Morphosyntactic errors of verbs in english written compositions by vietnamese undergraduates

INTRODUCTION

Background of the study

Writing skills play an influential role in the process of acquiring a language efficaciously However, writing is a complex process, and a cognitively challenging task inasmuch as fruitful writing production requires the utilization of correct language and grammar structures, and the usage of appropriate lexical items (Richards & Renandya, 2002) Among these aspects, grammar significantly contributes to constituting the complete arrangement of words so that the writers can effortlessly communicate their ideas Nonetheless, a multitude of studies have extensively investigated that grammar remains one of the most formidable obstacles obstructing EFL learners' writing proficiency (e.g., Alisha, Safitri, & Santoso, 2019; Fitria, 2022; Toba, Noor, & Sanu, 2019) This situation is seemingly even more exacerbated with English beginners who possess little prior second language knowledge tend to generate hypotheses about grammatical rules (Brown, 2014; Ellis,

1994) As a result, no matter how strenuous their effort is, they notch up little success in releasing grammatical-error-free writing compositions

Several notable explanations have been provided regarding errors made by language learners when writing Jobeen, Kazemian, and Shahbaz (2015) declare that learners’ errors are the sequel of incomplete learning and linguistic incompetency, and these errors are unable to be self-corrected Thus, according to Corder's (1967) assertion, error analysis has greatly benefited research on language acquisition by identifying the noteworthy impacts of learners' mistakes in three domains First, these errors provide valuable insights to educators regarding the systematic development of the learners’ language skills and what areas need further attention Second, they offer researchers substantial evidence of the acquisition process and the strategies that learners employ during language learning Finally, errors play a crucial role in the learners’ hypothesis testing process by providing a reliable means of testing their assumptions about the structure and rules of the language Therefore, Corder's (1967) view emphasizes the essential role of error analysis in improving our understanding of language acquisition and enhancing language teaching practices

Discerning the magnitude of error analysis, numerous researchers have conducted studies concerning grammatical errors in writing Of the findings, errors of verbs (e.g., subject-verb disagreement, verb tenses) have been frequently detected in writing compositions by elementary EFL undergraduates (e.g., Hamed, 2018; Nguyen, 2011; N Nguyen, 2020; Nuruzzaman, Islam, & Shuchi, 2018) Notably, these types of errors inextricably relate to verb inflections, a part of morphosyntactic verbs

For the purpose of ensuring the lucidity of this research, it is imperative for the author to delimit certain crucial terms in order to offer a comprehensive understanding of the subjects at hand Given an emphasis on morphosyntactic errors of English verbs in written compositions, this section provides definitions for the two primary concepts, namely morphosyntactic English verbs and written composition Firstly, based on Crytal’s (2008) explanations of English morphosyntax, morphosyntactic verbs are distinguished by their transformation in morphological properties to accommodate the syntactic frameworks This means that the morphosyntactic attributes describe the way a verb changes in form as a corollary of its use in a sentence and its interaction with other words to express meaning Illustrations of morphosyntactic attributes for verbs include tenses, voices, and conformity between the verb and subject in terms of number or person Secondly, a written composition is a work of written language that a writer constructs to convey a message or idea to a reader It can be expressed in a variety of styles, such as simple or descriptive prose English writers and teachers have categorized different forms and modes of writing, such as description, narration, exposition, and argumentation to aid beginner writers (McCuen-Metherell & Winkler, 2016)

Several studies have explored morphosyntactic errors in compositions by English to speakers of other languages (ESOL) students based on two main classifications The first taxonomy refers to parts of speech Studies by Hariri (2012), Cantina and Banquiao (2015), and Zainuddin (2016) have ascertained the misuse of tenses and subject-verb disagreements The second taxonomy alludes to surface strategy taxonomy Gayo and Widodo (2018) emphasized the high occurrence of omission of copular to-be, omission of inflection –es –s -ing, redundant addition of inflection –s and copular are Padilla and Padilla (2021) supplemented that wrong use of linking verbs, misformation errors of faulty verb tense, and redundancy of helping verbs were remarkable verb errors Moreover, the authors shared the same thoughts about discovering the causative factors of these errors Of which, interlingual and intralingual types are problematic issues

However, very few studies have intensively investigated morphosyntactic errors of verbs Therefore, this has inspired the author to detect these errors in English- written compositions by Vietnamese undergraduates and their causative factors.

Statement of the problems

Verbs are an essential component of linguistic expression and are indispensable in communication According to Pinker (2015), verbs represent a cornerstone of language and enable speakers to convey not only actions but also states of being Furthermore, in English, a rich morphosyntax language, verbs play a critical role in constructing sentences On the basis of Larsen-Freeman & Celce-Murcia’s (2015) highlights, verbs are requisite in forming a sentence and serve as the main predicate, conveying important information about the action, tense, and aspect Thus, the significance of verbs in a language is impossibly understated, and their understanding is vital in comprehending language structure and meaning

From the experiential aspect, as a lecturer, the researcher observed that the majority of students had difficulty in scoring highly with in-class writing tasks due to their incorrect utilization of verb inflections (e.g., –s/es inflections in the present tense; -ed inflections in simple past tense) In particular, their writing performance was hindered by these errors in different focused tasks

Based on previous studies on common writing errors, several studies have indicated that EFL undergraduates commit different types of verb errors (e.g., Hamed, 2018; Nuruzzaman et al., 2018) In the Vietnam context, several authors (e.g., H Nguyen, 2020; Nguyen, 2011; N Nguyen, 2020) have discovered that fallacious use of tense of verbs and subject-verb disagreement are prevalent errors Among these studies, N Nguyen (2020) detected verb errors due to students’ dearth of proficiency in using inflectional morphemes Generally, previous studies have discovered that verb errors significantly exacerbate students’ writing and these errors are partially related to morphosyntactic aspects of verbs (e.g., erroneous inflections of regular verbs)

Upon conducting a thorough review of the literature, the researcher has identified two noteworthy problems that require further investigation First, findings from previous studies have revealed that low-level ESOL students tend to commit a significant number of written morphosyntactic errors in English verbs Nonetheless, these studies have insufficiently presented a systematic exploration of morphosyntactic errors of verbs, given their emphasis on all word classes (e.g., noun, verb, preposition, etc.) Furthermore, a limited deal of research on morphosyntactic errors of verbs has been conducted in the Vietnam university context Second, findings from previous studies of causative factors have been deficient in detailed analysis and interpretations as they merely presented the percentages of factors and exemplified typical instances

To conclude, the importance of verbs in linguistic expression is unable to be understated However, the researcher has found that students struggle with correct verb inflections, which negatively affects their writing performance The identified problems in previous studies call for further investigation into morphosyntactic error of verbs, especially in the context of low-level ESOL Vietnam university student context Moreover, there is a need for more in-depth analysis and interpretation of the causative factors of the morphosyntactic error of verbs Overall, the problems from

Purpose of the study and research questions

In this study, the purpose was to investigate morphosyntactic errors of English verbs in the low-level EFL undergraduates’ compositions, which included two research objectives This study first aimed to explore morphosyntactic errors of English verbs in terms of types of errors and their occurrences in student essays The second objective was to explain the causative factors of these errors in the paragraphs of EFL undergraduates

In order to accomplish these two objectives, two following research questions were formulated:

1: What types of morphosyntactic errors of verbs do EFL undergraduates commit in English written compositions?

2: What causative factors result in these morphosyntactic errors of verbs in English written compositions by EFL undergraduates?

The first questions corresponded with the theoretical and practical problems of the study Specifically, as a lecturer, the researcher has noticed that most of the students struggle with in-class written compositions due to their insufficient knowledge of morphosyntactic verbs Moreover, they are also hampered in avoiding these errors in narrative paragraphs However, a scarce amount of research on morphosyntactic errors of verbs has been carried out Accordingly, the first research question was formulated to explore the morphosyntactic errors of verbs which EFL undergraduates commit in their compositions The second research question was posed to elucidate the causative factors since it is indispensable and usual to identify causes of errors in the procedure of analyzing written errors, as asserted by Corder

(1975) Identifying these factors is crucial as it enables teachers to develop effective interventions to address the errors (Ellis, 2009) Understanding the reasons behind the errors can help teachers provide appropriate feedback and instruction to students, thus improving their weaknesses in specific areas This can also assist in diagnosing the learners' individual needs and designing tailored language programs for them, leading to more efficient language learning and better proficiency levels (Norrish,

Significance of the study

The current study sheds light on morphosyntactic errors of verbs detected in the paragraphs of EFL tertiary students and the causative factors of these errors Thanks to that, this study would make significant contributions in both practical and theoretical aspects

In light of the practical contributions, this study promisingly offers valuable insights for teachers to improve their teaching of writing and grammar, particularly in relation to verb-related units, and to provide appropriate corrections to their students' written compositions By identifying common morphosyntactic errors of verbs that impact their students' writing skills, teachers might develop efficacious strategies to improve their students' proficiency in writing They potentially prioritize grammatical aspects in the teaching and learning process, and design corrective activities and instructional materials to address the specific needs of their students Vietnamese lecturers are expected to notice their students’ frequent errors due to Vietnamese influence and customize their lessons to assist their students in handling these errors

For students, this study hopes to enhance students’ awareness of the significance of grammar, particularly in using the morphosyntactic level of verbs They are also expected to increase their attentiveness to the content of their writing and enhance their writing abilities As a result, they are supposed to utilize correct English grammar to convey their messages accurately without any errors or misunderstandings Vietnamese students promisingly recognize their frequent errors due to Vietnamese influence, so they are expected to put more conscious of avoiding these errors

With reference to the theoretical contributions, there is a scarcity of literature students making a fertile area for additional research Accordingly, this study gains plenty of research room to obtain the results These are advantageous for other researchers who are in need of immersing in a similar field of research in both error analysis (EA) and morphosyntactic aspects

In conclusion, the study would have practical contributions As for teachers, they are expected to place a premium on grammar aspects and create appropriate materials to improve students' writing skills It also accentuates the importance of grammar for students to release written submissions accurately As for Vietnamese lecturers and students, they promisingly become aware of the morphosyntactic error of verbs under interlingual interference Moreover, the theoretical contributions of this study include opening up a new area for further research on these types of errors and providing a foundation for future studies.

Structure of the thesis

The study is structured with six main chapters First, Chapter 1 describes the objectives of the study To do this, it presents five parts of the background, the purposes, the research questions, the significance and the organization of the study Second, Chapter 2 aims to shape a theoretical framework of English morphosyntactic verbs and error analysis procedures It provides a review of the related theoretical issues within the scope of the study, including writing skills, verb classes, and types of English errors Third, Chapter 3 deals with the research methodology employed to undertake the research It describes several primary issues, namely, the research site, participants and sampling, instruments, the procedure of data collection, data and source of data, and data analysis for two research questions, and then ends up with the ethical issues Chapters 4 and 5 contain study findings and their interpretation in light of previous relevant investigations Finally, Chapter 6 concludes with a summary of key findings and a discussion of implications, limits, and future research.

Chapter summary

This chapter has been organized into five main parts, including the background of the study, statement of the problems, purposes of the study and research questions, the study's significance, and the thesis's structure The first section has provided an in-depth overview of the foundation of the study, indicating how bewildering writing skills are and Vietnamese students' dilemma with producing grammatically correct writing due to rudimentary knowledge of English grammar The importance of error analysis has been affirmed, citing well-known authors who have recognized its usefulness The section then has gone on to enumerate numerous studies that have found that errors in writing compositions by EFL undergraduates were frequently related to verb inflections, a part of morphosyntactic verbs Key terms such as morphosyntactic verbs and written compositions have been defined The researcher ascertained that almost no studies have investigated morphosyntactic errors of verbs, inspiring him to conduct this study

The second section has elucidated several significant research problems Firstly, ealier research findings have indicated that low-proficiency ESOL students commonly commit a substantial number of written morphosyntactic errors of verbs Nevertheless, these studies have failed at offerring a systematic exploration of the morphosyntactic errors of verbs, as they have broadly encompassed all linguistic categories such as nouns, prepositions, etc Moreover, the number of studies focusing on the morphosyntactic errors of verbs within the context of Vietnamese universities have remained limited Secondly, the previous research that has investigated two main causes associated with these errors have provided insufficient analysis and interpretation, as they have only presented the percentages of factors and provided a few illustrative examples

The third part has detailed the purpose of the study and research questions The purpose was to investigate morphosyntactic errors of English verbs in the low-level EFL undergraduates’ compositions, which has included two prime research objectives Specifically, this study endeavored to explore the frequency and types of morphosyntactic errors of English verbs committed by non-English majors and provided a description and analysis of the factors provoking these errors Two research questions were formulated, and the rationale for formulating these two inquiries was also provided

The fourth section of the chapter has accentuated the potentially practical advantages for teachers and students in the context of teaching and learning English, in addition to the theoretical contributions that may fill the gap in the existing research Lastly, the structure of the thesis, which comprises six chapters, has been presented.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Overview of writing skills and paragraph writing

Writing has been defined in a variety of ways As for linguistic perspective, Byrne (1979) defines that writing involves generating a succession of phrases structured in a specific order and connected together in certain ways In other words, writing text has sentences that are organized in a grammatical and cohesive manner to link the concepts As for communication function, writing, according to Carroll and Wilson (2018), is the process of conveying ideas, emotions, and feelings to other individuals by writing symbols so that readers may comprehend what is being said

In conclusion, despite the multiple writing definitions, writing is the act of organizing words, phrases, and sentences in papers to represent writers' ideas, emotions, or anything else that exists in their heads

In a more narrow vein concerning writing a paragraph, Craik (2000) asserts that a topic sentence, unity, coherence, and proper development are all essential components of a paragraph In this regard, a well-written paragraph should include a distinct main sentence, supporting sentences, and an ending one It should only express one key topic and be organized clearly and coherently (Craik, 2000) In addition to these components, writers fundamentally ensure writing accuracy encompassing a range of criteria, including grammar, spelling, punctuation, syntax, and vocabulary According to Winkler and McCuen-Metherell (2016), accurate writing is essential for conveying ideas and arguments clearly and logically, and for errors in grammar, spelling, or punctuation can undermine the author's authority and detract from the overall quality of the work (McCuen-Metherell & Winkler, 2016)

Remarkably, Craik (2000) affirms that it is relatively bewildering for second language learners to construct proper sentences in English using well-structured phrases; consequently, committing common grammatical errors in paragraphs appears thereby inevitable Hence, Candling (2001) states that error analysis provides necessary information about what learners’ competence is short of Weireech (1991) also considers learners’ errors to be of particular importance since making errors is a device the learners use in order to learn Accordingly, the author affirms that error analysis is a valuable aid to identify and expound on adversity encountered by learners Corder (1981) suggests that analyzing learners’ errors serves two related but distinct functions Pedagogically, it is a decent understanding of the nature of errors before a systematic means of eradicating them Theoretically, it is essential to provide an adequate linguistic explanation of learners’ process of second language acquisition (SLA).

Theoretical framework of the thesis

The present section aims to provide an overview of the prevailing theories in order to establish a comprehensive and robust theoretical framework for the current study By delving into the existing body of knowledge, this academic investigation seeks to draw upon well-established theories that have been developed and refined by scholars and researchers in the relevant field

Defining errors and proposing error analysis procedures have gained great interest from several prolific scholars With respect to the definition of errors, linguistic experts have proposed a spectrum of perspectives There is a classical definition given by Corder (1981); the author considers error as a sign of imperfect knowledge on the grounds that the learners have not yet internalized the formation rules of the foreign languages Ellis (1997) consents to the notion that errors indicate deficiencies in a learner's understanding, as the learner lacks intimate knowledge of the correct response Parrot (1993) refers to errors as evidence of the learners' developing competence in the foreign language The scholar also adds that the errors may indicate that learners employ rules from their own language to the use of English

Besides, there is another term, "mistake", which may be confused with "error"

In common, “mistake” and “error” have been understood as synonymous, but in language analysis, they have different implications Corder (1981) clarifies that

"mistake" is not significant to the language learning process and the author reserves the term "error" for the systematic errors of the learner from which his/her rudimentary knowledge of the language can be reconstructed Likewise, Brown (2014) agrees that a “mistake” is a performance error that is either a random guess or a "slip" There is a way to distinguish errors from mistakes, which is on the basis of learners' consciousness of doing something fallacious Brown (2014) mentions three stages which learners necessarily experience when learning L2 In the first stage, the learner does something wrong without knowing it; in the second phase, the individual is unable to rectify their error even if they are aware that they are incorrect, whereas, in the final stage, they are capable of correcting their fallacious version Of these stages, errors occur in the first two stages, while mistakes belong to the last one In short, this study focused on errors (Brown, 2014)

In regard to the definitions of error analysis (EA), Corder (1981), a major contributor to the field of error analysis, defines EA as the study of erroneous utterances generated by the language learner, which is an integral part of the broader investigation of the language learning process EA shares a methodological resemblance to the study of the acquisition of the mother tongue, providing valuable insights into the linguistic development of learners and indications of the learning process Otherwise, Brown (2014) characterizes EA as a process of observing, evaluating, and identifying instances in which learners violate linguistic rules, thus providing a means of identifying patterns and sources of errors, which can be used to

Regarding the error analysis procedures, there are two prominent ones established by Corder (1974) and Gass, Behney, and Plonsky (2013) Overall, both procedures share several similar steps, namely, collecting and analyzing data, classifying errors, and identifying their sources Nonetheless, they differ in several aspects Firstly, Corder (1974) states that the collected data can be either massive, specific, or incidental samples, but Gass et al (2013) underscore the importance of sample size, homogeneity, and medium of a sample (written or spoken) It can be argued that the former procedure appears to be more flexible and less prescriptive regarding data collection, whereas Gass et al.'s (2013) procedure advocates for a more rigorous and structured approach to sampling

Several research studies have employed Gass et al.'s (2013) procedure as a framework for investigating written errors For instance, Kampookaew (2020) conducted a study with a sample size of 29 second-year students from the Faculty of Economics at a public university in Bangkok, Thailand The participants were all native Thai speakers who had been learning English for a minimum of 13 years Similarly, Promsupa et al (2016) provided adequate information about their sample with 34 English essays written by Thai second-year English majors from a university in Thailand In contrast, Cantina and Banquio's (2015) study, which adopted Corder's

(1974) procedure, was insufficient in the details regarding the sample size

Secondly, Corder (1974) proposes five steps of EA, including identifying errors, explaining the causes of errors, and evaluating the seriousness of errors In contrast, Gass et al (2013) suggest six EA steps, with additional steps of quantifying errors and remediating them based on pedagogical intervention, which is not explicitly mentioned in Corder's (1974) procedure Finally, Corder's (1974) EA excludes quantification of errors, whereas Gass et al (2013) highlight the significance of counting errors to reveal their frequency

Research endeavors that have employed Gass et al.'s (2013) procedure have provided detailed accounts of error frequencies, thereby elucidating the patterns and rankings of errors, as evidenced by the work of Kampookaew (2020) In contrast, studies that have relied on Corder's (1974) procedure have often only included selected excerpts to exemplify error types, thereby limiting their ability to capture the prevalence of errors This limitation is highlighted in the studies conducted by Gayo and Widodo (2018) and Purinanda and Sutrisno (2022), which have reported shortcomings in terms of accurately capturing frequent errors

In conclusion, both Corder’s (1974) and Gass et al.'s (2013) procedures provide valuable insights into conducting EA and they share a common goal of identifying errors in learners' language production and understanding the sources of these errors to improve second language learning Nevertheless, they differ in several key aspects, such as data collection, number of steps, types of errors analyzed, and sources of error identification Generally, Corder's (1974) procedure provides a more generalized approach to EA, and Gass et al.'s (2013) procedure is more systematic and specific, providing researchers with a clear framework to conduct EA

As a result, the utilization of Gass et al.'s (2013) procedure is deemed advantageous by the current researcher, as it offers a robust framework for examining morphosyntactic errors in verbs and delving into their underlying causes Consequently, a comprehensive comprehension of the morphosyntactic intricacies associated with verbs can be imperative in the present investigation

The present study endeavors to examine the occurrences of morphosyntactic errors in English verbs within the written compositions of low-level EFL undergraduates In addition to an exploration of theoretical issues surrounding errors and error analysis, a comprehensive understanding of the morphosyntactic aspects of verbs is deemed essential

With respect to the definition of English morphosyntax, Crystal (2008) denotes that morphosyntactic is a term used in linguistics to allude to grammatical categories the characteristics of words Relating to clarification for morphosyntactic verbs, Crystal (2008) clarifies that these verbs are constituted by changing the morphology of verbs to accommodate syntactic structures It is an uphill task to separate morphological aspects in syntactic structure For instance, in English, inflecting affixes to verbs tends to be unconsciously conducted (Crystal, 2008)

In relation to the morphosyntactic properties of verbs, Payne and Payne (1997) propose a classification system that comprises two distinct categories, namely, distributional and structural aspects The former encompasses the functional roles of verbs in phrases, clauses, and texts, while the latter pertains to their internal structure

More specifically, distributional properties refer to the various functions that verbs can serve as the head of verb phrases, the predicate of clauses, and so on As for structural properties, these have to do with the internal structure of the verb itself

In this case, verbs exhibit subject agreement, tense etc

To exemplify the above points, the subsequent examples are given In addition, the verbs in these below sentences are analyzed to illuminate the morphosyntactic perspectives of verbs

Example 2.1: My brother works for a local company

Example 2.2: Water boils at 100 degrees Celsius

Example 2.3: He is running in the park

Example 2.4: I will go to the store if it stops raining

Example 2.5: I am a post-graduate student

Example 2.6: I ran to the park yesterday

In Examples 2.1 and 2.2, the words works and boils occur in English sentences whose subjects are singular noun and uncountable noun, and the tense is simple present In these examples, the words works and boils consist of the free morpheme work and boil and the inflectional bound morpheme –s

Empirical evidence in previous research

The current section endeavors to provide a synthetical review of preexisting research on the topic of common errors made by English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) undergraduate students Besides, previous investigations into morphosyntactic errors and the underlying causal factors that contribute to their occurrence are also reviewed

2.3.1 Empirical evidence in previous research on common errors by non- English majored undergraduates

There have been numerous studies detecting frequent errors in written composition by low-level EFL undergraduates These studies were conducted in a broad set of teaching contexts, which are shown in the following table:

Common errors committed in compositions by non-English majored undergraduates

Studies Research sites and participants

Main findings of verb errors

144 Diploma students from various schools in Malaysia

- Subject-verb disagreement (wrongly matched singular subject with a plural verb and vice versa)

- Verb tenses (wrong change of the verbs into past tense form)

40 non-English major Libyan students at the pre- intermediate

- Subject-verb agreement as syntactic error

- Wrong tense as grammatical error (improper use of simple present or present perfect)

90 non-English majors in Saudi Arabia

A paragraph ahout yourself, your best friend, a nice place to visit, etc

Subject-verb disagreement as the second highest percentage among grammatical errors

- Errors in verb group as the second highest occurance

20 pre-intermideate students at National College of Education, Vietnam

Wrong use of verb tenses as the the most prevalent errors under interlingual interference

122 non-English majors at Ha Tay Teacher Training College

Wrong use of verb tenses (past tense, present perfect tense, etc.)

125 EFL sophomore students at HaUI

Three most noticeable errors including verb tense, sentence structure, verb forms

A multitude of previous studies have investigated that verbs were frequently misused; in other words, the frequency of verb tense errors outweighed the other types of errors The first verb error type related to subject-verb disagreements, studies by Singh et al (2017), Hamed (2018), Nuruzzaman et al (2018) have indicated that the majority of the EFL students struggled in agreement since they could not make closely and the number of the subject was unclear Nonetheless, this is in contrast with a study by Hamzah (2012) The author deciphered that subject-verb agreements were not problematic issues, but wrong choice of verb groups was a serve error in Indonesian students’ English texts The second verb error type related to verb tenses which were improperly applied with high frequency (Hamed, 2018; Nuruzzaman et al., 2018; Singh et al., 2017) The authors have reported that the students were unavailing to alter the verbs into past tense form and misemployed the rule of present perfect tense which takes the form “to have + a past participle”

In the Vietnam context, several studies about written errors of non-English majors have proved the relatively significant influence of the mother tongue Nguyen

(2011) identified language transfer errors in the written compositions of the sophomores The results showed that among the students’ types of interlingual errors, the most prevalent ones are verb errors, especially tenses of verbs Likewise, H Nguyen (2020) and H Nguyen (2020) shared this school of thought that EFL students made numerous verb tenses and aspect errors under mother tongue intervention

In addition to studies detecting students’ errors, there have been a few renowned books focusing on frequently-made errors in English, which are entitled Longman Dictionary of common errors by Heaton and Turton (1989) and ABC of common grammatical errors for learners and teachers of English by Turton (1995) These books present an alphabetical checklist of common errors, with each entry containing a sample example of the error, a correct version, and an explanation

In short, the compelling body of findings from the previous research justified that low-level EFL tertiary students tended to commit written errors, especially verb errors with tenses and agreements with the subject Noticeably, these errors are partly related to morphosyntactic aspects of verbs (e.g., erroneous inflections of regular verbs) Furthermore, despite being well-known for enumerating common errors, two reviewed books suffer a dearth of morphosyntactic errors of verbs Accordingly, this study was feasibly conducted to detect Vietnamese undergraduates’ morphosyntactic errors of verbs

2.3.2 Empirical evidence in previous research on morphosyntactic errors

Numerous studies in the literature have focused on analyzing morphosyntactic errors made by language learners In this area of research, the identification and classification of these errors have generally been undertaken by utilizing two key dimensions, namely, parts of speech and surface strategy taxonomy

2.3.2.1 Morphosyntactic errors classification based on parts of speech

Several studies have been conducted to identify morphosyntactic errors among students by categorizing them according to their parts of speech This approach involves examining errors that are specific to particular classes of words, such as nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs Table 2.5 shows the previous studies on morphosyntactic errors of students based on parts of speech:

Morphosyntactic errors of students based on parts of speech

Studies Research sites and participants

Main findings of verb errors

“What do you want to do in future?"

Wrong use of tenses as the third highest frequency (20%)

Not mentioned Wrong use of verbs with the third singular subjects

Argumentative Errors of wrong tense as the second highest frequency (23.3%)

Descriptive Errors in past tenses form

Errors with plural subjects and verb agreement

Descriptive Wrong use of verb group (15,7%)

Previous studies have indicated that wrong use of tenses and subject-verb disagreements appeared with high frequency (e.g., Cantina & Banquiao, 2015; Hariri, 2012; Hijjo, 2013; Zainuddin, 2016) Specifically, the participants normally committed errors in the past tense due to omission of –ed suffixes as well as the present simple tense due to insufficient knowledge of the third singular and had dilemmas with using verbs with compound subjects Nevertheless, it is important to note a contrasting finding from the study conducted by Ramadhan et al (2018), which was unviable to indicate any verb tense errors in the descriptive texts of the selected participants Alternatively, the authors highlighted erroneous use of verb groups This discrepancy suggests that the manifestation of verb errors may vary among different groups of learners or contexts

2.3.2.2 Morphosyntactic errors based on surface strategy taxonomy

A limited number of studies have utilized a surface strategy taxonomy to identify and categorize morphosyntactic errors Table 2.6 includes the previous studies on morphosyntactic errors of students based on surface strategy taxonomy in both international and Vietnam contexts:

Table 2.6 Morphosyntactic errors of students based on surface strategy taxonomy

Studies Research sites and participants

Main findings of verb errors

77 Indonesian students in 10 th grade

- Omission errors (inflection –es/s,; – ing, be (is and am))

- Addition errors (inflection –s, addition of are)

- Misformation errors (misformation of be auxiliary)

- Misordering errors (wrong word order of the phrase or sentence)

40 EFL undergraduates at Tra Vinh University

- Misformation of verbal inflections (– ed, -en in past tense or present perfrect tense)

- Omission of –ing in progressive tense

49 Filipino students in 7 th grade

- Wrong use of linking verbs as the second highest error

- Misformation errors: verb tense (54.6%) faulty subject-verb agreement (4.59%)

- Misordering errors (no verb errors identified)

Six Indonesian English-majored undergraduates

- Omission errors: highest frequent errors (omission of elements in verb produces almost half the errors of omission)

- Misformation errors: second-highest contributor (inflectional errors, passive voice, tense, infinitive, and subject- verb agreement)

- Addition errors: third-highest number of errors (unnecessary linguistic items such as –ed, to be)

Among four reviewed studies, Gayo and Widodo’s (2018) research concluded that the use of omission of copular to-be, omission of inflection –es –s -ing, the addition of inflection –s, the addition of are, misformation of is and are, auxiliary were verb errors committed in 77 descriptive texts by Indonesian students in 9th misinformation errors of faulty verb tense, and addition of helping verbs were common verb errors in 49 submissions by Filipino students in 7th Grade Lastly, when discovering morphosyntactic errors in six unpublished research articles by Indonesian English-majored undergraduates, Purinanda and Sutrisno (2022) asserted that almost half the errors pertained to the erroneous use of verbs Among these, omission and misformation occupied a great number of errors Besides, misordered errors seemed not to be detected in these studies

In the Vietnam context, N Nguyen (2020) confirmed that tenses of verbs such as omission of –ed, -en in past tense or present perfect tense, omission of –ing in progressive tense, subject-verb agreement were most frequently committed by Vietnamese undergraduates The author stated that these errors were verb inflectional morphosyntax

In summary, previous research examining the morphosyntactic errors has consistently indicated that errors related to verbs constitute a substantial proportion of such errors

2.3.3 Empirical evidence in previous research on causative factors of morphosyntactic errors

Prior research has identified several factors that contribute to the prevalence of morphosyntactic errors in ESOL undergraduate writings These factors include two key causal factors, namely, interlingual interference and intralingual interference, and other causes Table 2.7 consists of the previous studies on causative factors resulting in morphosyntactic errors:

Causative factors resulting in morphosyntactic errors

Studies Main findings of causative factors

- Students’ incomplete knowledge of writing sentences

Banquiao (2015) Students’ carelessness in using technology when typing texts

- The pauciy of knowledge of the English grammar system

- Intralingual interference (the most factor)

- Communication strategies (only refers to sentence fragment)

- Intralingual (overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restriction, incomplete application of rules, false concept hypothesized)

Several authors have found that intralingual factors were noticeable causes of these morphosyntactic errors (e.g., Gayo & Widodo, 2018; Hariri, 2012; Padilla & Padilla, 2021; Ramadhan et al., 2018) Among the various subtypes of intralingual factors, Hariri (2012) and Ramadhan et al (2018) determined that the primary contributors were false concept hypothesized and overgeneralization Additionally, negative transfer from Indonesian, Malaysian, Bahamas, and Hiligaynon dialects morphology of words From the Vietnam context, there was only a study by N Nguyen (2020) contributing to the field; however, because of the study’s focus, morphosyntactic errors were attributed to the adverse interference of Vietnamese Apart from these major causes, a smaller proportion of these errors was attributed to communication strategies (Hariri, 2012; Padilla & Padilla, 2021) This factor begot sentence fragments and incomplete messages in students’ compositions.

Research gaps

A plurality of previous studies (e.g., Cantina & Banquio, 2015; Gayo & Widodo, 2018; Padilla & Padilla, 2021; Purinanda & Sutrisno, 2022) have been conducted on morphosyntactic errors; nonetheless, there have been existing two major gaps, namely, knowledge gap and methodology gap With reference to the research knowledge gap, despite the extensive body of literature on morphosyntactic errors, limited attention has been devoted to examining the composition in narrative writing genre and given an intensive focus on verbs Moreover, almost no studies on morphosyntactic errors have been undertaken in the Vietnam context In addition, there have remained a few issues in previous studies on identifying the causative factors First, a few authors (Cantina & Banquiao, 2015; Padilla & Padilla, 2021; Purinanda & Sutrisno, 2022) reported subtypes of intralingual factors and gave examples in detail, the others only discussed the sources in general (Hijjo, 2013; Zainuddin, 2016) Second, there have been no studies identifying Vietnamese interference on morphosyntactic errors

With regard to the research methodology shortcomings, the previous studies have only collected a few submissions from the students (e.g., Hijjo, 2013; Purinanda

& Sutrisno, 2022; Ramadhan et al., 2018; Zainuddin, 2016) Beside that, these error analysis studies mainly employed the qualitative analysis approach, but they lacked the interpretations of meanings of data such as explanations of grammatical points of the errors, clarfication of the relation between causative factors and error types Moreover, when identifying the frequency, the authors have not applied norming frequency technique to ensure that the length of writings are comparable (Biber, Conrad, & Reppen, 1998) Finally, there have been no studies achieving the interrater reliability, which was momentous in analysing errors

Therefore, this study endeavored to fill these gaps by investigating the morphosyntactic errors of verbs made by low-level EFL undergraduates in their written compositions Two research objectives were identified Firstly, the study seeked to identify the types of morphosyntactic errors of verbs and how frequently they occur Secondly, the study aimed to explain the factors that lead to these errors in the writing of EFL undergraduates To achieve these objectives, the study formulated two research questions: 1: What types do EFL undergraduates commit morphosyntactic errors of verbs in English written compositions? and 2: What causative factors result in these morphosyntactic errors of verbs in English written compositions by EFL undergraduates?

Chapter summary

Chapter 2 has shaped the theoretical background, provided an analysis of the related literature, and critically indicated research gaps for this study Chapter 2 was structured into seven main sections, including an overview of writing skills, definitions of error and error analysis procedures, an explanation of English morphosyntax, identification of types of verbs and morphosyntactic verbs, taxonomies of morphosyntactic errors of verbs, causative factors, synthesis, and critiques of previous studies and research gaps

Within the domain of writing skills, there exists diverse definitions Generally, writing pertains to the process of arranging words, phrases, and sentences within written compositions to express the ideas of the writers A well-crafted paragraph necessitates the inclusion of crucial elements such as a topic sentence, unity, coherence, and proper development Writing accuracy encompasses a diverse array of criteria, including grammar, spelling, punctuation, syntax, and vocabulary, as in a lucid and rational manner, while also establishing the writer's credibility with readers Nonetheless, the occurrence of errors in paragraphs appears to be inevitable Consequently, experts in the field of linguistics assert the indispensability of error analysis, as it furnishes vital information regarding the challenges faced by learners and their level of competence Corder (1981) suggests that analyzing learners’ errors serves two related but distinct functions of pedagogy and theory

As for the definition of error, error analysis, and its procedure First, there have been various perspectives In general, errors refer to a sign of imperfect knowledge as the learners have not yet internalized the formation rules of the foreign languages and they employ rules from their own language to the use of English Second, differentiating “error” and “mistake” is also noticed by several linguistic experts Generally, "mistake" is not significant to the language learning process, and learners may correct their wrong version, “error” is related to the systematic errors of the learner from which his/her knowledge of the language can be reconstructed Finally, upon comparing and contrasting two procedures of error analysis by Corder (1974) and Gass et al (2013) This study adopted the five first steps of Gass et al.’s (2013)

EA procedure thanks to its systematic along with specific framework and correspondence with the study objectives

In regard to the explanation of verbs from English morphosyntax perspectives, Crystal's (2008) explanation sheds light on the intricate nature of morphosyntactic English verbs The construction of such verbs involves the modification of their morphology to fit into the syntactic structure of the sentence In addition, Payne and Payne's (1997) classification of morphosyntactic properties of verbs into distributional and structural aspects further highlights the complexity of this linguistic phenomenon

With respect to classifcations of morphosyntactic errors There have been two primary dimensions employed in previous studies, namely, parts of speech and surface strategy taxonomy This current study adapted the theories by Dulay et al

(1982) about surface strategy taxonomy to create the coding scheme for data analysis, including four main error types, namely, omission, addition, misformation and misordering As explained, their classification of errors is in correspondence with the current study's first objective which intensively investigates of morphosyntactic errors of verbs but rather other parts of speech

Concerning typical causes of errors, this study adapted theories by Brown (2014) and James (2013), which classified causes into four main types, namely interlingual transfer, intralingual transfer, context of learning, and communication strategies First, language transfer refers to the influence that the learner's first language exerts over the learning of a second language This study focuses on negative transfer of the Vietnamese language Second, intralingual factors indicate generalizations formed from limited exposure to the target language and demonstrate the difficulties involved in mastering low-level rules, such as distinctions in verb inflections Intralingual sources consist of overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restrictions, incomplete rule application, and false concept hypotheses Third, the context of learning alludes to the classroom environment and materials used for education Finally, communication strategies are deliberate techniques used by language learners to communicate effectively

With reference to synthetically and critically reviewing previous studies, the current researcher identified two major gaps, including knowledge gaps and methodology gaps The knowledge gaps refer to the lack of studies on the composition of the narrative writing genre with intensive focus on verbs, as well as the absence of research on morphosyntactic errors in the Vietnamese context Additionally, previous studies have not sufficiently identified the causative factors, with a few authors providing subtypes of intralingual factors while others only discussed sources in general and none identifying Vietnamese interference The methodology gaps relate to the lack of interpretations of data meanings and norming frequency technique for frequency identification Furthermore, there have been no

METHODOLOGY

Research design

The purpose of this study was to investigate morphosyntactic errors of English verbs in low-level EFL undergraduates’ compositions, which included two research objectives This study first aimed to explore morphosyntactic errors of English verbs in terms of types of errors and their occurrences in student essays The second objective was to explain the causative factors of these errors in the paragraphs of EFL undergraduates To fulfill this purpose, the researcher resorted to employ a qualitative descriptive research design

Firstly, the qualitative method, as defined by Creswell and Poth (2018), focuses on understanding and interpreting the meanings of social phenomena It is a flexible and holistic approach that seeks to uncover the complexities and nuances of human experience According to Creswell and Creswell (2022), qualitative research is driven by the fundamental concept of acquiring knowledge about a particular problem directly from participants and directing the research process towards gathering relevant information The primary objective of qualitative research is to cultivate a comprehensive and intricate comprehension of the phenomenon under study This approach involves several key features, including data collection through interviews, observations, and document analysis, as well as data analysis through coding, categorizing, and interpreting data Creswell and Poth (2018) Qualitative data analysis can be a daunting task, especially when dealing with plenty of data One way to simplify this process is by using codes and categories

Regarding analyzing data by codes, according to Fraenkel, Wallen, and Hyun

(2018), the process of coding involves breaking down and labeling text in order to create descriptions and overarching themes within the data In this scenario, As recommended by Creswell and Creswell (2022), researchers have the option to construct a table comprising a predefined set of codes for data coding purposes Through the utilization of categorization and thematic analysis, qualitative researchers may iteratively refine their codes and subcodes while interpreting the data Once categories have been established, Fraenkel et al (2018) suggest using computer analysis to code the data Concerning interpreting findings, frequencies and proportions of particular occurrences are commonly used; besides, codes and categories are utilized to organize content and arrive at a narrative description of findings (Creswell & Creswell, 2022) In this study, the qualitative method was mainly employed when the researcher classified the identified error types and causative factors based on the coding schemes These codes were pre-determined based on theories of error types by Dulay et al (1892), causes of errors by Brown

Secondly, the descriptive method, as defined by Creswell and Creswell (2022), is a research approach that seeks to provide a detailed and systematic account of present phenomena or occurrences It aims to accurately and factually describe these phenomena, as highlighted by Richards and Schmidt (2010) The purpose of this method, according to Creswell and Guetterman (2019), is to offer an in-depth explanation of the research subject Typically, the descriptive method is utilized to report frequencies, as noted by Fraenkel et al (2018) Moreover, descriptive research often involves quantitative analysis of data using frequencies or percentages, as mentioned by Nassaji (2015) It is commonly employed in studies examining errors made by language learners in their speech or writing (Fraenkel et al., 2018)

For this study, the researcher deemed the qualitative descriptive research design appropriate The primary purpose was to identify and categorize error types and causative factors using the qualitative method Nassaji (2015) argues that qualitative research allows for a thorough examination of qualitatively collected data to identify relevant themes, which can then be converted into numerical data for further comparison and evaluation In this study, similar steps were taken for data analysis, as described in Sections 3.6.1 and 3.6.2 Therefore, the decision to employ the descriptive method to describe the frequencies of error types, raw numbers, and percentages of errors under different causes was reasonably justified.

Research site

The current research was conducted at Ho Chi Minh City Open University (HCMCOU), which has been operating for over 30 years The university has three modes of delivery: on-campus, in-service, and distance The university's mission is to contribute and enhance knowledge for the community in the most flexible and convenient ways Moreover, the university strives to become the leading multidisciplinary public university in Vietnam with application-oriented language, knowledge dissemination, and community engagement, in which distance learning activities are aimed to develop on a par with Southeast Asia

Every year, the General English Division of the Faculty of Foreign Languages welcomes over 4000 non-English majored new students who pass the National Entrance Exam and attend the formal curriculum These students take a placement test to be divided into one of ten general English classes Each class lasts five weeks with 45 periods (40 minutes for each period) The course books used for these levels are from National Geographic Learning publisher The syllabi are available-designed and distributed to each level It is worth mentioning that the students have to join online classes in the first six levels.

Participants and sampling

In terms of submissions, I collected were 224 paragraphs written by 224 first- year students at the elementary level of the General English Division of the Faculty of Foreign Languages in Ho Chi Minh City Open University They were freshmen who enrolled in 2020 with diverse majors such as law, information technology, etc

A number of authors (e.g., H Nguyen, 2020; H Nguyen, 2020; Nguyen, 2011) have analyzed writing errors by low-level EFL undergraduates and their results revealed that these students frequently committed numerous errors of verbs Thus, designating Elementary freshmen students was reasonably justified in this current study

Among more than forty classes from the population, six of which were selected to be the subject of the study They had been trained in General English Class 3 with National Geographic Learning publisher’s book “Life Elementary A2” from Unit 1 to Unit 4 At the time of the present study, they were in the second semester of their first academic year and continued the book in General English Class 4 The students had total six periods for writing skills in a 5-week semester

In respect to the sampling method, in the present study, participants were chosen with the convenience sampling technique which chooses a group of individuals who are available for study (Creswell & Creswell, 2022) This sampling is the most easily available method for the researcher who puts no effort into making them representative of the wider population (Fraenkel et al., 2018) The researcher conveniently collected data as students’ in-class midterm submissions from the lecturers in charge.

Instruments and materials

With regard to the research instrument, Kothari (2004) defines that research instrument as a tool employed by researchers to collect data Research instruments are imperative in the research process since they enable researchers to acquire the required data to address their research questions Selecting a research instrument is determined by the research aim, the data type to be gathered, the sample or population, and the research design (Kothari, 2004)

In this research, my primary focus was on examining the errors made by undergraduate students at HCMCOU in their written compositions during in-class midterm exams The research data consisted of the students' midterm submissions, which were provided in response to specific writing prompts Hence, these prompts served as the research instruments When analyzing errors in students' writing tests conducted during midterms, it is essential to rely heavily on the use of appropriate writing prompts, as emphasized by Fareed, Ashraf, and Bilal (2016) Adas and Bakir

(2013) further highlight the importance of selecting writing prompts that match the exam requirements and correspond to the student's language proficiency level to ensure accurate error analysis

These writing prompts included two main parts, namely, the main topic and detailed requirements (see Appendix A for a sample writing prompt) Specifically,

224 collected compositions belonged to six main topics (Table 3.1) The topics were assigned by the teachers as advanced English learners, and several ones were adapted from the website of National Geographic Learning These topics provoked the students to embark on composing a narrative paragraph (see Appendix B for a sample submission) This genre was chosen on account of practical and theoretical justifications Practically, most of the writing topics in General English Class 4 were related to the narrative genre (Table 3.1) The students were required to share a sequence of events, characters, and themes to entertain or educate the readers Their writings can spark emotion, encourage reflection, and convey meaning They were equipped with topic-related grammatical points such as past tense, temporal connectives (e.g, then, after that, etc.), and mental verbs (e.g., think, believe) Theoretically, although most of the previous studies (e.g., Cantina & Banquio, 2015; Gayo & Widodo, 2018; Ramadhan et al., 2018; Zainuddin, 2016) have mainly revolved around other writing genres such as descriptive, argumentative, little research has examined the composition in narrative writing genre In short, the narrative genre was reasonably chosen in this study

In addition to the main topic, the writing prompts required students to write a paragraph with an average of 150 words within 30 minutes and the other aspects about word use, and free mistake assurance (Appendix A)

The topics of selected compositions

1 Write a paragraph to tell a friend about a terrible restaurant or café in your town

2 Write a paragraph about your favorite festival 26 3,820 146.92 41.24

3 Describe a trip in the past you like 30 7,004 233.47 50.96

4 Write about an embarrassing moment that happened to you or someone you know

5 Write a short travel blog about a journey or a place you visited on

“It was nine o’clock in the evening, and Mary didn’t know where she was.”

As regards the teaching material, the textbook titled “Life Elementary A2” by National Geographic Learning was used, which the participants learned from the fifth unit to the eighth unit Each unit as a main topic consisted of nine sections with a warm-up part, a revision part, and seven sub-topic parts The writing tasks were embedded in the sixth part (Table 3.2) By the end of the unit, students should be able to write about an object from the past in their house, a travel blog including so and because, or describe a festival in their country by using grammatical points (e.g., past tense, comparisons between present simple tense and present continuous tense)

The writing sections in Life Elementary A2 (Unit 5 to unit 8)

Units Writing tasks in textbook

Unit 5: Food Write a paragraph to instruct how to cook a simple dish

Unit 6: Past Lives Write a presentation about an object from the past in your home

Unit 7: Journeys Write a travel blog including so and because

Unit 8: Appearance Write an email to describe a festival in your country

Data collection procedure and source of data

The data collection procedure followed these steps The first step was that permission was first sought from the Head of the General English Division of the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Ho Chi Minh City Open University (see Appendix C) The second step was that the researcher asked four lecturers’ permission to collect their students’ midterm submissions (see Appendix D1 and D2 for the consent forms in English and Vietnamese versions) The purpose and the significance of the study were fully clarified with them to get their optimum cooperation The lecturers consented to send him their students’ texts The final step was that the researcher collected the data samples as students’ midterm writing submissions from other lecturers and his classes This step was also the first step in the error analysis procedure advanced by Gass et al (2013)

Respecting research data, the data of this research was the online written submissions of six EFL classes at the Ho Chi Minh City Open University They were

224 midterm written paragraphs based on six topics which were produced by 224 elementary undergraduates during their class time It was desirable to collect the students’ final writings; however, because of the curriculum designed for this level at the research site, the students were not required to take any final writing tests

During the class time for midterm test, each student had 30 minutes to type one paragraph and submitted it onto the learning management system (LMS) or Google Doc form The teachers provided comprehensive guidance on how to utilize the online platforms, outlining all the necessary requirements It was presumed that the students independently completed the test While it was possible that some students sought additional assistance in composing their writings, it was important to note that they faced time constraints and were obligated to have their cameras turned on during the test Consequently, there was a low possibility of their reliance on external aids, minimally impacting the data source and study outcomes The 224 writings were assigned an identification code (ID) based on the topics instead of students’ names for the next data analysis steps For example, the researcher coded as S8-T5 for the eighth submission of the fifth topic.

Data analysis

Before conducting the analysis steps, I organized the data into a Microsoft Excel file which was named as data analysis with seven tabs, each tab represented a writing topic, but the last two tabs had the same topic (see Appendix E for an example of data analysis) In each tab, there was a row named after the topic at the top and nine columns The first column referred to the ID of each submission and the second column showed its total word The third one included the numbers of extracted sentences in each composition and the fourth column consisted of these I based on definitions of verbs by Biber et al (1999) to extract verbs of each corresponding sentence and enter them into rows of the fifth column Next, the sixth column showed the correctness of each verb after being detected If the verbs were wrong, their correct forms were provided in the seventh one; then, their error types and causative factors were coded in the eighth and ninth columns respectively

Following the first step of collecting data, the researcher proceeded to adopt the other steps in the error analysis procedure by Gass et al (2013) to analyze the data This resuming utilization of the error analysis procedure was to identify morphosyntactic errors of verbs, explain factors triggering these errors, and quantify their occurrences

3.6.1 Data analysis procedure for exploring morphosyntactic errors of verbs (RQ1)

To analyze data for the first research question, I adopted three main steps in Gass et al.’s (2013) procedure; in other words, this research adopted Gass et al.’s

(2013) error analysis procedure as in Figure 3.1:

Error analysis procedure for the first research question

Note: Adopted from Gass et al (2013)

The first step was to detect the correctness of verbs In order to ensure precise detection, I relied on several reputable books, namely Longman English Grammar Practice by Alexander (1990), Practical English Usage by Swan (1996), A Glossary of English Grammar by Leech (2006), and The Grammar Book by Larsen-Freeman and Celce-Murcia (2015) The following example is to exemplify how the correctness of a verb was judged:

Example 3.1: His car was *broke (broken) yesterday

Detecting the correctness of verbs

Identifying and classifying morphosyntactic errors of verbs

In Example 3.1, the sentence follows the passive voice structure since the action is done to the subject or the subject undergoes the action expressed in the verb, which is called the passive verb If in this case, the verb phrase needs to include a form of the be verb and a past participle form of the main verbs (Alexander, 1990; Larsen- Freeman & Celce-Murcia, 2015)

Secondly, I proceeded to identify and code the erroneous verbs These errors were classified as types of morphosyntactic errors of verbs, based on the coding scheme (Appendix F1, F2, and F3) This was a crucial step in the process, as it allowed me to systematically analyze and categorize the errors

Thirdly, I quantified the error types of each composition and applied the norming frequency technique to calculate the normed frequency of each error type Notably, given the different length in each composition, the researcher employed normed frequency counts for the first research question Biber et al (1998) elucidate that when analyzing the occurrence of features in various texts and registers, it is crucial to ensure that the counts are comparable To address this issue, the researchers might employ a method called normalization (Biber et al., 1998) This technique is used to modify the raw frequency counts from texts of varying lengths, making them comparable To normalize frequency counts, the total number of words in each text must be considered The raw frequency count should be divided by the number of words in the text, and then multiplied by the chosen basis for normalization As described, there are 224 collected texts, the average length of them was about 150 words Therefore, 224 texts were normed to a basis of 100 words, the normed frequency of morphosyntactic errors of verbs referred to a certain number as the result of the formula formed by the researcher:

In which, RF: the raw number of morphosyntactic errors of verbs in each composition

100: the basis of normed frequency of errors for each composition

After that, the researcher entered the normed frequency of error types into the second Microsoft Excel file (see Appendix G for the normed frequency of some sample error types in the first ten submissions) This file which was used to store the normed frequency of error types contained four main tabs The first tab referred to the normed frequency of each error type and comprised 34 columns It started with submission ID from S1-T1 to S55-T6 and showed the word count of each in the first and second columns, respectively The remaining columns presented the raw number and normed frequency of 16 subtypes of errors based on the above coding scheme The second tab pertained to a summary of the normed frequency of types of subtypes of errors with four rows and 17 columns (see Appendix H1 and H2 for a summary of normed frequencies of error types in all submissions) While the first row named four error types, the second row named subtypes and listed 16 subtypes in 16 adjacent columns Next, the total normed frequency of each subtype and the total one of each main type were presented in the third and fourth rows The third tab which showed the raw number of errors under the influence of each causative factor encompassed three main rows While the first one named the codes of factors, the second row presented the raw number and percentages of errors caused by each factor and the third one mentioned the total raw number of errors

3.6.2 Data analysis procedure for exploring causes of the morphosyntactic errors of verbs (RQ2)

To analyze data for the second research question, I proceeded to adopt two main steps in Gass et al.’s (2013) procedure as in Figure 3.2:

Error analysis procedure for the second research question

Identifying and classifying causes of errors

Note: Adopted from Gass et al (2013)

Firstly, I identified the causes of morphosyntactic errors of verbs based on the theories by Brown (2014) and James (2013) Next, these causes were coded based on the coding scheme (Table 3.3), the researcher conducted this step in the same Microsoft Excel file as for the first research question It is significant to highlight that

I recoded several factors based on my discussion with the second coder after finishing the calculation of interrater reliability percentages Considering that there were a few changes in classifying causes, the researcher conducted this recoding step

Secondly, the researcher used the second Microsoft file with the second tab to enter the raw number of errors under each cause and calculated the percentages of each cause (see Appendix I for the raw number of errors under each factor in the first ten submissions) and total raw number of errors under all factors (see Appendix J)

The coding scheme of causative factors

Interlingual factor Inter He *go (goes) to school

2 Ignorance of rule restriction IRR On Christmas children *will

3 Incomplete application of rules IAR Everyone *partake (partakes) in the the party

4 False concept hypothesized FCH Last winter, he *has (had) a trip to

Context of learning CL Textbooks, handouts

Communication strategies CS Message abandonment:

“a skirt with…er…I have no clue”

The above coding scheme table was established as a result of adopting the theories of four typical causes of errors by Brown (2014) and James (2013).

Interrater reliability

As mentioned in Section 3.4, the research tool employed in this study was the writing prompts provided to the students as the basis for their writing submissions

To ensure the credibility of these writing tasks, it is necessary to implement two indispensable approaches Firstly, the validity of these writing tasks must be determined by evaluating their internal consistency in identifying errors (Mohajan,

2017) In other words, to evaluate the validity of writing prompts, it is essential to gauge the interrater reliability of error identification by having teachers or unaffiliated specialists compare their ratings When these ratings among teachers and specialists are analogous, the writing prompt is considered valid and reliable for error analysis (Johnson, Penny, & Gordon, 2000)

The internal consistency of error detection, as defined by Mohajan (2017), is the only way to determine its effectiveness To assess interrater reliability in identifying errors, teachers or independent specialists can grade writings and compare their ratings These ratings should be identical to consider the writing prompt valid and reliable for error analysis, as stated by Johnson et al (2000)

In this current study, the researcher utilized the percent agreement technique to achieve interrater reliability for identifying the correctness of verbs, detecting errors, and classifying error types and causative factors The percent agreement technique was applied by virtue of its salient advantages (McHugh, 2012) First, the present study utilized a straightforward procedure, whereby values were limited to binary categories of zero and one, and the number of data collectors, or error coders, was limited to two Additionally, this approach facilitated the use of a matrix that allowed the author to assess the degree to which errors were randomly distributed across the two coders or if a specific data collector demonstrated a consistent pattern of deviations from the other collector Last but not least, this technique afforded the researcher the opportunity to identify any variables that may have introduced problematic biases into the data collection process (McHugh, 2012)

On the basis of the procedure, the researcher conducted several main steps First of all, after the researcher identified errors of the 224 paragraphs and classified error types and causative factors, an English teacher was recruited to verify the researcher’s work The selection of the teacher was attributed to various qualifying attributes that she possesses, such as her advanced level of English language proficiency, her specialized knowledge of English language teaching acquired through her bachelor's degree, and her experience in instructing students at the elementary level The recruited teacher, as the second coder used the third Microsoft Excel file to identify and classify the errors (see Appendix K1 and K2 for a sample application of the interrater technique) This file was related to the second coder’s participation in analyzing the research data and the interrater reliability calculation consisted of seven tabs Each tab was structured the relatively same way as of each in the first Microsoft Excel file as aforementioned However, there were three additional columns which was used to mark agreement or disagreement between the researcher’s and the second rater’s work

Then, the author used this file and compared his identification of the correctness of verbs, the identified and classified errors and causative factors in 224 paragraphs by him and his second coder The agreement was coded as number zero, and the disagreement was coded as number 1 To obtain the percent agreement, the author applied the formula as follows:

In which, NOD: total number of disagreement codes

TNC: total number of codes The author divided the number of zeros by the total number of identified instances to get a quotient in the form of a decimal Finally, he multiplied the agreement percentage, Fraenkel et al (2018) emphasize that the level of agreement is generally good with 100% and 93% for the major categories

After calculating the interrater reliability for identified and classified errors and causative factors, the percentage of agreement of each step was obtained at a high proportion; in other words, interrater reliability was sensibly ensured in this study

As for the agreement in identifying the correctness of verbs, the percentage was 97% approximately Disagreement mainly aligned with inflections of the be verbs and simple past tense verbs In this respect, the researcher relied on two reputable books, namely Longman English Grammar Practice for by Alexander (1990) and The Grammar Book by Larsen-Freeman and Celce-Murcia (2015) to discuss with the second coder Afterall, the researcher kept his initial decisions The following excerpt is to clarify this point:

Excerpt 3.1: Tet *was (is) keeped traditionally (S5-T2)

In Excerpt 3.1, the be verb was is being misformed inasmuch as the present simple tense should be applied to state facts (Alexander, 1990); in other words, the be verb should be is instead of its past tense form Based on this point, I kept my initial code in this case

Regarding the agreement in identifying and classifying the error types, the figure was over 96% Disagreement primarily alluded to omission type of irregular lexical verb inflections In this respect, the researcher relied on theories of error types by Dulay et al (1892), as well as excerpts from previous studies by Gayo and Widodo

(2018) and Padilla and Padilla (2021) Afterall, the researcher kept his initial decisions The below excerpt is to demonstrate this case:

Excerpt 3.2: And for me, I have chosen a place to relax at the end of the day, and I also *go (went) to pick up a very special friend of mine (S11-T4)

In Excerpt 3.2, both I and my second coder agreed the verb go should be inflected into its past tense form; however, I coded it as an omission error of irregular lexical verb inflections but rather a misformation error, as my second coder stated I relied on theories of omission error to explain that there was an absence of the inflectional morpheme that is necessary for the verb; in other words, the verb go is omitted its morpheme in this case Thus, I kept my initial decision to code these error types as omission errors

Concerning the agreement in identifying and classifying the causative factors, the number was over 95% Disagreement remarkably referred to three factors including interlingual, ignorance of rule restriction, and overgeneralization For example, while the researcher identified misformation of irregular lexical verb inflections and primary verbs related to the fallacious use of tense provoked by false concept hypothesized, the second coder supposed that this error type can be triggered by either interlingual, or false concept hypothesized In this case, based on analyses by Dam (2001) and Cao (1998), the researcher adhered to the second coder Another instance was when the researcher identified omission of primary verb effectuated by ignorance of rule restriction, the second coder supposed that this error type can result from the interlingual transfer In this regard, based on analyses by Dam (2001), Cao

(1998), and theories by Richards (1971) and Richards and Schmidt (2002), the researcher remained his initial decision The following excerpt is to illuminate one of these points:

Excerpt 3.3: I asked her for the address of my house, but she *doesn't (didn’t) seem to remember the specifics (S20-T6)

In Excerpt 3.3, the primary verb doesn’t was misformed which should be inflected into its past tense form to agree with the tense of the sentence Initially, I identified this error type caused by false concept hypothesized; however, the second coder elucidated that the student possibly had no idea about the system of English tenses of verbs as Vietnamese verbs suffer the absence of inflection to mark tenses These explanations are also proposed by Cao (1998) and Dam (2001); therefore, I recoded these error types triggered by either interlingual or false concept hypothesized.

Ethical issues

This study prioritized ethical considerations in accordance with established guidelines by Padgett (1998) and Fraenkel et al (2018) The authors emphasize the critical importance of ethical concerns in qualitative research and identify key considerations including privacy, anonymity, deception, confidentiality, avoidance of harm, and deceit To uphold these criteria, the current study implemented several key steps

Firstly, the current author collected in an unbiased and non-intrusive manner, as the students were required to write paragraphs for their midterm test without external pressure or manipulation Secondly, to ensure anonymity and maintain strict confidentiality, student names were not collected, and their submissions were coded by letters and numbers For instance, the researcher coded S8-T5 as the eighth submission of the fifth topic Finally, the researcher took great care and diligence to ensure that the research was relevant and valuable to the field of English language teaching and learning

By adhering to these ethical standards, the current research aims to contribute meaningfully to the literature while ensuring that participants' privacy and well-being were prioritized and protected.

Chapter summary

This chapter has offered a methodological overview of the qualitative descriptive research design The researcher delineated two primary research approaches, namely the qualitative approach and the descriptive approach, along with their underlying rationale The data collection and analysis process comprises several key steps, which were discussed in detail

Initially, the data collection process started with seeking permission from the Head of the General English Division of the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the research site, Ho Chi Minh City Open University, as well as from four lecturers to obtain their students' midterm submissions The convenience sampling technique was used to collect a sample of 224 participants (n"4) from a population of approximately 1500 (N00) The instrument used in this study was the writing prompts from the writing midterm tests These prompts included two main parts, namely, the main topic and detailed requirements The teaching material was the textbook titled “Life Elementary A2” by National Geographic Learning which the participants learned from the fifth unit to the eighth unit

Regarding research data, the data of this research was the online written submissions of six EFL classes at the Ho Chi Minh City Open University They were

224 in-class compositions following six topics which were produced by 224 elementary undergraduates The total of words in each paragraph was an average of

150 words The 224 writings were assigned an identification code (ID) based on the topics instead of students’ names for the next data analysis step

Prior to conducting the analysis, the data was organized into a Microsoft Excel file specifically designed for error analysis The analysis for the first research question was then carried out in three stages, following Gass et al.'s (2013) procedure Firstly, the accuracy of the verbs was verified by referencing reputable books Secondly, erroneous verbs were identified and coded according to a morphosyntactic error coding scheme Thirdly, the normed frequency technique was used to quantify the types of errors in each composition This process resulted in the identification and reporting of types of English morphosyntactic errors of verbs, along with their normed frequencies, to address the first research question

To address the second research question, the researcher adopted two steps proposed by Gass et al (2013) to identify the causes of morphosyntactic errors of verbs based on theories by Brown (2014) and James (2013) These causes were then coded according to a second coding scheme in the same Microsoft Excel file used for the first research question The researcher consulted with a second coder to recode several factors after calculating interrater reliability percentages The raw number of errors under each cause was entered into a second Microsoft file, and the percentages of each cause were calculated The findings of this analysis included the identification of causative factors, an analysis of the typical errors emanating from each cause, and the raw number and corresponding percentages of errors associated with each identified factor

Last but not least, it is imperative to note that ethical considerations were prioritized in this study The researcher identified and addressed key ethical considerations, including privacy, anonymity, deception, confidentiality, avoidance of harm, and deceit Ultimately, ethical concerns were adequately addressed and ensured the integrity of the research.

RESULTS

Omission errors

Figure 4.2 provides the normed frequencies of morphosyntactic errors of verbs that were committed inasmuch as the students omitted regular and irregular lexical verb inflections, primary verbs, and modal verbs in their compositions

The normed frequency of omission error types

It is figured that regular inflections (e.g., –ing, -ed, -s/-es) are omitted the most frequently, with 195.76 instances; in contrast, there is no appearance of omission of modal verbs Besides, the omission of irregular lexical verb inflections occurs at the second highest frequency, although it is marginally half as much as that of regular

Normed frequencies of omission errors 195.76 100.82 32.27 0.00

Fre q u en cy lexical verb inflections (100.82 instances) Following that, primary verbs are irregularly omitted, which is nearly one-third portion compared to the numbers of morphosyntactic verbs lacking irregular lexical verb inflections, with 32.27 instances

The omission errors refer to the absence of English linguistic items or morphemes that are necessary for the well-formed phrase or clause (Dulay et al.,

1982) The following table includes three omission error types and their excerpts extracted from the students’ submissions:

The omission error types of morphosyntactic verbs and typical excerpts

Excerpt 4.1: I *travel (travelled) by plane last summer (S1-T5) Excerpt 4.2: Because Banh Chung is a traditional food, everyone in the family usually *gather (gathers) to make it (S5-T2) Excerpt 4.3: It is often *call (called) /a highland city because it is

Excerpt 4.4: While we *ate (were eating), the owner saw that we were quite young (S26-T3)

Excerpt 4.5: Last week, I heard you *say (said) you *want (wanted) to go to your old restaurant to eat (S18-T1)

Excerpt 4.6: Before *set (setting) off, I packed up my things early and felt excited (S3-T5)

Excerpt 4.8: But we didn't arrive until noon because the bus *broke (was broken) (S19-T5)

Excerpt 4.9: Nam Du consists of the main island and smaller islands, with blue sea, white sand, as well as a lighthouse from which the island can *seen (be seen) (S9-T5)

In terms of the omission errors of the regular inflections, the students underestimated that the sentence included a time marker as an indicator of tense, they also ignored the rule restrictions in sentences, and they impossibly applied rules to make the verb align with its subject In Excerpt 4.1, last summer is a time marker for simple past tense; therefore, the main verb travel must be used in past tense form by adding –ed (Alexander, 1990) In Excerpt 4.2, the sentence followed the present simple tense which describes a habitual action and the subject everyone was an indefinite pronoun Hence, to accommodate the syntactic structure, the main verb must be added the –s/-es inflection instead of maintaining its base form (Alexander,

1990) Additionally, in Excerpt 4.3, when the sentence followed the passive voice structure because the action is done to the subject or the subject underwent the action expressed in the verb, which is called the passive verb If in this case, the verb phrase needed to consist of a form of the be verb and a past participle form of main verbs (Alexander, 1990; Larsen-Freeman & Celce-Murcia, 2015) Nevertheless, the student was unavailing to inflect the verbs into participles

Considering the omission errors of the irregular inflections, in Excerpt 4.4, a sentence intentionally described actions that were in progress when something else happened; hence, past continuous tense must be applied in the dependent clause in lieu of simple past tense; accordingly, the verb phrase must include was/were and an -ing participle verb (Alexander, 1990) Excerpt 4.5 proved that the students underestimated the time marker as an indicator of the past simple tense Last week was a time marker for simple past tense; therefore, the main verbs say and want must be used inflected into irregular past tense forms (Alexander, 1990) The other cases related omission of irregular inflections, in Excerpt 4.6, the verb set was in the clause- initial position of the adverbial clause Danielson and Hayden (1973) indicate that the verbs need to be in form of present progressive participles setting because both clauses have the same underlying subject

In reference to the omission errors of the primary verbs, several students unfeasibly applied the rules or differentiated the tenses Excerpts 4.8 and 4.9 referred to the rules of verb phrases in passive voice, including a copula be and a past participle verb The students omitted the be verbs in these passive structures (Alexander, 1990; Larsen-Freeman & Celce-Murcia, 2015)

To put it succinctly, the omission errors of morphosyntactic verbs occurred due to verbs not being inflected, primary verbs missed in tenses, passive voice structures, and verb inflections not being used in the clause-initial position of the adverbial clause.

Addition errors

Figure 4.3 shows the normed occurrences of errors that were made by improper additions of regular and irregular lexical verb inflections, and primary and modal verbs

The normed frequency of addition error types

Addition of regular lexical verb inflection

Addition of irregular lexical verb inflection

Normed frequencies of addition error 31.69 1.23 60.17 16.97

In comparison, omission error types and addition error ones, the normed frequency of addition errors witnesses a relatively different pattern It is evident that primary verbs are excessively included most of the time, with a frequency of 60.17 instances, whereas irregular verbs are typically added appropriately, occurring only 1.23 errors The second highest frequency aligns with abundant addition of regular lexical verb inflections, with 31.69 occurrences Following that, the occurrence of modal verb errors accounts for nearly one-third of these primary ones, making it the third most frequent with 16.97 counterparts

The addition errors of morphosyntactic verbs allude to the unnecessary presence of these verbs in sentences (Dulay et al., 1982) The below table enumerates four addition error types and their excerpts selected from the students’ submissions:

The addition error types of morphosyntactic verbs and typical excerpts

Excerpt 4.10: Anna's first step was to call Mary and *asked (ask) for assistance (S28–T6)

Excerpt 4.11: They taught me how to create unique lanterns and

*told (tell) me about the fairy tale of the Moon Goddess (S19-T3)

Excerpt 4.12: Then I do something else and suddenly I *am (“remove”) screaming again (S5–T1)

Excerpt 4.13: Because I prepared very well for the exam, the result was not what *did (“remove”) I expected (S24-T4)

Excerpt 4.14: In the following days, my family *can (“remove”) go to many places: Yang Bay resort, Vinpearl, Thap Ba Ponagar, etc (S7-T3)

As for the addition error of regular inflection, in Excerpt 4.10, the student used and to connect two or more grammatically analogous items (Swan, 1996) In this case, he/she used and to connect two verbs call and ask after the preposition to; thus, when the former verb call was in its base form, the later verb ask needed to be used with its base form, as well

Concerning the addition error of irregular inflection, in Excerpt 4.11, this error shared the same case with the above error The student used and to connect two or more grammatically identical expressions, but he/she failed at using the later verb tell with its base form

In respect of the addition errors of the primary verbs, in Excerpt 4.12, the student added a tense-related primary verb am into the sentence; however, in English, when the student used this auxiliary to express a tense, they necessarily relied on a time marker In this excerpt, the sentence was in the present simple tense without any time expressions of the present progressive tense; therefore, the second main verb scream needed to be used in its present form In this case, the student ignored this rule, he/she redundantly inserted the auxiliary am and the –ing inflection to the main verb scream

The other error was in Excerpt 4.13 in which the student might apply prior knowledge of making direct wh-word questions into this case; specifically, he/she redundantly placed the primary verb did in front of the subject in a wh-clause Leech (2006) elucidates that a wh-clause is a subordinate clause that is introduced by one of the wh-words In this case, the order of subjects and main verbs is the same as in a normal statement (Leech, 2006)

Regarding the addition errors of the modal verbs, a few addition errors were related to superfluous appearance of modal verbs of ability occurred as in Excerpt 4.14 because the students could be unaware of the significant role played by a modal verb of ability in a sentence and the need to select it carefully to accurately convey the intended meaning In the given sentence, the modal verb can was unnecessary possibility of an action, indicating that the family has the option or capacity to go to many places mentioned However, the sentence structure and context did not require the inclusion of can The sentence already stated that the family went to various places, such as Yang Bay resort, Vinpearl, Thap Ba Ponagar, etc., in the following days Therefore, the use of can added an unnecessary layer of uncertainty or possibility that was not intended in Excerpt 4.14

To sum up, the addition errors of morphosyntactic verbs occurred because of verbs redundantly inflected regardless of grammatically similar items linked by the coordinators, the redundant addition of the tense-related primary verb without considering time expressions of tenses, and the unprecise use of modal verbs of ability.

Misformation errors

Figure 4.4 illustrates the normed frequency of misformation error types, which were the most noticeable morphosyntactic error types

The normed frequency of misformation error types

Misformation of regular lexical verb inflection

Misformation of irregular lexical verb inflection

Normed frequencies of misformation error 78.67 387.71 72.40 30.29

Visibly, irregular lexical verb inflections are misused the most frequently in terms of their morphosyntax, reaching a peak at 387.71 occurrences Noticeably, the frequency of this morphosyntactic error strikingly surpasses further than that of the second and third-highest counterparts, occurring almost five times more than them

In other words, regular lexical verb inflections and primary verbs are misformed with 78.67 and 72.4 instances, respectively Finally, the morphosyntactic aspect of modal verbs is incorrectly applied the least frequently, with the figure standing at 30.29 instances, although this number is more remarkable than the other error types of modal verbs

The misformation errors pertain to the use of an incorrect form of a morpheme or structure (Dulay et al., 1982) The following table demonstrates four misformation error types and their excerpts extracted from the students’ writings:

The misformation error types of morphosyntactic verbs and typical excerpts

Excerpt 4.15: After *waited (waiting) for forty-five minutes, Anna's father came to pick her up, she was happy (S7-T6)

Excerpt 4.16: I didn't like two dishes I ordered because the rice is *wraped (wrapped) in seaweed (S8-T1)

Excerpt 4.17: Because the air in Sapa was quite cold, we *have (had) prepared warm clothes such as scarves, sweaters (S7-T5)

Excerpt 4.18: The first step is *took (taken) when children receive their lucky money in a small red envelope (S1-T2)

Excerpt 4.19: Everyone greeted us warmly that we didn't *felt (feel) like strangers (S29-T5)

Excerpt 4.20: It was *keeped (kept) traditionally (S5-T2)

Excerpt 4.21: The food they made *were (was) very salty and I couldn't eat it (S3- T1)

Misformation of modal Excerpt 4.22: When I was 10 years old, it was a shame that I can never forget (S5-

Respecting the misformation errors of the regular inflections, in Excerpt 4.15, the student selected the wrong participle form of the verb wait In this excerpt, the first clause was a reduced form of an adverb clause, and two clauses of this sentence shared the same underlying subject Anna; thus, the verb wait needed adhering to the rule of using present participles waiting after the joining word after (Danielson &

Hayden, 1973) In Excerpt 4.16, the other misformaton errors appertained to conjugating the verbs in the past tense It can be explained that the student struggled to add –ed inflection to the verb wrap properly in lieu of not doubling the final consonants based on the spelling rules suggested by Biber et al (1999)

Referring to the misformation errors of the irregular inflections, in Excerpt 4.17, the student seemingly failed at differentiating the usage of tenses When there were two past references, they needed the past perfect tense for the event that happened first to avoid ambiguity (Anderson, 1990) In this case, the speakers had prepared for the trip before they recognized the cold air in Sapa; hence, the auxiliary verb have needed inflecting into its past participle had so that the second clause was used in the past perfect tense However, it is worth highlighting that because of the limitation of the course objectives of grammar, the participant students are not taught this grammatical point Therefore, this morphosyntactic error of the verb is acceptable

Several misformation errors of the irregular inflections are revealed in the next three excerpts In Excerpt 4.18, the student had difficulty applying the passive voice structure to utilize the past participle verb of take in the verb phrase is taken The verb phrase in such a structure, as expounded by Alexander (1990) and Larsen-Freeman and Celce-Murcia (2015), needs to include a form of the be verb and a past participle form of main verbs In Excerpt 4.19, the student impossibly thrived on adopting the basic rules of negative statement to place a bare-infinitive verb of feel after an auxiliary verb with not, like didn’t (Swan, 1996) In Excerpt 4.20, the student unsuccessfully used the irregular lexical verb inflection of keep, which can be based on the irregular verb list suggested by Huddleston, Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1988) He/she might recognize the requirement of inflecting the main verb keep in this passive voice structure; nonetheless, he/she formed it improperly with a regular form keeped instead of its irregular form kept

As to the misformation errors of the primary verbs, a typical error is in Excerpt 4.21, the student probably struggled with the subject-verb accord The verb were was incorrect in this sentence because it disagreed in number with the noun food Food was a singular noun, so the correct verb to use should also be singular, which is was

Relating to the misformation errors of the modal verbs, a typical error is shown in Excerpt 4.22, the student unequally applied the past tense for a sequence of events in a statement The modal verb can was erroneous in this sentence because it impossibly agreed in tense with the verb was used earlier in the sentence Was was in the past tense, indicating an event that happened in the past when the speaker was 10 years old Therefore, the verb that followed should also be in past tense; in other words, the correct verb to use in this sentence would be could which is the past tense form of can The corrected sentence would be: "When I was 10 years old, it was a shame that I could never forget."

In brief, the misformation errors were committed with a noticeable number of morphosyntactic verbs The typical excerpts and analyses indicated the misformation errors of the regular inflections associating with the wrong participle form of the verb in a reduced form of an adverb clause, and verbs not being doubled the final consonants in the past tense The misformation errors of the irregular inflections related to the student’s failure at differentiating the usage of tenses, difficulty applying the passive voice structure to utilize the past participle verb, adoption of the basic rules of negative statement to place a bare-infinitive verb, and improper formation of irregular verbs in the past tense The misformation errors of the primary verbs revealed the students’ struggle with the subject-verb accord, and the misformation errors of the modal verbs signified their unequal application of the past tense for a sequence of events in a statement.

Misordering errors

Figure 4.5 delineates the final morphosyntactic error type of verbs, misordering

The normed frequency of misordering error types

It is evident that EFL undergraduates infrequently commit this error type Noticeably, regular and irregular lexical verb inflections and modal verbs are situated in the correct order in their compositions However, the primary verbs are placed in the wrong position, with the figure standing at 4.26 instances

The misordering errors, pertains to the erroneous arrangement of a morpheme or cluster of morphemes within an utterance (Dulay et al., 1982) The below excerpts include two misordering errors of the primary verbs selected from the students’ compositions:

Excerpt 4.26: It was eleven in the evening, and Anna didn't know where *was she (she was) (S2–T6)

Excerpt 4.27: Anna was very scared and didn't know where *was she standing (she was standing) (S17-T6)

Misordered regular lexical verb inflection

Misordered irregular lexical verb inflection

Normed frequencies of misordered errors 0.00 0.00 4.26 0.00

The typical errors occurred because the students seemingly failed at situating the primary verbs in noun clauses with a wh-question word in both Excerpts 4.26 and 4.27 They might apply previously-accumulated knowledge of making direct wh- word questions to these cases In the questions, the word order is often inverted, with the question word or question clause coming before the subject However, Leech

(2006) explicates that a wh-clause is a subordinate clause that is introduced by one of the wh-words In this case, the order of subjects and main verbs was the same as in a normal statement.

Causative factors of morphosyntactic errors of verbs in EFL undergraduates’

Among four factors from theories by Brown (2014) and James (2013), only interlingual and intralingual interference were explored to provoke morphosyntactic errors of verbs in the selected compositions The number and proportions of instances of these two factors are presented in Table 4.4 and Figure 4.6

The number of pre-determined factors causing morphosyntactic errors of verbs

The percentages of pre-determined factors causing morphosyntactic errors of verbs

Apparently, intralingual sources represent the largest proportion among these four causes, triggering 1,596 errors and occupying 75% of the whole Nevertheless, learning strategies and communication strategies were not causes deterring the students from using morphosyntactic verbs correctly Finally, interference from the Vietnamese accounted for a quarter of the total number, making 536 instances

As presented in Table 4.4, there are 75% of morphosyntactic errors of verbs caused by intralingual interference (1,596 errors) There are four sub-factors related to intralingual factors, namely, overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restriction, incomplete application of rules, and false concept hypothesized The number and percentages of instances by these factors are presented in Table 4.5 and Figure 4.7

Intral ingual int erferenceInterlingual interference

The number of intralingual factors causing morphosyntactic errors of verbs

Ignorance of rule restriction (IRR) 189 12%

Incomplete application of rules (IAR) 319 20%

The percentages of intralingual factors causing morphosyntactic errors of verbs

It can be evident that the false concept hypothesized is the most influential determinant of students’ errors, causing 910 instances and comprising 57% of the whole Compared to the false concept hypothesized, incomplete application of rules

Percentages of errors under intralingual sub-types

Ignorance of rule restriction (IRR)

Incompl ete application of rules (IAR)

Fal se concept hypothesized (FCH) with 319 occurrences The remaining factors, overgeneralization, and ignorance of rule restriction have the least bearing on students’ errors, making up an almost comparable proportion, at 11% and 12% (178 and 189 instances) respectively

As analyzed, most of types of morphosyntactic errors of verbs were effectuated by four intralingual factors provoked most of types of morphosyntactic errors of verbs The typical examples are shown in Appendix L

With regard to the false concept hypothesized (FCH), the errors primarily derive from a dearth of the perspicacity of the distinction in the target language, as it seems that students appear not to fully comprehend the differences Numerous misformation and omission errors may be attributable to this factor; specifically, false concept hypothesized possibly results in fallacious tense use and misspelling First, misformation and omission of regular and irregular lexical verb inflections, omission of primary verb, and misformation of primary and modal verbs were inextricably connected with students’ failure at distinguishing between the appropriate use of different tenses According to error analysis, the students seemingly misinterpreted that the sentence encompassed a time marker as an indicator of tense or meaning of a tense, as exemplified in Excerpts 4.28, 4.29, and 4.32 Another specific situation, Excerpt 4.31, was when a sentence intentionally described actions that were in progress when something else happened; hence, past continuous tense must be applied in the dependent clause in lieu of simple past tense Second, there were several misformation occurrences of past tense verbs pertaining to misspelling errors as in Excerpt 4.30

As for ignorance of rule restriction (IRR), this category refers to the use of grammar rules in situations where they are not being correctly followed, potentially effectuating numerous addition errors An instance, Excerpt 4.33, was connected to redundancy of tense-related primary verbs or inflections Another typical error was committed due to superfluous appearance of modal verbs of ability as in Excerpt 4.34 One noticeable example was that students unsuccessfully applied the rules of using and to connect two or more grammatically equal elements, leading to surplus addition of irregular lexical verb inflection of the verb tell in Excerpt 4.35

In regard to overgeneralization (OV), this factor refers to the student's proclivity to apply target language norms where they are not justified An exemplification was Excerpt 4.36 which manifested the misformation error of –ed inflections for past tense verbs The students possibly overapplied the –ed past tense marker on verbs, which is commonly referred as overregularization Other examples, Excerpts 4.37, 4.38, and 4,39 were when the students redundantly placed and misordered the primary verbs in front of subjects in noun clauses with a wh-question word They perhaps applied prior knowledge of making direct wh-word questions to this case

Regarding the incomplete application of rules (IAR), this cause involves the students’ unsuccess in fully developing a structure, possibly provoking most of the omission errors First, a typical case was identified that several students omitted the main verb in sentences, especially the be verbs in Excerpt 4.40 Moreover, IAR might instigate insufficient production of the passive structure due to the deficit of the be verbs as primary verbs or omission of inflections for participles in Excerpts 4.42, 4.41 and 4.44 Furthermore, another case was related to subject-verb disagreement as a sequel of omission of inflections; in other words, a verb was not conjugated to suit its subject in Excerpt 4.43 (e.g., singular noun, third person, indefinite noun)

As shown in Table 4.4, a quarter of morphosyntactic errors in verb usage can be attributed to interlingual interference (25%) The specific instances of these errors can be found in Appendix M

Notable disparities between Vietnamese and English present potential challenges for students in their application of morphosyntactic elements Firstly, the primary obstacle for Vietnamese students appears to be the concept of tense According to Cao (1998), Vietnamese lacks a distinct tense system, as tenses and explicated by Vietnamese linguists (Cao, 1998; Le, 1972; Nguyen, 2001) Excerpts 4.45, 4.46, and 4.50 exemplified the influence of Vietnamese on students' struggles with tense usage The students erroneously employed the past tense for expressing a sequence of events in a statement In Excerpts 4.45 and 4.46, errors were observed in the usage of modal verbs and primary verbs will and don't in sentences, as they were incompatible in tense with the preceding verb, resulting in the misformation of these verb types Additionally, the students underestimated the significance of time markers as indicators of the past simple tense, such as Last week, resulting in the omission of irregular and regular past tense inflections of verbs, as indicated in Excerpt 4.50

Furthermore, another distinction between Vietnamese and English is that English is a subject-prominent language, while the concept of a grammatical subject does not exist in Vietnamese (Cao, 1998) Consequently, Vietnamese students encounter difficulties in ensuring subject-verb agreement This divergence was demonstrated in Excerpt 4.47, where a singular subject, a car, was followed by the plural verb come In English, when the subject is singular, the verb should also be in the singular form Hence, come should have been changed to the singular form, comes, to match the singular subject, a car In this case, Vietnamese interference potentially led to the omission of irregular lexical verb inflections

Lastly, Vietnamese is a monosyllabic non-inflecting language Nguyen (1996) and Dam (2001) contend that Vietnamese verbs lack inflections to indicate tense Consequently, certain grammatical phenomena in English that involve word morphology pose challenges for students due to their complete absence in their native language In this context, Vietnamese interference may also contribute to various errors of misformation and omission, rendering students unable to inflect the main verb into its participle in the passive voice structure, as shown in Excerpt 4.48, and present progressive participle for the verb in the clause-initial position of the adverbial clause, as demonstrated in Excerpt 4.49

4.2.3 Context of learning and communication strategies

There were not any morphosyntactic errors of verbs triggerred by the context of learning and communication strategies in this study This was perhaps because this study only detected errors by analyzing the morphology of verbs in light of according with syntactical aspects in sentences In other words, it detected errors from neither the context of learning including the classroom and materials (Brown, 2014) nor communication strategies that the students utilize to communicate or get a message from their interlocutors (Corder, 1978) Thus, in the coding procedure, these factors were not identified; in order terms, these causative sources had no deleterious influence on morphosyntactic errors of verbs.

Chapter summary

Chapter 4 has presented the results of qualitative data analysis and descriptive approach To answer Research question 1 – What types of morphosyntactic errors of verbs do EFL undergraduates commit in English written compositions? – the researcher resorted to the qualitative approach to code and classify error types and the descriptive approach to quantify the normed frequency The results indicated that the findings of the study demonstrated a preponderance of morphosyntactic errors in verb usage in the form of misformation errors, notably in the misapplication of irregular lexical verb inflections Omission errors were also prevalent, primarily arising from a deficiency of proper inflection of verbs or omission of primary verbs in tenses and passive voice structures Addition errors, while less frequent, were often effectuated by incorrect utilization of tense or an insufficient grasp of sentence syntactic principles The least frequent error was misordering, where irregular inflectional verbs and primary verbs were inappropriately placed in clauses containing wh-question words

To answer Research question 2 - What causative factors result in these morphosyntactic errors of verbs in English written compositions by EFL morphosyntactic errors of verbs were the predominant corollary of interlingual and intralingual factors The absence of a significant impact from the context of learning or communication strategy was noted Among the intralingual factors, the most significant contributor was false concept hypothesized (FCH), effectuating misformation and omission errors, particularly in tense and misspelling Incomplete application of rules (IAR), overgeneralization (OV), and ignorance of rule restrictions (IRR) were found to have a lesser impact The study identified errors caused by FCH as incorrect usage of tense and misspelling, while IRR led to a high number of addition errors OV resulted in misformation of -ed inflections for past tense verbs and the overapplication of the -ed past tense marker IAR caused omissions of the main verb and subject-verb disagreement The presence of Vietnamese language influence led to the occurrence of omission and misformation errors in tenses, and subject-verb agreement.

DISSCUSION

Morphosyntactic errors of verbs in EFL undergraduates’ English compositions (RQ1)

The findings of the first research question show that in the occurrences of morphosyntactic errors of verbs, the misformation error was noticeably the highest committed type Omission and addition types followed misformation one, and the misordering errors were made insignificantly as the least frequent error In this study, participants mainly resorted to main verbs and auxiliary verbs in simple structures; however, they were unable to inflect or misselect morphosyntactic elements for the verbs precisely, leading to a high occurrence of omission and misformation errors

On the contrary, they only utilized a few high-level structures (e.g., indirect wh-word question as a noun phrase); therefore, they committed only several misordering errors This relatively corresponds with several studies (e.g., Gayo & Widodo, 2018; Padilla

& Padilla, 2021; Purinanda & Sutrisno, 2022) that the majority of the errors involve misformation; notwithstanding, misordering errors seemingly had no impact Because the previous studies have detected morphosyntactic errors in all word classes (e.g., noun, verb, preposition, etc.), the verb errors were not systematically discussed and analyzed

In terms of omission errors, regular inflections (e.g., –ing, -ed, -s/-es) were omitted the most often Subsequently, irregular lexical verb inflections and primary verbs were frequently omitted, but there was no occurrence of omission of modal verbs The omission errors occurred because verbs were not inflected, primary verbs were missed in tenses along with passive voice structures, and verb inflections were potential reasons for omission errors First, the students can be precluded from Vietnamese transfer A few scholarly authors argue that individuals with limited proficiency in a second language often exhibit a tendency to depend on their native language, as it constitutes their sole linguistic system prior to gaining familiarity with the linguistic structure of the L2 (Corder, 1975; Ellis, 1997; Richards, 1984) To illuminate Vietnamese influence, Nguyen (1996) states that Vietnamese verbs suffer the absence of inflection Vietnamese verbs do not undergo conjugation, and tense and aspect are typically inferred from the context, as noted by Nguyen (1996) Even though Vietnamese has particles to indicate tense and aspect, and the implied tense and aspect are understood in the context (Dam, 2001; Le, 1972) This unique characteristic of the Vietnamese language can be explained by the fact that tense and aspect are not considered functional categories in Vietnamese, as argued by Cao

(1998) Second, low-level students can commit these errors by dint of the students’ inadequate English proficiency, so they incompletely applied rules and struggled to discern when to use different tenses correctly A relatively identical result can be found in studies by Hariri (2012), Hijjo (2013), and N Nguyen (2020) that omission of inflectional morphemes affects the precise use of verb tense and the concord of subject and verb For instance, the students were confused about using –ed inflection, so they committed errors in the simple past tense (Hijjo, 2013; N Nguyen, 2020) Relating passive voice sentences, Cantina and Banquio (2015) and Zainuddin (2016) also confirmed that the omission of –ed inflection led to the erroneous use of verbs in such a structure

With regard to the addition errors, primary verbs were unnecessarily added the most frequently, which was followed by regular lexical verb inflections and modal verbs of ability redundancies; nevertherless, irregular verbs were often properly added These addition errors can be explained that the students employed the incorrect tense uses, put excessive meaning concentration to not understand the crucial function of a modal verb, might apply prior knowledge, and ignored syntactic rules This is consistent with the calculation by Gayo and Widodo (2018) and Padilla and Padilla (2021) that almost no irregular verbs were unnecessarily used; alternatively, linking verbs and helping verbs were considerable issues The findings partially support the analysis conducted by H Nguyen (2020), which suggests that the majority of students experienced confusion when learning the simple past tense This confusion was addressed by incorporating the auxiliary form of the verb "be" in all instances of the simple past tense H Nguyen’s (2020) explained that the be verb came first at the beginning of the past tense in most courses and textbooks, so most students endeavored to use was or were for all cases of the past simple In addition, Gayo and Widodo (2018) elaborated that the students added linguistic features triggering error utterances in English; however, the addition errors only occurred at the morphological level but rather at the syntactical level Concerning regular lexical verb inflections, this research echoes Zainuddin’s (2016) finding of redundant addition of –s/es morphemes to verbs after a plural noun, causing errors about subject-verb agreement

In reference to the misformation errors, irregular lexical verb inflections were misused the most frequently, strikingly surpassing this error type of regular lexical verb inflections and primary verbs Finally, the morphosyntactic form of modal verbs was incorrectly applied the least often Several cases typically pertained to students’ failure at differentiating tenses, inflecting the verbs for the subject-verb agreement, and conjugating the verbs in the past tense At the morphological level, this is in line with Purinanda and Sutrisno’s (2022) finding of high frequency of misformed inflections At the syntactical level, this corresponds with Gayo and Widodo’s (2018) and Purinanda and Sutrisno’s (2022) findings that the errors included misformation of verbs and be for passive voice and tenses, misformation of verb tense, subject-verb agreement This is partly comparable to Padilla and Padilla’s (2021) conclusion that one of the prominent morphosyntactic errors was faulty verb tense The results can be explained by Padilla and Padilla’s (2021) rationale Generally, the students were unviable to adhere to transformation rules of verbs Moreover, they used the incorrect

Vietnam context, the result also backs up H Nguyen’s (2020) and H Nguyen’s (2020) findings of misformation errors, provoking fallacious use of tenses by EFL Vietnamese undergraduates

As for the misordering errors, several irregular inflectional verbs and primary verbs were situated in the wrong positions in noun clauses with a wh-question word Comparably, Gayo and Widodo (2018) investigated misordered primary verbs in students’ descriptive essays Padilla and Padilla (2021) concluded that the incorrect placement of a morpheme or group of morphemes in a given utterance results in this error According to the findings of Purinanda and Sutrisno (2022), misordering errors primarily manifested at the syntactic level, owing to the potential ambiguity in the relationships between elements within a phrase or clause Such ambiguity could give rise to errors that have an adverse impact on the overall structure of the phrase, clause, or even the entire sentence

In conclusion, in the previous studies, most of the frequent morphosyntactic errors of verbs have been related to subject-verb agreement and verb tenses; notwithstanding, a scarce deal of research so far has indicated the fallacious use of morphemes affected other syntactic structures such as omission of –ing inflection or participle inflections in the clause-initial position of the adverbial clause, redundancy of modal verb of ability, or erroneous arrangement in noun clauses with a wh- question word Apparently, these are the core values of this research Into the bargain, numerous studies have detected morphosyntactic errors based on the classification of parts of speech, and few ones have employed the surface strategy taxonomy Therefore, this study would fill in the gap of identifying morphosyntactic errors of verbs based on the surface strategy taxonomy.

Causative factors of morphosyntactic errors of verbs in EFL undergraduates’

The findings of the second research question indicate that interlingual and intralingual factors were two main sources triggering morphosyntactic errors; nevertheless, there was no existence of context of learning and communication strategy detected It can be explained that the students were at low levels of English proficiency, so they struggled with applying morphology of English verbs to accommodate syntactic structures in their written compositions Consequently, they were unable to comprehensively apply morphosyntactic rules of verbs or discriminate similarities between Vietnamese and English This is congruent to some extent with the conclusions of several studies (e.g., Gayo & Widodo 2018; Hariri, 2012; Padilla

& Padilla, 2021; Purinanda & Sutrisno, 2022) that the majority of errors were ascribed to intralingual and interlingual intervention; nonetheless, because of different research settings, objectives, and writing genres, this study incompletely echoes previous studies Furthermore, the aforementioned results find support in the causative factor theories postulated by several linguists

In terms of intralingual factors, false concept hypothesized was found to be the most significant contributor to students' errors, whereas the incomplete application of rules was the second most prevalent intralingual factor, despite having a lower impact Conversely, overgeneralization and ignorance of rule restrictions were found to have the least impact on students' errors Hayati (2012) explained that intralingual factors referred to studuents’ inability to recognize the relationships between the words within L2 sentences Cantina (2015) discussed that once students have begun to absorb components of the new system, there was an increase in intralingual transfer generalization inside the target language

With regard to false concept hypothesized (FCH), it was likely that a multitude of misformation and omission errors were the corollary of this factor, leading to incorrect usage of tense and misspelling errors These findings accord with a limited number of prior studies, with the exception of the work conducted by Gayo and Widodo (2018), who observed that false concept hypothesized resulted in the misformation of irregular verbs in the written compositions of students Evidently, Richards' (1917) hypotheses regarding FCH appeared to substantiate these findings students' ability to differentiate between tenses The results revealed that the students exhibited inadequate comprehension of the nuances of tenses, as evidenced by their improper verb inflections

As for ignorance of rule restrictions (IRR), numerous addition errors were triggered by this factor Specifically, the redundancy of tense-related primary verbs or inflections, the excessive appearance of modal verbs of ability, and the addition of irregular lexical verb inflections were identified This somehow echoes Gayo and Widodo's (2018) findings that students unnecessarily inflected verbs due to not adhering to the rules of accordance with the subject This finding backs up Richards’

(1971) elucidation that the students struggled to comply with the limitations of certain structures

In reference to overgeneralization (OV), misformation of –ed inflections for past tense verbs, overapplication of the –ed past tense marker, redundant placement and misordered primary verbs were possibly caused by OV These findings seem not to be congruent with any previous studies While Gayo and Widodo (2018) analyzed this factor triggered superfluous addition of inflections after a modal verb, Hariri

(2012) and Ramadhan et al (2018) indicated that OV resulted in omission of regular inflection, causing disagreement of subject and verb Remarkably, these findings can back up the instances of OV given by Hummel (2014) The author accentuates that it is a prevalent phenomenon among English language learners to demonstrate overapplication of the –ed past tense marker on verbs that impossibly conform to the general rule This type of overgeneralization is commonly referred as overregularization, as exemplified in the utterance I eated instead of I ate Such instances of overgeneralizations are indicative of learners' internalization of specific rules, which they apply even in unsuitable contexts

In respect of the incomplete application of rules (IAR), there were occurrences of omission of the main verb, dearth of primary verbs or inflections for participles in the passive structure, and omission of inflections provoking subject-verb disagreement Similarly, Gayo and Widodo (2018) and Ramadhan et al (2018) acknowledged the deleterious influence of IAR on the omission of main verb, especially the be verbs, bringing about subject-verb disagreement Nevertheless, Ramadhan et al (2018) mentioned this factor as a simplification because the author adapted a different error source framework These findings are confirmed by Richards’s (1971) examples of errors triggered by IAR, which mainly revolve around omissions of parts of speech in sentences

With respect to interlingual intervention, omission and misformation errors were ascribed to Vietnamese transfer These morphosyntactic errors of verbs primarily pertained to the accord of verbs and subjects in tenses, numbers, or persons as well as verb inflections in certain structures This is consistent with the findings of studies by Vietnamese researchers (e.g., H Nguyen; 2020; H Nguyen, 2020; Nguyen, 2011; N Nguyen, 2020) that verbal inflection errors in tenses and subject-verb agreement were problematic in students’ compositions One of the possible explanations is that in English, the singular subjects must take singular verb forms while the plural subjects must take plural verb forms In contrast to English, which is characterized as a subject-prominent language, the Vietnamese language lacks the notion of a grammatical subject (Cao, 1998); consequently, Vietnamese students are potentially detained to ensure the subject and verb accord In this sense, the interference of Vietnamese might also be the cause of errors in subject and verb agreement Furthermore, Nguyen (2011) concluded that students seemingly had few ideas about the system of English tenses of verbs Additionally, the Vietnamese language lacks the characteristic of using inflectional means to mark tenses because the Vietnamese language belongs to a mono-syllabus non-inflecting language instead of a poly-syllabic inflecting language like English (Dam, 2001; Nguyen, 1996) In short, the differences between the verb system of the Vietnamese language and English tenses obstruct Vietnamese students from acquiring the English notion of tenses Regarding the subject-verb agreement, N Nguyen (2020) examined the agreement While English verbs are required to agree with their subjects in terms of person and number, Vietnamese verb stems neither change nor inflect for person and number In other words, subject-verb agreement based on person and number is excluded in Vietnamese sentences These findings of mother tongue transfer are also elucidated by Brown (2014) that when students possess a limited level of proficiency in a second language, they commonly rely on their native language as their sole familiar linguistic system In an attempt to comprehend and utilize the second language, they resort to employing their native language as a cognitive tool This is consistent with Taylor's (1975) theory that students who lack familiarity with a new linguistic system rely heavily on their native language

With reference to the other factors, as mentioned, this study only detected errors by analyzing the morphology of verbs in light of according with syntactical aspects in sentences, but rather the context of learning and communication strategies; accordingly, they were not identified in this study Nevertheless, when examining a whole sentence, Padilla and Padilla (2021) reported that the use of communication strategy resulted in sentence fragments because the students could not articulate their ideas using full sentences They resorted to a reduction strategy and utilized all the available lexicon to convey their message

To conclude, as for the detrimental intralingual impact on morphosyntactic errors of verbs, there have been only a few findings from previous studies; notwithstanding, this study is impossibly connected with the entire literature It can be clarified that previous literature has detected errors in parts of speech with divergent writing genres and student levels instead of giving emphasis to verbs in narrative writing by EFL undergraduates Therefore, the determination of ranking of causative factors and detailed analysis of these on morphosyntactic errors of verbs were contributive values of this study In terms of interlingual transfer, most studies have found that tenses and subject-verb agreement were attributed to Vietnamese transfer; nevertheless, this study shed light on the morphosyntactic aspect that omission and misformation of inflections were caused by Vietnamese influence

Respecting the other factors, this current is not in harmony with previous studies because of its error analysis focus.

Chapter summary

Chapter 5 has discussed the results of both descriptive and qualitative analyses With regard to Research Question 1, the study explored that the participants committed the misformation errors with the most frequent type followed by omission and addition types; nevertherless, misordering was the least common error type It can be manifested that the participants mainly used simple verb structures but struggled with precise morphosyntactic inflection; however, they employed a few high-level structures These findings partly correspond with previous studies which have detected morphosyntactic errors of all linguistic elements (e.g., noun, verb, preposition, etc.) in various writing genres by different research participants, so the findings are incompletely aligned with these of previous studies

With respect to Research Question 2, this research elucidated that interlingual and intralingual factors were the main causes of morphosyntactic errors in low-level ESOL students They struggled with applying morphosyntactic rules in their writing, as well as distinguishing between similarities and differences between Vietnamese and English Nevertheless, the study impossibly presented the evidence of the impact of learning context or communication strategies on these errors The study partially supports the previous research on the topic, but also acknowledges differences in the research settings, objectives, and genres.

CONCLUSION

Summary of key findings

The prime objectives of this study were to explore how morphosyntactic errors of English verbs were made in terms of types of errors and their frequency and explain the causative factors of these errors in the paragraphs of EFL undergraduates To achieve these objectives, two corresponding research questions were formulated This section presents the key findings that address these questions

To answer Research question 1 – What types of morphosyntactic errors of verbs do EFL undergraduates commit in English written compositions? – The findings of the study demonstrated a preponderance of morphosyntactic errors in verb usage in the form of misformation errors, particularly in the misapplication of irregular lexical verb inflections Omission errors were also prevalent, primarily arising from a deficiency of proper inflection of verbs or primary verbs in tenses and passive voice structures Addition errors, while less frequent, were often effectuated duo to incorrect utilization of tense or an insufficient grasp of sentence syntactic principles The least frequent error was misordering type, where irregular inflectional verbs and primary verbs were inappropriately placed in clauses containing wh-question words

To answer Research question 2 - What causative factors result in these morphosyntactic errors of verbs in English written compositions by EFL undergraduates? – the results revealed that morphosyntactic errors of verbs predominantly stemmed from both interlingual and intralingual factors Remarkably, no significant impact was observed from the context of learning or communication strategies Among the intralingual factors, false concept hypothesized (FCH) had the most significant impact The other factors such as incomplete application of rules (IAR), overgeneralization (OV), and ignorance of rule restrictions (IRR) had a lesser influence Regarding errors caused by these factors, FCH triggered misformation and omission errors, notably in tense and spelling IRR led to a higher frequency of addition errors OV resulted in misformation of -ed inflections for past tense verbs and overapplication of the -ed past tense marker IAR led to omissions of the main verb and subject-verb disagreement Interlingual influence from Vietnamese was found to provoke omission and misformation errors in tenses and subject-verb agreement.

Implications of the study

The current study offers a large number of implications for both practical and theoretical aspects In terms of practical implications, the findings of the first research question could inform the lecturers of the frequent morphosyntactic error of verbs They should allocate sufficient time to teaching grammar, with particular emphasis on verb-related units, and provide appropriate corrections for their students when composing English paragraphs In order to assist students in mastering the use of these verbs, teachers should incorporate morphosyntax instruction and practice- focused exercises such as verb conjugation, sentence rewriting, and error correction into their lessons Additionally, the underlying causes of these errors could suggest to the lecturers that they should clarify the morphosyntactic rules of verbs in their lessons and instruct distinctive concepts of these verbs meticulously Lastly, it is advisable that Vietnamese lecturers should notice the regular errors caused by Vietnamese influence and modify their lessons to aid their students in handling these errors

As regards EFL elementary students, the acquisition of a second language requires attention to morphosyntactic aspects of verbs in writing, specifically within the narrative genre It is imperative that students are aware of prevalent errors, including the misapplication of irregular lexical verb inflections and the deficiency of proper inflection of verbs in tenses and passive voice structures Besides, the findings of causes warn them to apply morphosyntactic rules and discriminate target language concepts carefully

With regard to the theoretical aspect, the implications include several points Firstly, unlike previous studies (e.g., Cantina & Banquio, 2015; Gayo & Widodo, 2018; Hariri, 2012; Padilla & Padilla, 2021) that have primarily focused on investigating morphosyntactic errors across all parts of speech, this study offers a systematic investigation of morphosyntactic errors of verbs based on the surface strategy taxonomy There is a preponderance of morphosyntactic errors in verb usage in the form of misformation errors and omission errors Secondly, the exploration of causative factors of these verbs indicates the corollary of interlingual and intralingual factors.

Limitations of the study

There are a couple of limitations that seemingly constrain the generalizability of this study, namely, the sampling method and the time of conducting the study The first factor pertains to the methodological limitation, which is the use of convenience sampling for data collection in this study The study collected 224 submissions from

224 students in six intact classes from a population of 1500 freshmen students in the General English Division of the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Ho Chi Minh City Open University The researcher only collected compositions that were available for the study because of other lecturers’ reluctance to share their students’ midterm writings As a result, the sampling method was convenient rather than random, which may introduce bias and preclude it from being representative of the population (Mackey & Gass, 2005)

Second, the study was conducted at a certain point in time, which was after the students’ midterm test It would be much better if the study is done on a longitudinal basis, that is to say, but the observations are done all over the time of the course of study In that way the data obtained will certainly be more reliable.

Suggestions for further research

The following suggestions are put forth for future investigations Firstly, it is recommended that further research adopt the same research design using random sampling methods This could enhance the generalizability of the findings Secondly, the data collected on students' errors should be gathered throughout the entire class period in a longitudinal study In the current study, the focus was on identifying morphosyntactic errors of verbs in narrative writing Thus, more studies are needed to examine these errors in different genres

Additionally, these errors were majorly triggered by intralingual and interlingual factors since this study only detected errors by analyzing the morphology of verbs in light of aligning with syntactical aspects in sentences Hence, subsequent studies should examine the intervention of other aspects such as teaching materials, pedagogies, and students’ perceived difficulties using morphosyntactic verbs by conducting interviews with the students and teachers or observing the class Lastly, it would be beneficial for educators to conduct more research on correction techniques for these types of errors.

Concluding remarks

Prior research has indicated that ESOL students tend to commit a significant number of written morphosyntactic errors in English verbs Nonetheless, the existing literature is limited in terms of knowledge of these errors as it primarily focuses on word classes as a whole, and few studies have been conducted in the context of Vietnamese universities Furthermore, previous studies on the causative factors of these errors have lacked detailed analysis and interpretation To address these gaps in the literature, this study utilized two research approaches to identify the types and frequency of morphosyntactic errors made in English verbs by low-level ESOL

EFL undergraduates were also described and analyzed This study contributes to a more systematic exploration of morphosyntactic errors in English verbs and their causative factors in low-level EFL undergraduates' submissions Although the study is subject to limitations such as non-random sampling and data collection timing, it provides valuable insights into the common types of morphosyntactic errors of verbs and the two most influential causes The findings have implications for research and practice in the EFL teaching context at the tertiary level

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Zainuddin, Z (2016) Morphosyntactic analysis on Indonesian EFL learners’ descriptive writing Lembaran Ilmu Kependidikan, 45(2), 47-51 https://doi.org/10.15294/lik.v45i2.7199

APPENDICES APPENDIX A: A SAMPLE WRITING PROMPT

Write a short travel blog about a journey or a place you visited on holiday

 the past forms of verbs

 free spelling-and-grammar mistakes

Hi, my name is *** Me and my family went to Quang Nam 7 months ago during my summer vacation We spended time visit a lot of old and historical places in Hoi An We feel very comfortable when stayed here We ate together special dishes such as: Phuong bread, Cao Lau, Quang noodles It’s very delicious! The water here was cool and clean, the weather here was very comfortable not too hot and not too cold We walked, went to the beach, and even had the opportunity to visited our grandparents and relatives after a year of not returned I am very happy and looking forward to this holiday for a long time I really enjoyed that vacation I liked the most here is the poetic and peaceful scenery and the food here too Because this is the ideal place to visit, and I will definitely come back here

APPENDIX C: THE APPROVAL FOR RESEARCH PROJECT FROM THE HEAD OF THE GENERAL ENGLISH DIVISION OF THE FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AT HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY

Title of research project: Morphosyntactic errors of verbs in english written compositions by Vietnamese undergraduates

Name of researcher: Tran Thanh Tan

Email of researcher: tantt.208t@ou.edu.vn

The researcher is conducting a study on morphosyntactic errors of English verbs in low-level EFL undergraduates’ compositions The purpose of your participation in this study is to help the researcher collect your students’ in-class midterm writings Your students’ submissions are selected because your students’ English proficiency level meets the requirements of this research, elementary level, and they are currently first-year students at the General English Division of the Faculty of Foreign Languages in Ho Chi Minh City Open University

If you agree to allow the researcher to collect the writing submissions in this study, the following will occur: the submissions will be provided an ID code Then, these pieces of information of each submission will be entered into a Microsoft Excel file, including, submission ID, total word, extracted verbs, and sentences After that, the verbs will be detected their correctness The incorrect verbs will be coded with their error types and causative factors in the next step Besides, the initial Microsoft Excel file will be distributed to the second coder to conduct the same steps as the researcher will do The comparison of coding between the researcher and the second coder will be conducted; then, coding the error types and causes will be executed again if necessary Finally, the raw and normed frequencies of error types and the raw occurrences of errors under causative factors will be calculated, summed, and reported

The submissions will be kept as confidential as possible No individual identities will be used in any reports or publications resulting from the study All submissions will be given codes and no real names will be used in the study

Only the researcher and Dr Vu Hoa Ngan, who is the researcher’s instructor will have access to the files and data After the study is completed, the submissions will be returned to the lecturers and all the data of this study will be deleted

The lecturers will have their students’ submissions examined in terms of morphosyntactic verbs The results will inform them the types, occurrences, and causative factors of these errors Besides, they will gain useful and practical implications for their teaching practices

Your decision whether or not to allow the researcher to collect writing submissions in this study is voluntary and will not affect your students learning process at HCMCOU If you choose to allow the researcher to collect the writing submissions, you can withdraw your consent and writing submissions at any time without prejudice

If you have any questions about the study, please contact the researcher via the phone number (0964495704) or the email address (tantt.208t@ou.edu.vn)

YOU ARE MAKING A DECISION WHETHER OR NOT TO ALLOW THE RESEARCHER TO COLLECT DATA IN A RESEARCH STUDY YOUR SIGNATURE BELOW INDICATES THAT YOU HAVE DECIDED TO PARTICIPATE IN THE STUDY AFTER READING ALL OF THE INFORMATION ABOVE AND YOU UNDERSTAND THE INFORMATION IN THIS FORM, HAVE HAD ANY QUESTIONS ANSWERED AND HAVE RECEIVED A COPY OF THIS FORM FOR YOU TO KEEP

APPENDIX D2: GIẤY CHẤP THUẬN CUNG CẤP DỮ LIỆU NGHIÊN CỨU

Tên đề tài nghiên cứu: Lỗi hình thái cú pháp của động từ trong các bài viết tiếng Anh của sinh viên Việt Nam

Tên người nghiên cứu: Trần Thanh Tân

Email của nghiên cứu viên: tantt.208t@ou.edu.vn

Số điện thoại của nhà nghiên cứu: 0964.495.704

Nhà nghiên cứu đang tiến hành một nghiên cứu về các lỗi hình thái cú pháp của động từ tiếng Anh trong các bài viết của sinh viên học tiếng Anh như ngôn ngữ thứ hai Mục đích của việc quý thầy/cô tham gia vào nghiên cứu này là để giúp nhà nghiên cứu thu thập các bài viết giữa kỳ của học sinh trong lớp của thầy/cô Bài thi viết giữa kì của sinh viên từ lớp của thầy/cô được chọn vì trình độ tiếng Anh của họ đáp ứng yêu cầu của nghiên cứu này và họ hiện đang là sinh viên năm thứ nhất thuộc Bộ môn Tiếng Anh không chuyên Khoa Ngoại ngữ Trường Đại học Mở TP.HCM

B QUY TRÌNH THỰC HIỆN NGHIÊN CỨU

Nếu bạn đồng ý cho phép nhà nghiên cứu thu thập các bài viết trong nghiên cứu này, tiến trìnhsau đây sẽ diễn ra: các bài nộp sẽ được cung cấp một mã ID Sau đó, các phần thông tin này của mỗi bài nộp sẽ được nhập vào một tệp Microsoft Excel, bao gồm, ID bài nộp, tổng số từ, câu và động từ được trích xuất Sau đó, các động từ sẽ được kiểm tra tính chính xác của chúng Các động từ sai sẽ được mã hóa với các loại lỗi hình thái cú pháp và các yếu tố gây ra trong bước tiếp theo Bên cạnh đó, tệp Microsoft Excel ban đầu sẽ được phân phối cho người viết mã thứ hai để tiến hành các bước tương tự như nhà nghiên cứu sẽ làm Việc so sánh mã hóa giữa nhà nghiên cứu và người viết mã thứ hai sẽ được tiến hành; sau đó, việc mã hóa các loại lỗi và nguyên nhân sẽ được thực hiện lại nếu cần thiết Cuối cùng, tần suất thô và chuẩn hóa của các loại lỗi và sự xuất hiện của lỗi theo các yếu tố nguyên nhân sẽ được tính toán, tổng hợp và báo cáo

C SỰ BẢO MẬT THÔNG TIN CỦA SINH VIÊN TRÊN CÁC BÀI VIẾT

Dữ liệu thu thập từ bài nghiên cứu này được bảo mật Mọi thông tin cá nhân của học viên tham gia chỉ được sử dụng cho mục đích duy nhất là bài nghiên cứu này Tất cả bài viết đều được mã hóa và tên thật của sinh viên sẽ không được sử dụng Không cá nhân nào khác ngoài tôi và Tiến sĩ Vũ Hoa Ngân, giảng viên hướng dẫn của tôi được tiếp cận những thông tin này Sau khóa học, bài viết sẽ được trả lại cho quý thầy/cô và dữ liệu sẽ được xóa khi người nghiên cứu hoàn tất dự án

D LỢI ÍCH KHI THAM GIA VÀO BÀI NGHIÊN CỨU