Common errors in the use of English articles made by first-year students at Hung Yen industrial college

iii ABSTRACT This study focuses on the analysis of errors in the use of English articles made by first-year students at Hung Yen Industrial College with an aim to recommend some selected implications for better teaching of English articles The analysis was based on the data collected from two tests: a free-response test, writing a composition and a multichoice test provided by 90 non-major first-year students of Hung Yen Industrial college Errors were described and classified according to linguistic category and strategies employed by the students The greatest frequency of errors occured in the definite article in both tests The omissions of both definite and indefinite articles were most found in the compositions but the wrong selections of definite article instead of the indefinite in the multi-choice test Explanations for the causes of the errors were done: interlingual or intralingual and developmental causes Suggestions for improvement in teaching English articles are offered based on the findings iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS E.g For example i.e That is L1 First language L2 Second language EFL English as a foreign language Ø Zero article v LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Summary of English articles (p.5) Table 2: Bickerton’s semantic table for noun phrase reference (p.9) Table 3: General information of the writing corpus (p.25) Table 4: Frequencies of articles supplied in the written work by article type (26) Table 5: Non-pass and pass students of Test (p.26) Table 6: Distribution of choices by the students in Test (p.27) Table 7: Distribution of explanations on the right choices by the students in Task (p.27) Table 8: Errors classified according to linguistic categories (p.29) Table 9: Errors classified according to the strategies employed by the students (p.30) Table 10: Strategies and causes of errors (p.36) Table 11: Interlingual versus intralingual and developmental errors (p.37) vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS iv LIST OF TABLES v TABLE OF CONTENTS vi PART A: INTRODUCTION Rationale for the study Aims of the study Research questions Scope of the study Methods of the study Significance of the study Design of the study PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 An overview of English article system 1.1.1 Definitions of English article 1.1.2 Types of English articles 1.1.2.1 Definite article 1.1.2.2 Indefinite articles 1.1.2.3 Zero article 1.1.3 Usage of English articles 1.2 The determiners in Vietnamese language 10 1.3 Error and error analysis 12 1.3.1 The notions of errors in language learning 12 1.3.2 Classifications of errors 13 1.3.3 Error analysis 14 vii 1.3.3.1 Definitions 14 1.3.3.2 Significance of error analysis 15 1.3.3.3 Stages in error analysis 16 1.4 Causes of errors in second language learning 17 1.4.1 Causes of interlingual errors 17 1.4.2 Causes of intralingual and developmental errors 18 CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 2.1 Setting of the study 21 2.2 Participants 22 2.3 Instruments of data collection 23 2.4 Data collection procedures 23 2.5 Methods of data analysis 24 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS, DISCUSSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 3.1 Findings and discussions 25 3.1.1 General evaluation of the students’ performance 25 3.1.2 Recognition of errors 28 3.1.3 Description of errors 28 3.1.4 Explanation of errors 31 3.2 Recommendations 37 3.2.1 Recommendations for instructional materials 37 3.2.2 Recommendations for teachers’ presentation 38 PART C: CONCLUSION Conclusions 40 Limitations and suggestions for further study 41 REFERENCES 42 APPENDIX .VIII MULTI-CHOICE TEST .VIII -1- PART A: INTRODUCTION RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY The English article system is one of the most difficult aspects of English grammar for students of English as a second language to understand English articles occur very frequently and incorrect use may affect communication negatively Also an L2 writer may prefer to be accurate, when he/she has to write Master (2002) attributes this difficulty to three facts about the article system: First, the English articles, the, a and zero, are the most commonly used words in English, making constant rule application difficult over a long discourse; Second, function words are often spoken with such weak stress that they are inaudible and consequently are very difficult for non-native speakers to discern, which affects the availability of input in the spoken mode; and third, the article system stacks multiple functions onto a single morpheme, which constitutes a considerable burden for the learner who usually looks for a one-to-one correspondence between form and function, especially in the early stages of language learning In addition, because they rarely carry significant information, they can usually be deleted in telegraphic speech, including telegrams and newspaper headlines Thus, unlike content words, function words are generally overlooked by learners when processing language primarily for meaning According to Pienemann (1998), the difficulty of the meaning expressed by an article is determined by the novelty and abstractness of the concept, not to mention learners’ changing hypotheses about article usage at different stages in interlanguage development and the potential influence of the native language which may further complicate the task The idea of doing my research came from the following reasons First, researchers such as Newman (1977, cited in Master, 1988) and Barry Lush (2002) analyzed the composition errors of EFL learners and found that of all error types, the most common were related to definite and indefinite articles -2- Second, the English article system is so difficult to acquire for students with article-less languages like Vietnamese as their first language It is also understood that these errors are mostly caused by the fact that no such independent grammatical category as the article exists in Vietnamese on which the learners could lean when learning the use of the English article system This, of course, holds true generally, but we still come up against the problem of which parts of the English article system are especially difficult for Vietnamese learners to understand and learn AIMS OF THE STUDY This study is carried out with the aims:  To identify the students’ common types of error in using English articles  To find out the causes of error committed by Hung Yen Industrial College’s students when learning and using English articles  To work out possible solutions to the problems identified RESEARCH QUESTIONS In order to achieve the above mentioned aims, the study will be conducted to answer the three following research questions: 1) What are the common types of article errors made by first-year students at Hung Yen Industrial College? 2) What are the possible causes of the errors the students make in the use of English articles? 3) What are the recommendations for the teachers to teach English articles effectively? SCOPE OF THE STUDY The research will deal with errors in the use of English articles on the first-year student writings at Hung Yen Industrial College The subjects selected for this study are 90 general EFL learners -3- METHODS OF THE STUDY In order to complete the paper, the main research methods employed are: - Statistical methods are used to find out and classify the learners’ errors - Descriptive methods are used to describe the actual errors committed by the learners SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY The study will be useful not only to the author and her colleagues in improving the teaching quality, but students will also benefit from it The result of the study will serve as a foundation for the possible solutions to students’ errors in using English articles Furthermore, the study will make some contribution to the field of teaching methodology DESIGN OF THE STUDY The study has three main parts as follows: Part A provides a brief introduction to the issue and an overview of the paper Part B includes three chapters, namely Literature Review (Chapter 1), Research Methodology (Chapter 2) and Data Analysis and Discussion (Chapter 3) In greater details, Chapter reviews the theoretical backgrounds to English article system, error and error analysis in second language learning Chapter describes the methods used to carry out the study It also includes an overview of the context of the study Chapter presents and analyzes the data collected, and offers possible solutions to errors made by students at Hung Yen Industrial College Some suggestions for the betterment of teaching and learning English article system are also provided Part C summarizes the main issues so far touched upon in the research, the limitations of the research and some suggestions for further studies Following the chapters are the references and one appendix -4- PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 An overview of English article system The article in English has always been considered one of the most formidable problems to overcome in teaching English grammar to foreigners and its misuse is one of the most evident grammatical signs that a person is not a native speaker of English In this part, I will present an overview of English article system 1.1.1 Definitions of English article An important subset of adjectives in English is the determiner, a category of words that indicate which noun is being discussed The determiner in English consists of articles (a/an, the), possessives (my, your, their, etc), demonstratives (this, that ), numerals (three, first…) and a few quantifiers (some, many…) According to Richards and Schmidt (2002), determiner is a word which is used with a noun and which limits the meaning of the noun in some way The most common kind of determiner in English is the article And Alexander (1998) defines that “articles are determiners which affect the meaning of the noun, and make it clearer by showing which particular thing we are referring to” (p.55) 1.1.2 Types of English articles In Thomson and Martinet (1986:15-22), English articles are classified into two types: definite article the and indefinite article a/an However, Quirk and Greenbaum (1987) adds one more type, that is zero article Ø Yotsukura (1970) seems to be the first person who suggests adding another category beside the zero article So English articles include a/an, the and Ø (the null or zero marker) The two categories of the article are traditionally called indefinite and definite articles Singular count nouns take a or an as indefinite articles Plural nouns and non-count nouns take as their indefinite article All categories of nouns take the as the definite marker This system is summarized in the following table: -5- Singular INDEFINITE ARTICLE DEFINITE ARTICLE a/ an The Ø The Ø The Count noun Plural Non-count noun Table 1: Summary of English articles According to Whitman (1974), “thinking about the articles in such terms as: A/an is the indefinite article and the is the definite article” (p.253) is considered a misunderstanding or misconception He also explains that The misconception involved lies in thinking that a/an and the are essentially the same thing (that is, “articles”), differing only along a dimension of “definiteness/ indefiniteness” or “specificity/ nonspecificity” A/an and the are, in fact, entirely different syntactic entities, quite unrelated to each other except for that fact that both occur within the same general structure (p254) However, for reasons of conformity with other grammarians and textbooks, the terminology “indefinite” or “definite” will be kept For example, if we say, ‘I have a book you may be interested in,” we are referring to a definite, specific book Nonetheless, we use the indefinite article a to signal that the book is not known by the listener 1.1.2.1 Definite article “The definite article the never varies in form whether it refers to people or things, singular or plural” (Alexander, 1998:55) (1) a Ann is in the garden (the garden of this house) b Please pass the wine (the wine on the table) (Thomson and Martinet, 1998:19) According to Halliday and Hasan, The definite article has no content It merely indicates that the item in question is specific and identifiable; that somewhere the information necessary for identifying it is recoverable (1976:71) -34- Eg Are you going away next week? No, a week after next (correct: the week) In the above sentence, 56% of the informants of Test chose the indefinite article instead of the definite According to their explanations for the choice, we find that they understood the meaning of the sentence and they translated into Vietnamese “A” seems to be the way a Vietnamese says “một tuần sau đó” Thus, it is due to interlingual cause Eg I like living in this house but it’s a pity that a garden is so small (correct: the garden) However, in the above example, many of the students chose a and explained that “garden” is singular and is mentioned first time in the sentence So this error is considered to be of intralingual and developmental origin Selection of a instead of an, or an instead of a The primary cause of most of the wrong selections of a for an, or an for a is clearly of intralingual and developmental origin It is due to the faulty learning of the students However, the percentage of this type of errors is just 2% in Test and 4.3% in Test The zero article As the basic rule is that singular count nouns must take an article, the students not often leave out the article Eg Can you tell me where the/a Room 25 is, please? (correct: Ø Room 25) -35- Consequently, 76% of the students added the indefinite article or definite in the above sentence in Test even though the zero article is to used It seems that the addtions of a and the in both tests were of intralingual and developmental origin Some of the unnecessary additions of the definite or indefinite article were caused by faulty teaching or by too much teaching of the wrong kind This part of the English article system is taught unsystematically at Hung Yen Industrial college No choice The researcher considers all the questions with no answers made by the students to be caused by the students’ lack of linguistic competence That means the students fail to apply linguistic rules to give the answers Consequently, 134 questions without answers have been collected of the total amount of 2340, making 5.7% And in our point of view, incomplete application of rule is blamed for the students’ failure From the above explanations, the causes of the article errors made by the participants are summed up in the following table Table 10 gives detailed figures of each causes of errors It is shown that in Test 1, the higher percentage is recorded for interlingual errors which accounts for 171 out of 246 (70%) The participants omitted items where they should be present, specifically by analogy to the mother tongue’s forms in free-response tests However, in Test 2, the impact of the students’ native language was drammatically cut to 206 out of 1070 (19%) Selection errors are the most frequent in this test and mainly suffer from intralingual and developmental causes -36- Table 10: Strategies and causes of errors Test Strategies Interlingual cause Omission of a 88 Omission of the 83 Test Intralingual and developmental causes Interlingual cause Intralingual and developmental causes 14 128 Addition of a 13 66 Addition of the 60 A instead of the 24 The instead of a 25 210 An for a, or a for an 46 No choice 134 Total 171 75 78 206 334 864 The below statistical figures illustrate a marked difference between interlingual errors and intralingual and developmental errors in the two tests The percentage of interlingual errors is twice as much as that of intralingual and developmental errors in test 1, around 70 versus 30 On contrary, the difference is reversed in Test The percentage of intralingual and developmental errors is even four times that of interlingual errors in the second test -37- Table 11: Interlingual versus intralingual and developmental errors Test Test Errors of N % N % Interlingual 171 70 206 19 Intralingual and developmental 75 30 864 81 This means that Vietnamese exerts considerable influence over the learning of English articles in the free-response test, and in the multi-choice test, the errors attributed to overgeneration, ignorance of rule restrictions, incomplete application of rules or false hyphothesis are drammatically more than those ascribed to Vietnamese interference It is hoped that the identification of learners’ common types of errors and their causes may provide a basis for improving instruction of the English article system at Hung Yen Industrial College in future 3.2 Recommendations On the basis of the results of this study, one is bound to draw the conclusion that there are certain defects in the present teaching system at Hung Yen Industrial college Then there are some pedagogical implications of this study 3.2.1 Recommendations for instructional materials Because error frequencies of articles by category (a/an, the and zero) are different, we must take this into consideration in both classroom teaching practice and instructional material writing Definite and indefinite articles should be paid more attention than zero article -38- We may need to accept the information about the different meanings certain grammatical items can carry may be of more interest and use to grammarians than it is to learners As more information becomes available about how articles behave in the target language, textbook writers should approximate their input texts more closely to authentic language use, and teachers will be able to organize language practice that is consistent with that use This may be more helpful in the long run than oversimplified rules of meaning 3.2.2 Recommendation for teachers’ presentation This study indicates that learners’ errors stem from different causes Unfortunately, articles not appear to have been the focus of very much attention in many L2 classrooms to date However, the results of this study indicate the importance of considering a more suitable way of teaching the article system Specifically, this might help entail helping students overcome specific types of difficulties they commonly experience For example, successive and systematic instruction could be the most effective for those learners who exhibit confusion and struggle to capture the workings of the article system With a view to assisting the learners in refraining from the influence of their mother tongue, the present analyst suggests that the article should be taught by comparing the English and Vietnamese means of distributing communicative dynamism over sentence elements Because much of the article system works on a discourse rather than sentence level, sentence-level exercises often fail to provide the necessary context for appropriate article selection Starting with simple texts or small dialogues, the students could be made to discover how English and Vietnamese introduce new information to a text and how the new information becomes given information At the same time, the learner could make observations on what changes taking place on the grammatical level connected with the distribution of communicative dynamism and the use of articles Also, in teaching the situation use -39- of definite article, the teacher can make full use of the objects readily available in class Since students have often been exposed to oversimplified rules such as “first mention use , second mention use the” or “use the when a noun is modified by a phrase or a clause,” students should be warned explicitly against the use of such rules in our lessons Because the use of English articles may often lie in a speaker’s choice, we also find that students need to be aware of the principles that cause the differences in meaning It is advisable that a semantic approach is of no help in article use Teachers need to help learners to identify these uses and encourage them to absorb them Particular attention should be paid to the order and way of presentation It seems more natural to start with specific reference, but the main thing is that specific and generic reference should be kept apart somehow at the beginning However, one consideration that the teacher should bear in mind is that much more time should be spent on practice than on presentation so that the students can acquire the linguistic item Teachers should be patient and should not feel frustrated when students still make errors after many hours of instruction We also need to understand that some students move faster in the process than others, and we can not expect them to grasp the diffferent uses of English articles at the same time It is hoped that the recommended implications might help the English article teaching more effective at Hung Yen Industrial College -40- PART C: CONCLUSION In this concluding part, we will restate in a more condensed form the central issued discussed in this thesis and offer suggestions for further research Conclusions This study is a full analysis of errors committted by first-year non-major students of Hung Yen Industrial College in their elementary level of English in using English articles This study is carried out with a view to benefit firstly Vietnamese teachers and learners of English, and then material designers The data examined in the present study shows that the common types of article errors by the first-year students at Hung Yen Industrial College are the omissions of the indefinite and definite articles and the wrong selections of the definite article instead of the indefinite The first type was mostly found in the compositions, a free-response test in which the students are not careful about the rules of English The phenomena of the omissions of articles could in some ways be influenced by the learners’ native language In this particular case where the native language of the Vietnamse learners lacks an equivalent article system of that found in the target language of English Nevertheless, the second type was mostly generated by the students in test 2, a multi-choice test, in which they had to select a correct answer among the given answers for each item The main cause for this type of errors is of intralingual and developmental origin In total, intralingual and developmental causes most outnumber the interlingual We also find that the students had more problems in using the than using a/an because definiteness is not overtly marked in Vietnamese With a view to overcome difficulties and reduce the number of errors in using English articles, some implications for teaching English article system to -41- Vietnamese learners, especially first-year students of Hung Yen Industrial college have been suggested on the basis of the major findings of the study Limitations and suggestions for further study No matter what the study attempts at, it can not cover all aspects of errors due to the researcher’s shortage of time and the scope of the study The study merely investigates article errors committed by the non-major elementary students at Hung Yen Industrial college And all ambigous or uncertain items were not judged by a native speaker of English, so the reliability of the analyst was not checked In order to have a full picture of English articles errors by the learners at Hung Yen Industrial College, more studies approached from actual errors should be conducted on different types of learners of various levels -42- REFERENCES Alexander, L.G (1998) Longman English Grammar Longman Barry, Lush (2002) Writing errors: a study of Thai students’ writing errors Thai TESOL Bulletin, 15(1),75-82 Beaumon, M and Gallaway, C (1994) Articles of Faith: The Acquisition, Learning and Teaching of a and the In Bygate, M., A Tonkyn, and E Williams (Eds), Grammar and the Language Teacher (pp.161-174) UK: Prentice Hall Brown, H D (2000) Principles of language learning and teaching Longman, Inc Burt, M K (1975) Error analysis in the adult EFL classroom TESOL Quarterly, 9(1):53-63 Butler, Y.G (2002) Second language learners’ theories on the use of English articles SSLA, 24, 451-480 Cambridge University Press Cao Xuan Hạo 1999 Tieng Viet: May van de ngu am, ngu phap, ngu nghia Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Giao duc Celce-Murcia, M and Larsen-Freeman, D (1999) The Grammar book: An ESL teacher’s course Boston: Heinle and Heinle Chesterman, A (1991) On definiteness: A study with special reference to English and Finnish Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press Corder, S P (1992a) The significance of learners’ errors In Richards, J.C (Ed.), Error analysis- Perspectives on second language acquisition Part one (pp 1927) 11th ed Singapore: Longman Corder, S P (1992b) Idiosyncratic dialects and error analysis In Richards, J.C (Ed.), Error analysis- Perspectives on second language acquisition Part four (pp 158-171) 11th ed Singapore: Longman Ðinh Văn Ðức 1986 Ngu phap Tieng Viet (‘A Grammar of the Vietnamese Language’) Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Dai hoc & THCN Jain, M P (1992) Error analysis: Source, Cause and Significance In Richards, J.C (Ed.), Error analysis- Perspectives on second language acquisition Part four (pp 189-215) 11th ed Singapore: Longman -43- Halliday, M.A.K, and R Hasan (1976) Cohesion in English London: Longman Hok, R (1970) The concept of “Generic-Specific” and its application to The/A and Some/Any TESOL Quarterly, 4(3):231-238 Liu, D., & Gleason, J.L (2002) Acquisition of the article The by nonnative speakers of English SSLA, 24, 1-26 Cambridge University Press Master, P (1988) Acquiring the English article system: A cross-linguistic interlanguage analysis Report at the 22nd annual TESOL convention, Chicago, Illinois Retrieved May 26, 2011 from http://www.eric.ed.gov Master, P (1997) The English Article System: Acquisition, Function, and Pedagogy System 25 (2), 215-232 Norrish, J (1992) Language learners and their errors.5th ed London: Macmillan Nguyễn Tài Cẩn, 1975 Van de Danh tu Tu loai tieng Viet Hanoi: Nhà Xuất Bản Khoa hoc Xa hoi Nunan, D (2001) Second Language Acquisition In Carter, R & Nunan, D., (eds) The Cambridge guide to teaching English to speakers of other languages Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 87-92 Pienemann, M (1998) Language processing and second language development Amsterdam: John Benjamins Quirk, R, Greenbaum, S, Leech, G and Svartvik, J (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language Longman, Harlow Quirk, R., and S Greenbaum (1987) A university grammar of English (8th edition) Hongkong: Longman Richards, J.C (1992) A Non-contrastive approach to error analysis In Richards, J.C (Ed.), Error analysis- Perspectives on second language acquisition Part four (pp 172-188) 11th ed Singapore: Longman Richards, J.C & Sampson, G.P (1992) The Study of Learner English In Richards, J.C (Ed.), Error analysis- Perspectives on second language acquisition Part four (pp 3-18) 11th ed Singapore: Longman -44- Richards, J.C & Schmidt, R (2002) Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics Pearson Education Limited Scott, M (2006) Wordsmith tools Oxford: Oxford University Press Retrieved June 4, 2011 from http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/version4/index.htm Tomiyano, M (1980) Grammatical errors and communication breakdown TESOL Quarterly, 14(1):71-79 Thomson, A J and Martinet, A V (1986) A practical English Grammar Oxford University Press Whitman, R L (1974) Teaching the Article in English TESOL Quarterly, 8(3): 253-262 Yotsukura, S (1970) The articles in English: a structural analysis of usage The Hague: Mouton VIII APPENDIX MULTI-CHOICE TEST [from Raymond Murphy (1998) English Grammar in use Da nang Publishing House, pp.139, 143, 145] I Which of the underlined parts of these sentences is correct? Explain your choice a If you want to know the news, you can read paper/ a paper b I want to write some letters but I haven’t got a paper/ any paper to write on a I was in a hurry this morning I didn’t have time/ a time for breakfast b ‘Did you enjoy your holiday?’ ‘Yes, we had wonderful time/ a wonderful time.’ We had very good weather/ a very good weather while we were on holiday It’s very difficult to find a work/ job at the moment ‘Did you hear noise/ a noise just now?’ ‘No, I didn’t hear anything.’ II Put in a/an or the Explain your choice 1.a This house is very nice Has it got _ garden? b It’s a beautiful day Let’s sit in garden c I like living in this house but it’s a pity that garden is so small a Can you recommend _ good restaurant? b We had dinner in very nice restaurant IX c We had dinner in _ most expensive restaurant in town a She has French name but in fact she’s English, not French b What’s _ name of that man we met yesterday? c We stayed at a very nice hotel- I can’t remember _ name now a There isn’t airport near where I live _ nearest airport is 70 miles away b Our plane was delayed We had to wait at airport for three hours c Excuse me, please Can you tell me how to get to airport a ‘Are you going away next week?’ ‘No, _ week after next.’ b I’m going away for week in September c George has a part-time job He works three mornings week III Put in the or a/an or Ø where necessary Explain your choice A: Where did you have Ø lunch? B: We went to _a _ restaurant A: Do you often listen to radio? B: No In fact, I haven’t got radio A: Where’s nearest shop? B: There’s one at end of this street A: Would you like to travel in space? B: Yes, I’d love to go to _ moon X A: It was nice day yesterday, wasn’t it? B: Yes, it was beautiful We went for a walk by _ sea A: Can you tell me where _ Room 25 is, please? B: It’s on second floor KEY I a a paper, b any paper; a time, b a wonderful time very good weather; job; a noise II a a, b the, c the a a, b a, c the a a, b the, c the a an, the, b the, c the a the, b a, c a III listen to the radio……I haven’t got a radio the nearest shop… the end of this street to travel in Ø space… go to the moon a nice day……by the sea where Ø Room 25… on the second floor Thank you for evaluating AnyBizSoft PDF Merger! To remove this page, please register your program! Go to Purchase Now>> AnyBizSoft PDF Merger  Merge multiple PDF files into one  Select page range of PDF to merge  Select specific page(s) to merge  Extract page(s) from different PDF files and merge into one