Possible causes of common English written errors made by 12th- form students at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong and some possible solutions

Possible causes of common English written errors made by 12th- form students at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong and some possible solutions Nguyễn Thị Hương Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Lu

Possible causes of common English written errors made by 12th- form students at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong and some possible

solutions Nguyễn Thị Hương

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn ThS Chuyên ngành: English Methodology; Mã số: 60 14 10

Người hướng dẫn: Nguyễn Thị Thơm Thơm, MA

Năm bảo vệ: 2011

Abstract: This minor thesis was carried out with an attempt to improve the teaching and

learning of writing skill of the teachers and the 12th form students at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong province The purposes of the thesis were to investigate the types of errors that 12th form students at Thanh Ha High School often make in learning English, possible causes of common English written errors made by 12th form students and to offer some possible solutions to overcome these common English written errors The subjects involved in the study were 130 students' actual writings in class and 8 teachers who are currently teaching and have taught writing skill before Teachers were invited to answer the survey questionnaire and to participate in the interview The study reveals that

in lexical and grammatical errors, students often commit errors in spelling, noun number, word choice/ wrong word, wrong conjunction/ connective, article and verb form mistakes The common causes for these kinds of errors are mainly their carelessness, mother tongue interference, incomplete application of rules, overgeneralization and ignorance of rule restrictions The study suggests that teacher should use some techniques

in pre-writing stage and post- writing stage to reduce and prevent students' written common errors In pre-writing stage, teacher can elicit students' vocabulary and structures, give students samples of the topic which students are required to write, and sometimes teach them grammar rules In post-writing stage, teachers can ask student to correct themselves, then correct in pairs and finally teachers give corrective feedback

Keywords: Phương pháp giảng dạy; Lỗi; Học sinh; Lớp 12; Trung học phổ thông Thanh

Hà

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Background to the study

English has become one of the most popular languages in the world As an effective means of international communication, it is used as the official language in many fields of life such as economics, politics, science, technology, sports and many others Therefore, there is a great demand for teaching and learning English throughout the world There are more and more people who learn English and consider it an inevitable factor in their work and life

In Vietnam, English has been brought into the school curriculum as a compulsory subject, and the teaching and learning of the international language has been recently paid great attention to When teaching English, the teacher teaches his learners not only the English language but also its usage It means that his aim is to train learners with a good control of English skills and to teach them to put the language into use in real communicative situations: either writing or speaking This learners' competence is assessed in terms of how comprehensibly and accurately a message is conveyed If a message is unsuccessfully conveyed, the teacher will consider the reason why it is so, and the answer often is the means that causes it What lessens the effectiveness may be that there are something wrong with the meanings of the sentences i.e what is usually called 'error' in foreign language learning

In effect, learners often make mistakes when they produce English When teachers find the learners' errors, they often give feedback by correcting or just pointing them However, this is sometimes not effective because learners still make the same errors the next time Like many teachers and researchers, Vietnamese teachers have been always seeking for new and effective methods and techniques to improve their teaching with the hope of predicting and preventing errors before they appear Nevertheless, they pay much more concern to why Vietnamese learners commit errors and how to prevent or reduce these errors, not students at high schools Therefore, the situation encouraged the author to do the research on "Possible causes of common English written errors made by 12th- form students at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong and some possible solutions" This study will be really useful for both teachers and students in teaching and learning writing skill

2 Aims of the study

The researcher defines the major objectives of the study as:

 to investigate the types of written errors that 12th-form students at Thanh Ha High School often make in learning English

 to investigate possible causes of common English written errors made by 12th- form students

 to offer some possible solutions to overcome these common English written errors

This study is carried out with the hope that teachers can improve their writing teaching methods and students can define their common errors and adjust their way of learning this skill

to obtain better results

3 Research questions

In order to achieve the above aims, three research questions are raised:

3.1 What are the types of written errors that 12th- form students make in writing skills?

3.2 What are the major causes of these errors?

3.3 What recommendations should be given to reduce and prevent these errors?

4 Methods of the study

With the aim of finding out the causes of common written errors made by 12th-form students at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong, this study adopts quantitative and qualitative methods

To identify the problems, the study has been carried out with the data collected from different instruments:

- Consulting related materials: For the sake of getting knowledge and useful ideas,

I read many books and other materials in addition to earlier researchers about errors and causes

of common English written errors

- Delivering survey questionnaire: To fulfill this thesis, one survey questionnaire for teachers was carried out to find out the teachers' attitudes toward causes of common English written errors and some possible solutions

- Interviewing teachers who have been teaching writing to 12th form students to investigate what and how they do to prevent and reduce students' common written errors

- Using students' actual writings as a technique of eliciting data for the analysis and statistical counting as measurement of results

5 Scope of the study

This study is limited to the area of teaching and learning writing in 12th-form at Thanh

Ha High School, Hai Duong Specifically, this minor thesis deals with the possible causes of common English written errors made by 12th- form students, and based on these discussions of the findings, some possible solutions will be introduced

6 Organization of the thesis

The thesis has three main parts: introduction, development and conclusion

The introduction presents the background to the study, aims and significance of the study, research questions, methods, scope and organization of the thesis

The development consists of two chapters Chapter One exposes literature review relating writing and causes of errors in foreign learning Chapter Two is about the study which investigates possible causes of common English written made by 12th- form students at Thanh

Ha High School from survey questionnaires on teachers and students' actual writings It also contains findings of the study and some solutions for the problems

The conclusion gives a summary of what has been discussed so far in the thesis, the limitation of the study, and suggestion for further research

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