Nghiên cứu việc sinh viên chuyên ngữ tiếng anh sử dụng hình vị s để biểu thị danh từ số nhiều và động từ thường ở thì hiện tại ngôi thứ ba số ít trong bài viết tranh luận

HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES FACULTY OF ENGLISH -❉📖❉ - DONG NGOC MINH THU HOW VIETNAMESE EFL STUDENTS USE THE INFLECTIONAL MORPHEME –S MARKING PLURAL NOUNS AND THE THIRD PERSON SINGULAR IN THE PRESENT TENSE IN ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAYS GRADUATION THESIS SUPERVISOR: NGUYEN THI BAO TRANG, PhD Hue, Academic year: 2017-2021 HUE UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES FACULTY OF ENGLISH -❉📖❉ - DONG NGOC MINH THU HOW VIETNAMESE EFL STUDENTS USE THE INFLECTIONAL MORPHEME –S MARKING PLURAL NOUNS AND THE THIRD PERSON SINGULAR IN THE PRESENT TENSE IN ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAYS GRADUATION THESIS SUPERVISOR: NGUYEN THI BAO TRANG, PhD Hue, Academic year: 2017-2021 i LỜI CAM ĐOAN Tôi xin cam đoan kết đạt khoá luận sản phẩm riêng cá nhân, không chép lại người khác Tất tài liệu tham khảo có xuất xứ rõ ràng trích dẫn hợp pháp (theo tiêu chí quy định APA 6th) Huế, ngày 22 tháng năm 2022 Sinh viên thực (ký ghi rõ họ tên) Đồng Ngọc Minh Thư ii ABSTRACT The most common errors in the writings of learners studying English as a foreign language (EFL) are lexical errors, including those relating to morphological markers of plurality and third-person singular (James, 1998) The previous studies on EFL learners using these morphemes mainly focused on oral production and only few on writing skill; especially, researches on Vietnamese students were very limited Therefore, the present research aims to explore how Vietnamese EFL thirdyear students at Hue University of Foreign Languages (HUFL) use inflectional morphemes –s marking plural nouns (PN–s) and third person singular in the present tense (3SG–s) in argumentative essays A sample of 32 argumentative essays from an EFL writing class was collected and analyzed for the use of PN–s and 3SG–s Students wrote about the topic of Facebook within 45 minutes as a progress test Ten students were subsequently interviewed in an in-depth semi-structured format in Vietnamese language The results revealed that students used PN–s and 3SG–s correctly in a majority of the obligatory contexts, and they used PN–s more accurately than 3SG–s Moreover, omission was the most common error students made, and they omitted 3SG–s more often than PN–s Particularly, omission rate of –s form in PN–s was significantly higher than that of –es and –ies Incorrect use rarely occurred and, if it did, it was only spotted in PN–s The frequency of oversuppliance was rather low; and that in PN–s was significantly higher than in 3SG–s Through the interviews, the students reported facing a number of difficulties in using PN–s and 3SG–s, and they made suggestions for the better usage of these morphemes Pedagogical implications regarding the use of PN–s and 3SG–s were then mentioned and discussed iii TÓM TẮT Một lỗi thông dụng viết sinh viên chuyên ngữ tiếng Anh lỗi liên quan đến việc sử dụng hình vị biểu thị danh từ số nhiều động từ thứ ba số (James, 1998) Những nghiên cứu trước hầu hết tập trung vào việc sử dụng hai loại hình vị kỹ nói số khai thác kỹ viết; đặc biệt số lượng nghiên cứu đối tượng sinh viên Việt Nam chun ngữ tiếng Anh cịn hạn chế Do đó, nghiên cứu nhằm khảo sát việc sinh viên chuyên ngữ tiếng Anh năm thứ ba trường Đại học Ngoại Ngữ, Đại học Huế sử dụng hình vị –s để biểu thị danh từ số nhiều (PN–s) động từ thường ngơi thứ ba số (3SG–s) viết tranh luận Nghiên cứu sử dụng 32 viết từ lớp học phần Viết cho sinh viên chuyên ngữ tiếng Anh năm ba để phân tích việc sinh viên sử dụng hai loại hình vị Bài viết kiểm tra kỳ, có chủ đề Facebook, giới hạn thời gian 45 phút Sau đó, 10 số 32 sinh viên viết mời tham gia vấn sâu Kết nghiên cứu cho thấy sinh viên sử dụng PN–s 3SG–s hầu hết ngữ cảnh bắt buộc (obligatory contexts) sử dụng PN–s xác 3SG–s Lỗi bỏ qua (omission) phổ biến với tỉ lệ bỏ qua 3SG–s nhiều PN–s; với PN–s tỉ lệ biến thể đuôi –s nhiều đuôi –es –ies Ngồi ra, lỗi sử dụng sai (incorrect use) có xảy với PN–s (tuy không nhiều) không xảy với 3SG–s Việc sử dụng thừa (oversuppliance) không phổ biến với tần suất xảy PN–s thường xuyên so với 3SG–s Ở phần vấn, sinh viên nhắc đến số khó khăn sử dụng hai hình vị đề xuất giải pháp để sử dụng chúng tốt viết tranh luận Từ kết này, gợi ý giảng dạy liên quan đến việc sử dụng PN–s 3SG–s đưa thảo luận iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express the heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Nguyen Thi Bao Trang, for her unwavering support throughout my investigation process Her dedication, vision, sincerity, and motivation have greatly influenced me It was a tremendous privilege and honour to work and study under her intellectual guidance Secondly, my special words of thanks also go to the students from Writing class at Hue University of Foreign Languages for their participation in the writing task and interview section of my research Without their cooperation, I was unable to collect the source of data for the study Thirdly, I would like to show my special thanks to all the teachers in the English Department at Hue University of Foreign Languages for their whole-hearted lectures during my period of four-year academic training They provided me with valuable knowledge in my major field, which facilitated my preparation and completion of this study Last but not least, I am extremely thankful to my family and friends who have given me their tender care and encouragement throughout the course of my thesis research v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT iii TÓM TẮT iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v TABLE OF CONTENTS vi LIST OF TABLES viii LIST OF FIGURES ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS x CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 Objectives CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Studies on English morpheme acquisition order in L1 and L2 2.1.1 Studies on English morpheme acquisition order in L1 2.1.2 Studies on English morpheme acquisition order in L2 2.2 Influential factors on acquisition order of L2 learners 2.2.1 Semantic complexity 2.2.2 Input frequency 2.2.3 L1 interference 2.3 Vietnamese EFL learners and the use of 3SG and PN–s in writing 10 CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 13 3.1 Participants 13 3.2 Instruments 13 3.2.1 Argumentative essays 13 3.2.2 Interview 14 3.3 Procedures 14 3.4 Data analysis 15 3.4.1 Essay data 15 vi 3.4.2 Interview data 17 3.5 Reliability 18 CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 21 4.1 Findings 21 4.1.1 Students’ use of PN–s and 3SG–s 21 4.1.1.1 Students’ use of different forms of PN–s 23 4.1.1.2 Students’ use of different forms of 3SG–s 25 4.1.2 Student perceived difficulties in using PN–s and 3SG–s 28 4.1.2.1 Lack of explicit knowledge 28 4.1.2.2 Carelessness 29 4.1.2.3 Confusing situations 29 4.1.2.4 Time pressure and idea focus 30 4.1.2.5 L1 interference 30 4.1.3 Suggestions from the students for better use of PN–s and 3SG–s 31 4.1.3.1 Self–study methods 31 4.1.3.2 Teacher’s instructions 32 4.1.3.3 Additional class activities 32 4.2 Discussion 32 CHAPTER CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 36 5.1 Key findings 36 5.2 Implications 36 5.3 Limitations 38 REFERENCES 39 APPENDIX 45 APPENDIX 46 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Morpheme acquisition order in L1 (Brown, 1973) Table 2.2 Eight morphemes in the order of L1 and L2 acquisition Table 3.1 An example of coding a student’s use of PN–s and 3SG–s 17 Table 3.2 Formulas for calculating the percentages of PN–s and 3SG–s use 17 Table 3.3 An inter-coder reliability example 19 Table 3.4 Results of percentage agreement between coders 19 Table 4.1 Students’ use of PN–s and 3SG–s 21 Table 4.2 Students’ use of PN–s endings 23 Table 4.3 Students’ use of 3SG–s endings 25 Table 4.4 Students’ oversuppliance of PN–s and 3SG–s 27 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Four stages of L2 acquisition in Krashen’s model (1977) Figure 4.1 Students’ use of PN–s and 3SG–s 21 Figure 4.2 Percentage distribution of PN–s correct use and omission 22 Figure 4.3 Percentage distribution of 3SG–s correct use and omission 23 Figure 4.4 Students’ use of PN–s endings 24 Figure 4.5 Frequency distribution of –s form correct use and omission in PN–s 25 Figure 4.6 Students’ use of 3SG–s endings 26 Figure 4.7 Frequency distribution of –s form correct use and omission in 3SG–s 26 Figure 4.8 Frequency distribution of PN–s oversuppliance 27 ix 4.1.3.2 Teacher’s instructions Eight students mentioned that they had a desire to receive close revision from teachers on PN–s and 3SG–s usage at the beginning of writing courses (i.e Writing 1) to have a firm knowledge foundation This could be proceeded by providing students with a list of common confusing nouns in singular/plural differentiation, comparing the similarities/differences between Vietnamese and English to minimize the errors, and explaining PN–s and 3SG–s usage with the combination of interesting logics A student shared a story about a lesson in his/her class: “Mình nhớ năm có học mơn Viết lồng ghép câu chuyện ‘Chia sẻ –s cho cần’ ơn cho tụi điểm ngữ pháp thêm –s vào danh từ Câu chuyện vừa giúp tụi nhớ lại kiến thức, vừa đem lại hứng thú học nên tụi khắc cốt ghi tâm điểm ngữ pháp lâu nữa” (S15) (When I was a freshman studying the Writing course, my teacher combined teaching adding PN–s with the story called ‘Sharing the morpheme –s to those in needs’ The story not only reminded us of the knowledge but also created excitement in the classroom, which helped us remember the lesson for a long time.) (S15) 4.1.3.3 Additional class activities All ten interviewees also suggested that students should be given more opportunities to practice They mentioned, for example, autonomous cross-checking peers’ essays, which allows students to comfortably identify the errors and learn from each other; translating Vietnamese sentences into English helping students with independence in using 3SG–s and PN–s; and speed-mini games encouraging students to learn thoroughly about 3SG–s and PN–s 4.2 Discussion The present study aims to explore Vietnamese EFL students’ use of PN–s and 3SG–s in argumentative essays in a Vietnamese university context The results 32 from the students’ argumentative essays showed that they used PN–s and 3SG–s correctly in a majority of obligatory contexts However, the correction rate of PN–s was higher than that of 3SG–s In addition, the most common error students committed was omission while other errors were less frequent These findings supported the hypotheses formed in the present research that students used PN–s more accurately than 3SG–s (Hypothesis 1) and they most frequently committed omission error (Hypothesis 2) The findings were parallel to the results of previous studies of N Bailey and colleagues (1974), Brown (1973), Dulay and Burt (1973), Dulay and Burt (1974a), Freeman (1975), and Joelsson (2018) that PN–s was acquired earlier than 3SG–s The findings could be explained by Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis (MSIH), which argued that L2 learners found it challenging to realize the surface morphology, resulting in resorting to morpheme omission In the students’ perceptions, their Vietnamese language knowledge could be a factor in their morpheme omission, as Vietnamese was an isolating language with no inflectional morphemes (Ngo & Tran, 2001) In terms of ending forms in PN–s, students omitted –s ending more often than –es and –ies This could be clarified by the common occurrence of –s form in their essays resulting in a high possibility in committing errors However, some interviewees in the present study mentioned about a positive influence of their L1 on the use of PN–s: Vietnamese language had such plurality monosyllables as ‘những’ and ‘nhiều’, which made them more cautious to use PN–s in English L1 positive transfer was also noticed among EFL Russian students resulting from the existence of plural markers in their mother tongue (Murakami et al., 2013) In terms of 3SG–s, it expressed more grammatical features (number, person, and present tense) than PN–s (only number) (Goldschneider & DeKeyser, 2001), so it was difficult for students to use 3SG–s correctly in their L2 Other researches also showed that semantic complexity could influence students’ use of 3SG–s negatively (Gass, 2013; Freeman, 1976; Schenck & Choi, 2013) 33 Regarding incorrect usage from the essays, it was found in PN–s, but minor (only 0.18%); and, surprisingly, no students used 3SG–s forms incorrectly This finding was different from that of Phuket and Othman’s (2015) study in which Thai students applied other forms of morphemes such as progressive -ing or regular past -ed instead of 3SG–s This may be due to the fact that Vietnamese students were introduced 3SG–s grammatical knowledge at the early ages (usually in their secondary or high school); therefore, they may have a firm foundation in 3SG–s usage Students’ incorrect use of PN–s forms could be explained by the their occasionally carelessness and the unsubstantial influence of PN–s errors on their overall writing grade, which was also stated in Thai and colleagues’s (2017) study Along with the errors above, oversuppliance of PN–s and 3SG–s were also noticed among the participants; especially, the frequency of overused PN–s was much higher than those of 3SG–s Oversuppliance occurred and involved the use of countable and uncountable nouns Some possible explanations are that students were unable to identify the singularity in the created countable noun (e.g ‘a books’); they could not distinguish between regular and irregular countable nouns (e.g ‘childrens’); and, they confused between countable and uncountable nouns (e.g ‘a lot of moneys’) The finding could also be clarified by the Representational Deficit Hypothesis (RDH), which argued that the absence of equivalent inflectional features in the learners’ mother tongue compared to those in L2 resulted in, not only omission, but also the overuse of inflectional morphemes (Hawkins, 2005; Hawkins & Chan, 1997; Hawkins & Liszka, 2003; Tsimpli, 2003; Tsimpli & Dimitrakopoulou, 2007) Regarding students’ difficulties in PN–s and 3SG–s use, apart from L1 interference, time pressure and topic focus were also reported by the majority of students McDonald (2000) once mentioned time pressure issue affected the L2 students’ performance, as it required more time for the late learners or L2 learners to decode the surface forms in a language compared to the early learners or L1 learners Another explanation is that, as argumentative essays were considered to be at the advanced academic writing level, they were quite challenging for these 34 Vietnamese third-year English-majored students in the present study; therefore, the multitasking of brainstorming the ideas and ensuring grammatical correction was troublesome to them Students in the present study also admitted that 3SG–s-errorcommitting incidents occasionally happened to them when the distance between the subject and the verb was too far, which echo in the previous researches (Thai et al., 2017; Joelsson, 2018) 35 CHAPTER CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS This chapter summarizes the key findings of the present study and discusses some pedagogical implications for teaching and learning English with regard to PN–s and 3SG–s Moreover, the limitations of the research and future research directions will also be discussed 5.1 Key findings The present study investigated the Vietnamese students’ use of PN–s and 3SG–s in argumentative essays and their perspectives The findings showed that when writing argumentative essays, students used PN–s more correctly than 3SG–s; additionally, both were applied with accuracy Furthermore, PN–s and 3SG–s omission was discovered to be the most common error that students made in their writing tasks, despite individual variations; and they tended to omit 3SG–s more frequently than PN–s Specifically, students omitted –s ending of PN–s more often than –es and –ies Incorrect use of inflectional forms was also observed, though at a low percentage, in PN–s and not in 3SG–s Furthermore, students were found to overuse the PN–s more than 3SG–s, but they only did so occasionally or not at all in their essays All of the overused PN–s was related to the –s ending; and it involved more in countable nouns than uncountable nouns Only two 3SG–s oversuppliance instances were detected in the students’ essays, one with –s ending and the other with –ies ending The present study has also found that students had some difficulties in using PN–s and 3SG–s Lack of explicit knowledge, carelessness, confusing situations, time pressure, idea focus, and L1 interference were among challenges that students reported in the interviews In addition, students provided some feasible approaches in order to enhance the accuracy in using PN–s and 3SG–s, including suggestions on self-study methods, teacher’s instructions, and additional class activities 5.2 Implications Based on the research’s findings, some implications are suggested to improve the use of PN–s and 3SG–s in argumentative essays 36 Firstly, students should be exposed more to the English environment, applying various creative strategies in learning, and reduce L1 interference (Thai et al., 2017) To be more specific, exercises in the form of gap-filling or in-sentence appliance format should replace those in the form of multiple choices to reduce the chances of random pick or analogy This would be useful to enhance students’ process of using the morphemes In addition, as the students often omitted PN–s and 3SG–s due to their L1 interference, teachers, hence, should encourage students to reduce its effects by preventing them from transferring the Vietnamese linguistic features into their English use Therefore, using monolingual dictionaries is a potential method for students to gain a thorough understanding towards the linguistic characteristics of a word and correctly use it in the number, person, and tense specified in obligatory contexts In addition, Vietnamese-English translation is a good exercise for the students’ independently generating PN–s and 3SG–s; however it is well-applied for only students with good explicit knowledge of the morphemes usage Students’ misuse of PN–s and 3SG–s was reported to result from the students’ lack of knowledge and carelessness Therefore, teachers should orally discuss and record the mistakes in the students’ writings, provide feedback on their writings, and create more opportunities for students to practice with specific activities (Thai et al., 2017) It is essential to revise the explicit knowledge of PN–s and 3SG–s use in the very first course of English-majored program to provide students with firm grammatical foundation Especially, teachers should remind the students carefully about the irregular countable/uncountable nouns to reduce the PN–s omission or oversuppliance Confusing instances related to the distant subjectverb agreement in compound/complex sentences should be brought to students’ attention Moreover, as PN–s and 3SG–s errors were not considered serious in the writing tasks, students often neglected them The feasible solution is to increase the grade ratio for correct grammatical use in the overall grade for writing performance As the students mentioned the time pressure and topic focus as their difficulties in using PN–s and 3SG–s in writing argumentative essays, teachers 37 should provide them with in-class additional activities These may inspire them more in revising and practicing PN–s and 3SG–s extensively Additionally, such activities may enhance students’ speed of reaction to the morphemes and, therefore, reduce the pressure while doing writing tasks Some speed-mini games or autonomous cross-checking the peers’ essays after the lesson could be a good idea 5.3 Limitations This study did provide some substantial findings in Vietnamese students’ use of PN–s and 3SG–s in argumentative essays However, there are some shortcomings needed to be acknowledged Due to time constraint, the study was only conducted with a small number of essays The students’ insights data from only ten students did add some interesting points, yet, not significant enough to generalize the findings to other contexts Therefore, future research should be in larger scale with a larger sample of students with different levels and language backgrounds Furthermore, only PN–s and 3SG–s were taken into consider in the present study Hence, future research could explore the use of other types of inflectional morphemes to learn more about Vietnamese students’ morpheme acquisition 38 REFERENCES (The referencing and citation style used in this thesis follows APA 6th edition) Adejare, R A (2019) The acquisition and use of the –s plural morpheme by thirdyear students of English in a Nigerian university Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 9(6), 416-455 Bailey, K D (1987) Methods of Social Research (3rd ed.) 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Provide reasons and examples to support your position You have 45 minutes to plan and write your essay You should write about 250 words (From Nguyen Thi Bao Trang, Hue University research project, in progress) ANSWER ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ………………………………………………………… …………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………… 45 APPENDIX Interview questions Cám ơn bạn chấp nhận trả lời câu hỏi vấn Tất thơng tin người nghiên cứu thu thập đơn phục vụ cho mục đích nghiên cứu Danh tính người tham gia nghiên cứu giữ bí mật hoàn cảnh Khi viết tranh luận (argumentative essay) lớp học, bạn nghĩ có hay để ý (một cách có nhận thức) thêm –s vào danh từ số nhiều (ví dụ many things) vào động từ thứ số (ví dụ It tells me) khơng? Nếu có, bạn nghĩ loại bạn không cần nỗ lực nhiều để suy nghĩ thêm vào? Lý Nếu bạn khơng hay để ý thêm –s cho xin lý ln Khi viết tranh luận (argumentative essay) lớp học, bạn nghĩ phạm lỗi điểm ngữ pháp nêu hay khơng? Nếu có, nêu rõ bạn hay phạm loại lỗi sử dụng điểm ngữ pháp Lý bạn gặp lỗi Nếu bạn khơng hay phạm lỗi cho xin lý ln Bạn có thấy hay nghĩ bạn bè gặp khó khăn hay dễ dàng sử dụng điểm ngữ pháp viết argumentative essay hay không? Lý bạn nghĩ bạn lại gặp khó khăn hay dễ dàng sử dụng điểm ngữ pháp này? Khi viết tranh luận (argumentative essay) lớp học, điều làm bạn thấy khó khăn bạn muốn sử dụng điểm ngữ pháp này? Bạn có đề xuất cho chương trình học để sinh viên nâng cao độ xác sử dụng điểm ngữ pháp viết tiếng Anh nói chung viết tranh luận (argumentative essay) nói riêng? 46