack of knowledge According to the students participating in the interview, they 34 all said that they didn’t review the article grammar well before writing because they thought they had enough knowledge Therefore, the author suggests that before every writing tasks, students need to review the grammar well to have better results, because sometimes the easiest knowledge can even be done wrongly due to subjective behavior There are some sentences that the author discovered through the essays of students For example: “The man was overcome by a sadness when he lost his home.” “Sadness” is a mass noun that can not be counted, so “a” in this situation is omitted The true sentence must be: “The man was overcome by sadness when he lost his home.” In addition, “zero article” is also used before the means of transport For example: Incorrect sentence: “ The group traveled from Ha Noi to Ho Chi Minh city by a train” Correct sentence: “ The group traveled from Ha Noi to Ho Chi Minh city by train” 3.4.5 The student’s attitudes toward using articles in writing skill After conducting the survey and interview with students, the author collected many useful information to support this study All of them agreed that writing task at university is quite hard for students, indeed the usage of articles is quite a hard tasks too, it requires lot of knowledge including vocabulary, grammar, expressing, etc But they all also sympathize that if they want a better results at university or finding jobs after graduation, they need to write English essays well and of course, they have to swallow the article grammar as well They also shared about methods help them improve the ability to use articles in writing English essays and avoid making the common errors They read books, news: practice writing English essays: usually ask classmates or teacher give them feedback to their assignments and note the errors down whenever they made mistakes The author thinks that these methods are very useful and systematic Besides, in the world of 4.0 35 technology, they also suggest leaners to find out some apps, websites or books to improve their performance in using articles as well as writing English essays The author received lots of recommendations from the participants as below No Books No App/ Website Grammar in Use Grammarly Longman English Grammar Google Docs Cambridge Dictionary Google Translate Hemingway Editor Table 3.2 Recommendations for improving articles knowledge The result of solutions above is the significant reduction of mistakes when writing essays And the evidence has been proven by the high scores of tests Besides, the three interviewees said that the subject “ Writing skills” at Thuongmai University was very helpful for their future careers They can improve writing skills in generral and grammar skills in particular Moreover, they have more knowledge about the writing skills and know how to write a good essay to improve the result for the other subjects and exams 36 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 4.1 Limitations of the study As indicated in the introduction, this is a case study on developing the capacity to employ articles in essay writing The author did her best to identify the most typical article problems in writing essays committed by second-year English majors at Thuongmai University, as well as the reasons of such mistakes and proposed solutions However, the study only examines a class of 40 students, which is a small sample size It would be impossible to establish whether the same results would be obtained with a bigger sample size Finally, the study examines ways for rectifying typical article faults in essay writing, ensuring that only material relevant to these concerns is included There is a lot of material on the subject that needs to be looked into more 4.2 Suggestions for further studies Based on the research constraints, it is critical to modify these limits for future investigations The research should be expanded to include additional students from different departments at Thuongmai University A bigger sample size is also required for future research Furthermore, future research should be based on more theoretical literature in order to discover other aspects of English grammar 4.3 Recommendations and suggestions for students 4.3.1 Self-practice According to the findings of this study, one of the major causes of frequent errors in using articles when writing English essays is a lack of practice As a result, students should put in as much practice time as possible This can help students broaden their experience, learn more about how to write a decent essay, and have a better understanding of the language Self-practice is an easy solution to follow because students can self-study whenever they have free time When self-practicing writing English essays, students should make an outline of the writing first, then note the 37 sentences which should use articles and then pay attention to it After finishing the writing, students need to read again several times, if seeing errors, especially article errors, they should note them down on their notebook to remember longer 4.3.2 Help from classmate Aside from self-practice and self-correction, students should seek assistance from their peers Peer correction is a classroom practice in which students correct one another Peer correction is an effective strategy because learners feel less scared when they are assisted by others in the class Article errors are, perhaps, kind of tiny errors, but very important to make the writing more perfect Peer assistance when correcting the article errors is really important accordingly By correcting for each others, students may exchange information and even debate theories They can all help to encourage language development in general, as well as improve both speaking and writing abilities in particular 4.3.3 Others Students must pay attention in class to increasing their ability to use articles They should also have a notebook in which they may jot down all of the theory of regular and exceptional situations They might then devote a significant amount of time to revising grammar, vocabulary, and so on Other sources of information, such as Google or forums, will be quite beneficial in gaining expertise 4.4 Recommendations and suggestions for teachers The researcher offers some ideas for other English teachers about the teaching of grammar and the emphasis on writing and error correction To begin, teachers should prioritize what they are correcting and grading Don't focus solely on grammar so that students believe they can only rely on grammar to use articles correctly They are suggested to lead students care about the special circumstances that native foreign usually use, so that students can have more flexible usage of articles 38 Secondly, distinguishing between learners who have attempted and those who have not The instructor should ask each student to revise their own writing or employ a pair system in which students review each other's work before delivering it to the teacher to check In this scenario, the instructor should encourage their students to be extra cautious and to double-check their work before submitting it Thirdly, English professors at Thuongmai University should provide appropriate feedback on their students' written essays They should indicate clearly what students did wrong, the specific errors, and guide them to prevent those errors next time Fourthly, before beginning any writing examinations, teachers should provide students some notes about the tough scenarios that may occur in the themes; this will help the students prepare well for the test Following that, English teachers should be prepared to recognize and treat students' article faults using appropriate teaching tactics Because only the learned can impart the correct knowledge Students should be given extensive feedback and specific examples during the teaching process to assist them comprehend the topics presented 4.5 Recommendations and suggestions for managers Managers should have some remedies in place to prevent the common English article errors produced by second-year students at Thuongmai University's Faculty of English, such as: First, the management of the school library should provide more books connected to grammatical English books, or English papers from prominent writers all over the globe, so that students may develop their English abilities and knowledge Thuongmai University is currently constructing a new library to better serve professors' teaching and students' learning Second, the Internet is very important in this century of technology, so I suggest the Wi-Fi should be put around the university to help the students access to Internet to search for information quickly 39 Following that, the Faculty of English at Thuongmai University has established several events for students to test their English talents, such as the Olympic of English, and so on However, in my opinion, the management could arrange more English tournaments on a monthly or semester basis to measure students' ability If more contests are conducted, students will study harder and have a better understanding of English Finally, the management should train professors in the Faculty of English to place a greater focus on assisting students in dealing with the time-consuming and laborious work of error correction 40 CONCLUSION This study aimed at working out the solutions for improving the ability to use articles when writing essays for second-year English majored students at Thuongmai University Based on the instrumentations as survey questionnaire, interviews and student’s essays assessments, the three main types of mistake were presented along with the solutions to improve the ability to use articles when writing essays Firstly, there are three main types of errors when using articles when writing English essays made by second-year English majored students a Thuongmai University They are omission, substitution and addition Secondly, there are several causes of these mistakes in using articles including different cultural backgrounds, different English level, the first language interference and unclear instructions of tasks Besides, in the process of researching this study, the author fingured out lacking of practice and lacking of knowledge about the subject were also two important causes Finally, some solutions and techniques are also provided in the study to improve the knowledge for students, teachers and managers The researcher hopes that this study will be useful for students, teachers and managers in the process of learning and teaching grammar, especially the articles 41 REFERENCES [1] Nedelcu, Carmen English Grammar Universitaria, 2004 [2] Debata, Pradeep Kumar "The importance of grammar in English language teaching-A reassessment." Language in India 13.5 (2013): 482-486 [3] Marsh, G P Lectures on the English Language London: O U.P 1966 Print [4] Han, Na-Rae, Martin Chodorow, and Claudia Leacock "Detecting errors in english article usage with a maximum entropy classifier trained on a large, diverse corpus." LREC 2004 [5] Crompton, Peter "Article errors in the English writing of advanced L1 Arabic learners: The role of transfer." Asian EFL Journal 50.1 (2011): 4-35 [6] Alhaysony, Maha "An analysis of article errors among Saudi female EFL students: A case study." Asian Social Science 8.12 (2012): 55 [7] Chesterman, Andrew (1998) Contrastive Functional Analysis John Benjamins Publishing ISBN 978-90-272-5060-5 Retrieved December 2012 [8] English Grammar Lesson - Articles! - ELC" ELC - English Language Center 2016-12-23 Retrieved 2017-09-14 [9] Cowan, Ron (2008) The Teacher's Grammar of English Cambridge University Press p 214 ISBN 978-0-521-80973-3 Retrieved December 2012 [10] Yule, George (1998) Explaining English Grammar Oxford University Press p 41 ISBN 0-19-437172-7 [11] Nopjirapong, Ratchanee "An Analysis of Article Errors in Thai university student’s Composition." Unpublished Master of Arts thesis, Srinakarinwirot University, 42 Bangkok, Thailand (2011) [12] Trịnh Công Minh “Errors when using English articles of Vietnamese” Diss H.: ĐHKHXH&NV, 2014 [13] Yen, Tran Thi, and Tran Nhat Le "ENHANCING THE COMPETENCE IN USING ARTICLES FOR ENGLISH MAJORS THROUGH READING BBC NEWS." [14] Quirk, Randolph “A university grammar of English Pearson Education India”, 2007 43 APPENDIX 1: QUESTIONNAIRE Hello everyone! My name is Tran Thi An I am the senior at Thuongmai University The aim of this questionaire is to collect information to contribute to my graduation study I hope that you guys can support me to finish this questionaire Thank you so much! Please choose the answer that you agree with the following question: Question 1: Your gender is A Male B Female C Prefer not to say Question 2: How long have you been learning English? A years B 4- years C - 10 years D Over 10 years Question 3: Of four skills, which skill(s) you think you are bad at? Listening Speaking Reading Writing Question 4: How often you practice writing a week? A Under hours B 3-5 hours C 6-8 hours D Over 10 hours 44 Question 5: Do you find it difficult to identify the use of "a, an, the and zero" article? A It's easy for me B It's quite difficult, but I still know to identify C It's very difficult, I can't identify them Question 6: What kinds of article errors you usually make? Addition Omission Substitutions Others …………………………………………… Question 7: Please put a tick the choice if you ever made these errors while using articles in writing English essays? Omission of "the" before the centuries Omission of “the” before superlatives Omission of “the” before a defining relative clause Use "the " instead of "a" Use “a” instead of “an” Add “a” instead off “Zero Article” Add "the" instead of "Zero Article" Others:………………………………………………… Question 8: The reason(s) why you make article errors? Poor teaching in class Lack of grammar and grammar Differences between English and Vietnamese Limitation of time when writing 45 Difficult topics Others: ………………………………………… Question 9: What actions did you to improve your ability to use articles? Review grammar Practice writing English essays everyday Ask teachers and friends for help Read the references from experts on the world Take notes whenever the mistakes happen Create teams to learn together Learn through Internet, apps, website, Others:……………………………………… Question 10: Some books/ websites you want to recommend learners to improve their knowledge about articles usage? English Grammar in Use Longman English Grammar Practice Cambridge Dictionary (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/) English Grammar 101 (https://www.englishgrammar101.com/) TOPICA Native (https://topicanative.edu.vn/tu-hoc-tieng-anh/tieng-anhgiao-tiep/ngu-phap-tieng-anh-tieng-anh-giao-tiep/) Others: …………………… Question 11: Learning through apps on mobile phones is popular recently, what apps you want to suggest for learning online? Your answer:………………………… 46 APPENDIX 2: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS Question 1: Can you brief some information about yourself? Question 2: Do you find the writing task in the university’s too hard for students? Question 3: If you have to choose between apps and books, what will you choose to learn grammar about articles at home? - The end 47 ... writing Due to above reasons, the author picked the research topic " A study on improving the ability to use articles in writing essays for second- year students at Thuongmai University " The study' s... improving the ability to use articles when writing essays for second- year English majored students at Thuongmai University Based on the instrumentations as survey questionnaire, interviews and... use? ??what Hawkins (1978) referred to as 'structural information,' which relates to prepositional phrases, relative clauses, or adjectives—aid in locating the referent Hawkins amended his location theory