An investigation into common written errors committed by first year students at nghe an economics and technology college

1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGỤY VÂN THÙY AN INVESTIGATION INTO COMMON WRITTEN ERRORS COMMITTED BY FIRST YEAR STUDENTS AT NGHE AN ECONOMICS AND TECHNOLOGY COLLEGE Khảo sát lỗi viết sinh viên năm thứ trường cao đẳng Kinh tế – Kỹ thuật Nghệ An thường mắc phải M.A Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10 HANOI – 2010 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NGỤY VÂN THÙY AN INVESTIGATION INTO COMMON WRITTEN ERRORS COMMITTED BY FIRST YEAR STUDENTS AT NGHE AN ECONOMICS AND TECHNOLOGY COLLEGE Khảo sát lỗi viết sinh viên năm thứ trường cao đẳng Kinh tế – Kỹ thuật Nghệ An thường mắc phải M.A Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10 Supervisor: Phạm Thị Hạnh, M.A HANOI - 2010 TABLE OF CONTENTS Declaration i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Table of contents iv List of Abbreviations vii List of tables viii Part A: Introduction 1 Rationale of the study Aim of the study Scope of the study Research questions Structure of the study Part B: Development Chapter I: Liturature review 1.1 Writing 1.2 Paragraph 1.3 Errors and Mistakes 1.4 Classification of errors 1.4.1 Interlingual Errors 1.4.2 Intralingual Errors 1.5 Sources of errors 1.5.1 Interlingual interference 1.5.2 Intralingual Interference 10 1.5.2.1 Overgeneralization 10 1.5.2.2 Ignorance of rule restriction 10 1.5.2.3 Incomplete application of rules 11 1.5.2.4 False concepts hypothesized 11 1.6 Error analysis 11 1.7 Significance of error analysis 12 1.8 Error Frequency 13 Chapter II: Research Method 16 2.1 Research questions 16 2.2 Research methodology 16 2.3 Participants and context of the study 16 2.3.1 Context of teaching and learning at NgheAn Economics and Technology college 17 2.3.2 Participants and their background 17 2.4 Research Instrument 18 2.5 Procedure of data collection 19 2.5.1 Collection of samples 19 2.5.2 Identification of errors 19 2.5.3 Classification of errors 19 2.5.4 Explanation of errors 20 2.5.5 Evaluation of errors 20 Chapter III: Findings And Discussion 21 3.1 Findings 21 3.2 Discussion 24 3.2.1 The most common errors 24 3.2.1.1 Preposition errors 24 3.2.1.2 Errors in Verb Tense 26 3.2.1.3 Errors in using Articles 27 3.2.1.4 Subject-Verb agreement errors 28 3.2.1.5 Errors in Verb form 29 3.2.1.6 Errors in pluralization 29 3.2.2 The cause of those errors 29 3.2.2.1 Mother tongue interference 30 3.2.2.2 Overgeneralization 31 3.2.2.3 Ignorance of rule restrictions: 32 3.2.2.4 Incomplete application of rules: 33 3.2.2.5 False concepts hypothesized 34 Chapter IV: Pedagogical Implications and recommendations 4.1 Pedagogical Implications 4.1.1 Implications for teachers 35 35 35 4.1.2 4.2 Implications for syllabus designers 35 Recommendations 36 4.2.1 Peer-correction 37 4.2.2 Teacher correction 37 Part C: Conclusions 38 Conclusions 38 Limitations of the study 38 Suggestions for further study 39 References 40 List of Abbreviations EA: Error Analysis L1: The first language L2: The second language 10 List of tables Table 1: Collected data about errors made by students in their free writings 21 Table 2: Collected data about errors made by students in their final writing tests 22 Table 3: Comparative data about errors made by students 22 Table 4: Frequency of each types of errors 23 11 Part A: Introduction Rationale of the study English has recently been used in many fields of life in Vietnam It has entered into politics, economics, tourism, electronics, telecommunication, culture and science and technology It is not only a means but also a key to accessing the latest achievements of science and technology Further more, it‟s English that brings Vietnam closer to many other countries in the World Therefore, it is necessary for many Vietnamese to have a good command of English to satisfy the growing needs in a developing country like Vietnam Learning a language is a lifelong process And whenever a language is learnt or acquired, one is faced with the problem of errors As a famous saying goes “to err is human” In the process of language development, this is also the case When the utterances produced by learners are examined and compared with the target language norm, they are often found to be full of errors Errors are an inevitable feature of learning process As it is known in 1950s, behaviourist learning theory described language learning as habit formation and explained why learners made errors According to based language teaching, old habits hinder or facilitate forming new habits That is why errors are unwanted Since the errors were result of non-learning rather than wrong learning, there was a danger of errors becoming habits if they were tolerated, so like sin, error should be avoided However, in recent years, many experts on Communicative language teaching have emphasized the significance of EFL/ESL learners‟ errors which have been considered as “a way of learning” (Olsson,1974), as “strategy the learner uses in order to learn” (Corder,1981), as “a natural and unavoidable part” of their language learning process (Doff, 1988), and as the learners‟ “learning steps” (Edge,1989) Nunan (2001) believed that “linguists and educators began studying the specific language learners used as they attempted to communicate in the target language” and that “errors were seen not as evidence of pathology on the part of learners, but as normal and healthy part of learning process ”.They are not problems to be overcome or evils to be eradicated They, in fact, are part of learning and reveal the strategies that learners use to learn a language They provide valuable insight into the language learning process 12 Being a teacher of English at Nghe An Economics and Technology college for five years, I have marked many students‟ final written tests I found that, students made a lot of mistakes and errors in their writings The errors they have made were grammatical errors, vocabulary errors, semantics errors, or errors of coherence and cohesion ect… As teachers, how should we treat those errors? how to make their writing better? Having realized the significance of focusing on learners‟ errors in learning and teaching a language, I this research to investigate into the most common errors committed in the process of foreign language acquisition by first year students at Nghe An Economics and Technology college to find and draw out the best possible solutions to solve the problems mentioned above This research attempts to overview the background theories of learners‟ errors analysis, investigate and find out the causes of those errors More importantly, this study tries to give some suggestions on how to treat students‟ errors in the process of foreign language acquisition Aims of the study This study tries to: - investigate the errors made by first year students of Nghe An Economics and Technology college in their written work - identify and classify the errors into various categorizations - draw out the most common errors that committed by first year students of Nghe An Economics and Technology college in their written work; and - recommend methods of treating errors for teachers and students of English at Nghe An Economics and Technology college Scope of the study Learning a foreign language is a step by step process, during which errors or mistakes are to be expected These errors and mistakes are now considered a part of language learning process Therefore, instead of seeing errors negatively as a sign of failure, we can see them positively as an indication of what still needs teaching However, due to the limitation of time, and more importantly, the requirements of academic thesis, this study could not cover all types of errors of all four language skills I just focus on the analysis of written errors, especially the grammatical errors which are committed by first year students at Nghe An Economics and Technology college under the study of their writings, thereby 13 making some pedagogical suggestions for error treatment that I believe may be appropriate to the context of Nghe An Economics and Technology college Research questions For the achievement of the above objectives, this study was designed to seek the answers to the following questions: What are the most common written errors committed by first year students at Nghe An college of Economics and Technology? What are the main sources of those errors? Structure of the study The study was structured into main parts Part A is the introduction in which the rationale, the aims, the research questions, the scope and the structure of the study are presented Part B is the development of the study in which three chapters are presented Chapter I consists of the literature review in which various perspectives on error and error analysis which have been documented in the literature are reviewed to provide a theoretical background of the study Chapter II is about the research methods in which the research questions, research approach, research instrument, data collection, participants and context of the study and procedure of investigation are given Chapter III is about findings and discussion Some pedagogical implications and recommendation are included in chapter IV of this part Part C is the conclusions which deal with the main summary of the study Limitations and suggestions for further study are presented in this part as well 37 The verb „đi‟ in the sentences above did not indicate time The same verb was used in every sentence for present, past, future, continuous or perfect setting The time was shown separately by other particles such as „đã‟ for past tense, „đang‟ for continuous tense and „rồi‟ for perfect tense While the verb „go‟ in English changed according to the time when the action happened Thus, this makes it difficult for the students to understand the idea of tense usage in English and their errors creation is unavoidable For examples: 1) Before, I live (V tense) in the country 2) I was born and grow (V tense) up in the countryside… 3) I‟m very happy when you give (V tense) me a gift on my birthday For sentence the students used simple present tense instead of simple past tense As in sentences and 3, the students used simple past tense when composing the sentences instead of the more appropriate present tense In short, the differences between the verb system of the first language and English tense make it difficult for students to grasp the English notion of tense Due to the grammar rules of Vietnamese that not need any changes of verbs according to time aspect, students tend to omit the inflection of the English verb 3.2.1.3 Errors in using Articles The category of „Article errors‟ contains article omission, article redundancy and wrong article use According to the analysis, it was found that error concerning articles omission accounted for the largest portion In Vietnamese, there is no concept of articles Therefore, students tend to apply this to English learning process There are two main types of articles, indefinite (a/an) and definite (the) The developed historically from a word meaning this and still retains some of the basic meanings of the pointing demonstrative The serves to particularize a noun It helps to distinguish the known from the unknown It may narrow down a class, or it may even limit the class to one While, we use indefinite article (a/ an) if the noun has not been mentioned before The use of indefinite article also takes into account whether the noun is countable or not and whether it is singular or plural If the noun is countable, singular and has not been mentioned before, the indefinite article must be used Thus, to be able to use an article properly, the students have to be sensitive in differentiating the use of definite article, indefinite article and even using no article at all If they are not able to differentiate them, they will make errors as follows: 38 Article omission: That was the first time I saw √ (Art Today is √ (Art In √ (Art omi.) omi.) omi.) beach off day, so I don‟t go to school morning, I learning at home and go to school in √ (Art omi.) afternoon Article redundancy: I often spend for (Art red) 30 minutes to read book and listen to music She has a oval face with black eyes and (Art In the (Art red) red) (Art red) long black hair Summer, traveller in many where go to Cua Lo rest and relax Incorrect articles There is a small table, a TV set, four chairs and a (Inc Art.) alter Hang is twenty four years old and a (Inc Art.) accountant After a (Inc Art.) hour of sitting on the bus, finally we also arrived 3.2.1.4 Subject-Verb agreement errors Agreement between subject and verb is influenced by the subject form whether it is singular or plural To construct a correct sentence structurally, the verb must agree with the subject in number If the quantity is only one, we should use singular verb form On the other hand, if the quantity is more than one we use plural verb form Fail to recognize this means we are failed to construct correct sentences structurally Thus, the students must be able to identify the subject whether it is singular or plural Having no competence in identifying the subject will make students fail to produce the correct form of the verb It means that the students have made errors in making the agreement between subject and verb Errors in subject-verb agreement make up 13.7 % of the total number of errors Subject-verb agreement errors pose problems for the Vietnamese students for a number of reasons These errors occur because in Vietnamese, there is no difference between verbs in the third person singular and verbs in the third person plural For example: My mother teach (S-V disagreement) us work good matter We lives (S-V disagreement) in a small house near HoChiMinh square Ha Noi have (S-V disagreement) very much sightseeing 3.2.1.5 Errors in Verb form Here the students made errors in case of producing infinitives or gerunds which go after V1 They failed to recognize where to put the infinitives and where to put the gerunds The rule of using infinitives and gerunds is rather complicated for students because it 39 depends on V1 It seems that the students have to learn by heart the verbs followed by a gerund and the verbs followed by an infinitive if they want to use correct verb form all the time However, there are many verbs in English so learning by heart all of them is not an easy task Here are some errors of verb form that participants made in their writings: After finish (Verb form) two important exams, my class decided to celebrate … I must spent (Verb form) the most time for studying He can‟t smoking (Verb form) 3.2.1.6 Errors in pluralization The concepts of singular and plural nouns, countable and uncountable nouns are the new one in mono-syllabus language like Vietnamese In order to show the number, Vietnamese people use cardinal numbers or the word „những‟ Because the participants have had difficulties in distinguish singular and plural nouns, countable and uncountable nouns, the errors are inevitable Some of the participants did not know that the plural form using the suffix „s‟ must be applied to the countable plural noun A possible reason for the failure to construct plural noun forms probably because in Vietnamese, there is no plural marker for a noun However, for some participants, they have already hypothesized that English nouns have plural and singular forms However, they were not sure when they should apply the plural form For example: There are four department (noun pluralization) in my house I have many chances to improve my knowledge in every fields There are four peoples (noun pluralization) in my family 3.2.2 The cause of those errors With a view to addressing the second research question "What are the causes to common written errors made by first year students at Nghe An Economics and Technology college?", the researcher would like to rely on the theoretical background presented in chapter concerning the causes of second language learners' written errors According to the literature and the process of analyzing errors committed by the participants, five major causes of those errors are mother tongue interference, overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restrictions, incomplete application of rules and false concept hypothesized The detailed discussion and justification of each cause is provided as below 40 3.2.2.1 Mother tongue interference In the process of learning a new language, the learners are often affected by their mother tongue As defined in chapter 2, mother tongue interference is due to the fact that learners carry the characteristics of their native language, Vietnamese, in to the target language, English They have the trend of applying the grammatical rules of their native language into the target one Moreover, the translation is, most of the time, word-by-word, which leads to the wrong order of words, wrong verb form, wrong use of prepositions in a sentence Many errors made by the participants are caused by the interference of mother tongue The word order is the type of errors which is mainly interfered by the Vietnamese learners In Vietnamese, the order of an adjective and the noun modified by that adjective in a noun phrase, the order of adjectives occur in a noun phrase, the order of adverbs in a sentence, the order of auxiliary verbs and subjects in a report sentence are different from those in English These are the illustrated examples: It is a house beautiful (a beautiful house) She is a beautiful girl with black long hair (long black) My mother very likes cooking (My mother likes cooking very much.) The use of preposition is another matter in this situation For example: My house is up floor (My house is on the fifth floor) His house is down floor (His house is on the first floor) Many pictures are hanging up the walls (There are many pictures on …) A larger portion of verb form and word choice is also caused by the interference of the mother tongue For example: I very like look at them ( I like looking at them very much) After finish a hard school year, they are rested about three months (After finishing a hard school year, they have three months for a rest) I tried learn hard (I tried to learn hard) Especial, when you gazed at twilight on the beach ( Especially, when you looked at the twilights on the beach) My life is interest and very good Besides verb forms and word choice, verb omission or redundancy are errors which happened rather much in participants‟ written work As it‟s known that, in English grammatical rulers, there must be a linking verb (to be) between the subjects and 41 complements Linking verbs as „be, look, seem, appear…‟ are used to connect between a subject and a complement while in Vietnamese this type of verbs doesn‟t exist Moreover, there exists another type of verb with the name „modal‟ which always followed by an ordinary verb And this type of verb can‟t be found in Vietnamese either Consequently, the participants made a lot of missing verb and verb redundancy errors For examples: The weather √(V omission) hot those days, no rain at all My school √(V omission) very wonderful My English teacher √(V omission) very good In addition to the different syntax between the two languages, Vietnamese morphological system corresponding with its phonological system imposes certain impacts on students' spelling errors In other words, a certain word will be written exactly as how it is read Here are some errors of spelling which are caused by the interference of mother tongue I like readinh books in my free time (I like reading in my free time) We had dicision go to Cua Lo beach (We had decision of going to …) I find English is a dificult subject (I find English is a difficult subject) The wether hot those days In short, mother tongue interference is relatively popular among students' written errors It not only makes students' writing less smooth but also impedes the conveyance of meaning at times 3.2.2.2 Overgeneralization Overgeneralization is present in errors related to noun number, subject and verb agreement, and too formal language style In particular students overgeneralize the rule that every expression of quality which is used to denote the concept of „plurality‟ will be followed by a plural noun Students, therefore, would see that „every‟ also denotes a plurality concept and accordingly, it should be accompanied by plural nouns Or when „everybody, everything, something…‟ function as subjects, of course these subjects are considered plural ones Here are some illustrated examples: In the city, every things are more expensive than in the country My mother advises us not every bad things Everybody were sitting on the beach very happy They may also expand the rule that plural nouns taking zero articles refer to a group of people or things and adopt it to non-count noun Hence, it is common to encounter such 42 errors as "advices, equipments, informations." Or in other situation, the students overgeneralize the rule that suffix „s‟ is used after a noun to make it plural Therefore they apply this rule for uncountable nouns and irregular nouns as well Examples: Every body don‟t say much and they only their works In the distance, the fishermans were catching fishes In the morning, I eat breads for breakfast Additionally, the structure "there + to be + Noun" seems problematic to students as they assume that any elements at the beginning of a sentence should be the subject and the number of verbs are supposed to be in accordance with the number of subject Thus, they may see that "there" belongs to a singular subject and it must go with singular verbs In fact, the number of the verb "to be" should be determined by the nearest noun following it This accounts for the presence of such sentences as There is many new friends There is many facilities at the centre of town There was many beautiful flowers on two sides of the way to the beach Verb tense is also the learners‟ overgeneralization in case of adding suffix „s‟ after all verbs in the third person singular in simple present tense For examples: My mother can cooks very well My teacher can speaks English very fluent She must gets up early to prepare breakfast for my family In conclusion, overgeneralization is other main source of students‟ making errors The learners seem automatically apply grammatical rules wherein these are not allowed to 3.2.2.3 Ignorance of rule restrictions: The presence of ignorance of rule restrictions is seen in errors concerning lexical items (word choice) and prepositions usage Specifically, students often ignore the restriction of contexts wherein rules are applied and produce a deviant form or structure As we know, there are so many of English words with meanings that sound similar to each other such as: take and bring, listen and hear, and make, look and watch, nice and beautiful, big and huge, clear and obvious, true and right and so on However, these word are used differently depending denotation meaning of each word The participants seemed take no care of the restrictions in using these words They failed to identify them exactly For examples: I always get up at and take morning exercises ... the most common errors that committed by first year students of Nghe An Economics and Technology college in their written work; and - recommend methods of treating errors for teachers and students. .. to: - investigate the errors made by first year students of Nghe An Economics and Technology college in their written work - identify and classify the errors into various categorizations - draw... stated in chapter I, this study means to explain the errors made by first year students at Nghe An Economics and Technology college in their written work After collecting and analyzing the data,