Writing is one of the most common communication forms used not only in daily life but also in education and working places. In order to deliver a full meaning of a piece of writing, writers should pay attention to grammar because it is a key factor for that purpose. Considering the importance of grammar in writing English, the research was carried out in the aim of finding out whether there are grammatical errors made by the Englishmajored students in the class 15DTA in the Saigon International University. In fact, the researcher discovered there are four common errors relating to grammar, collected from the students’ essays: Subject Verb Agreement (22.17%), Noun (21.18%), Verb Tense and Form (17.73%) and Article (17.73%). Some solutions were suggested in order to assist students to overcome this problem.They include practicing writing, reading English books, news or other materials and consulting grammar books
COMMON GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN WRITINNIVERSITY Hochiminh City – 2019 …………………………………… GRADUATION THESIS Major English Language Topic Common grammatical errors in writing English made by the English-majored students of the class 15DTA of the Saigon International University Supervisor Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy, M.A Student Nguyen Trung Van ID: 97011501082 Student’s ID: 97011501082 Student: Nguyen Trung Van DECLARATION I am Nguyen Trung Van hereby declare that the work presented in this Graduation Thesis is uniquely prepared by me I also confirm that, the thesis paper is only prepared for my university requirements not for any other purposes It might not be used with the interest of the opposite party of the corporation _ Nguyen Trung Van ID: 97011501082 Course: Class: 15DTA Major in English Language The Saigon International University Date submitted: ………………………………………… Signed : ………………………………………… Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van Student’s ID: 97011501082 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I had received many helps when I completed my graduation thesis Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Ms Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy, whose encouragement, guidance and willingness motivated me from the beginning to the end and enable me to finish this work Secondly, I would like to give the appreciation from the bottom of my heart to The Saigon International University for providing me a professional learning environment and facilities, as well as all teachers in the English Language major for giving enthusiasm and sympathies to lift me to be the better one as I am today In addition, because of my limited knowledge, shortcomings and mistakes cannot be avoided so I expect to receive helpful advice from teachers to make the paper more perfect In short, I really thank to all people helping me to finish this graduating paper Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van Student’s ID: 97011501082 SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS ADVISOR: ………………………………… SIGNED: ………………………………… Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student’s ID: 97011501082 Student: Nguyen Trung Van PANEL’S COMMENTS PANEL: …………………………………… SIGNED: ………………………………… Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van Student’s ID: 97011501082 TABLE OF CONTENT LIST OF CHARTS AND FIGURES LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Abstract Chapter 1: Introduction and background of the study I Rationale II The significance of the study III The scope and limitation of the study IV Research questions Chapter 2: Literature review I Definitions of terminology Definition of English Writing Definition of Grammatical errors II Review of previous works 22 Chapter 3:Methodology 24 I Research design 24 II Description 24 III Participants 24 IV Tools to collect data 25 Chapter 4: Findings and discussion 27 I The common grammatical errors in writing English of the students 27 II Some suggestions to overcome the issue 39 Chapter 5: Conclusion and recommendation 46 I Conclusion 46 II Recommendation 47 Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van Student’s ID: 97011501082 REFERENCES 49 APPENDIX 53 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 30 Figure 31 Figure 42 Figure 43 Figure 45 Figure 45 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CEFR The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages ESL English as Second Language L1 First language L2 Second Language SIU The Saigon International University Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van Student’s ID: 97011501082 Abstract Writing is one of the most common communication forms used not only in daily life but also in education and working places In order to deliver a full meaning of a piece of writing, writers should pay attention to grammar because it is a key factor for that purpose Considering the importance of grammar in writing English, the research was carried out in the aim of finding out whether there are grammatical errors made by the English-majored students in the class 15DTA in the Saigon International University In fact, the researcher discovered there are four common errors relating to grammar, collected from the students’ essays: Subject - Verb Agreement (22.17%), Noun (21.18%), Verb Tense and Form (17.73%) and Article (17.73%) Some solutions were suggested in order to assist students to overcome this problem.They include practicing writing, reading English books, news or other materials and consulting grammar books Key terms: grammar, grammatical errors, writing Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van Student’s ID: 97011501082 Chapter 1: Introduction and background of the study I Rationale Although English is not the most commonly spoken language in the world, it is used widely by many people and in a great many large countries due to its merits According to a survey updated by Benjamin Elisha Sawe in 2019, there are roughly 1.39 billion people reported to speak English globally By knowing English, you can get exposed to a great deal of information owing to more than 50% of the content today written in English on the Internet (Zauzulak, 2015) Besides, this language offers people more job opportunities since when facing with applicants having the English proficiency, recruiters may have them involve in international tasks (Binh T., 2015) The journalist also stated in this article that English learners can approach the top universities in the world Among the four skills of the English language, writing is considered to be the most essential because of its perks, namely giving more logical and convincing arguments, granting a person opportunities to later reflect on their points of view and re-evaluate them, and preparing for school and employment, etc (Chappell, 2011) Furthermore, the writer Kelly Walsh (2010), the founder of the website emergingedtech.com, pointed that writing is really important on the grounds that writing in English is used greatly in higher education and working environment According to his hypothesis, he supposed that students who were unable to write in English properly could not communicate with their professors, employers, colleagues or anyone else He also added that in such professional environment it entails communication via writing as communication is conducted through proposals, memos, e-mails, letters, applications and reports, etc Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van Student’s ID: 97011501082 In this researcher, the researcher would like to mention one of the important factors in English writing, which is grammar According to the author David Crystal whose books are Making Sense of Grammar, grammar is said to become “the structural foundation” in order to express ourselves and have other crucial functions, namely fostering precision, detecting ambiguity and exploiting the richness in the English expression (Crystal, 2004) Moreover, a doctor from KIIT University, Dr Pradeep Kumar Debata, also emphasized the importance of grammar as he stated in his study in 2013: “Grammar is a sure ground of reference when linguistic habits fail us So grammar is indispensable for the student.” Owing to the significance of the grammar, the researcher’s aim to choose the topic is to find out whether the 8th course English-majored students of the Saigon International University still make grammatical errors in the written English in order to draw their attention to such errors so that they can determine strategies by themselves to overcome the shortcomings II The significance of the study On account of the purpose of choosing this topic mentioned in the previous part, the findings of this analysis should be of great help to the 8th course students whose major is English in SIU Not only these students but the researcher and other students who is learning English will greatly benefit from this study as the students can acknowledge their grammatical errors, which may be made while writing English, so as to they have ourselves appropriate solutions and consult several suggestions to surmount them as well as improve our English proficiency Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van Student’s ID: 97011501082 III The scope and limitation of the study This work only focuses on finding the common grammatical errors collected from the essays written by the 8th course English-majored students studying at the Saigon International University Meanwhile, while researching this topic, the author is restrained in time (short-term investigation), lack of experience from Vietnamese undergraduated students There is also lack of profound topic-related documents from Vietnamese editor offices so the author is searching all the foreign literature Therefore, the part of solutions in this topic is the suggestion from the writer IV Research questions In this analysis, the purpose of it is to figure out which are the common errors relating to grammar that the SIU students studying the English language as their major make while writing in English In attempt to learn these errors, two following questions were constructed and it is essential to answer them: What are the common grammatical errors that are made by the English-majored students studying in the class 15DTA of the Saigon International University? What are suggestions to overcome the problem? Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van Student’s ID: 97011501082 Chapter 2: Literature review I Definitions of terminology Definition of English Writing Writing is one of the fundamental factors in linguistic study In order to achieve the ability of fluent English communicating, writers should fathom the primary concept of writing In the work of Celce-Murcia (2001), the writer quoted: “Writing is the ability to express one’s idea in writing in a second or foreign language and to so with reasonable coherence and accuracy is a major achievement” Meanwhile, Pincas (1982) defines writing is a way of communicating a message to a reader for a purpose which can be to express one’s self, to provide information for one’s reader, to persuade one’s reader, or to create a literary work According to Palmer (1994), there are myriad formations of writing created raging from an easily understandable piece of work to more advanced level of writing consisting of a hierarchy system of words, phrases, clauses, sentences into coherent and cohesive paragraphs Writing English could be utterly sophisticated as numerous stages needed undertaking in order to create correct sentences which can be effortlessly comprehended Regarding the process of writing, it should be of phases initiating from prewriting (brainstorming before composing), drafting (translating thoughts and ideas into sentences and paragraphs), sharing (reading the work aloud to share with listeners), revising (including expanding the ideas, clarifying the vague points and reorganizing the information) and finally, editing (the stage entailing spelling, punctuation, syntax and structure of the writing work) (Palmer, 1994) Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van Student’s ID: 97011501082 Moreover, it is the firm belief of Harmer (2002) that there are several factors which need to be taken into consideration in the writing procedure, namely language use comprising grammar, lexical resources, and connectives; punctuation and layout; spelling; checking for repetition of words and/or information; deciding which information should be included in each paragraph, and creating structure of the paragraph; logging various ideas and opting the most valued for inclusion This leads to the conclusion that to execute impeccably aforementioned stages, writers ought to take time management in generating ideas into account Definition of Grammatical errors To provide more evident meaning of this term, this part should be of the clarification the word “errors” and “grammar” respectively 1.1 What is error? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, it defines error as “a mistake, esp in a way that can be discovered as wrong, or the making of such mistakes” whereas it is the definition of error made by the Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries stating that error is “a mistake, especially one that causes problems or affects the result of something” Errors can be understood as the distinction from mistakes From the point of view made by Brown (1994), he stated that mistake is specified as "a failure to utilize a known system correctly" while "a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker, reflecting the interlanguage competence of the learner" is considered to be errors He pointed out that errors are likely not to be evident enough for learners to figure out as they require guidance so as to learn the errors and correct them, leading to the assumption that “learners cannot learn language without systematically committing errors first” Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van Student’s ID: 97011501082 It is true that mistakes and errors are different from each other Mistakes, nevertheless, seem to imply errors, which is mentioned in the work of Harmer (2007) as he cited from the study of Julian Edge (1989): Julian Edge suggested that we can divide mistakes into three broad categories: ‘slips’ (that is mistakes which students can correct themselves once the mistakes has been pointed out to them), ‘errors’ (mistakes which they can’t correct themselves - and which therefore need explanation) and ‘attempts’ (that is when a student tries to say something but does not yet know the correct way of saying it) (p.137) Harmer (2007) also noted that errors are one of the categories which the most matters and derive from “two instinct sources” which are L1 “interference” and developmental errors While errors may be made by L1 ‘interference’ as learners find the use of the English language perplexing owing to associating both the L1 and English language knowledge in learning, there are developmental errors in which learners ‘over-generalize’ a new rule of the grammar point which they have learned Yet, when they acquire the flaws in their self-made new rule, he or she then can conduct the correct form For instance, one of the developmental errors is the mistake in the sentence “*she is more nicer than him” which students made when adding “more” In this case, the word “more” is over-generalized and learners get confused with the rule that they have been taught However, this sort of errors is “a part of a natural acquisition process” (Harmer, 2007) Meanwhile, Norrish (1983) did differ errors from mistakes in his study working on errors in which he considered errors “systematic deviation” as learners seem to consistently make due to their deficiency of learning “correct forms” On the other hand, the definition of mistakes is demonstrated as an “inconsistent deviation” In this case, learners have been taught “correct forms” and used these forms accurately sometimes but other times, Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van 10 Student’s ID: 97011501082 they make the wrong forms inconsistently Similarly, according to Ellish (1997), although mistakes are likely to be “occasional lapses” in performance where English learners fail to perform what they know and they make the mistakes intentionally, the researcher considered errors “gaps in learners’ knowledge” as learners are still on their way of obtaining the target language knowledge Therefore, errors should not reflect the negative aspect of language learning as they are natural and inevitable during learning process (Hourani, 2008) In the work analyzing the grammatical errors carried out by Alfiyani (2013), this researcher used a descriptive classification which is named the surface strategy taxonomy, suggested by Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982) to analyze different types of grammatical errors in writing English In surface strategy taxonomy, the ways surface structures in an sentence are changed are highlighted There are four kinds of errors pointed out in this taxonomy (Dulay et al., 1982) Omission errors An omission is a kind of error that is “characterized by the absence of an item that must appear in a well-formed utterance” As we know that morphemes or words can be distinguished into two classes: content words and grammatical words Content words play a considerable role in expressing the meaning of a sentence, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, etc Grammatical or function words are those little words that play a minor role in carrying the meaning of a sentence They include verb inflection (-s, -ed, -ing), the article (a, the, an), verb auxiliries (is, will, can, may, etc), and preposition (in, on, or, etc), etc Language learners are said to omit grammatical morphemes much more frequently than content words Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van 11 Student’s ID: 97011501082 Example 1: *John is clever student There is missing “a” that should be John is a clever student Example 2: *it affect people seriously The omission error in this sentence is *affect, which should be corrected into “affects” or “affected” Addition errors This kind of errors happens when there is a presence of an item which must not appear in a well-formed utterance It is usually occurred in the later stages of L2 acquisition or learning, when the learner has already acquired some target language rules Example 1: *She didn’t went/goed back It should be corrected into “She didn’t go back” Example 2: *sheeps instead of sheep For example 3: the fishes doesn’t live in the water The correction should be “the fish doesn’t live in the water” Misformation errors Misformation errors are characterized by the use of the wrong form of the words or structures It happens when a learner supplies something that it is incorrect Example 1: *runned instead of run There is errors that should be “run” Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van 12 Student’s ID: 97011501082 Example 2: *I see her yesterday Her dances with my brother There error that should be “I see her yesterday She dances with my brother” Example 3: *I seen her yesterday The error in this sentence should be corrected into “ I saw her yesterday” Misordering errors Misordering errors are characterized by the incorrect placement of a grammatical words or groups of grammatical words in an utterance For example: *I don’t know what is that There is misordering error that should be “I don’t know what that is” 1.2 The definition of Grammar Grammar is a distinctive feature of every language spoken and written in the world Those whose language is identical seem to be able to communicate, which is enabled by their being exposed to the grammatical system of that language, and the fact that people who write or/and speak a language are aware of its grammar is utterly crucial (Alfiyani, 2013) As regards definition, apparently defined by the Cambridge Dictionary, grammar is “(the study or use of) the rules about how words change their form and combine with other words to make sentences” whilst the meaning of this word in the Oxford Dictionary is “the rules in a language for changing the form of words and joining them into sentences” Meanwhile, grammar is pointed out by Thornbury (2004) as “partly the study of what forms (or structures) are possible in a language”, which means this part of language play a Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van 13 Student’s ID: 97011501082 crucial role in forming a sentence correctly and comprehensibly, with a right order and without flaws Ur (1996) also added his angle in the grammar since he wrote that grammar manipulates and combines the words in order to construct word chains that express “longer units of meaning” Grammar is all about the formation of words which can transform so as to covey new different meanings of a sentence, which is commented as ‘the heart of grammatical knowledge’ (Harmer, 2007) Harmer (2007) generalized the notion of grammar which can be understood as “a knowledge of what words can go where and what forms these words should take” If learners study grammar, he or she should be aware of the variety of grammatical elements can be linked in order to make chains of words Of the category to evaluate whether a piece of writing work is good or not, grammar is considered to be the most important one In the book called “The little gold grammar book” by Brandon Royal (2016), the author asked anyone who wants writing fluency to look inside “the car bonnet” to find out how the “engine” of an essay works It means that some individuals have improved their writing skills perfectly by certainly learning and usually using some of important grammatical principles In an effort to produce a good writing, one ought to bear grammar in mind as she suggested that good understanding of grammar should be of an impact on a piece of writing work (Alfiyani, 2013) Royal (2016) summarized a number of grammatical terms that can be used as a note, a beginning or a inspiring means for the English writers who are willing to dig into the English grammar: In the English language, there are eight word classes: Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A Student: Nguyen Trung Van 14 Student’s ID: 97011501082 Noun Noun is the most important word class It is the name of a person, place, thing or idea For example: boy, country, city, birth, day, happiness, Steven, New York, etc Pronoun A pronoun is a word used in place of one or more nouns It is used to refer a noun that usually comes before the pronoun For example: Sally is a nice person and you can speak freely with her Verb A verb is a word describing an action or a condition A group of words cannot be described as a sentence or a clause unless at least one of the words is a verb For example: Sally is a nice person and you can speak freely with her Adjective An adjective modifies or describes a noun or a pronoun For example: Sally is a nice person and you can speak freely with her The adjective “nice” is used to modify the noun ‘person’ Adverb An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb For example: Sally is a nice person and you can speak freely with her The adverb “freely” is used to modify the verb ‘speak’ Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A ... Considering the importance of grammar in writing English, the research was carried out in the aim of finding out whether there are grammatical errors made by the English- majored students in the class. ..Hochiminh City – 2019 …………………………………… GRADUATION THESIS Major English Language Topic Common grammatical errors in writing English made by the English- majored students of the class 15DTA of the Saigon. .. is essential to answer them: What are the common grammatical errors that are made by the English- majored students studying in the class 15DTA of the Saigon International University? What are suggestions