Bài phân tích các lỗi thường gặp trong phần viết đoạn văn quan điểm của sinh viên năm nhất không chuyên tiếng Anh đến từ Ulis, vnu

NGHIÊN CỨU ỨNG DỤNG AN ANALYSIS OF COMMON ERRORS IN OPINION PARAGRAPH WRITING MADE DY FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH NON- MAJORING STUDENTS FROM ULIS, VNU Bui Th! Hang * ABSTRCT Writing is a productive skill It is one of the most difficult and therefore frustrating subjects to teach particularly in an ESL/EFL programme This paper is an outcome ofteachers ’concerns and efforts to identify 'reas of difficulty’ in writing an academic paragraph among English non-majoring students and to work out remedial procedures to help them overcome their weaknesses The study examines 40 opinion paragraphs about a certain topic ofsecondyear university students A standardformatforparagraph writing consisting of 10 criteria was usedfor evaluating the types oferrors Thefrequency of errors was calculated as percentage The students’ errors were grouped and analyzed The study concludes with pedagogical recommendations Keywords: Paragraph writing, error and error analysis Received: 6/1/2022; Accepted: 15/1/2022; Published:16/2/2022 ! I INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Writing is always one of the most problematic skills that challenge every student even in their first language and are “magnified [ ] in a second or foreign language” (Enginarlar, 1990) In this sense, it is more difficult to repah the lack of coherence in writing than in speaking because the opportunity to asK for clarification or to flashback for background information in spoken interaction not exist in written discourse (Zor, 2006) In the researcher’s teaching context, coherence is undoubtedly among the most challenging issues to cope with in every type of paragraph This problem is even more burdening as it comes to opinion paragraphs whan students are asked to support their ideas with relevant arguments and logical reasoning They often reflect that they cannot provide relevant support that explains, describes, or exemplifies their ideas, leading to their failure in achieving coherence in their written production and negative feedback from the teacher The reality mentioned above has inspired the author to carry out a small research named: “An analysis of common errors in opinion paragraph writing made by first-year English non-majoring students from ULIS, VNU” Aims and research questions * KhoajTieng Anh, Đại học Ngoại ngừ, Đại học Quốc gia Hà Nội The study aims to investigate common errors which ULIS first year students commonly make in their opinion paragraph writing Besides, the researcher would also like to analyze them in the hope of preventing students from making the same mistakes over a period of time 1.3 Scope of the study This study focuses mostly on frequently-committed errors among 40 non-majoring English students from ULIS in writing an opinion paragraph about a certain topic Also, the sample size is limited to 40 entities only This small sample size obviously affects the study results, which, to some extent, reduces the internal reliability of the research Methodology of the study To complete the study, the following method is applied 40 ULIS students are required to write an opinion paragraph on a certain topic On the basis of given categories of coherence errors, the researcher can analyze and find out the most common errors made by those students in opinion paragraph writing I L MAIN PARTS IL L Literature Review II 1.1 Opinion paragraph writing The main focus of this research is expressing opinions at the paragraph level Therefore, paragraph writing or the organization of a paragraph is of primary importance Rajatanun (1988:95) said that a paragraph is a unit of writing which expresses one ! I TẠP CHÍ THIẾT BỊ GIÁO DỤC - số 259 KỲ - 2/2022 • 59 II NGHIÊN cứu ỨNG DỤNG central idea and consists of two kinds of sentences: a topic sentence and a number of supporting statements O'Donnell and Paiva (1993:2-4) provided more details about the essential parts for paragraph writing which include a topic sentence, supporting sentences, details, logical order, logical connectors, a concluding sentence, unity and coherence The ideas in the paragraph must be presented in logical order by using transition words or connecting words which indicate the relationship between the ideas (chronological, causal, etc.) Unity and coherence are also main components of a paragraph, together with the main idea and the supporting details Coherence means “to stick together.’’ One way to achieve coherence is with the use of connectors called transition words or phrases that link one sentence to another (Wyrick 1999:211) IL J Errors in Writing We can conclude that writing is of course, not easy and in some way, more difficult than speaking (Noirish 1983:63) Writing is more complex in that it tests a person’s ability to use a language and the ability to express ideas This difficulty of writing leads students to be more susceptible to producing errors This study was designed to identify important features of students’ errors, the causes of their errors, and categorize those errors Errors in language learning, therefore, play an important role in this study Corder (1971 :152) stated that errors are ‘the result of some failure ofperformance’ Norrish (1983:7), like Corder, defined ‘an error’ as a systematic deviation that happens when a learner has not learnt something and consistently ‘get(s) it wrong’ James (1998:1) also identified a language error as an unsuccessful bit of language Errors are significant in three different ways First to the teacher, errors tell him how far the learner has progressed and, consequently, what remains for him to learn Second, errors provide researchers with evidence on how language is learnt or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner are employing in his discovery of the language Thirdly, errors are indispensable to the learner himself, because errors can be regarded as a device the learner uses in order to learn Norrish (1983:21-42) described the causes of language learners’ errors as arising from carelessness, interference from the learner’s first language, translation from the first language, contrastive analysis, general order of difficulty, overgeneralization, incomplete application of rules, material-induced errors and a part of language creativity II Methodology I1.2.1 Participants The participants were 40 non-majoring English students in their second year of study at ULIS, VNU They had had little previous English-writing experience in their secondary and high schools, since writing is not emphasized at these levels In basic writing lessons, the objectives were to develop students’ writing abilities beyond sentences and also to familiarize them with various styles of writing, such as description, narration and argumentation II 2.2 Writing sample and Instrument Following Halliday and Hassan (1976) who stated that writing allows writers to demonstrate their ability to construct a string of well-connected sentences that are grammatically and logically correct, the students were asked to state their opinion about studying abroad Thus, the writing sample for the study was 40 paragraphs written in English by PPA students The ten criteria for analysis were used which are as follows Inability to perform the assigned task because of not understanding the question No introduction Lack of main ideas No topic sentence stating the main points Lack of development of the main ideas (adding details and facts about the main point) Lack of organization Accumulation of errors in sentence structure and / or usage No transitional words Incoherence 10 No conclusion All the ten criteria were gathered from the survey and the principles of good paragraph writing from many books such as TOEFL criteria for correcting paragraphs (Mahnke & Duffy, 2002), Writing Academic English (Oshima & Hoque, 2006), Logic, Language, and Composition (Willis, 1975) The frequency of errors found in the opinion paragraph writing of the students was calculated using the following formula: Percentage of errors = number of errors (for each criteria) X 100/total number of subjects (40) I1.2.3 Data analysis The analysis of written essays will be derived from Corder’s (1967) method on error analysis This method has three steps: (1) collection of sample errors, (2) identification of errors and (3) description 60 • TẠP CHÍ THIẾT BỊ GIÁO DỤC - số 259 KỲ - 2/2022 NGHIÊN CỨU ỨNG DỤNG of errors II ỉ Results The following are the results that the researchers obtained Errors were found in the writing of most students The distribution of type of error was quite similar for all groups A high percentage of errors was found in nine out of ten criteria The top four criteria (or causes) of errors were: no transitional words, lack of organization, lack of main ideas and no conclusion (See Table 1) Order Criteria Analysis Level of error Amount % Inability to perform the assigned task because of not understanding the question No introduction Lack of main ideas Lack of development of the main 30 ideas (adding details and facts about the main point) 75 Lack of organization 35 87,5 Accumulation of errors in sentence structure and / or usage No transitional words 25 62,5 95 Incoherence 38 24 No conclusion 32 80 10 No topic sentence stating the main points 12,5 20 50 33 22 82,5 55 II Only a small percentage of ULIS first-year English non-majoring students know how to write a standard paragraph Most of them lack the skills of writing a coherent and well-organized paragraph They cannot organize their ideas logically and systematically by using transitional words This reflects the need to improve their ability in English paragraph writing Therefore, all ULIS students should be taught to write a standard opinion paragraph Furthermore, transitional words should be taught and emphasized These findings will be used as a reference point for developing materials appropriate to what the students need Moreover, the error correction technique to improve the students’ ability in writing a standard opinion paragraph should be further investigated in order to prepare and to develop language skills, especially English non-majoring students Given the results of this study, a number of recommendations for further research are suggested First, it is recommended that further research be undertaken to investigate the errors made by students majoring in English Second, further investigation into intra-lingual errors is strongly recommended REFERENCE 60 II Discussion In evaluating the students’ opinion paragraph writing, the researchers found that most students cid not present a reasonable connection or relation, □etween ideas in their paragraphs which causes “coherence breaks” (Wikborg, 1990) They did not use transitional words to link the ideas together Also, the sentences bin the paragraphs did not directly relate to the main idea They only put the content into the paragraph without expanding on their ideas, so their paragraphs were short and unclear They only paid a tention to content which prevented them from Ỉriting a detailed paragraph In addition, it seemed at most students from ULIS did not have proper ganizational skills That is to say their ideas were rely organized in logical order, which made the ader find it hard to understand Also, the participants paid little attention to supporting ideas These are the areas that should be explained to students so that they keep in mind when writing a paragraph in English III CONCLUSION Corder, s.p (1981) Error Analysis and Interlanguage Oxford: Oxford University Press Ellis, R (1995) Understanding Second Language Acquisition.(10th ed.) Oxford: Oxford University Press Halliday, M.A.K & Hasan, R (1976) Cohension in English Landon: Longman Hart, A.w & Reinking, J.A (1990) Writing for College and Career.(4th ed.) New York: St Martin’s Press Liu, M & Braine, G (2005) Cohesive Features in Argumentative Writing Produced by Chinese Undergraduates System, 33: 623-636 Mahnke, M.K.& Duffy, B.c (2002) TOEFL Preparation Course New Jersey: Mackmillan Heinemann O’Donnell, T.D & Paiva, J.L (1993) Independent Writing (2nd ed.) Massachusetts: Heinle & Heinle Publishers Norrish, J (1983) Language Learners and Their Errors London: Macmillan Press Reid, J.M (1994) The Process ofParagraph TẠP CHÍ THIẾT BỊ GIÁO DỤC - số 259 KỲ - 2/2022.61 ... Participants The participants were 40 non-majoring English students in their second year of study at ULIS, VNU They had had little previous English-writing experience in their secondary and high schools,... made by students majoring in English Second, further investigation into intra-lingual errors is strongly recommended REFERENCE 60 II Discussion In evaluating the students’ opinion paragraph writing,