A study on common english written errors made by second year english majored students at tay do university

TAY DO UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE A STUDY ON COMMON ENGLISH WRITTEN ERRORS MADE BY SECOND YEAR STUDENTS OF ENGLISH MAJOR AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY Supervisor: Students’ name: Ngo Bao Anh Phan Thi Minh Uyen, M.A Students’ code: 15D220201005 Class: English 10B May 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This research proposal has been completed thanks to the help of many people from Tay Do University whom I have received support, I would like to express my appreciation to all of them First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, M.A Phan Thi Minh Uyen for her support, guidance, and spent her valuable time to read and give comments on my study Without her help and support, I would not have completed my study Secondly, I would like to show my special thanks to all lecturers in the Faculty of Linguistics and Literature at Tay Do University for their teaching and helping me gain a widen knowledge of English over the past four years Lastly, I am grateful to my parents and my friends for their mental support They are the motivation for me to overcome all the difficulties in completing this Again, thank you so much! Ngo Bao Anh i COMMENTS **** ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………………………………………… …………………………………………… ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i COMMENTS ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii ABSTRACT v CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 The significance of the study 1.3 The organization of the study CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definitions of writing 2.2 The importance of writing 2.3 Some common English written errors 2.3.1 Problems in Vocabulary 2.3.2 Problems in Background knowledge 2.3.3 Problems in Grammatical structure 2.3.4 Problems in Writing styles 2.4 Previous studies CHAPTER III RESEARCH AIMS – RESEARCH QUESTIONS – HYPOTHESIS 3.1 Research aims 3.2 Research questions 3.3 Hypothesis CHAPTER IV RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 4.1 Research design 4.2 Participants iii 4.3 Instruments 4.4 Procedure 10 CHAPTER V EXPECTED OUTCOME 11 REFERENCES vi APPENDIX viii iv ABSTRACT Writing is seen as one of the four central skills of English that contributes to the success of language learners Hence, to improve the ability of writing skill, English majored students have to meet some difficulties in learning process Consequently, this research titled “A study on common English written errors made by second-year English majored students at Tay Do University” was conducted to identify sophomores‟ writing problems in English language and to suggest ways of solving those problems The study was conducted in Tay Do University The research method used was the descriptive research method A sample of 40 English language sophomores was selected using a simple random sampling procedure They were asked to fill in a questionnaire The aim was to identify the problems and mistakes that students could get in writing The findings revealed that those sophomores have various writing problems: grammatical problems, problem about vocabulary, problem about organization, problem about context v CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION This chapter will present in details (1) the rationale of this research, (2) the significance of the study and (3) the organization of the study 1.1 Rationale English has become one of the most dominant media in many fields like economy, politics, and culture Obviously, English is the most popular foreign language taught in Vietnam The goal of teaching and learning foreign language is improving learners‟ communicative competence In order to acquire this competence, learners must be good at four skills in English such as reading, writing, speaking and listening; among which writing is considered a very important proficiency Besides speaking, writing is a productive skill It helps people communicate with others through messages Furthermore, writing makes contribution to enhance other skills in languages and learners‟ logical way of thinking, thus facilitating them in their profession Writing is a method of representing language in visual form Writing systems use sets of symbols to represent the sounds of speech, and may also have symbols for such things as punctuation and numerals According to Lado (1964), “Writing is a partial representation of Units of language expression.” In learning, students are often asked to define words and phrases to prove that they understand the terms clearly However, academic writers generally also identify important terms carefully sometimes, so readers can understand and know exactly the meaning of those words before understanding the full content of the essay Hence, when important words are not explained clearly and correctly, the result may lead to misunderstandings Previous studies have categorized these factors into some broad domains, for example, teachers‟ incompetence (Haider, 2012; Mansoor, 2005; Harmer, 2008), students‟ lack of interest (Byrne, 1991; Harmer, 2008) and methodological inappropriateness (Ahmad, Khan, Munir, et al., 2013; Javed, Juan, & Nazli, 2013; Siddiqui, 2007) However, there is still a need of further research that could explore the origin of these factors and their subsequent conversion into permanent writing problems of students‟ written discourses The current study, along with teachers‟ and students‟ perceptions, explores and examines the students‟ opinions and their written texts to identify their writing problems and the factors that generate these issues coupled by suggestions from the respondents on the improvement of learners‟ writing skills It will bring the latent psychological and cognitive factors into light for further enquiry and suitable solution The ability of third semester students‟ in writing English is good enough, although they still have weaknesses in terms of grammar, vocabulary and some other skills that should be owned by the student in writing In fact, based on experience in English learning process after semesters, the researcher realizes that English majored students, especially English majored sophomores now still have difficulties in building sentences The students‟ difficulties in writing English can be influenced by lack of many vocabularies, and grammar, lack of written exercises and ideas It is supported by Sulastic (2003), the problems that they mostly face are about how to write, what to be written, and lack of vocabulary words as well as incompetence in structure 1.2 The significance of the study The research is conducted to help students find out some difficulties in writing English essays, particularly English major sophomores at Tay Do University Besides, they also find out their own problems for making some useful solutions or update some study methods to improve their writing skills 1.3 The organization of the study Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Literature Review Chapter 3: Research Methodology Chapter 4: Result and Discussion Chapter 5: Conclusion, Implications, Limitations and Recommendations CHAPTER II LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter will present in details (1) definitions of writing, (2) the importance of writing, and (3) some common English written errors 2.1 Definitions of writing In daily life, writing is one of good ways for people to communicate to each other It helps us express our thoughts and ideas by text The term of writing can be defined by several ways, the researcher figured out some definitions that are easy to understand Writing is a medium of human communication that represents language and emotion with signs and symbols It is an important and complex language skill that everyone must learn it Byrne (1988) & Heaton (1990) pointed out that writing is a complex process because it requires the mastery of grammatical devices, conceptual thinking and judgmental (have purpose and activating) elements In most languages, writing is a complement to speech or spoken language “Writing is communicating Good writing gets yours ideas out of your head and into the readers’ head without losing of distorting those ideas” (Leki, 1976, p.4) Furthermore, the time management is an essential element for writing skill According to Chakraverty & Gautum (2000), writing is defined as “a reflective activity that requires enough time to think about the specific topic and to analyze and classify any background knowledge Then, the writers need a suitable language to structure these ideas in the form of a coherent discourse.” Moreover, Hedge (1988:11) stated that the idea of time needs to be given attention because writing activities by nature have different stages which need ample time Learners need time for gathering ideas, organizing their ideas, writing draft, proof reading and re-writing To sum up, writing is a form of communication that allows students to put their feelings and ideas on paper, to organize their knowledge and beliefs into convincing arguments, and to convey meaning through well-constructed text 2.2 The importance of writing Writing is seen as an important element that is widely used in English major at university It supports and ensures students develop at all levels of English skills such as grammar, vocabulary, phonology, or discourse, and so on Therefore, if students cannot express their writing skill, they will not communicate in written language with anyone else Furthermore, besides reading, speaking and listening, writing nowadays has an irreplaceable position in English teaching methods for teachers as well as in training English majored students‟ English skills To be successful in writing, it is considered that learners have to go through a hard learning process First of all, they need to recognize the objectives in their writing, then planning carefully a logical structure or outline of this At the same time, analyzing the sources in the writing and impacting them are absolutely required In particular, one of the best ways to attract language learners to improve their writing skill is to let them write as freely as possible at the beginning of learning process and evoke in them the feeling of creativity Creative writing obviously can play a crucial role in the development of writing skills (cf Janikova, 2005/6; Zajicova, 2011; or Rico, 1984) 2.3 Some common English written errors Language learners have a number of problems in their attempts to write in the second language As verbs take different forms depending on tense and subjects they are used with, they create problems for second language writing students Students have problems with subject verb agreements, pronoun references, and connectors 2.3.1 Problems in Vocabulary Researchers have been studying the important role of vocabulary in writing essays for over twenty years Most of people agree that lack of vocabulary is the main problem which of learners in writing skill Thornbury (2002, p.33) stated, “Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed.” In fact, students often lack necessary vocabulary when they are engaged in authentic communicative situations such as writing essays A good writing or composition should consist of appropriate and varied range of vocabularies used along with proper grammar and varied range of sentence structures When the writer practices, the choice of vocabulary would always cause difficulty for delivering the reader about the purpose and content of writing Zughoul & Husain (1985) considered that lack of lexical variety was also remarkable problems students face in writing their papers They did not add any information to the text because of lacking words to express their ideas Therefore, using appropriate words in appropriate contexts in writing in English is a problem for students For example, students usually use words that are too sublime and professional in their small essays to impress their readers or teachers, then it leads to a problem of diction unsuitably 2.3.2 Problems in Background knowledge Most students who learn writing in English often not have enough words and language structures to express their ideas while writing So they often have to change words and sentence structures that they not know by what they have learned Thus, this has caused lack of knowledge According to Bland (2003), “Background knowledge consists of many aspects in practical life such as culture, society, custom and etc…” Hence, if students have poor background knowledge, they cannot build a good structure of English writing to attract readers This means that for the topics assigned, many students still cannot prepare the outline or structure very well with opening, body or closing in their essays Moreover, lack of confidence also causes difficulty to the students in writing about the topic Students feel that they are not as experts as those writers who are both experienced and intelligent This implies that students need to learn about the topic carefully before they start writing an essay by reviewing some articles related to their topic 2.3.3 Problems in Grammatical structure The highest number of errors was made in grammar Grammatical errors included errors of different word classes, subject-verb agreement, and forms of singular and plural, for example, „these applications gives a proper protocol to communicate others‟, „these channels provide numerous number of information‟, „every day the situation goes bad to bad‟ and „their personality impress by everyone‟ James (2005;2) said, “Grammar is a study of the structure of the language and describes the way of putting words together to make meaningful sentences.” In reality, students usually make grammatical errors in their writing such as tense, word order and pronunciation They not even know how to write sentences correctly, so it leads to unclear meaning and content in their essays Therefore, learners should try to recognize and fix in time with common mistakes by appropriate methods 2.3.4 Problems in Writing styles When mentioning about writing styles, it can be seen that the use of spoken and informal style of writing was also observed Spoken expressions like “Let‟s talk about television first” and “Now if we talk about life without them” were used by learners in their writing Moreover, the learners used the contracted form mostly in their negative sentences using don’t, won’t, and can’t According to Rogers Henry (2005), “Writing essay features mentioned include informative, complex, formal, precise, objective, explicit, qualification and responsibility.” Besides, students cannot build good ideas to attract readers Moreover, students rarely read some materials to enrich knowledge about various topics in real world, so they are confused in showing their thoughts when facing unfamiliar topics Thus, they often make readers bored because of not having enough background knowledge in their writing 2.4 Previous studies Furthermore, many researchers have emphasized the difficulties in writing First, Dr Ibrahim Mohamed Alfaki (2015) conducted a study to identify the errors and mistakes made by the students The research method used was the descriptive research method A sample of 20 English language students was selected using a simple random sampling procedure They were instructed to write a composition of about 250-300 words on “A description of my own home town/village” The students‟ compositions were reviewed twice by 10 English language instructors The findings reveal that those university students have various writing problems: language problems at the levels of morphology and syntax; usage errors, and mechanical mistakes, that is, spelling, punctuation and capitalization, lack of several writing development skills, cognitive problems and graph motor problems Greenhalgh (1992, cited in Tony 2001) mentioned that most frequent advice students receive about their work progress come from ESL teachers of writing The writing task is challenging because many practical and theoretical issues are included The ethical issues of rights and responsibilities also arise in texts Researchers recommend that students should be supported by teachers to take control of their own writing As a result, a responsible teacher would be a reactive reader, a person who helps students recognize and resolve writing problems Yu (2008), contended that there are different aspects of writing, such as controlled composition model, built-in three- or fiveparagraph model, basic organizational and informative assumptions, the simplified writing assignment, the assumption that supposes working without the help of each student or only with the instructor for comprehensive feedback, usage of grammar and handbooks or even lectures, and the linear composition model based on “outlining, writing, and editing” Thence, it can be said that these above aspects can help learners make a remarkable improvement in writing process Despite the growing amount of research supporting the use of writing skill for improving learning (e.g Kharma,1986; Norish, 1993; Abu, 2001; Davie, 1998:25; Raimes, 1983:25), many teachers are still uncertain about how effective it is Therefore, in this study the reseachers investigate whether university students‟ writing skill could improve with other skills in learning English CHAPTER III RESEARCH AIMS – RESEARCH QUESTIONS – HYPOTHESIS 3.1 Research aims This research aimed to investigate problems in writing essays of English major sophomores at Tay Do University Thanks to recognizing their own problems, they are able to find out some possible solutions for themselves 3.2 Research questions To reach the aims mentioned above, the research supposes the research questions as follow: What are some difficulties in writing essays of English major sophomores at Tay Do University? How can English majored sophomores overcome their obstacles? 3.3 Hypothesis According to most of English majored sophomores at Tay Do University, writing is the most difficult skill although they have learned this subject after two last semesters as well as in high school Through chapter 2, literature review and the research question, it is hypothesized that English majored sophomores at Tay Do University usually face difficulties in writing essays such as vocabulary, content, grammar and writing styles CHAPTER IV RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 4.1 Design The quantitative research is carried out to find out the difficulties that English majored sophomores have faced in writing essays The reliability and the validity of the research results are based on the instruments To achieve the above mentioned purposes, English majored sophomores are chosen as the sample to the survey The data from the participants will be collected through the questionnaire for students 4.2 Participants The participants of this study are 40 English majored sophomores who are studying in two classes English 12B and 12C (with 20 students for each class) at Tay Do University They come from different provinces and their ages ranges from 19 to 20, some of them are 21 or 22 years old Besides, most of them have learned English since grade 6, so their English level is the immediate They speak Vietnamese as their mother tongue and English is a second language to them All of them will be given the questionnaires to collect information about difficulties they have met in writing essays 4.3 Instruments The instruments used in this study were a questionnaire It was designed for students at the immediate English level This questionnaire included two main sections The first section mentioned students‟ personal information and some general questions about their writing skill The second one was designed on the basic of the five degree scales including “Strongly disagree”, “Disagree”, “Neutral”, “Agree” and “Strongly agree” This part consisted of questions and 20 statements which were distributed in clusters including grammar, vocabulary, organization and context The questionnaire is classified into the following groups: Group Summary of the content of question group a 1, 2, Students‟ background b 4, 5, Students‟ attitude towards writing c From to 26 Students‟ difficulties in writing essays 4.4 Procedure Duration (12 weeks) Activities in duty process From the 1st week to 4th - Design the framework of the research week - Meeting in supervisor to conform the proposal - Asking teacher for the permission of delivering From the 5th week to 7th week questionnaire - Delivering questionnaire to the sophomores - Collecting data from questionnaire From the 8th week to 12th - Analyzing the collected data from the questionnaire week - Completing the paper 10 CHAPTER V EXPECTED OUTCOME Writing plays an important role in learning a language and working Most of people never consider the difficulty of the writing process In fact, writing relates to all academic activities, it requires more basic skills than others This research aims to find out some common written errors in writing essays of second-year English majored students at Tay Do University First of all, vocabulary is one of the most important factors in writing essays However, English majored sophomores often get some difficulties in using vocabulary effectively The shortage of vocabulary knowledge causes for misunderstanding and problems in choosing right words to express the ideas to the students Therefore, they feel very hard to make use of vocabulary variously Secondly, the background knowledge of an essay is essential to determine whether the essay is successful or not Students often meet difficulties to show their opinions because of lacking general knowledge such as culture, society, custom and so on This is the reason why English majored sophomores cannot organize good ideas, good structure and good content for an essay to be more attractive to readers Thirdly, grammatical structure is another factor that is seen as a vital element affecting writing essays Students have faced some common in grammar such as tenses, word order, pronouns, and parts of speech and so on They rarely feel easy to right a sentence with correct grammar Therefore, they make some inevitable grammatical mistakes in writing essays Last but not least, in term of styles, the writing assigned to English majored sophomores in their academic years is a formal, objective and factual type of writing essay However, they often use informal speaking vocabulary, style, or sentence structures to express their opinion that are not allowed in writing styles of essays During this study, the researcher hopes that second-year English majored students at Tay Do University can realize their own writing errors subjectively and objectively Thanks to this, they can be aware to change immediately for writing improvement 11 REFERENCES References from books Bland, S., K (2003) Grammar Sense England: Oxford University press Bryne, D (1988) Teaching Writing Skill Longman Published Chakraverty, A & Gautum, K (2000) Dynamics of writing Forum 38(3) Hedge, T (1988) Writing Oxford: Oxford University Press James D., William (2005:2) The teacher’s Grammar Book Soka University Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Lado, R (1964) The correlation between students’ vocabulary master and their writing ability in descriptive text Salatiga: English Education Department of Teacher Training and Education Faculty State Institute for Islamic Studies (IAIN) Salatiga Leki, I (1976) Academic Writing Techniques and Tasks: S.T Martin Press New York Rogers Henry (2005) Writing systems: A linguistic approach Oxford: Blackwell Scott Thornbury (2002) How to teach vocabulary TEXTBookAMAZING 10 Zughoul, M & Husain, R (1985) English for higher education in the Arab world – a case study of needs analysis at Yarmoukn University ESP Journal 4, 133-52 11 Yu, H.J (2008) Interactional Structure in the Writing Process: A Comparison of Three ESL Writing Classes Unpublished PhD thesis, Arizona State University, U.S.A vi References from Internet Haider, G (2012), Mansoor, S (2005) & Harmer, J (2008) ESL Learners’ Writing Skills: Problems, Factors and Suggestions Retrieved on March st, 2019, from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311669829_ESL_Learners'_Writing_Skill s_Problems_Factors_and_Suggestions Heaton, J (1979:138) In thesis the use of animation movies to improve student’ skill of narrative text by Nafik Fitriana (2011) Retrieved on March st, 2019, from http://eprints.uns.ac.id/ Ibrahim Mohamed Alfaki (2015) University students’ English writing problems: Diagnosis and Remedy Retrieved on March st, http://www.eajournals.org/wp-content/uploads/University-Students EnglishWriting-Problems-Diagnosis-and-Remedy.pdf vii from APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS My name is Ngo Bao Anh and I am an English majored senior I really appreciate for your spending your precious time helping me Now I am carrying out my research entitled “A study on common English written errors made by second-year English majored students at Tay Do University” This is the questionnaire aiming to collect necessary information from you Your responses are very important and helpful to the success of the study, please take your time to finish the below questionnaire carefully Students‟ full name: ………………………………………………… Gender: □ Male □ Female Class: ………………………………… PART 1: Please read the following questions and circle the appropriate answer for each question Give specific answer if needed How long have you learned English? year(s) Where you come from? a Urban area/City b Rural area/Countryside In your opinion, which is the most difficult subject? a Listening b Speaking c Writing d Reading What you think about writing? a Very important b Important c Normal d Not important How much time you spend on practicing writing every week? viii a _ minutes a week b _ hour(s) a week How you self-evaluate your writing skill? a Very good b Good c Average d Bad e Very bad PART 2: Please read these following statements and evaluate by putting a tick (√) into the column which is the most appropriate with your situation according to five levels of agreement: Strongly agree – Agree – Neutral – Disagree – Strongly disagree Levels of agreement Statements Strongly agree I have troubles in grammatical structure in writing an essay I don‟t know how to use transitional words to connect the sentences in an essay I find it is difficult to write an essay without any grammar mistake It is difficult to use words with the same meaning in writing essays I usually express my ideas to long or too short I am often out of track when expressing the content in an ix Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly disagree essay It is difficult to use tenses correctly in writing essays I feel it is difficult to use appropriate words in specific situation I don‟t know how to write the topic idea 10 It is hard to arrange words to make a correct sentence 11 I am confused to use appropriate vocabulary in writing essays 12 I don‟t know how to prepare outline before writing 13 I always misspell in writing an essay 14 I don‟t know to organize my supporting ideas 15 I often feel difficult to write an essay because of lack of idea 16 I feel uncomfortable with unfamiliar topics 17 I am not looking up new words when writing 18 In my essays, I sometimes use spoken language instead of written words 19 In case of lacking knowledge about some specific fields, I cannot write a convincing and x informative essay 20 My mind often goes blank whenever I start to work on English writing THANKS FOR YOUR HELP! xi