(LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ) A Study on Structural and Semantic patterns of Wh-questions in English. M.A Thesis Linguistics 60 22 15

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES  NGUYỄN VĂN CƯƠNG A STUDY ON STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC PATTERNS OF WH-QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ MƠ HÌNH CẤU TRÚC VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA CÂU HỎI CÓ TỪ HỎI TRONG TIẾNG ANH M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 HANOI, 2011 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES  NGUYỄN VĂN CƯƠNG A STUDY ON STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC PATTERNS OF WH-QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ MƠ HÌNH CẤU TRÚC VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA CÂU HỎI CÓ TỪ HỎI TRONG TIẾNG ANH M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr VÕ ĐẠI QUANG HANOI, 2011 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com iii ABSTRACT The thesis entitled “A Study on structural and semantic patterns of Whquestions in English” is to analyze and illustrate the types of wh-questions and their semantic features This one is also to investigate the students' categories of mistakes when using wh-questions, find out the causes, suggest some possible solutions to these matters, and propose several pedagogical implications for the teachers at the research site This study is divided into three major sections The first one sets out the rationale of the study as well as the aims, the methodology and the design of the study The second section contains three chapters Chapter offers the most relevant factors involving a wh-question such as notions of wh-questions, wh-rhetorical questions, operators, wh-words and their semantic features relating information structure, presupposition and theme and rheme Chapter is to describe the types of wh-questions based on structures and discourse and the types of presuppositions in wh-questions Chapter is the study about the mistakes that the students in Kinh Mon high school often make in using a wh-question The data were collected among 100 eleven grade students in Kinh Mon high school by means of questionnaires The findings highlighted students’ categories of mistakes including wrong use of whwords, wrong use of operators, non-inversion failure and some other subtypes Through the findings, the author also assumes some causes of the mistakes and suggests some possible solutions in order to help students avoid committing these types of mistakes TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Retention i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Table of contents iv List of tables vii Part 1: Introduction 1 Rationale Aims of the study Objectives of the study .2 Scope of the study .2 Methods of the study Design of the study Part 2: Development Chapter : Literature review 1.1 English questions 1.1.1 Definition of question .4 1.1.2 Definition of Wh-questions in English .5 1.1.2.1 Wh-information question 1.1.2.2 Wh-rhetorical questions 1.2 English operators 1.3 Question words 1.3.1 Wh-word functions 1.3.1.1 Wh-words as interrogative pronouns .7 1.3.1.2 Wh-words as determiners 10 1.3.1.3 Wh-words as adverbs .10 1.4 Given - New Information Structure .12 1.4.1 Given information 12 1.4.2 New information .12 1.4.3 Information structure 12 1.5 Theme -Rheme Structure 13 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com v 1.5 Theme- Rheme Structure in wh-questions 14 1.6 Presupposition 15 Chapter : The structural and semantic patterns of English wh-questions 16 2.1 STRUCTURAL PATTERNS OF ENGLISH WH-QUESTIONS 16 2.1.1 Wh-words as subjects of the wh-questions 16 2.1.2 Non-subject wh-questions .18 2.1.3 Verb-oriented questions 19 2.1.4 Wh-questions with prepositions 20 2.1.5 Emphatic wh-questions .21 2.1.6 Negative structures in Wh- questions 21 2.1.7 Response questions .21 2.1.7.1 Short response questions .21 2.1.7.2 Wh-echo questions 22 2.1.8 Multiple wh-element Questions 23 2.1.9 Wh-rhetorical questions .24 2.1.10 Formulaic wh-questions .26 2.2 SEMANTIC PATTERNS OF ENGLISH WH-QUESTIONS 28 Chapter 3: Errors made by eleventh grade students in using wh-questions 31 3.1 Introduction 31 3.2.Setting .31 3.2.1 Setting of the study 31 3.2.2 Participants 31 3.3 Research instrument - Questionnaire 32 3.2.1 Objectives of the survey questionaire .32 3.2.2 The Survey questionnaire 32 3.4 Procedures 33 3.5 Findings 33 3.5.1 Wrong use of wh-word 35 3.5.2 Wrong use of operator 37 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com vi 3.5.3 Non-inversion failure 39 3.5.4 Other types 40 3.6 The causes of Vietnamese students’ mistakes 41 3.7 Solutions to the problems 42 3.8 Summary of findings 43 PART 3: CONCLUSION 44 Conclusions 44 Implications of the study for teaching English wh-questions 45 Limitations of the study 45 Suggestions for further research 46 REFERENCES .47 APPENDIX I TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: The number and percentage of each category of mistake Table 2: Number and percentage of mistakes concerning the use of wh-word Table 3: Number and percentage of misused operators Table 4: Number and percentage of inversion mistakes Table 5: Number and percentage of other types of mistakes TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Part 1: Introduction Rationale It is undeniable that English has been an essential means of communication and more and more Vietnamese students are aware of the importance of English to their study and their future The ability to communicate clearly and efficiently in English contributes to the success of the learners at school and later in every phase of life However, the sad fact is that students‟ English proficiency especially their ability to communicate in English orally does not really meet employers‟ demand At Kinh Mon High School, English is a compulsory subject in the curriculum and it is considered as a major subject for the high school examination It is taught with the purpose that students have some basic knowledge of English in order to communicate and to use it as a key to science and technology However, there still exist many difficulties facing the students They often keep quiet during speaking lessons; they mind speaking English There are many students who have good knowledge of grammar, can reading and writing exercises wonderfully but they cannot express themselves in English and find it hard to make questions to discuss during the speaking lessons They often make mistakes in using the correct question words and in giving the right form of a wh-question Besides making the discussion during a speaking lesson successful, questions also play an important role in our daily life We are not able to keep communicating going on well without asking questions We ask in order to exchange information, ideas, feeling and knowledge On the other hand, we sometimes ask questions not for the above purposes but for confirmation, refusal irony or reply avoidance It is undeniable that questions can not be missed in communication English wh-questions have long been the subject of the study of many researchers and linguists Each of them investigates some aspects of this type of questions Their study on English wh-questions have provided a great help for Vietnamese learners of English There are some MA thesis that pay attention to English Wh-questions Hoa N.T.X (1996) studies English questions in terms of S-P inversion Meanwhile, Ms Nguyet D.T.M (1996) pays her attention to the aspect of English questions concerning teachers' questions and politeness strategies And Tuyet L.T.A contrasts English wh-questions and their equivalents in TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com Vietnamese in terms of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features Especially there is also a Ph.D dissertation investigating English Wh-questions Quang V.D (2000) looks at contrative analysis of questions in English and Vietnamese in terms of semantic and pragmatic features in his Ph.D project Generally, such researchers mentioned above studied English whquestions from different angles and mostly either focus on syntactic and semantic features of English Wh-questions or provide a theoretically general picture of wh-questions between the two languages, English and Vietnamese However, besides such certain contributions, there still exist some gaps that need dealing with There are a lot of aspects concerning English wh-questions, however, in this paper the author would like to devote all my interest in the structural and semantic patterns of Whquestions in English Then he would like to investigate the kinds of mistakes in using whquestions the students in Kinh Mon High School often make Basing on the findings, the author can make some suggestions in order to help the students to overcome these difficulties and make questions fluently Aims of the study The aims of the study are to: - help raise the students' awareness of structural and semantic features of English wh-questions - deepen the author's knowledge for the improvement of teaching English wh-questions to Vietnamese learners of English Objectives of the study The objectives of the study are to : - examine the structural and semantic patterns of English Wh-questions - identify some common errors and mistakes made by Vietnamese students and present some suggested solutions The objectives of the study can be realized through the research questions: What are the structural and semantic patterns of English wh-questions? TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com What categories of mistakes the students in Kinh Mon High school often make in using English wh-questions? What should be done to improve the students' skill in using English wh-questions? It is hoped that the findings from this study will be of some benefits to teachers and students at Kinh Mon high school Scope of the study The study on structural and semantic patterns of Wh-questions in English focuses on English wh-questions from the perspectives of structural and semantic features There are two types of wh-questions will be focused: wh-information questions and wh-rhetorical questions The author also conducted a questionnaire to find out the mistakes made by Vietnamese students, and from these mistakes, some possible solutions to the problems identified Methods of the study A combination of different methods of analysis will be used in this study Firstly, the author applies the descriptive method to find out the structural and semantic patterns of the English wh-questions The study is conducted by carefully collecting materials from various sources to have full-blown information of English wh-questions Secondly, the author designs a questionaire in order to find out what categories of mistakes the studetnts often make when using wh-questions The students' errors and mistakes will be analized All comments, remarks, recommendations and conclusion are based on the data analysis The sheets of questionaire will be collected randomly so that this research will help to gain reliable data and a close investigation into the problems that the students are encountering Design of the study This study is divided into three main parts: - Part is the Introduction of the study It includes the rationale for choosing the topic, the aims, the objectives, the scope, the methods and design of the study - Part contains three chapters, in which Chapter provides readers some theoretical background on English questions in general, wh-words and their functions and the TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 34 3.5.1 Wrong use of wh-word From the table below, we can see that the majority of the questions ( fifteen out of twenty) in the questionaire have mistakes relating to the use of the wh-word Only five questions ( 25%) not have a mistake of this type This is because in these five questions the information needed to ask is very clear Of the other fifteen, Question seems to be by far the most difficult question Ninety two out of one hundred students make mistakes in using the wh-word here When designing this question, the aim of the author is to test the students' use of which with definite reference However, most students use "what" instead of "which" There are some students know that they should use "which", but they separate the determiner "which" from the noun phrase Some of them say Which you like best of the five qualities for true friendship? or Which true friendship you like best? Item Questions Wrong use of wh-word number percentage Who called me while I was out? Who did you write to last night? What is your father? 17 17% Whose car are you driving? 63 63% What is Mr Ba doing? 17 17% What does her boyfriend look like? 80 80% How is she now? 4% Which of the five qualities for true friendship 92 92% you like best? When would be the best time for a picnic? 23 23% 10 When does your father often cook his special dish? 9% 11 How does she often go to school? 16 16% 12 How many students are there in your class? 6% 13 How often you go out at night? 11 11% 14 Why didn't Mr Smith attend the meeting? TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 35 15 What don't you mind doing? 9% 16 Where you often spend your summer holiday? 17 Where is the best place for a honeymoon? 18 What did she give you? 19 What happened outside Halong city early this 4% September? 20 What kind of books does she like best? 89 89% Table 2: Number and percentage of mistakes concerning the use of wh-word The second most confusing question is the counterpart of which with definite reference, that is what with indefinite reference question 20 In this case nearly ninety percent of the students produce a wrong question Most of them use only what or which instead of what kind of books in this sentence Although what and which as determiners are quite commonly used in everyday conversation, students may not have much chance to practise using these two words Therefore, they are very likely to make mistakes when making these two of questions Personally, I think that the students should be helped to distinguish between these two question words The third striking mistake appears in question In this question, the students have to use "what like?' to ask about the appearance of a person This question is also quite commonly uttered everyday, however, only 20 students make the correct question Most of the students use "how" in this question I think, the reason for their mistake in this sentence is that they are influenced by their mother tongue and that they think when asking questions about the adverbs and adjectives, they should use "how" Therefore, when the students are asked to make question in situation 7, only a mall number of them get the wrong question ( only 4%) From this finding, the author suggests that teachers should differentiate between the use of "how" and that of " what like?" when searching the information relating general health and appearance Another determiner causes the students much trouble is "whose" In question 4, the students should use "whose" to make question However, many students use "what" or "who" Some know that they need to use "whose" but they not put the noun "car" right after the TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 36 determiner "whose", they put the noun "car" at the end of the question, instead Therefore, when guiding students how to make questions with the question word "whose", teachers should stress that there must be a noun after "whose" except when "Whose" appears alone as an anaphoric noun phrase In short, the students more frequently make mistakes in using "which, what, and whose' as determiners of a noun phrase and in using " what .like?" to search information relating to the identity and appearance of a person 3.5.2 Wrong use of operator Item Questions Wrong use of operator number percentage Who called me while I was out? 27 27% Who did you write to last night? 42 42% What is your father? 33 33% Whose car are you driving? 27 27% What is Mr Ba doing? 7% What does her boyfriend look like? 21 21% How is she now? Which of the five qualities for true friendship you like best? When would be the best time for a picnic? 12 12% 10 When does your father often cook his special dish? 41 41% 11 How does she often go to school? 23 23% 12 How many students are there in your class? 13 How often you go out at night? 32 32% 14 Why didn't Mr Smith attend the meeting? 31 31% 15 What don't you mind doing? 43 43% 16 Where you often spend your summer holiday? 26 26% 17 Where is the best place for a honeymoon? 4% TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 37 18 What did she give you? 36 36% 19 What happened outside Halong city early this 32 32% September? 20 What kind of books does she like best? 4% Table 3: Number and percentage of misused operators As can be seen from table 3, the frequency of mistakes as wrong operators is the highest Seventen out of twenty questions have mistakes in using operators and the operators associated with "do" have the highest percentage of inaccuracy Many students make that type of mistakes because in those situations, the auxiliary "do" does not appear Therefore, most of them use "be" instead of '"do" For example in question 2, they often say Who were you write to last night? or in question question 11, they may use How is she often go to school? Another type of mistake is that in questions asking information about the subjects of the questions, in these situations, the students just need to replace the underlined words or phrases with the right question words, but they also add operators in front of the main verbs For example, in question 1, the students may ask Who did call me while I was out? or in question 19, they may say what did happen outside Halong city early this September? The third common mistakes appear in negative wh-questions number 14 and 15 In these two questions, although the auxiliary "do" has appeared in the situations, the matter here is that, the students not use the negative word "not" It means that they should have made negative questions but they did not By analysing the table above, the author can conclude that the students are more likely to use "be" instead of "do" in the situations where the auxiliary "do" does not appear And if "do" appears such as in negative questions, the students may omit the negative word "not" in these questions 3.5.3 Non-inversion failure TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 38 Item Questions Inversion failure number percentage Who called me while I was out? Who did you write to last night? What is your father? Whose car are you driving? 12 12% What is Mr Ba doing? 6% What does her boyfriend look like? How is she now? Which of the five qualities for true friendship you like best? When would be the best time for a picnic? 10 When does your father often cook his special dish? 11 How does she often go to school? 12 How many students are there in your class? 13 How often you go out at night? 14 Why didn't Mr Smith attend the meeting? 26 26% 15 What don't you mind doing? 17 17% 16 Where you often spend your summer holiday? 17 Where is the best place for a honeymoon? 18 What did she give you? 19 What happened outside Halong city early this September? 20 What kind of books does she like best? Table 4: Number and percentage of inversion mistakes A less common category of mistakes involving the inversion of operators and subjects in non-subjects questions In this case, two types of questions that the students sometimes make mistakes in inverting the operators to the front of the subjects are those using the present TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 39 tense ( be as the operators) and the negative questions Some of the students only replace the underlined words by the wh-words For example, the students sometimes say " Whose car you are driving?" instead of ' Whose car are you driving?" or " Why Mr Smith didn't attend the meeting?" In this type of mistake, the author suggests that teachers should stress the importance of putting the operator before the subjects in non-subject wh-questions, especially when the auxiliary is "be" and in negative questions 3.5.4 Other types Item Questions Who called me while I was out? Who did you write to last night? What is your father? Whose car are you driving? What is Mr Ba doing? What does her boyfriend look like? How is she now? Which of the five qualities for true friendship Others number percentage 46 46% 94 94% you like best? When would be the best time for a picnic? 10 When does your father often cook his special dish? 11 How does she often go to school? 12 How many students are there in your class? 13 How often you go out at night? 14 Why didn't Mr Smith attend the meeting? 15 What don't you mind doing? 16 Where you often spend your summer holiday? TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 40 17 Where is the best place for a honeymoon? 18 What did she give you? 19 What happened outside Halong city early this September? 20 What kind of books does she like best? Table 5: Number and percentage of other types of mistakes After collecting and carefully analysing the data of the questionaire, the author finds that there are two common mistakes which are the one involving the omission of "do" in question 15 and "are there" in question 12 The most serious mistake is the omission of "doing" in question 15 In this survey, the author has designed two situations in which the students have to ask about the main verbs of the sentence In question 5, all 100 students know that they have to replace the word watching a film on T.V by the word doing However, in situation 15, only four students make the right questions and ninety four others forget to use "doing" to replace "correcting my students' papers" This is because the students may think that they only need the verb "mind" in the question Therefore, there is a need for teachers to help students to overcome this mistake Another mistake surprising the author is that nearly half of the students ( 46%) leave " are there" from their questions Their question is only " How many students in your class?" I think that this mistake is due to the influence of their mother tongue on their target language This type of mistake raise the question that teachers should help their students overcome the effect of their mother tongue when learning a foreign language 3.6 The causes of Vietnamese students’ mistakes From the analysis, students‟ difficulties in making wh-questions are concluded to be caused by four factors The first one is misunderstanding of wh-words, which means that students only remember a part of the semantic features of the wh-words and they use them in every situation For example, the quesition word "what" can be used in many situations, not just to ask for non-personal nouns, but they are used to ask about the person and adjectives as well The second one is the misuse of operators Many of them can not remember when to use TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 41 " be" and when to use "do" In other words, they think only "be" is the only operator in situations when "do" is absent They also find it hard to use the correct tense of the sentence The third factor is that the students have difficulties in memorising the structures of the whquestions though they are quite simple The last but not the least important factor is that students may find it hard to remember some fixed idiomatic expressions, such as “What like?”, " What for?" " Why didn't " If the students not have much time to practise these, they may not remember and therefore, they may misuse them 3.7 Solutions to the problems Wh-questions have been taught in junior high school; however, teachers not take much notice of them They only emphasize the grammatical rules As for the different meanings of wh-words, they don‟t put much emphasis, not to mention the subtle differences of the whwords which share the same meaning, for example " which" and " what" with definite reference and indefinite reference respectively There are three drawbacks in teaching whquestions in present classroom practice The first one is the ignorance of wh-words and wh-questions Since the grammatical rules of this type of questions are very easy, teachers not often put much emphasis on them They only ask students to memorize the grammatical rules They not emphasize the importance of using wh-questions correctly in discussing and exchanging information The ignorance of wh-questions in teaching causes students to underestimate the importance of asking questions Besides, they not know the precise roles of each wh-word They only know that who is used to ask about people and what is for non-person Although the grammatical characteristics of wh-quesitions are very easy, their roles and the situations in which they are used are actually complicated Teachers should not ignore them The second main problem is that teachers during their lessons are so used to asking questions themselves that they automatically regard their students' main role as to answer what has been asked rather than to make questions As a result, students may have a lot of time practising listening to and answering the questions, but have so little practice asking them Therefore, students have a lot of difficulties giving a question to find out some certain information or respond to the addressers while the communication process is taking place This cause can be TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 42 called " students' lack of practice" In order to solve the problem above, teachers should try to encourage students to participate actively in the lessons by making full use of the situations in each lesson for the students to discuss, to exchange their opinions freely as well as try hard to finish all related exercises assigned by the teachers The open and friendly interactions between teachers and students and among students themselves can motivate the students When the students feel confident in sharing their opinion by making and answering questions, their communicative competence will also improve By that way, their skill to make questions will be better Although the structures of the wh-questions are quite easy, many students still make mistakes in forming them This raises the need that teachers should help them to distinguish among the types of wh-questions The normal wh-questions come in two basic varieties, depending on where the questions get the information The first type is that the information gap is in the predicate and the other one is in the subject With a predicate information gap, the word order becomes object-verb-subject (OVS) In a subject information gap question, however, the word order remains as in a normal statement Moreover, in a wh-question, wh-word stands at the beginning of the sentence, the subject and operator must be inverted; and, if no operator is present, must be added to carry tense For example: " What did you eat for lunch today?' Another matter is that when the wh-word acts as a determiner ( Whose book is that?) or an adjective ( What colour is your car?); the noun modified by the word word ( book and colour, respectively) must be fronted along with the wh-word Therefore, it is necessary to help students to master the structural patterns of wh-questions Through the careful description, the English wh-words, their functions, the operator system, how these two items are used to form a question and what presupposition is it in each question are made out Students can clearly distinguish these things and apply them in the right situations In addition, through the study findings, the students' difficulties in making a whquestion are anticipated and therefore, can be prevented in advance In other words, most problems mentioned above can be solved 3.8 Summary of findings From the analysis above, we can come to the following conclusion about the categories of mistakes that the students in Kinh Mon high school often make TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 43 The study has come up with four main findings Firstly, seemingly, the students not have much time practising using wh-words as well as making questions Therefore, many students are still confused how to use the correct wh-word in each situation This is the reason why the majority of the students make the mistakes called " wrong use of wh-words" The second common mistake is the misuse of operator They often use " be" instead of "do" when making questions about the situations where "do" does not appear or they use the wrong tense Additionally, they may not invert the operators to the front of the subjects in non-subject whquestions Moreover, they may omit "do" in verb-oriented questions especially when "do" is the object of another verb One more prominant mistake is the omission of "are there" in the question asking about the quantity On the whole, the study has proved to be beneficial as it helps the author learn about the msitakes that the students make Through the findings, he has assumed some causes of the mistakes and he has suggested some ways to help the students overcome their mistakes and improve their English competence PART 3: CONCLUSION Conclusions TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 44 As far as the theoretical background is concerned, the study has briefly presented concepts of wh-questions both wh- information questions and wh-rhetorical questions, operators and wh-words and their functions as well as the wh-word semantic features, and some other related factors such as information structure, theme- rheme structure, and the most semantic feature of a wh-question- presuppositions This theory has been a solid framework for the analysis of the wh-questions Structurally, the English wh-questions are divided into several subtypes based on their characteristics Basing on the functions of the wh-words, we have wh-questions for subjects, wh-questions for non-subjects and wh-questions for the main verb Wh-questions are also devided basing on their discourse functions such as reply questions, formulaic questions and rhetorical questions Semantically, the author describes six types of presupposition of the wh-questions based on Yule (1983) : the existential, the factive, the non-factive, the lexical, the structural and the counterfactual By analysing the sheets of questionaire collected from one hundred students in Kinh Mon high school some interesting findings have been made It is discovered that there are four most striking types of mistakes that the students often make They are wrong use of wh-word, wrong use of operator, non-inversion failure and the omissions of "do" in questions about main verbs and the omission of "are there" From the result of the survey, the author can assume the causes of the mistakes and suggest some ways to help the students to overcome the difficulties in making wh-questions Implications of the study for teaching English wh-questions Most students find it hard to make a correct wh-question and therefore, they not participate actively in the discussion activities during a speaking lesson and can not communicate freely and confidently The findings are very important for English teachers If English teachers can make out the problems, they can figure out some solutions to help their students Therefore, the purposes of this study are to find out: (1) what types of wh-questions are the most difficult to the students, (2) whether students use the operator system correctly, (3) what other difficulties students have in making a wh-question, (4) why they use these wh-words and operators wrongly TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 45 To find out students‟ difficulties, the first step is to understand the usages and meanings of English wh-words and wh-question formation and semantic features After understanding all these matters, teachers should realize the difficulties in students‟ learning and using whquestions The main difficulty lies not only in their forms but in the meaning aspect as well In addition, students are also confused with the subtle differences among the functions of whwords in each situation One of the suggestions is that wh-words should be presented according to the functions The other is about ways which help students to realize the functions and the use of English operators in certain setting by regarding to the context of utterance First, the tenses of the sentences and their auxiliaries should be clearly defined Then show the students how and when to use these auxiliaries in questions Besides, teachers also remind the students that when asking about the verbs of the sentence, "do" must be used to replace that verb Teachers should create some real world situations to make them acquainted with the different usages of wh-words and wh-questions The last thing to be taken into consideration is that students should be encouraged to freely participate in the discussion activities By that way, students' abilities to ask questions will be improved Limitations of the study This paper is to describe the structural and semantic features of English wh-questions, and to identify the errors and mistakes likely to be made by students The author has subjectively drawn out some findings about the structures and semantics that are used in English wh-questions However, with limited amount of time spent on the research and limited number of participants, the results of the categories of errors and mistakes are confined to the eleventh graders in Kinh Mon High School only The author has put a lot of efforts on this study and also got much help from teachers, friends and family Even though, it is desired that this study may be of some help to those who are interested in the topic, it will be a great source of happiness for the writer if readers contribute for the thesis improvement Your reading, judgment, suggestions will be highly appreciated with gratefulness However, for such a large topic as this, it requires much more efforts, time and knowledge to cover, therefore, the study can not avoid imperfection and limitation Suggestions for further research On the basis of this study, the following further research may be feasible TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 46 - wh-questions viewed from the perspective of pragmatics REFERENCES TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 47 Alexander, L.G (1992) Longman English Grammar Longman Brown, G., and George Yule (1983) Discourse Analysis Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Carter, R., Mc Carthy, M (2006) Cambridge Grammar of English Cambridge: CUP Dixon R M V (1992) A New Approach to English grammar, on Semantic Principles Oxford, Clarendon Press Frawley, W (1992) Linguistic Semantics Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers Givón, Talmy (1984,1990), Syntax: A Functional-Typological Introduction, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Halliday, M A K., and Ruqaiya Hasan (1976) Cohesion in English London: Longman Hoa, N.T.X (1996) English Questions in terms of Subject-Operator inversion MA Thesis Hanoi University of Foreign Studies Hoa, Nguyen (2004) Understanding English Semantics VNU Publishing House Hanoi 10 Huddleston, Rodney D (1984) Introduction to the Grammar of English, Cambridge University Press 11 Hudson, G (2000) Essential Introductory Linguistics Michigan: Blackwell Publishers Inc 12 Kuno, S (1972) Functional Sentence Perspective Linguistic Inquiry 3, 269-320 13 Leech, G (1978) Semantics Penguin Books 14 Levison, S.C (1997) Pragmatics Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 15 Lynch, T.(1991) Questioning Roles in the classroom ILT Journal 45 (3): 201-210 16 Lyon, J (1977) Semantics London: Cambridge University Press 17 Nguyet, D.T.M ( 1996) A Cross-Cultural Study of Question Functions and The English Department at Hanoi University of Foreign Studies in Vietnam MA Thesis Hanoi University of Foreign Studies 18.Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S (1987) A University Grammar of English London: Longman 19 Quirk, R, Greenbaum, S, Leech, G and Svartvik, J (1985) A Comprehensive grammar of the English language Longman Group Limited TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com 48 20 Quirk, R, Greenbaum, S, Leech, G and Svartvik, J (1972) A Grammar of Contemporary English Longman Group Limited 21 Seuren, Peiter (1985) Discourse Semantics Blackwell, Oxford 22 Swan, M (1991) Practical English Usage Oxford: Oxford University Press 23 Tuyet, L.T.A (2001), Graduation Paper: English Wh- Questions and their equivalents in Vietnamese, VNU-CFL, Hanoi 24 Vo Dai Quang (2005), Cấu trúc Ngữ nghiã câu hỏi danh Tiếng Anh Tiếng Việt Cơng trình nghiên cứu cấp Đai học Quốc gia Hà Nội 25.Yule, G (1998) Explaining English Grammar Oxford University Press Internet sources http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/rthompso/interactionquestions.html http://www2.gsu.edu/eslhpb/grammar/lecture_10/quest_answers.html http://www.ling.upenn.edu/ellen/givennew.pdf http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPresupposition http://www.sjsu.edu/writingcenter/docs/handouts/Old_before_New.pdf http://www.uniroma2.it/didattica/ling_ing1_linfo/deposito/Presupposition_and_Entailment http://www.unisi.it/gofolwww/joomla/iscrizione/materiali/16258/StickyBusiness.doc http://www.uobabylon.edu.iq/ /articles/Entailment%20&%20Presupposition.pdf http://www vietnamese-grammar.group.shef.ac.uk/grammar_en.php?ID=16 TIEU LUAN MOI download : skknchat@gmail.com ...VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES  NGUYỄN VĂN CƯƠNG A STUDY ON STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC PATTERNS OF WH-QUESTIONS. .. collecting and carefully analysing the data of the questionaire, the author finds that there are two common mistakes which are the one involving the omission of "do" in question 15 and "are there" in. .. " an adverb is traditionally defined as a word that modifies a verb, an object or an adverb." Where and When As an adverb, where and when occur as head of a phrase and function as complement of