linguistic errors in writing a paragraph of 10th form students at nguyen trai high school in hai phong and some solutions = những lỗi về ngôn ngữ khi viết đoạn văn của học sinh lớp 10 trường thpt nguyễn trãi

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES PHẠM THỊ BÍCH NGỌC LINGUISTIC ERRORS IN WRITING A PARAGRAPH OF 10T

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THỊ BÍCH NGỌC

LINGUISTIC ERRORS IN WRITING A PARAGRAPH OF 10TH FORM STUDENTS AT NGUYEN TRAI HIGH SCHOOL IN HAI PHONG AND

SOME SOLUTIONS

(NHỮNG LỖI VỀ NGÔN NGỮ KHI VIẾT ĐOẠN VĂN CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP

10 TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN TRÃI – HẢI PHÒNG VÀ MỘT SỐ BIỆN PHÁP

KHẮC PHỤC)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

(NHỮNG LỖI VỀ NGÔN NGỮ KHI VIẾT ĐOẠN VĂN CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP

10 TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN TRÃI – HẢI PHÒNG

VÀ MỘT SỐ BIỆN PHÁP KHẮC PHỤC)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

HANOI - 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THỊ BÍCH NGỌC

LINGUISTIC ERRORS IN WRITING A PARAGRAPH OF 10TH FORM STUDENTS AT NGUYEN TRAI HIGH SCHOOL IN HAI PHONG

AND SOME SOLUTIONS

(NHỮNG LỖI VỀ NGÔN NGỮ KHI VIẾT ĐOẠN VĂN CỦA

HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN TRÃI – HẢI PHÒNG

VÀ MỘT SỐ BIỆN PHÁP KHẮC PHỤC)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

Supervisor: Cao Thúy Hồng, M.A

HANOI - 2012

TABLE OF CONTENT

Page PART I: INTRODUCTION

6 Organization of the study 2

PART II: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter I: Literature review

I.1 Teaching writing

I.1.1 Reasons for teaching writing 4 I.1.2 Principles of teaching writing 5

I.2 Teaching paragraph writing

I.2.1 Definition of Paragraph 5 I.2.2 Classifications of paragraph 6

I.3 Writing errors

I.3.2 The role of “errors” in English Language Teaching 8 I.3.3 Classifications of writing errors 9

I.3.5 Teacher‟s role in error correction 10

Chapter II: Methodology

II.1 The situation of teaching and learning English at N.T.H.S 12

II.3.1 Method of data collection 13 II.3.2 Method of data analysis 14

Chapter III: Data analysis and discussions

III.1 Students‟ perception of their linguistics errors in writing a paragraph 15

III 2 Students‟ feeling when making errors in writing 15 III.3 The causes of students‟ linguistic errors in writing a paragraph 16 III.4 Teacher‟s errors correction in students‟ paragraphs 16 III.5 Students‟ revision on their errors 17 III.6 Kinds of linguistic difficulties 18 III 7 Grammar difficulties 18 III.8 Vocabulary difficulties 21 III.9 Linking words difficulties 23

Chapter IV: Suggestions

IV.1 Fostering students‟ knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and linking words 27 IV.1.1 Fostering students‟ grammar knowledge 27 IV.1.2 Fostering students‟ vocabulary knowledge 28 IV.1.2 Fostering students‟ knowledge of linking words 31 IV.2.1 Self - correction and peer – correction 33 IV.2.2 Teacher‟s correction 35

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

N.T.H.S: Nguyen Trai high school

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Students‟ perception of making linguistic errors

Table 2: Students‟ feeling when making errors in writing a paragraph Table 3: Teacher‟s errors correction in students‟ paragraph

Table 4: Students‟ revision on their errors

Table 5: Kinds of linguistic errors

Table 6: Grammar difficulties in writing a paragraph

Table 7: Vocabulary difficulties in writing a paragraph

Table 8: Linking words difficulties in writing a paragraph

LIST OF CHARTS

Pie chart 1: Causes of students‟ linguistic errors in writing a paragraph Chart 1 : Students‟ frequency of using linking words in a paragraph

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Teaching and learning a foreign language aims at providing the learners with means of communication To acquire the communicative competence, four language skills (reading, speaking, listening and writing) are taught regularly at schools and universities, among which writing skill is very important because it helps learners to learn other skills better

“First, writing reinforces the grammatical structures, idioms, and vocabulary that we have been teaching our students Second, when they write, they have a chance to be adventurous with the language, to go beyond what they have just learned to say, to take risks Third, when students write, they necessarily become very involved with the new language; the effort to express ideas and constant use of eye, hand and brain is the unique way of expressing their idea They discover a real need for finding the right word and the right sentence The close relationship between writing and thinking makes writing a valuable part of any language courses” (Raimes, 1938: 3)

Due to the importance of writing skill, it is part of the English syllabus at high school However, from the writer‟s teaching-experience at Nguyen Trai high school, not enough attention has been paid to the teaching and learning of writing skill at high school Writing is both dismal and neglected: many students never get a writing assignment, and many writing exercises in the textbook are abandoned Besides that, teachers are also afraid of teaching writing skill They think that teaching writing is really a challenge

The ignorance of writing skill at high school has resulted in students‟ poor writing skill: they have a lot of mistakes and many of them are unable to write an understandable paragraph One of the most serious problems that the writer has identified from her experience teaching paragraph writing to students is linguistic difficulties For example students often use wrong verb tenses in a paragraph, they confuse the meaning of the words or they can‟t create the coherence in the paragraph by linking words Therefore, the researcher would like to do this research

to find out common linguistic difficulties in writing a paragraph of 10th form students and suggest some solutions to help students to avoid the linguistic errors and improve their paragraph writing

2 Objectives of the study

As just mentioned, students at Nguyen Trai high school face many linguistic difficulties in writing a paragraph Therefore, the ultimate goal of the research is to find out the real situation of students‟ linguistic difficulties in writing

4 Scope of the study

The study is about paragraph writing of 10th form students at Nguyen Trai high school However, due to the limited scope and time, it is confined to finding out the students‟ linguistic errors in paragraph writing Specifically, only mistakes

in grammar, vocabulary and linking words will be taken into consideration

5 Method of the study

In this study, the writer adopted the quantitative research approach Specifically, survey questionnaires and model analysis were two methods employed

to collect data for the research study

Questionnaires were conducted among 60 students to find out students‟ perceptions of their linguistic difficulties in writing a paragraph

Sixty paragraphs on three different topics from 60 students were collected Mistakes were identified and classified into different categories Statistical counting was carried out to bring about the real picture of students‟ linguistic difficulties

6 Organization of the study

In order to achieve the above mentioned aims, this paper is divided into three parts:

The first part is the Introduction, which points out the rationale, aims, and scope of the study Research questions are also specifically defined to serve as guidelines for the whole paper

The second part is the Development In this part, three chapters are presented In chapter one, literature related to teaching writing, paragraph writing and writing errors is reviewed In chapter two, the method of the study is presented

It includes careful descriptions of the subjects, sampling method, instrument and method of data collection and analysis The last chapter presents data analysis and discussion In this part, questionnaires and writing samples collected from 10th form students at Nguyen Trai high school are analyzed to find out students‟ typical errors

in order to recommend effective strategies for teaching paragraph writing

The last part of the study is the Conclusion, which points out what has been addressed as well as what has not been completed and offers recommendations for further study

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW I.1.Teaching Writing

I.1.1 Reasons for teaching writing

In Byrne‟s (1988) point of view, teaching writing is beneficial because it brings many pedagogical benefits First, writing enables different learning styles and needs of learners Some learners, especially those who do not learn easily through oral practice alone, feel more secure if they are allowed to read and write in the language Besides that, written work provides learners with some tangible evidence that they are making progress in language Moreover, learning writing means that the learners are exposed to the foreign language through more than one medium and it is more effective than relying on a single medium alone In addition, writing provides variety in classroom activities, serving as a break from oral work

At the same time, it increases the amount of language contact through work that can

be set out of class Last but not least, writing is often needed for formal and informal testing

Harmer (1998) also highlighted some reasons for teaching writing:

Firstly, it is reinforcement Most students gain great benefits from seeing the written language especially the visual demonstration of language construction is valuable for both their understanding and committing the new language to their memory It is, therefore, very useful for them to write sentences using new language after they have just studied it

Language development is also a reason for teaching writing It seems that the actual process of writing helps students to learn language better The highest level

of writing skill involves critical thinking To deal with their mental activities, students have to construct proper written texts using all their learning experience The third and also the most important reason for teaching writing is that it is a basic productive language skill Obviously, students need to know how to write a letter, how to write a report, etc Therefore, they need to know some writing conventions such as punctuation, paragraph construction, forms of paragraph

I.1.2 Principles of teaching writing

There are several principles of writing But according to Huong, T.T, Minh N.T.T.etal (2007: 58), teachers should consider some following principles when teaching writing

First of all, teachers should provide many opportunities for students to write Students‟ writing skills just improve when they practice writing a lot Therefore, just asking students to practice in writing lesson is not enough Teacher can create writing tasks from listening, reading and speaking lessons with different styles of writing such as letter writing, e-mail writing, etc

Then, teachers should make their feedback to students helpful and meaningful by giving detailed comments at the end of students‟ writings Teachers‟ comments should help students to be independent writers It means that teachers‟ comments should help students to correct the errors themselves instead of teacher correcting students‟ errors

Moreover, to evaluate students‟ writings clearly and exactly, teachers should have specific criteria for marking such as spelling, accuracy of vocabulary, use of cohesive devices, etc

Besides, as often as possible teachers should create the right conditions for students‟ generation of ideas, Moreover, teachers should always consider themselves a resource for information and language when necessary

Lastly, teachers should provide students with communicative writing activities With this kind of activities, students must identify the genre, the audience and the purpose of the writing This is useful for students because these writing activities in the class tend to resemble communicative writing tasks in the real life

I.2 Teaching paragraph writing

I.2.1 Definitions of Paragraph

There are various definitions of a paragraph

In the Oxford advanced learner‟s dictionary, a paragraph is defined as “a section of a piece of writing, usually consisting of several sentences dealing with a single subject The first sentence of a paragraph starts on a new line.” In this

definition, a paragraph is defined as a part of the writing work, having a single subject and including several sentences

Besides, Feist (1996: 6) reckons that a paragraph consists of a group of sentences with a single idea and the purpose of writing these groups of sentences in

a paragraph is to make the organization of the ideas clear to the readers

Oshima and Hogue (1999: 3), however, think that a paragraph is an organization of related sentences These sentences must have the same topic The length of the paragraph depends on the writer‟s purpose

In this study, the author would like to refer to a paragraph as the definition of Oshima and Hogue (1999) This definition points out clearly that the sentences in the paragraph must be related and tell the readers about the same topic

Qualities of a good paragraph

A good paragraph has three main structural parts: a topic sentence, supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence The topic sentence states the main idea of the paragraph, in the other words, a topic sentence must state the controlling idea of the paragraph (Feist, 1996: 17) Supporting sentences include the ideas related to the topic (Feist, 1996: 23) They develop various aspects of the topic such as causes, effects, reasons, example, etc The supporting sentences are connected together by cohesive devices The concluding sentence signals the end of the paragraph, and it summarizes or restates the main point the writer made

In addition to three structural parts of a paragraph, a good paragraph also needs to have unity and coherence Unity means that the writer discusses only one main idea

in a paragraph Coherence means that the paragraph is easy to read and understand

A coherent paragraph contains sentences that are logical and flow smoothly Therefore, in order to have coherence in writing, the movement from one sentence

to the next must be logical and smooth; and there must be no sudden jumps

I.2.2 Classifications of paragraph

According to Feist (1996), there are four main kinds of paragraph: informative, descriptive, narrative and persuasive

An informative paragraph is a paragraph that informs information

A narrative paragraph is a paragraph that tells about something that

happened

“Persuasive writing convinces the reader to take action or to support an

idea” (Feist, 1996: 54) In this kind of paragraph, the main idea is your opinion on the topic It is usually stated in a topic sentence The others support the opinion with reasons and evidence The tone of persuasive paragraph should be strong, but polite

in order to encourage the reader to act

A descriptive paragraph tells what something or someone is like It helps

readers see, feel, taste, smell and hear the things being described The topic sentence gives the overall impression Supporting sentences include specific details about the person or thing being described

In English 10 textbook, most of the writing tasks require students to write a descriptive paragraph, so the author also chose the topics about descriptive

paragraph for students to write to collect the data

I.3 Writing errors

I.3.1 Definition of errors

We all know that writing is not easy It is complex in that it tests a person‟s ability to use a language and the ability to express ideas This difficulty of writing leads students to be more susceptible to producing errors

There have been a number of definitions of errors proposed by experts Some scholars are in favor of defining errors basing on their degree of frequency Cunning Worth (1987: 29) sees errors as "systematic deviation from the norms of the language being learned" This can be interpreted as the repeated violation against the rules and the standards of the language being learned, excluded from the language that has not been learned Nevertheless, the definition itself is problematic, for the concept “learned" is just relative Students may not learn the language in class but they may have learned it somewhere outside the class It is also probable that students learned the language but they may have forgotten

it Thus, it would be difficult for language teachers to decide whether students have

or have not learned the language

On the other hand, other scholars identify the term "errors" with regard to students' inability to correct these errors by themselves

Edge (1997:18) defines "errors" in a simple way as followed “ If a student cannot self-correct a mistake in his or her own English, but the teacher thinks that the class is familiar with the correct form, we shall call that sort of mistake an error." Edge's definition has one trait in common with that of Cunning (1987); that

is, certain parts of the language being learned are problematic to students Thus, they make errors unconsciously, which accounts for their incapacity to self-correct

In the meantime, some experts combine both of the two dimensions above when mentioning the notion of "errors"

Corder (1967: 22) regards” errors" as the "systematic and regular deviant form of language produced by second language learners at competence level due to linguistic reason.” Accordingly, second language learners repeatedly produce deviant forms of language because of their deficient competence of selective items

of the target language but not because of their carelessness or lack of attention, etc

In the light of the aforementioned definitions, the researcher would like to employ the third view by Corder (1967) as it proves to be the most comprehensive According to Corder (1967), an error is characterized with two features namely systematic deviancy and learner's deficiency to self-correct These two features can be considered criteria to determine whether students have made an error or not

I.3.2 The role of "errors" in English Language Teaching

Corder (1967) argues that errors are the most important source of information revealing that learners are organizing knowledge available to them to produce the language at a particular point of time

Edge (1997) is also in line with this school of thought He regards errors as necessary learning steps which are evident for the fact that students are learning the language successfully

By the same token, Bartram & Walton (2001:11) see errors as "an inescapable natural part of language learning" and that they are "part of the learning

process: not the wrong turning on the road of mature language use but actually part

of the road itself." These two scholars consider the process of learning a second language similar to that of a baby learning his mother tongue

In particular, errors benefit both the learner and the teacher As for the former, errors could assume the role of stimuli to facilitate learning and assist students in achieving writing fluency (Lyons & Heasley, 1992).With respect to the later, errors serve as an invaluable implication of what strategies used by learners and an indication of what they have learnt or have not (Crystal, 1987)

In short, there has been positive spectrum in the view concerning the importance of errors in the field of English language teaching and learning It can be concluded that errors are by no means to be avoided at any expense

I.3.3 Classification of written errors

Gavigan and Citarella (2005) point out 20 common errors in writing They are errors in subject-verb agreement, verb tense, pronoun- antecedent agreement, agreement of nouns, pronoun case, idioms, parallel structure, adjective/ adverb, comparisons, ambiguity/ indefinite referent, redundancy, wordiness, double negative, misplaced modifier, dangling modifier, words commonly confused, who/which / that, pronoun shift, sentence structure, active/passive voice

Ferris (2005) divides writing errors into four types The first is morphological errors which includes the errors related to verbs (tense, form, subject- verb agreement) and errors related to nouns (articles/ determiners, noun endings) The second one is lexical errors which are the errors of word choice, word form, informal usage, idiom error, and pronoun error The third type is syntactic errors consisting errors in sentence structure, run-ons, fragments The last type is mechanical errors which are the errors of punctuation, spelling, and capitalization

Ferris „s (2005) classification is comprehensive and easy to follow But due

to the scope of the study and the real situation of N.T.H.S, the researcher only chooses to focus on some most commonly made mistakes among high school students in Vietnam such as verb tense, subject-verb agreement, word choice, word form, articles, spelling

I.3.4 Error correction

Although errors committing is inevitable in the process of learning as it proves learners are exploring the language, there remains a controversial issue related to the question whether or not errors should be corrected and how to correct errors as well Basically, there are quite a few contrasting views The first school of thought holds that there is no need to correct learner's errors Teacher's job is only to point out to learners that an error has been committed The other view suggests that errors must be corrected every time they are detected; otherwise, a bad habit of the wrong use of the target language will be formed To some extent, these schools of thought reach an extreme that would not benefit students to the best Thus, the researcher would like to employ the Communicative Language Teaching approach

to error correction That is, error correction should be provided when needed because the very goal of this approach is to develop students‟ communicative competence and errors are seen as a sign of their real learning but not a sign of incomplete learning

Lee (1990) mentions three kinds of errors that require more concern from teacher namely errors that interfere with intelligibility or communication, errors which stigmatized or irritate common errors and high frequency errors

I.3.5 Teacher’s role in error correction

Traditionally, the role of teacher in error correcting has always been dominant Teacher is the only source to both point out the errors and show how to correct them Edge (1997) coins the term "over-correct teacher" to imply this Teachers always strive to be correct in terms of linguistic form when they are in class and this poses profound effects on students Thus, learners will see that what their teachers prioritize is freedom from any kinds of mistakes or errors

"Even if the teacher tells the students that they should try to express themselves freely, it will be difficult for the students to behave in this way when they see that it

is not the teacher's way." (Edge,1997) Besides, teacher assumes the role as the only linguistic model in their setting for students to look at Learners always have a strong desire to be themselves and to be able to express themselves in English Teacher, to some extent, has become the model of the same background culture to

enjoy the language, to express himself/ herself in the target language Thus, from students' perspectives, teachers earns their status "based on the fact that they are successful examples of what their students aim to be; people from a shared background who have achieved an ability to communicate in English" (Edge, 1997) Therefore, teachers should provide correction that helps learner to express themselves more accurately and "make correction a part of the teaching and learning process, not something to fight against" or "a kind of criticism or punishment" (Edge, 1997) This is the very status that teachers should assume in error correction

I.4 Previous studies

Tran and Bui (2010) conducted a study of different kinds of grammatical errors made by the first-year students of Faculty of English Language Teacher Education at Universities of Languages and International Studies They found out the top five common errors: comma usage, verb tenses, conjunctions, run-on sentences and articles: a/ an/ the

Another study is the one of Bui (2010) about common errors committed by first year students at the faculty of English Language Teacher Education, Hanoi University of Languages and International studies This study pointed out that typical mistakes in students‟ compositions included errors in idea organization, lexical items, inappropriate language style, grammar, wrong format, mechanics expressions and word choice

Le (1999) investigated written errors and mistakes made by the 12th form students and concluded that students often had common written errors and mistakes

in spelling, appropriateness, grammar ( tense uses, V-ing forms used like nouns, conditional sentences, and relative clauses), expression and composition format

It is visible that most of the previous studies focused on university students, only the study of Le (1999) was carried out in high school but it was about general written mistakes and errors considering both linguistic mistakes and mistakes in format and organization Therefore, the authors got the desire to investigate the real situation in teaching paragraph writing for high school students and look at some linguistics errors in particular

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the author describes the situation of teaching and learning English at N.T.H.S, the subjects of the study, data collection instruments, research method and the research procedure

II.1 The situation of teaching and learning English at N.T.H.C

N.T.H.S is located in An Duong district, which is in the rural areas of Haiphong

It is a poor district because agriculture plays the main role in its economy This heavily affects people‟s thinking here According to them, being able to speak their mother tongue (that is Vietnamese) correctly is enough, so it is not necessary for them and their children to learn to speak English Although learning a foreign language (for example, English) at lower secondary schools and high schools has been considered an official subject among Maths, Literature, Chemistry, Physics, and others, it is not appreciated at lower secondary schools Therefore, teachers and students‟ attitudes towards teaching and learning English are negative They consider English a minor subject at schools As a result, students do not pay attention to learning English They learn it very badly

When these students enter N.T.H.S, they have to take part in exams in three subjects: Maths, Literature, and English at the beginning of the school year They often gain high scores in Maths and Literature but most of them get low scores in English All students at lower secondary schools have learned English for four years but most of them have not paid any attention to learning it Thus, it is very difficult for teachers at N.T.H.S to teach them English because the new English textbooks at high schools now are written based on the English textbooks at lower secondary schools Teachers have no time to re-teach all the English knowledge students have learned at lower secondary schools They have to follow the syllabus Day by day, both teachers and students feel tired and bored when having to teach and learn English During the teaching period at N.T.H.S, the researcher sees that, among four language skills, writing is the most difficult for students She often hears students rumbling, teachers avoiding such meticulous task of teaching and learning writing Linguistic difficulties in writing a paragraph is one of the big problems in writing skill

II.2 Subjects

The subjects of the study consist of 60 students of 10th form at N.T.H.S Because

of time limitation, it is impossible to carry out the study with all students who are in grade 10th at N.T.H.S individually Therefore, the data collection in the study is derived from a subset of the population by means of cluster sample

60 students from classes 10C1, 10C4, 10C9, and 10C10 were randomly selected from 450 the tenth form students at N.T.H.S Obviously, it was difficult to select a random sample of individuals because the tenth form students have already been assigned to different classes from 10C1 to 10C10 and classified into two groups according to their choice of favorite subjects (students from 10C5 to 10C10 are interested in natural science subjects whereas 10C1 to 10C4 are basic classes) Therefore, the researcher decided to randomly choose four classes from two groups

to study The result, thus, could be more reliable

The 10th form students at N.T.H.S are learning basic English with the new text book TIENG ANH 10 by Hoàng Văn Vân – Hoàng Thị Xuân Hoa - Đỗ Tuấn Minh- Nguyễn Thu Phương - Nguyễn Quốc Tuấn This text book is theme- based, which includes 16 units and 6 Test Yourself sections Each unit has its own topics and is divided into 5 sections: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language Focus

In the first term of the school-year, in comparison with other subjects, students‟ English results were not good: only 4% students got excellent mark (9-10), 12% got good mark (7-8) , 57% got average mark (5-6) and 27% students got bad marks (<5)

II.3 Research method

II.3.1 Method of data collection: In order to conduct the study, the researcher

employed quantitative method including questionnaires and students‟ writing analysis

a Questionnaires:

The questionnaire is designed to find out students‟ perception of their linguistic errors in writing a paragraph, the causes of the errors, the correction of the errors, the students‟ revision on the errors

The questionnaire helps the researcher gather information quickly and objectively and gather information from a large portion of a group

b Students’ writing analysis:

The analysis of students‟ writing aims at finding the real situation of the linguistic errors in students‟ writing This analysis helps the researcher classify the major linguistic errors in students‟ writing, compare them with the result from the questionnaire to come to an agreement of the linguistic errors students often make

II.3.2 Method of data analysis

Data from questionnaires was calculated and summarized to identify the general trends of students‟ linguistic errors when writing a paragraph

Students‟ writing samples were carefully studied Errors were classified into different categories to help researcher find out the most common linguistics errors made by 10th form students

Whenever relevant, data from two sources were compared and contrasted to have the most comprehensive picture of the situation

II.4 Research procedure

The procedure of data collection was as follow:

(1) Choosing 60 students who are in grade 10 of N.T.H.S randomly to conduct the survey of the study

(2) Giving topics to students to write English paragraphs The subjects were

required to write about one of the following topics:

a Write about your daily life

b Write about your class’s excursion

c Write about the film that you like best

There are several reasons to choose the topics Firstly, these topics are familiar with students They are taken from students‟ textbook Moreover, there are some guidance as well as some exercises in the textbook for students before writing Secondly, students have chance to choose the topic that they are interested in, so they can write the paragraph with their own ideas basing on the topic they like (3) Collecting students‟ writing Students‟ errors in the writings are counted and categorized

(4) Synthesizing the analysis and drawing conclusions

(5) Suggesting some implications for teaching and learning paragraph writing to

10th form students

CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS

This section discusses students‟ perception of their linguistic errors, the causes of the errors, the correction of the errors, the students‟ revision on the errors and a classification of difficulties based on the students‟ writing and the questionnaire

III.1 Students’ perception of their linguistics errors in writing a paragraph

It is the fact that students at N.T.H.S are very weak at paragraph writing and making errors in writing is inevitable The first question in the questionnaire is to find out whether students are aware of the errors that they produce in writing Students‟ answers for the first question were:

Table 1: Students’ perception of making linguistic errors

It can be seen from Table 1 that students themselves recognized their weaknesses in writing a paragraph and they were aware of the linguistic errors they often make when writing

III 2 Students’ feeling when making errors in writing

As mentioned above, all students often make linguistic errors in the process of writing However, when asked “How do you feel when you make errors in writing”, different students have different answers:

I consider it the chance to know what I have lacked and to get

experience

46%

Table 2: Students’ feeling when making errors in writing a paragraph

As can be seen, after making errors when writing a paragraph, the proportion

of students who were disappointed with their English (48%) seemed to be equal to

those who consider making errors the chance to know what they have lacked and to get experience (46%) In other words, 10th form students at N.T.H.S had a positive attitude towards learning English There were only 4 out of 60 students, approximately 6%, who had negative attitude toward learning English, they had no feeling when making errors

III.3 The causes of students’ linguistic errors in writing a paragraph

As mentioned above, students often make errors in writing a paragraph Therefore, the author would like to find out the causes of students‟ linguistic errors Some causes such as carelessness, teaching methods, lack of necessary knowledge, difficult topics are given and the analysis of those causes may help teacher find out

a good way to help students overcome difficulties in writing

Pie chart 1: Causes of students' linguistic errors in writing a paragraph

Carelessness Teaching method Lack of necessary knowledge Difficult topics

It can be seen from Pie chart 1 the percentage of the carelessness cause was the least (only 4%), then came to teaching methods cause accounting for 9% The percentage of students who thought that difficult topics cause the errors was slightly higher but only makes up 28% A large number of students thought that the lack of necessary knowledge was the main cause of the linguistic errors in their writing

III.4 Teacher’s errors correction in students’ paragraphs

4 %

59 %

After students write a paragraph, their errors need to be corrected Teacher‟s error correction is also an important element to help students improve their paragraph writing The teacher has to know how to correct students‟ writing to help them avoid errors in their next writings Table 3 illustrates the typical ways that teachers usually correct students‟ errors in writing

Give a comment at the end of the paragraph only 33%

Table 3: Teacher’s errors correction in students’ paragraphs

According to Table 3, most teachers (71%) chose the common errors to correct Besides, it was unexpected that there were many teachers (33%) who only gave comment at the end of the paragraph A small portion (2%) represented those who corrected all errors

III.5 Students’ revision on their errors

The author collected the information by asking students: “What do you often do

when having back your paper” and students‟ answers were:

I look carefully at my errors and self-correct them 2%

I compare my work with the others and correct the errors together 5%

Table 4: Students’ revision on their errors

As can be recognized from the table, the portion of students who looked carefully the errors and self-corrected them (2%) and those who compared the work with the others and corrected the errors together (5%) were too small, in comparison with those students who had a look at the remarks given by the teacher - with highest portion (61%) Furthermore, 23% of students said that they only glanced

over indicated errors, and smaller portion of them (9%) only paid attention to the mark

III.6 Kinds of linguistic difficulties

There are a lot of linguistic errors that are found and counted in 60 paragraph writings However, within the scope of this study, only errors in grammar, vocabulary and linking words are studied Table 5 shows the results of the error categorization according to students‟ paragraph analysis as well as questionnaires:

Table 5: Kinds of linguistic errors

According to the data in Table 5, there is an agreement between linguistic errors found in students‟ writing and their awareness of those errors

As can be seen from the table, the most common errors belong to grammar, which appeared on all the analyzed papers (50%) In the answers for the questionnaire, the number of students who often had grammatical errors is also the highest, accounting for 56% The next common errors are vocabulary ones which appeared in 41% of students‟ writing and in the result of questionnaire, 34% of all students recognized that they often make vocabulary errors Errors in the linking words seem to be fewer than the others with only 9% in the writing; and 10% of all students revealed in the questionnaire that errors in linking words was the most common kind of linguistic errors they often made

III 7 Grammar difficulties

From the author‟s experience in teaching paragraph writing, of all the grammatical errors in the writing, the most common errors that students made were those related to the use of verb tenses, subject-verb agreement, article usage and preposition usage So, only these kinds of errors were studied and discussed carefully The results from questionnaire and students‟ papers are as follows:

Linguistic difficulties Grammar Vocabulary Linking words

Students’ paragraphs Questionnaire Verb tense Numbers of errors 35

Table 6: Grammar difficulties in writing a paragraph

Table 6 presents the information about the grammatical aspect students found the most difficult Although students knew that the most common errors they often made was grammar errors, there was a conflict between the errors students made in their paragraphs and their perception of those errors It might be because students couldn‟t distinguish clearly their grammatical errors

In students‟ writing, the total number of errors related to the choice of English tense amounts to 35 (37%) A large number of the students made errors in this area Errors of article usage follows with 34% Subject-verb agreement is also difficult for the students in paragraph writing, and accounts for 26% The least frequently found errors was preposition usage with 8%

However, in the result of the questionnaires, a large number of students (43%) said that they often made errors in using article Preposition usage and verb tenses also caused many difficulties for students Both account for about 24% Subject- verb agreement did not seem to be difficult for students with 9%

A closer look at students‟ writing reveals that:

Verb tenses

The students' knowledge and use of English tense is very limited It revealed that the students failed to choose the correct tense when writing The 10th form students have learnt nearly all the tenses However, wrong application of verb tenses was still common It can be assumed that the students are not aware of the different rules for

tenses application

The following sentences are some examples of the misuse of English tense:

1 “That day is Sunday, and our class have an excursion to Cat Ba island”

(Appendix 1) In this piece of writing, the student wrote about the excursion of her /his class in the past, so the sentence should be put in the past tense: “That day was Thursday, and our class had an excursion to Cat Ba island”

2 “ She met Park Hi Yong when she waiting for the bus” (Appendix 1) This

sentence showed that the student acknowledged the “ing form” in continuous tenses but she/ he was not sure of the complete past continuous tense forms and application

in English sentence

Article usage

Article usage is also a big problem for the students Article is used to modify the nouns Many students are still weak in using articles Some of the errors are:

1 “ The(1) Ha Long Bay is the(2) wonderful place for visitors” (Appendix 1)

In this sentence, the student used the wrong article “the” First, Ha Long Bay is a proper noun, so there needn‟t be “the” here The second “the” in the sentence should be “a” because the sentence has a general meaning, and it is about the truth at present

2 “Some prominent places are: Temple of Literature…” (Appendix 1) The

student wrote Temple of Literature without using “the” That is wrong because in Vietnam, there is only one Temple of Literature, so “the” has to be used

Subject- verb agreement

The key to subject-verb agreement is matching the number of both; singular subjects take singular verb forms, as plural subjects take plural verb forms

Students have always been taught to use a verb, which should agree with its subject However, many errors were still made in this area , i.e., they use a plural verb with singular subject and vice-versa:

1 “There were a lake and many beautiful trees in the park” (Appendix 1) The

student was not clear about the structure “There+ to be”, so he used “ are” instead of

“is”

2 “Everyone were ready” (Appendix 1) The indefinite pronouns such as anyone, everyone, someone, no one, nobody are always singular and, therefore, require

singular verbs The sentence must be corrected as: “ everyone was ready”

3 “Listening to music and playing football is my hobbies” (Appendix 1) When

gerunds are used as the subject of a sentence, they take the singular verb form of the verb, but when they are linked by “and”, they take the plural form

Preposition usage

Errors in usage of preposition also appear in students‟ paragraphs The total errors in students‟ paragraph are 7, corresponding to 8% Here are some examples:

1 “The main character is killed by an axe” (Appendix 1) We can see that

“with” must be used because “axe” is a tool It cannot be “by”

2 “I consider about the time when doing anything” (Appendix 1) The

prepositions needn‟t be used in those sentences

III.8 Vocabulary difficulties

As mentioned above, students not only made many errors in grammar but also had difficulty in using vocabulary accurately The most common errors related to vocabulary that the students made were word choice, word form, word order and spelling

Students’ paragraphs Questionnaire Spelling Numbers of errors 31

Table 7: Vocabulary difficulties in writing a paragraph

The table shows differences between the vocabulary errors that students made

in their paragraphs and their perceptions of those errors In the students‟ writing, the number of spelling errors was the biggest - 31 mistakes were counted in 60 writing papers (38%) It was followed by errors in word order, word choice and word form However, in students‟ answers in the questionnaires, 46% of students said that word form is the most difficult Besides, 33% of students found spelling of the words difficult and 13% of students couldn‟t choose the correct words for their paragraphs

At last, 8% of students had difficulties in arranging the words into the correct order

it right or wrong spelling) that are found in the words The following piece of writing is taken from a student‟s composition:

1 “there parents do’nt no to comminicate with there frieds” (Appendix 2)

When we see the written sentences above, we can realize many problems The first letter of the first sentence “t” begins in a small letter There is also punctuation problem in writing a word “do‟nt”; the apostrophe should have been written in between „n‟ and „t‟ Besides this, the writer wrote „no‟ to mean „know‟, or “there”

to mean “their” These pairs of words have the same sounds but different meaning This error creates confusion for the reader In the same sentence, the student wrote the word communicate as “comminicate” where the spelling error is clearly seen At the end of the sentence, the student wrote a word friends as “frieds” which seems to depict the carelessness of the student as the sound „n‟ is omitted from the word

2 “ I didn’t eat seafood because I had tooth take” (Appendix 2) This again shows the weakness of the student in spelling the word correctly: “toothache” not “tooth take”

Word order

Besides spelling errors, students also have problems with word order as in the