SK KINH NGHIEM 2010

TABLE OF CONTENT PART 1. INTRODUCTION I. The problem 2 II. Aims and significance 3 III. Organization of the study 3 PART 2. LITERATURE REVIEW I. Errors in language learning process 4 I.1. Definition of error and its role in language learning and teaching 4 I.2. Error visus Mistake 4 II. Error Analysis III. Types of errors 6 III.1. Interlingual errors 6 III.2. Intralingual errors 6 III.2.1. Overgeneralization 6 III.2.2. Ignorance of rule restriction 6 III.2.3. Incomplete application of rules 6 III.2.4. False concepts hypothesized 6 III.3. Developmental errors 7 PART 3. METHODOLOGY I. The research questions 8 II.Method Review 8 III. Research Design 8 III.1. Subjects 8 III.2. Data Collection Method 8 IV. Techniques of Analysis 9 V. Presentation of Data Results VI. Discussion 10 VI.1. Strategies accounting for the L1 transfer errors 10 VI.2. Strategies accounting for Overgeneralization errors 11 VI.3. Teaching Procedures in dealing with error patterns 11 VI.3.1. Language input activity 11 VI.3.2. Consciousness- raising 11 CHAPTER 4. CONCLUSION 12 REFERENCES 13 APPENDIXES 14-16 1 CAUSES OF ERRORS IN USING PAST SIMPLE TENSE IN WRITING NARRATIVES BY GRADE-10 STUDENTS OF SON LA SPECIALIZED HIGH SCHOOL PART 1. INTRODUCTION I. The problem English has been taught as a specialized subject in Son la Specialized High School for about 10 years. Despite some considerable success, it is undeniable that teachers and students here have found many difficulties in their teaching and learning process. The researcher of this study realized from her observation and experiences for 10 years teaching in this school that many English specialized students in Son La Specialized High School have problems with their writing performance. Students are unsuccessful with their writing products in spite of their teachers’ help and their own attempt. Many students are unwilling to deal with their writing tasks and even show great anxiety in class. In dealing with students errors, one teacher may suggest correcting them as soon as they appear, another one might emphasizes ignoring them, and another one would say to find ways to help students on the basis of these errors. These suggestions lead to a debate of how to cope with students’ errors in their wrting tasks to improve their wrting skill. As a result, writing has become an awkward ostacles for both teachers and students here to overcome. II. Aims and Significance There have been many error studies carried out in different languages with different learners of various language backgrounds. Among the researchers of this kind, Corder (1967) and Richards (1971) attached the significance of errors in theory and practice of foreign language teaching and learning. According to Corder (1967), errors as traced their sources are useful in different ways for the following reasons: First of all, they tell language teachers how much progress a learner has made towards the target language and as the result, where s/he needs help and what sort of help s/he needs. Secondly, they provide evidence for researchers of L2 learning process. It means that the researchers, through errors, can discover what strategies foreign language learners use in learning and acquiring a language. Finally, errors can serve practically as good feedback to the learners for self-adjustment. 2 It is clear that when studied systematically, students’ errors in acquiring L2 can give significant insights into how the language is learnt. Apart from the above researchers’ theories, there have been no studies on students’ grammar errors in writing in Son La province. So there are no particular models or theoretical framework to guide English teachers working there to deal with students’ errors in writing. In view of the preceeding discussion, this assignment attempts to: (a) identify and analyze two main error patterns in using the Past Simple Tense, which are quite common in written texts by grade-10 students in Son La Specialized High School, one is considered to be originated in Vietnamese, the other is believed to be derived from general misuse or overgeneralization of learning strategies. (b) demonstrate the difficulties the students encounter in learning writing skill. (c) offer some practical suggestions. It is hoped that the study can be valuable to both teachers and students as the result of taking advantages of the research findings and its recomendations for a better strategies in English learning and teaching process. For the teachers, the study should help to provide them a deeper theoretical understanding and a closer look at the students’ writing problems from which they could seek for proper and more effective teaching methods to treat their students’ errors. For the students, it is hoped that they will increase their awareness of the causes which can lead them to errors committing in their writing process to avoid and reduce the would-be errors. This also should help them feel less challenging and become more confident in writing activity and be successfull in their written tests as well. III. Organization of the study The assignment will first, provide information on the background of the problem through a literature review; next, identify and analyze the students’ errors; and last, give some possible recommendations to help reduce errors in students’ compositions. 3 PART 2 LITERATURE REVIEW– I. ERRORS IN LANGUAGE LEARNING PROCESS I.1. Definition of error and its role in language teaching and learning The term “error” is widely used in language learning and teaching. However, ERROR is differently defined in terms of activities and areas of research by different scholars and linguists. Afrah (1981, p. 26) states that an error may be an incorrect activity of information in response to some directive or request for information. According to Richards (1992, p.126), errors can be considered as the use of liguistic items in a way that a fluent or native speaker of the language regards as showing faulty or incomplete learning. Errors arise from several possible sources, two of which are “ interlingual errors of interference from the native language, intralingual errors within the target language, context of learning and communication strategies” ( Brown, 2000, p.218) Errors play an important role in language learning and teaching. Corder (cited in Brown, 1994, p. 217) states that “ A learner’s errors . are significant in that they provide… to the reseracher evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in the discovery of the language”. I.2. Error versus mistake When we see something wrong with a piece of written work, we must first try to decide whether it is an error or a mistake. There are different distinction between errors and mistakes. Chomsky (1965) distinguishes these two terms as “competence errors” and “performance errors”, in which competence errors result from incomplete knowledge or inedequate competence of the target language, while performance errors are caused by some aspect of verbal performance such as lack of attention, fatigue or carelessness. According to Corder ( 1967, pp 24-25), there are systematic errors, which are caused by the formulation of incorrect hypotheses about the target language, and non-systematic errors, which result from memory lapses, physical states such as tiredness, and psychological conditions such as emotions. In other words, it is broadly understood that learners make errors when they try to do something with the language which they are not yet able to do. For example, they may use the wrong form of the verbs, such as in She work very hard instead of She works very hard, or they may transfer from their mother tongue, such as in They came to Ha Noi, where is the capital of Vietnam instead of They came to Ha Noi, which is the capital of Vietnam. Mistakes, on the other hand, are slips of some kind. Learners have learnt something but perhaps they have temporarily forgotten it for 4 some reason such as carelessness or tiredness. So mistakes refer to an inconsistent deviation in using the target language. It is clear that it is not easy to distinguish these two terms. However, it can be understood that mistakes are caused by the lack of attention, carelessness or some aspect of performance. And it is also stated by Corder that mistakes are of no significance in the process of language learning, while errors are systematic and traced back to inadequate competence of the target language. Therefore, they are inevitable and important to language learning and teaching. II. ERROR ANALYSIS Error analysis, the study of the errors made by second language learners, is often carried out in order to: - identify strategies which learners use in language learning - try to to identify the causes of learner errors - obtain information on common difficulties in language learning, as an aid to teaching or in the preparation of teaching materials ( Richards 1992, p.127) Error analysis, offered as an alternative to Contrastive analysis, has its value in the classroom research. Whereas contrastive analysis, which may be least predictive at the syntactic level and at early stages of learning languages (Brown 1994, p. 214), allows for prediction of the difficulties involved in acquiring a second language.(Richard 1974, p.172); error analysis emphasizes “the significance of errors in learners’ inter-language system” (Brown 1994, p.204) may be carried out directly for pedagogic purposes. (Ellis 1995, p.51) III.TYPES OF ERRORS In error analysis, it is necessary to identify and describe the learner’s errors. This provides the teacher valuable information on the strategies employed by the learner, from which the teacher can plan an effective correction or remedy. Richard (1974, p.172-173) divides errors into three major types, which are interference, intralingual and developmental errors. III.1. Interlingual Errors Interlingual errors are defined as the influence of the learner’s mother tongue on the production of the target language in the areas where the languages are remarkably different. In other words, interlingual errors refer to the second language errors that reflect 5 native language structure. The differences between the first language and the target language may affect learners in all areas such as pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and in various ways. George puts that “ one-third of the deviant sentences from second language learners could be attributed to language transfer” ( George, 1971, cited in Richards, 1984, p.5). And quite frequently, Vietnamese students write English sentences by translating directly from Vietnamese to English word by word or just put English word into Vietnamese syntax, because they think in Vietnamese rather in English, as in “ I am very thankful my parent for give me such a wonderful holiday , ” or in “In that evening we went buy gifts for all people .” Lado (1957, p.1) also notes that “errors are originated in the learner’s disposition to transfer the forms and meanings, and the contribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture to the foreign language and culture”. There are both positive and negative transfers of a set of habits from L1 to learning habits in L2. According to Cook (1992, p.589), the L1 is present in the L2 learners’ minds, whether the teacher wants it to be there or not. The L2 knowledge that is being created in them is connected in all sorts of ways with their L1 knowledge. As a result, he suggests that when working with L2 learners, teachers must not treat the L2 in isolation from the L1. III.2. Intralingual Errors Intralingual errors are those stemming from the strategies of the target language itself. They reflect general characteristics of rule learning, such as faulty generalization, incomplete application of rules and failure to learn conditions under which the rules apply. ( Richards, 1974, p.174) III.2.1. Overgeneralization Generalization is believed to be crucially important and pervading strategy in human learning, and the meaningful learning is in fact generalization, so language learning is a process of generalization. (Brown, 2000, Richards, 1974) However, “overgeneralization covers instances where the learner craetes a deviant structure on the basis of his experience of other structures in target language” (Richards, 1974, p.174). In other words, this kind of errors is caused by the failure to take exceptions into account because of the learners’ insufficient exposure to the target language and lack of data from which they can derive more complex rules. Another reason lies in the fact that after having found a rule which appears to work well, learners are not inclined to go looking for exceptions which will only complicate matters. In other words, 6 overgeneralization is the use of previous available strategies in new contexts. Therefore, misleading and inapplicable strategies are probably found in some exceptional cases due to superficial similarities between the two languages. For example, I goed, She can sings or We are hope, .… III.2.2. Ignorance of rule restriction These errors usually fall into the inappropriate use of prepositions, verbs or other grammatical items like in ‘ They are going to discuss about the new hotel project.’ III.2.3. Incomplete application of rules Foreign language learners, like L1 learners undergo developmental stages through which they process target language rules. This is the reason for their imperfect application of the rules. There are two factors that lead to this violation, including the use of questions in classroom as elicitation techniques and the ignorance of obtaining L2 rules provided that they can achieve efficient communication. III.2.4. False concepts hypothesized This is rooted in learners’ faulty understanding of distinctions of target language items. Poor presentation based on the contrastive approach should account for the confusion between come and go, the use of was and is as past and present marker respectively. III.3. Developmental errors Developmental errors reflect the strategies used by the learner to acquire the language by forming false hypotheses about the target language from the limited experience of and exposure to it in the classroom or textbook. 7 PART 3. METHODOLOGY I. The research questions The study is aimed to answer the following questions: i. What are the most common errors in using the Past Simple Tense made by the grade-10 students of Son La Specialized High School when writing narratives? ii. What are the causes of these errors? iii. What actions should be recommended for preventative and curative measures? II. Method Review In this research quantitative research method has been used. The reason for this choice is that the study is aimed to seek for answers to the mentioned questions. In order to find out the most common errors in the students’ writing and their causes derived from the grade-11 students of Son La Specialized High School, this analysis should be based on statistical number. It is necessary to apply the quantitative research approach, which refers to counts and measures of things. (Beg, 2001). Quantitative studies emphasize the measurement and analysis of causal relationships between variables, not process. (Lincohn, 1994) III. Research Design III.1. Subjects Subjects to be chosen are Grade-10 students who study English as their specialized subject. This class consists of 30 students and they come from different districts of Son La Province. They have learnt English for at least 5 years as one of their compulsory subjects at school. The researcher randomly selected 20 participants from this class, both male and female, to ensure the reliability of the research. III. 2. Data collection For the selection of a corpus of language, following the guidelines offered by Ellis (1995, p.51-52), a sample of written work was collected from 20 students. The students were asked to write about their most impressive holiday, one of the topics that they have learnt in their textbook with the length of 150 - 200 words in 45 minutes’ time and were allowed to consult a dictionary if required. IV. Techniques of Analysis 8 The techniques employed in the analysis process include identification, labelization, transferation to indexes and classification. After the ministration of the instruments, the data were collected from them and analyzed to the purpose of the study to elicit answers from the research questions proposed. Data collection consisted of results from 20 essays in practice. Types of errors were selected for analysis based on their relative seriousness and frequency of occurrence. The resulting data were investigated in detail, resulting in a number of several different categories, as predicted (Brown, 1994- p.214). The errors were then explained and thoroughly examined to find the sources of errors due to L1 and L2 transfer, paying particular attention to negative transfer. V. Data presentation and analysis The errors caused by the L1 were identified as resulting from negative transfer and non-existent linguistic items. (Brown, 1994, p.194), by comparing the students’ sentence to an equivalent one translated into the L1. The effects of negative transfer were seen in the omission of the past maker ed– , as in: After a hard day they gathered and chat in an informal atmosphere. Staying there, I feel very happy and comfortable. The first impression with me is the warm welcome of the family. These sentences represent a past context through the time orientation (italics). However, the present forms of the verbs (underlined) are employed to convey the past context, a very common tendency in this error pattern. (20 errors) Other sentences such as She knows everythings about Ha Long Bay. The caves have many rock crystals which are small pieces of a substance with many even sides. I liked the people there. They are very friendly and funny. …. are superficially correct at the sentence level, however, if the context, that is pastness, is taken into account, they are incorrect. ( see other examples in Appendix 2, p.14) Errors based on the overgeneralization of learning strategies were categorized in the following types: In type 1, the students used present perfect or past perfect for past simple as in 9 It was the first time I have gone to sea. There was a church which had been built long ago. Type 2 involved using Ing form for past simple tense, for example, They greeted me with all their heart, taking my hands, asking me everything about my life and study. We went to the fields to look at the sea and fishing, walking in the small paths in the village. Type 3 involved the misuse of the negative past form of had as in Although the village hadn’t a cinema or theatre, I still prefer village life to the life in a big city. Last weekend I hadn’t go to school so my friend invited me to his house … In the evening, I hadn’t anything to do so I was listened to people talking. Type 4 consisted of using the passive form for the active form, as in I and my mother arrived in Ha Tay when the sunset was let down. In the evening, I hadn’t anything to do so I was listened to people talking. ( Appendix 3) VI. Discussion In the light of existing theories, the results and examples from the performance data, this section primarily focus on the strategies the students employ that accounted for their errors and how the designed teaching procedures can help the students deal with these errors. VI.1. Strategies accounting for the L1 transfer errors The students had considerable difficulties in conveying the past tense form, which is in agreement with what was pointed by “ as . .” The main cause is likely to be… … associated with the negative transfer of Vietnamese language in the form of a translation strategies in producing sentences in English. The strategy was so widely employed that the students dropped the regular past tense ed– morpheme in situations where the context demands past tense. Most students had less difficulty in constructing a first clause or sentence with correct past tense form. However, when a student tried to use a conjunction, it resulted in an error. The strategy behind it would be that the student first formed a sentence using the ismple past tense, then added a conjunction and while writing the next 10 [...]... exposure of authentic language Non- classroom input data should be supplied to increase the chances for students to contact English after class After listening 11 or reading, students may be asked to do some different tasks on writing And wide reading is a straightforward matter of getting input VI.3.2 Consciousness-raising (C-R) Consciousness-raising means that “successful learning of whatever kind comes... procedures in dealing with error patterns Ellis ( 1997-a, pp.119-123), emphasizing the significance of input, states that the acquisition may be facilitated by teaching explicit knowledge through CR tasks assisted by the operations of noticing and comparing, which are considered necessary for acquisition to take place, and that the input can become implicit knowledge when the operation if intergrating... since the EFL teachers in Vietnam often focus on the explanation of the text while students spend a lot of time rote learning There is one example of C-R activity: After reading a text, students are asked to identify all the words referring to the present and simple past tense They will be encouraged to make a useful comparison with that of the L1 and find out similarities and differences between patterns... myself to try to learn English by many ways 6 Last summer I had travelled with my mother and her collegues 2 Type 2 Using Ing form for past simple 1 They greeted me with all their heart, taking my hands, asking me everything about my life and study 2 We went to the fields to look at the sea and fishing, walking in the small paths in the village 3 Type 3 Using hadn’ t instead of didn’ t have 1.Although the . suggestions lead to a debate of how to cope with students’ errors in their wrting tasks to improve their wrting skill. As a result, writing has become an awkward ostacles for both teachers and. to contact English after class. After listening 11 or reading, students may be asked to do some different tasks on writing. And wide reading is a straightforward matter of getting input. VI.3.2 learning strategies. (b) demonstrate the difficulties the students encounter in learning writing skill. (c) offer some practical suggestions. It is hoped that the study can be valuable to both