An exploratory study on the influence of the mother tongue (l1) on the english acquisition of thai students at thai nguyen

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* CẦM THỊ KIỀU ANH AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE (L1) ON THE ENGLISH ACQUISITION OF THAI STUDENTS AT THAI NGUYEN MEDICAL COLLEGE Tìm hiểu tác động tiếng mẹ đẻ việc học tiếng Anh sinh viên dân tộc Thái trường Cao đẳng Y tế Thái Nguyên M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Hanoi - 2014 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ********************* CẦM THỊ KIỀU ANH AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON THE INFLUENCE OF THE MOTHER TONGUE (L1) ON THE ENGLISH ACQUISITION OF THAI STUDENTS AT THAI NGUYEN MEDICAL COLLEGE Tìm hiểu tác động tiếng mẹ đẻ việc học tiếng Anh sinh viên dân tộc Thái trường Cao đẳng Y tế Thái Nguyên M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: NGUYỄN HUY KỶ, PhD Hanoi - 2014 DECLARATION I, hereby certify that the thesis entitled „An exploratory study on the influence of the mother tongue (L1) on the English acquisition of Thai students at Thai Nguyen Medical College‟ is the result of my own research in the fulfilment of the requirement for the Degree of Master of Arts of the Faculty of Post Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi Hanoi, 2014 Researcher Cam Thi Kieu Anh i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would particularly like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr NGUYẾN HUY KỶ for his precious advice, remarkable, suggestions, kind guidance and careful correction Next, I would like to acknowledge all my teachers at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, especially those who are working at the Faculty of Post - Graduate Studies for their interesting lectures which enable me to gain a great deal of theoretical knowledge and practical experience I am also indebted to all the students and teachers at Thai Nguyen Medical College for their cooperation and participation in this study Last but not least, my heart-felt gratitude goes to my family for their encouragement and support during the process of study ii ABSTRACT English language teaching in a non-native environment has experienced a variety of obstacles, one of which is the interference of English learners‟ mother tongue The impediment is doubled when English is taught in a multi-lingual environment like Vietnam, and this fact forces Vietnamese instructors of English to seek ways of teaching their cohort of minority students effectively In an attempt to improve of English language teaching in Vietnam, this thesis investigates the possible impacts of Vietnamese Thai on the English written production of Thai students at Thai Nguyen Medical College, with a detailed contrastive analysis of English and Vietnamese Thai which English teachers can use in their practice The study employed a written production questionnaire, which has been widely accepted as a tool for data collection in an interlanguage study The results suggest that Thai non-English major students heavily rely on their mother tongue in their English writing Several suggestions for minimising the influences of Thai learners‟ mother tongue on their English production are provided iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS L1= Mother tongue or first language L2= Foreign language or second language E = English E1 En = English example 1….n T = Vietnamese Thai T1 …Tn= Thai example 1….n Es = English sentences produced by the participant iv LIST OF TABLES Table1.1 English and Thai types of verbs Table 1.2 English and Thai types of words following a verb Table 1.3 English and Thai use of adjectives and adverbs Table1.4 Formation of tenses in English and Thai Table1.5 Subject-verb relation in English and Thai Table1.6 Negation in English and Thai Table1.7 English and Thai nouns 11 Table1.8 English and Thai articles 12 Table1.9 English and Thai word order 14 Table 1.10 Comparison of errors and mistakes 16 Table1.11 Dušková’s L1-transferred error classification 18 Table1.12 Keshavarz’s L1-transferred error taxonomy 18 Table1.13 Possible L1 interference of the Thai learners of English 19 Table 3.1 Summary of the total number of errors 25 Table 3.2 Errors in verbs 26 Table 3.3 Errors in nouns 29 Table 3.4 Errors in articles 30 Table 3.5 Errors in prepositions 32 Table 3.6 Errors in word order 35 v TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv LIST OF TABLES v PART A - INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims of the study Research questions Scope of the study Significance of the study Research methods Thesis structure PART B - DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 The Thai people and language in Vietnam 1.1.1 The Thai people 1.1.2 The Thai language 1.2 A contrastive analysis of Thai and English 1.2.1 Verbs 1.2.2 Nouns 10 1.2.3 Articles 12 1.2.4 Prepositions 13 1.2.5 Word order 13 1.3 Distinction of errors and mistakes 15 1.3.1 Errors 15 1.3.2 Mistakes 16 1.3.3 Distinction of errors and mistakes 16 1.4 Language transfer and L1 transfer in L2 acquisition 17 vi 1.5 Possible errors committed by Thai students in their learning of English 18 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 20 2.1 Research setting 20 2.1.1 An overview of the research site 20 2.1.2 The students 20 2.1.3 Learning materials 21 2.2 Participants 21 2.3 Data collection instrument 22 2.4 Data collection procedure 22 2.5 Data analysis procedure 22 CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 24 3.1 Data analysis and discussion 24 3.1.1 Identification of interlingual errors 24 3.1.2 Description and discussion of identified errors 24 3.2 Major findings 35 PART C - CONCLUSION 37 Recapitulation 37 Conclusions 37 Pedagogical implications 38 Limitations and suggestions for further studies 39 4.1 Limitations 39 4.2 Suggestions for further study 40 REFERENCES 41 APPENDICES I vii PART A - INTRODUCTION This part presents the rationale, the aims of the study, the research questions and the methods used to achieve the research objectives The scope, significance and the organization of the study are also stated Rationale Today, English becomes an important and influential language worldwide, with over 300 million native speakers and between 400 and 800 million non-native users (Manivanan, 2006) It is considered as a tool for international communication and worldwide data sharing English proficiency is of significance for individuals since it enables them to update their knowledge and share their practices and experiences or seek help from other people around the world in case obstacles arise at study and work English, thus, can “contribute to students‟ personal, linguistic, social, and cultural development” (Canh Le, 2004, p.167) Apparently, everybody would like to learn English; however, not so many people can study English well (Tam Nguyen, 2011) since L2 learning depends on various factors Perhaps, of all the difficulties shared by Vietnamese learners of English, e.g lack of supportive learning environment, lack of infrastructure and facilities, etc., minority students have suffered distinctive obstacles in their learning of English, one of which is teachers‟ low English proficiency and low proficiency of the Thai language, which cause difficulties in explaining new grammar terms and language areas to the Thai students Additionally, students‟ knowledge gaps resulting from their lower levels of learning and learning both Vietnamese and English simultaneously cause lots of difficulties for Thai learners of English Actually, the above hindrances could be solved if finance is granted and teachers‟ qualification is improved, but there exist impediments–the linguistic differences between L1 and L2-cannot be alleviated even with a complete disappearance of the above obstacles This claim is strongly supported by L2 researchers who found that L2 learners heavily rely on their L1 in their L2 learning (Dechert, 1983; Ellis, 1997) Specifically, George (1972) found that one-third of the deviant sentences from L2 learners could be attributed to language transfer In other words, the L1 interference, which causes interlingual errors, that similar categories could result in positive transfer and so can be neglected in the process of teaching and learning Besides, within a category, L1 interference in different subcategories is various, so some may be more problematic to Thai learners of English than the others It is of great importance for instructors to identify what language areas cause lots of obstacles towards a certain group of the Thai learners so that they can have an appropriate strategy to deal with them or to help their learners cope with them In fact, not all the systematic errors committed by the Thai students in this study are rooted in their mother tongue There are a variety of the subcategories with the mother categories cannot be accounted for by tracing back the Thai students‟ errors to their L1 A stronger argument for these cases is that they can be the result of the sophistication of the English system itself The above conclusion proposes that teaching English to the Thai students requires firm knowledge of English and deep understandings of the Thai language system as well Since the Thai students‟ L1 play a big role in their learning of English, classroom practitioners need to seek appropriate ways to help their students to alleviate their L1based errors, some of which are introduced in the next section of this part Pedagogical implications The findings that the Thai learners of English can be heavily affected by their L1 interference in their L2 learning imply that the teachers of this cohort of learners need to seek effective teaching strategies to help the Thai students to minimise or even alleviate the effect of their L1 in their learning of English The very first thing to be considered is the inclusion of L1 interference in syllabus and curriculum design This is, in fact, suggested by Corder (1967): “We may be able to allow the learner's innate strategies to dictate our practice and determine our syllabus; we may learn to adapt ourselves to his needs rather than impose upon him our preconceptions of how he ought to learn, what he ought to learn and when he ought to learn it”(p 169) Lack of careful calculation of L1 interference could lead to ineffective teaching techniques and ways of giving feedback 38 Secondly, instructors‟ teaching strategies also need to reflect the possible interference of the learners‟ L1 The L1-specific approach, which was suggested by Carey (2004), should be taken into accounts in the process of teaching and learning This teaching approach employs the comparision of the L1 and L2 in their process of teaching L2 The L1-specific approach gives students and teachers various benefits which the native model focus cannot offer For students, their L1 is a reliable and long standing reference point for effective comparison and contrast between their L1 existing inventory and that of the newly-learned system For teachers, if they implement a contrastive analysis of English and the Thai language, they will be able to predict the areas in which their students may have difficulties; this helps them to deliver the lesson more effectively and meaningfully Moreover, the L1-specific approach allows teachers to reflect on their own English learning experiences as a successful learner, so they can predict the English aspects to which they need to pay more attentions and provide more practice in their teaching Also, they can provide their students with strategies which they have used to deal with English effectively Next, developing L2 learners‟ language transfer awareness could also be beneficial Most native speakers usually not have much declarative knowledge of their L1, so a thorough mastery of some non-native language achieved in a classroom context, might be more useful for the learning of a new language (Ringbom, 2006) Research also states that there was no evidence that students were aware of how their intuitions about L1 grammaticality influenced their L2 judgements (Lightbown & Spada, 2000).As such, incorporating the techniques which help develop language transfer awareness into daily teaching is of great significance Finally, if possible, incorporating previously acquired procedural knowledge (strategic, pragmatic and otherwise) that students have developed through their experience with Vietnamese learning into their learning of English (Marx & Mehlhorn, 2010) Limitations and suggestions for further studies 4.1 Limitations An ambition of covering all of the aspects of L1 which may cause transfers in L2 learning could lead to lack of details and depth in the analysis, so this study has not 39 covered all the possible contrastive aspects of Thai and English Another limitation of the present study is that it is impossible to take into accounts the extent to which transfer occurs at different levels of proficiency 4.2 Suggestions for further study Due to the limitation with respect to the scope of the present study, the investigations into the L1 interference in other language areas and language learning may be of great interests for future research Specially, a relationship between L1 and L2 reading (Bernhardt & Kamil, 1995); long‐term cross linguistic transfer of skills from L1 to L2 (Sparks et al., 2009); the use of L1 reading strategies in L2 reading (Koda, 1990), and many other studies related to cross linguistic transfer of L1 sound system into L2 learning could be good suggestions for further research regarding Thai and English 40 REFERENCES IN VIETNAMESE An Nguyen, N (2011) Thực trạng giải pháp rèn luyện kỹ nghe hiểu việc học ngoại ngữ sinh viên không chuyên trường đại học –cao đẳng Tạp chí khoa học ĐHSP TP HCM, 25, 130-133 Dat Huu, Doi Tran, T., & Lan Đao, T (1998) 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friend: Suggested ideas: a) b) c) d) e) f) How you know him/her Where he/she is living now What he/she is doing now His/ her personality What you like best in him/her His/ her hobbies Compose a short paragraph (from to sentences) to describe your future job: Suggested ideas: a) What the job is b) Why you like it I c) Where you want to work d) What makes you suitable for the job e) What you to prepare for the job Compose a short paragraph (from to sentences) to describe your hometown or your village: Suggested ideas: a) b) c) d) e) f) g) What the weather is like there How people are How the scenery is How the air is there What people How the food is Anything special II Compose a short paragraph (from to sentences) to describe your school: Suggested ideas: a) b) c) d) e) f) How your school looks like How the teachers are How the students are What you like best about it If there is anything you don’t like about it How you wish it would be in the future Compose a short paragraph (from to sentences) to describe your classmates: Suggested ideas: a) b) c) d) e) f) g) How many people there are Where they come from How they learn What they during a break How they are What you like best about them If there is anything you don’t like about them III Compose a short paragraph (from to sentences) to describe your English class: Suggested ideas: a) b) c) d) e) f) g) How the class is How your teacher is How your friends are How much you and your friends talk What topics you and your friends talk about How you think of their English If there are any difficulties Compose a short paragraph (from to sentences) to describe one of your unforgettable past events: Suggested ideas: a) b) c) d) e) f) What happened If it was fun or sad for you When and where it happened How the scenery was How people there were If you learned anything from this experience IV Compose a short paragraph (from to sentences) to describe changes in your hometown: Suggested ideas: a) b) c) d) e) f) If there have been many changes How people’s life have changed How the weather changed What caused the changes Whether you enjoy the changes or not What you think it will be in the future Compose a short paragraph (from to sentences) to describe your family: Suggested ideas: a) How many members there are b) What your family members’ job is V c) What you like best about your family life d) If there is anything you don’t like e) How you think your family will be in the future 10 Compose a short paragraph (from to sentences) to describe your learning of English: Suggested ideas: a) b) c) d) e) f) What you think about your English and English learning How you think English is important How much time you often spend learning English What difficulties you have How difficult you feel English is If you have any plans to improve your English 11 Compose a short paragraph (from to sentences) to describe your daily routines: VI Suggested ideas: a What you in the morning b What you in the afternoon c What you in the evening Many thanks for your assistance VII Appendix B: TOOL FORDATA ANALYSIS Categories Codes Numbers of errors Vmismorph Vlackmorph Vlackagr VlackTO Verbs Vlackaux VomiBE Vreg-irreg Vinf-part Vadv-adj Vpart-inf Nc-u NomisE-ES Nouns Nlackagr NmisS-ES Nclfier ARTomisindef ARTomisdef Articles ARTmisuse PREPomis PREPmisuse PREPomisOF Prepositions PREPadd PREPlackcollo NPadj-n Word order NPpro-adj Spec-genAdv VIII Appendix C: LIST OF CODES Categories Codes Verbs Misuse of morphological marks for tenses Lack of morphological marks for tenses Lack of agreement between subject and its verb Lack of the particle ‘to’ in to-infinitives Lack of auxiliaries in negation Omission of be Confusion of irregular and regular verbs Infinitive instead of past participle Confusion of adverb and adjective Past participle instead of infinitive NOUNS Confusion of countable and mass noun Omission of the plural endings Lack of agreement between a pre-modifier and its noun Inappropriate plural endings Use of classifiers ARTICLES Omission of „a/an‟ Omission of „the‟ Misuse of „a(n)‟, „the‟ and „zero‟ PREPOSITIONS Omission of preposition Inappropriate use of preposition Omission of genitival of Addition of prepositions Lack of preposition in collocations WORD ORDER Adjectives placed after a noun Personal pronouns instead of possessive adjectives More specific adverbials placed after more general ones IX Vmismorph Vlackmorph Vlackagr VlackTO Vlackaux VomiBE Vreg-irreg Vinf-part Vadv-adj Vpart-inf Nc-u NomisE-ES Nlackagr NmisS-ES Nclfier ARTomisindef ARTomisdef ARTmisuse PREPomis PREPmisuse PREPomisOF PREPadd PREPlackcollo NPadj+n NPpro-adj Spec-genAdv ... influence of the mother tongue (L1) on the English acquisition of Thai students at Thai Nguyen Medical College‟ is the result of my own research in the fulfilment of the requirement for the Degree of. .. minimising the influences of Thai learners‟ mother tongue on their English production are provided iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS L1= Mother tongue or first language L2= Foreign language or second language... INTRODUCTION This part presents the rationale, the aims of the study, the research questions and the methods used to achieve the research objectives The scope, significance and the organization of the