An error analysis on the use ofcohesive devices in writing by freshmen majoring in English at thang long university

An error analysis on the use ofcohesive devices in writing by freshmen majoring in English at thang long university

Vietnam national university, HanoiCollege of foreign languages

trần thị hải bình

An error analysis on the use ofcohesive devices in writing by freshmen majoring in English

at thang long university

phân tích lỗi trong cách sử dụng

phơng tiện liên kết văn bản trong bài viếtcủa sinh viên chuyên anh năm thứ nhất

tại trờng đại học thăng long

Course workField: Methodology

Supervisor: vũ thúy quỳnh, m.a

hanoi, December 2005

I would like to express my deepest thanks firstly to my supervisor, Mrs Vũ Thuý Quỳnh,M.A who has enthusiastically helped and encouraged me to finish the research project.Without her experienced guidance and valuable comments, my research would still befar from finished I am also indebted to her for her substantial contributions inproofreading and help me make necessary changes.

My gratitude is also sent to all of my instructors in my M.A courses at Post-GraduateStudies, College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi Theirprecious and professional lectures and tutoring have helped me a great deal inunderstanding profound concepts of the field in English teaching methodology while Iattended the courses.

Last but not least, I appreciate constant supports from my colleagues at Thang LongUniversity, my beloved family and my friends.

Table of contents

AcknowledgementTable of contents

List of tables, charts and figures

Chapter One: Introduction

1.1 Reasons for choosing the topic1.2 Objectives of the study

1.3 Scope of the study

1.4 Significance of the study1.5 Methods of the study1.6 Organization of the study

Chapter Two: Literature review

2.1 Factors affecting language learning2.2 Errors analysis

2.3 The notion of errors in language learning2.4 Errors vs mistakes

2.5 Causes of errors in language learning2.5.1 First language interference

2.5.2 Causes independent from first language2.6 The concept of cohesion

2.7 Cohesive devices in writing2.8 Types of cohesion

2.8.1 Grammatical cohesion2.8.2 Lexical cohesion2.9 Summary

Chapter Three: Research Methodology 3.1 Subjects

3.2 Instruments of data collection 3.3 Method of data analysis

iiiiv11222335566788910111112171819192020212223232930

4.2 Errors in the use of conjunction

4.2.1 Errors in the use of adversative conjunction 4.2.2 Errors in the use of causal conjunction 4.2.3 Errors in the use of additive conjunction 4.3 Errors in the use of lexical cohesion

4.4 Summary

Chapter Five: ImplicationsChapter Six: ConclusionBibliography

3233343636383944

LIST OF TABLES, CHARTS AND FIGURES

Table 2.1 Types of cohesion at linguistic level.

Table 2.2 Types of grammatical and lexical cohesionTable 2.3 Personal reference

Table 2.4 Demonstrative reference.Table 2.5 Comparative reference

Table 4.1 The number of errors in the use of cohesive devicesTable 4.2 Errors and their causes

Table 4.3 Errors in the use of demonstrative referenceTable 4.4 Errors in the use of the definite article.

Table 4.5 Errors in the omission of ‘the’

Chart 4.1 Sources of errorsFigure 2.1 Types of reference

Figure 2.2 The process of recognizing and identifying errors

CHAPTER ONE

1.1 REASONS FOR CHOOSING THE TOPIC

Since Vietnam has opened its door to the rest of the world, more and more people with theirwish to join world trends have rushed to learn foreign languages, especially English Thisdemand in language learning has brought about a great amount of positive changes inlanguage teaching in Vietnam Language teachers have looked for and tried differentmethods and techniques in teaching and learning in order to find the effective ones Theeffectiveness of a teaching method or technique is reflected in the learners’ languagecompetence that is their abilities to perform the four language skills: Reading, Listening,Writing and Speaking Amongst these skills the two productive skills, writing and speaking,are considered more difficult than the others as the learners need to use the language toconvey their messages comprehensibly and accurately in real life communication When amessage is unsuccessfully conveyed, the factor, which is most likely to be blamed for iserrors in the use of the language.

It is natural in language teaching that learners make mistakes and errors when writing inEnglish How to cope with and when to give feedback to these errors are vital in teachinglanguage as it may either result in motivation or discouragement in language learning Someteachers’ concern is directed to contrastive analyses of Vietnamese and English with thehope to predict and prevent errors before they appear This theory has been supported byLado (1957) However, Richards (1971) in his research found out that apart from the firstlanguage interference, there were other causes which are products of intra-lingual analogiessuch as overgeneralization, incomplete application of rules or ignorance of rule restrictionsas well as false concepts hypothesized So far, there has been scarily any research on thecauses of errors in students’ writing in English in Vietnamese universities Therefore, I amattempted to carry out a research study applying error analysis in clarifying learners’ errorsin the use of cohesive devices in writing at Thang Long University as “cohesive devices arecrucial in writing” ( Zamel,1983:1).

1.2 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The purpose of this study is to obtain quantitative data for the investigation the types andcauses of errors in the use of cohesive devices in writing by first year undergraduate studentsmajoring in English at Thang Long University Thus, it aims to seek answers to thefollowing questions:

1 What are common errors in the use of cohesive devices in the students’ writing? and2 What are the major causes of these errors?

The answers to these questions will serve as help in giving recommendations to reducing andpreventing the problems of coherence in students’ writing.

1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

It is believed that different types of learners committed different types of errors Also, thetype of errors are various according to different stages in learning process Errors are madein both of the productive skills: writing and speaking Due to the limitation of time, the studyis confined itself to errors in the use of cohesive devices in the writing by Vietnamese pre-intermediate students

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

Many studies on errors have been carried out in the field of teaching English in the world.Researchers like Zamel (1983), Richard (1971) and Corder (1967) among others emphasizedthe importance of errors in theory as well as in practice of foreign language learning andteaching According to Corder (1967), errors are traced to their sources are beneficial indifferent ways Firstly, they help language teachers know how much progress a learner hasmade in the target language, in which language area he needs help and what sort of help heneeds Secondly, they provide researchers with evidence in language learning process;therefore, researchers through errors discover strategies applied in acquiring a language.Apart from that, errors can serve as good feedback to learners for self-adjustment Despitethese benefits, few studies on errors derived from Vietnamese learners have been made For

these reasons, this study should be conducted to find out types of errors, specifically errors inthe use of cohesive devices in Vietnamese learners’ writing and what their causes are.

It is hoped that the findings of the research would be useful to teachers as well as learners ofEnglish Once the type and the causes of a particular error are properly found, teachers willhave a better understanding of students’ problem in using cohesive devices in writing andcan develop proper solutions.

1.5 METHODS OF THE STUDY

The subjects of the study are two classes of first year undergraduate students at Thang LongUniversity They are at the age ranged from 18 to 19 Their major at the university isEnglish Though they come from different areas in the country, they are considered at thesame level of English as they all learned English at high school and have passed theuniversity entrance examination on three subjects including English.

This is intended to be a quantitative research study using compositions as a technique ofeliciting data for the analysis, statistical counting as measurement of results Students’ paperswere collected every week Any errors in the use of cohesive devices were found andclassified according to the cohesion-category by Haliday and Hasan (1976) Then theoccurrence frequency of each error type was counted The data and the list of the errors wasthe source for the analysis.

1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY

The study is composed of six chapters.

Chapter one gives reasons for choosing the topic, objectives and methods of the study It alsonarrows the scope of the study and briefly presents an overall out-line of the research study Chapter two reviews the literature related to the study Firstly, it presents the factorsaffecting language learning which is divided into two types: external and internal Secondly,error analysis and errors in language learning are discussed The literature related to errors isgiven; it includes the notion of errors in language leaning, the distinction between errors and

mistakes, main causes of errors Lastly, cohesion in writing is mentioned, it consists of theconcept of cohesion, cohesive devices and types of cohesion.

Chapter three describes in detail the research methodology which comprises the informationof the subjects, instruments of data collection and methods of data analysis.

Chapter four presents the statistical results and the analysis of the data The statistical resultsare shown in the tables which are the basement to determine the causes of each type of errorsin the use of cohesive devices in writing.

Chapter five named Implication with the recommendations for correcting errors in the use ofcohesive devices in writing, suggestions for teaching in order to prevent and eliminate theseerrors.

Chapter six closes the study with a conclusion which gives a summary of the whole studyand provides suggestions for further studies.

CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the literature related to errors and cohesive devices in writing is discussed inorder to provide the study with the sufficient theory background

2.1 FACTORS AFFECTING LANGUAGE LEARNING

On the basis of language learning process theories, it is clear that language learning bear alot of influences and the factors affecting language learning are categorized into two types:external factors and internal factors

External factors include: the first language, language environment and the formal teaching.

First of all, the mother tongue may be more or less helpful for the learners of a new languageas they have already learned how to do with that language Universal features in languagescan assist learners to learn a new language On the basis of behavior psychology, Lado(1957) and Fries (1965) suggested two types of transfers: transfers are positive when the firstlanguage and the target language share similar features, negative when there are differentfeatures in the two languages Language environment is also of great significance to successin learning a foreign language Lastly, the role of formal teaching was asserted in theresearch by Littlewood (1980) when he proposed that certain techniques or methods provedto be relevant in particular groups of learners.

Dulay et al (1982) named two internal factors: the filter and the monitor According to

Dulay, language learners do not acquire what is exposed to them, but select what they findsuitable, relevant and interesting Motivation, as he defined, is understood as “incentive, theneed or the desire to learn the second language” (Dulay et al., 1982:47), if motivation is low,failure is likely reported “The monitor is the part of the learners’ internal system thatappears to be responsible for conscious linguistic processing” (Dulay et al., 1982:58) Itappears when learners try to learn or to apply a linguistic rule or structure or when he isgiven tasks requiring grammatical judgments.

Foreign language learning are influenced both outside from teaching and learningenvironment, and inside from what and how learners process the language.

2.2 ERROR ANALYSIS

In 1970s and 80s, a large number of papers on error analysis were published Subsequently, amore positive attitude towards errors has emerged In the past, errors were deemed and errorsnow are viewed as natural and important part of learning process because they can yieldinformation about learning language This positive attitude towards errors is especiallyimportant in the wake of the Communicative Language Learning and Teaching Manyresearches on errors in second language learning have been done by several scholars likeCorder (1967), Richard (1992) and Selinker (1992) Error Analysis is the identification,description and explanation of errors either in its spoken or written form Following Corder(1967), Choon (1993) gives some suggestions on carrying out an error analysis research.According to her, one has to identify the errors first, then the errors are classified accordingto categories such as: semantic errors (wrong words, wrong forms, etc.), grammatical errors(tense, preposition, etc.), global errors and local errors She suggested that “the system ofclassifying errors should be flexible” (Choon, 1993: 2) The last step is determining howmuch they deviate from the target language norm, to what extent they affect communication.Error Analysis can help language teachers manner the specific and common languageproblems students have so that he or she can know what should be focused more in asyllabus Choon (1993) advised teachers to conduct Error Analysis at the beginning of thecourse when the items have not been fully learnt and remedy these first.

By classifying errors that learners made, researchers could learn a great deal about thesecond language acquisition process by inferring the strategies that the learners wereadopting For learners themselves, errors are ‘indispensable’ since the making of errors canbe regarded as a device the learner uses in order to learn (Selinker, 1992:150).

2.3 THE NOTION OF ERRORS IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING

On the basis of theory, Behaviorists view errors as symptom of ineffective teaching or asevidence of failure They also view it as being due to largely to the first languageinterference When errors occur they are remedied by a bombardment of correct forms whichcan be achieved by the intensive drilling or over teaching On the other hand, Mentalists ,who following cognitive principles, suggested that learners process the new data in his mindand come up with a set of rules that produce new patterns in the target language.

Consequently, errors are inevitable; in fact, they even become a part in learning process anddeveloping competence Errors are not regarded as a sign of failure, but evidence that thelearner is working toward the correct rules The attitude of Mentalists is positive towarderrors in language learning, it removes the anxiety caused by the behaviorist in classroom.Richards et al (1974) believed that both children learning the first language, and childrenand adults learning foreign languages likely to produce errors of following types:

iii) The over generalized application of irregular rules

2.4 ERRORS VS MISTAKES

The distinction between “errors” and “mistakes” has been given by many linguists though itis impossible to indicate any sharp differentiation According to Klassen (1991), the term“error” is used to refer to a form of structure that a native speaker deems unacceptablebecause of the lack of language competence Chomsky (1965) initiated the distinction whenhe suggested that there were two types of errors: one resulting from verbal performancefactors, the other from inadequate language competence Later, Corder (1967) named theformer mistakes and the later error Mistakes are said to be unsystematic in nature andcorrectable when attention is drawn to its producers Errors, on the other hand, refer to anysystematic deviations from the rules of the target language system In short, errors are causedby lack of knowledge about the target language or by incorrect hypothesis about it; mistakesare caused by temporary lapses of memory, confusion, and carelessness and so on If we areuncertain whether one of the learners has made an error or a mistake, the crucial test mustbe: can he correct himself when challenged? if he can, probably it is a mistake; if not, it is anerror.

2.5 Causes of errors in foreign language learning

There are a number of reasons for how learners make errors; they take root from both socialfactors and cognitive factors (Myles, 2002) Basically, two types of causes are classified: (1)first language interference and (2) causes independent of the first language interference.

2.5.1 First language interference

The notion of first language interference is understood as negative transfer from the firstlanguage to the target language, it is the way of learning new habits is hindered bypreviously learnt ones Lado (1957) claims that “errors are originated in the learners’disposition to transfer forms and meanings, and the distribution of forms and meanings oftheir native language and culture to the foreign language and culture” (1957:1) Myles(2002) considers transfer an important cognitive factor related to writing errors The study oftransfer involves the study of errors (negative transfer), facilitation (positive transfer),avoidance of the target language forms, and their over-use (Ellis, 1994) Corder (1967)observed language learners make hypotheses about the language they are learning, tried tocompare it with their native language, then came to the conclusion that errors in foreignlanguage reflected the first language’s features Later in 1978 he recasts interference aslearners’ reliance on the first language as their strategy of communication, which meanslearners use literal translation as a learning strategy to overcome their ignorance.

Why do language learners apply their native language in second language acquisition? Theanswer lies in four major factors Firstly, it is the performance pressure In class roomsetting, the learners may be forced to perform tasks they do not want or their linguisticcompetence fail to meet; therefore, they fall back on the language most familiar to them thatis their mother tongue Windowson (1990) realized that when learners write under pressure,they may rely on systematic resources from their native language for the achievement andsynthesis of meaning Secondly, the limited foreign language environment also contributesto errors in language learning The lack of natural linguistic inputs with native speakersresults in learners’ recourse on their language Moreover, language tasks assigned for thelearners have a significance affect on their verbal production Among these tasks, translationis said to “increase the foreign language learners’ reliance on first language structures”(Dulay et al., 1982:110) Lastly, Dulay et al (1982) considered the monitor as “an importantfactor associated with the learner’s use of foreign language acquisition” (1982:110).

Learners tend to think in the first language and attempt to put the idea in the target language.Thus, the first language interference takes place because of four factors: performancepressure, limited language environment, manner of eliciting verbal performance and themonitor use.

Myles (2002) defined the above four factors as social factors affecting writing in foreignlanguage These factors are closely related to learners’ attitudes, motivations and goals.“Research based on direct and indirect measures generally shows that learners with positiveattitudes, motivation, concrete goals will have attitude reinforced if they experience success.Likewise, learners’ negative attitudes may be strengthened by lack of success or by failure”(2002: 2) He concluded that learners’ attitudes, motivations and goals can explain why someforeign language writers perform better than others.

French (1958) when looking for common errors in English wrote:

The fact that the errors are common indicates that they have a common cause Thatcommon root is not to be found in a wide variety of languages exhibitinginnumerable differences in syntax, accidence and idiom Explanation does not lies incross-association and instinctive translation of the mother tongue, but in the usages ofEnglish itself; for these usages provide the only factor which is common to allregions, all students and all methods (1958: 7)

2.5.2 Causes independent from the first language

Causes independent of the first language include: overgeneralization, false conceptshypothesized, incomplete application of rules, cross association, and fossilization

Overgeneralization: According to Jakobovist (1969), overgeneralization is the application

of previous available strategies in new situations Richard (1974), Jain (1969) andLittlewood (1980) defined the term “intra-lingual interference” Littlewood (1980) suggeststhat overgeneralization and transfer have the same strategy; the difference is the employmentof knowledge of the foreign language in the former and of the first language in the latter

False conceptualization: Learners’ faulty understanding of distinctions of target language

items leads to false conceptualization, Richard (1971) blames poor presentation or

presentation based on contrastive approach for the confusion such as the use of verbs

“come / go”, “was / is”, of past and present markers

Incomplete application of rules: Richard (1971) noted down two factors leading to

incomplete application of rules as the use of question in classroom as elicitation techniquesand learners’ interest in communication which helps them to achieve efficientcommunication without a mastery of the target language rules.

Cross association: The notion of cross association is proposed by George (1972) It is

different from overgeneralization in the way that interference does not come from the priorlearning items, but from the adverse direction George (1972) wrote “cross-association is thephenomenon of mutual interference between partially learned items, neither being inhibitedbut one or both being affected by the other” (1972:153).

Fossilization: “Fossilization is referred to as a phenomenon that takes place as a learner

internalizes an incorrect form” (Brown et al., 1987: 186) This is believed to exist inadolescents and adults’ pronunciation, and also manifests in some syntactic structures orvocabulary a learner uses Three factors contribute to this phenomenon: mother tongueinfluence, communication needs, and teachers’ feedback

Sometimes it is difficult to decide exactly which process is applied in a certain error.Littlewood (1980:29) concluded that many processes might operate simultaneously andreinforce each other in causing the learners to produce errors.

2.6 THE CONCEPT OF COHESION

Texts, sequences of sentences or utterances which seem to hang together, contain what arecalled text-forming devices These devices are words or phrases which enable speakers orwriters to establish relationships across sentence or utterance boundaries, and help to tiesentences in a text together According to Yule (1996), a text is usually considered to have acertain structure which depends on factors quite different from those required in the structureof a single sentence; some factors are described in terms of cohesion, or the ties andconnections which exist within a text Renkema (1993) considers cohesion as the connectionwhich results when the interpretation of a textual element dependant on another element inthe text In short, that texts cohere or stick together, “have texture and this is what

distinguishes it from something that is not a text” due to the help of cohesive devices.Schiffrin (1978) defines cohesive devices as “clues used by speakers and hearers to find themeanings which underlie surface utterance” (1978:9) Halliday and Hasan (1976) regard atext ‘as a semantic unit: a unit not of form but of meaning’ (1976: 2) They describe cohesionas a semantic concept that refers to relation of meaning existing within a text, not as astructural unit Therefore, their use of the term cohesion refers specifically to non-structuretext forming relations and it often occurs where the interpretation of some element in thediscourse is dependent on that of another Their focus is on the cohesive ties betweensentences because they are the only source of textual, while within the sentence there arestructural relations as well.

2.7 COHESIVE DEVICES IN WRITING

In writing, cohesive devices are crucial for they turn separate clauses, sentences, andparagraphs into connected prose, signaling the relationships between ideas, and makingobvious and visible the writer’s “line of thought” (Boadhead and Berlin, 1981:306).Researchers have pointed out that these ties are an important property of writing quality(Witte and Faigleiy, 1981) In fact, these ties may be essential for preserving author’smeaning (Raimes,1979) While native speakers of English generally learn to use thesecohesive elements as they do other aspects of language, English language learners seem tohave great difficulties in mastering them Bacha and Hanania (1980) found that learners havemany problems with cohesive devices in writing

2.8 TYPES OF COHESION

Halliday and Hasan (1976) give the most comprehensive description analysis of cohesivedevices five major types of cohesive ties: reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunction andlexical ties The first four types are grouped as grammatical cohesion and the later is lexicalcohesion.

Table 2.1: Types of cohesion at linguistic levelLinguistic level at which “phoric” relation is

Type of cohesion

Grammatical Lexicogrammatical

Lexical

Substitution and Ellipsis

Lexical cohesion

( Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 318)

Conjunction is believed on the borderline of the two However, it is better to put it in thegroup of grammatical cohesion as it is mainly grammatical with a lexical component inside.Types of cohesion in each group are given out in details as follows:

Table 2.2: Types of Grammatical and Lexical Cohesion

Exphoric ReferenceEndophoric Reference

Nominal SubstitutionVerbal SubstitutionClausal Substitution

Nominal EllipsisVerbal EllipsisClausal Ellipsis

Same word/RepetitionSynonymy/ Near-synonymSuperordinate

interpretations” (1976: 31) In English these items are personals, demonstratives andcomparatives.

By contrasting Exophora, or Exophoric reference with Endophoric as a general name forreference within the text, Haliday and Hasan make the distinction between situational andtextual reference clear.

Figure 2 1: Types of reference

(Source: Haliday and Hasan, 1976: 33)

Exophora is situational reference refering to a thing as identified in the context of situationand Endophora is textual reference refering to a thing as indentified in the surrounding text.As general rule, reference items may be exophoric or endophoric, if endophoric, they may beanaphoric or cataphoric.

Anaphoric and cataphoric reference indicate two different ways in which reference items canfunction within a text Anaphoric reference points the reader or listener ‘backwards’ to apreviously mentioned entity, process or state of affairs In the following example, theunderlined words are anaphoric reference.

Example:

- They pressed round him in ragged fashion to take their money Andy, Dave, Phil,Stephen, Bob.

Haliday and Hasan (1976) classify three sub-types of referential cohesion: personal,demonstrative and comparative These various devices enable the writer or speaker to makemultiple references to people and things within a text.

Personal references are reference by means of function in the speech situation, through

catergory of person These items are expressed through pronouns and determiners They

serve to identify individuals and objects that are named at some other points in the text.

Table 2 3 : Personal reference

Semantic catergory ExistentialPossessive

Class noun (pronoun)DeterminerI me

youwe ushe himshe herthey themit one

(Source: Haliday and Hasan, 1976: 38)

Demonstrative references are references by means of location, on a scale of proximity,

expressed through determiners and adverbs These items can represent a single word or

phrase, or much longer chunks of text _ ranging across several paragraphs or even severalpages.

Table 2 4: Demonstrative reference

Semantic catergory SelectiveNon-selective

Grammatical function Modifier/HeadAdjunctModifier

Class DeterminerAdverbdeterminerthis these

that those

Here [now]There then

(Source: Haliday and Hasan, 1976: 38)

Comparative references are indirect references by means of identity or similarity,

expressed through adjectives and adverbs and serve to compare items within a text.

Table 2 5 : Comparative reference

Grammatical function Modifier:Deictic/Epithet

Class AdjectiveAdverbsame identical equal

similar additionalother different else

identicallysimilarly likewise so suchdifferently otherwisebetter, more etc

[comparative adjectivesand quantifiers]

so more less equally

(Source: Haliday and Hasan, 1976: 39)

Substitution

Substitution is the replacement of one item by another, as indicated in the Figure 1, thedistinction between substitution and reference is that substitution is the relation in thewording rather than in the meaning.

There are three types of substitution_ nominal, verbal and clausal They are the words, whichcan only be interpreted in relation to what has gone before Haliday and Hasan (1976) giveout the following list of the items that occur as substitutes:

The following underlined words are examples of substitution:

interpreted as that form of substitution in which the item is replaced by nothing” (Halidayand Hasan, 1976: 88) Consider the following discourse fragment illustrates for the point:

- Mary: I prefer the green

It is impossible to tell from the utterance what Mary prefers: the green dress, hat, or bag if

what is said before is not known (for example: Sylvia: I like the blue hat) Therefore, the

green is a elliptical nominal group

As with substitution, there are three types of ellipsis: nominal, verbal and clausal In the

following examples, the ellipsis, which have been left out and marked by (0).

The cohesion of conjunction can be interpreted in terms of either experiential function oflanguage that is the relation between the meanings in the sense of representations of content,our experience of external reality or the interpersonal function of language which is knownas the relation between meanings in the sense of representations of speaker’s own idea aboutthe situation Haliday and Hasan (1976) named these relations: external and internal

respectably The two types of conjunctive relation can be exploited whenever conjunction isused as a mean of creating text as the line between the two is not always a clear cut.

Basically, there are four main types of conjunction: temporality, causality, addition and

Adversative conjunctions such as however, on the other hand, etc are adversative because

the information in the following sentence of a text moderates or qualifies the information inthe preceding.

Additive conjunctions signal the presentation of addition information such as and,

moreover, in addition to, etc.

Temporal conjunctions such as first, then, after that, etc express the relationships which

exit when the events in a text are related in terms of the timing of their occurrence

Causal conjunctions interpret the relationship between the cause and consequence such as

because, because of, for, etc.

2.8.2 Lexical cohesion

Lexical cohesion occurs when two words in a text are semantically related in some way, inother words they are related in terms of their meaning There are two major categories oflexical cohesion: reiteration and collocation.

Reiteration includes repetition, synonym, super-ordinate, and general words The role ofreiterations in the text is referring back to the previously mentioned entity; thus, they fulfill asimilar semantic function to cohesive reference.

Collocation can cause major problems for discourse analysis because it includes all thoseitems in a text that are semantically related in some cases This type of lexical cohesion,according to Haliday and Hasan (1976), ‘is achieved through the association of lexical itemsthat regularly co-occur’ (1976: 284) It can be implied that collocation is expressed throughopen class items Any pair of lexical items which are in some way associated with each otherin the language is capable to bring about cohesion The cohesive effect of these pair does notdepend much on any systematic semantic relationship as on the tendency to share the same

lexical environment This effect even builds long cohesive chains across sentenceboundaries Therefore, there is no limit to these items; this means it is difficult to establishsets of regularly co-occurring words and phrases.

2.9 SUMMARY

This chapter has presented briefly the literature, which is relevant for the study According toLado (1957), Fries (1965), Littlewood (1980) and Dulay et al (1982), foreign languagelearning are influenced both outside from learning and teaching environment, and insidefrom what and how learners process the language Affected by these factors, learners’ errorsare inevitable It is error analysis which helps to turn these errors to the benefit of learningand teaching foreign language This has been proved by many studies on errors by Coder(1967), Richard (1992), Selinker (1992) and Choon (2002) When analyzing errors, it isnecessary to distinguish mistakes and errors The former are caused by the lack ofknowledge about the target language and the latter by temporally lapses of memory,confusion or carelessness Causes of errors are also presented in two main categories: Firstlanguage interference and causes independent from the first language The focus of the studyis on errors in the use of cohesive devices so the concept of cohesion, the importance ofcohesion in writing and the comprehensive description analysis of cohesive devices byHaliday and Hasan (1976) are included in this chapter.

3.2 INSTRUMENTS OF DATA COLLECTION

Errors researchers have applied a variety of ways to provoke errors from learners of foreignlanguage They, for example, ask the subjects to translate selected sentences or passages intothe target language, to rewrite the sentences with guided words or phrases, or tell a story bylooking at pictures All these techniques are done under control With the idea that errorswill come up spontaneously in the process of learning, free compositions were collectedduring the semester of 9 weeks as a mean of eliciting natural errors These compositionsselected did not include the writing tests as the students were affected by the psychologicalfactors During the semester under the study, the teacher was asked to set a rule in herwriting classes: each student had to pass their final version to any other student in classbefore handing it in to the teacher, this rule helped to extract only errors from students’writing.

3.3 METHODS OF DATA ANALYSIS

This research was conducted as a quantitative study The errors were measured in terms ofthe frequency of occurrence in various forms of cohesive devices and percentages of thedifferent kinds of errors in the total number of errors were established from this occurrencefrequency The techniques employed in the analysis process are: identifying, labeling,classifying, and transferring to indexes The procedure was carried out with four steps Firstof all, all of the papers were read carefully, deviated forms or structures in the use ofcohesive devices were identified and marked These forms or structures were included thosewhich were wrongly corrected by other students and the model of recognizing andidentifying errors by Coder (1975) was applied in this step (Please Figure 3 1 for theprocess of recognizing and identifying errors) Then, an interpretation was made toreconstruct what the subjects intended to express in their writing in order to decide if theform or structure was really erroneous Having been labeled as wrong use of definite article,conjunction, etc in accordance with the classification of cohesive devices by Haliday andHasan (1976), the errors were transferred to separate indexes according to their class ofcohesive devices Finally, occurrence frequency counting was made for each type of errors.The outcomes were put forward for comparison.

Is sentence superficially formed in terms of the grammar of the target language?

Does a normal interpretation according to the rules of the target language make

sense in the context? Yes

Sentence not apparently erroneous but may be right by chance

Hold in store for possible further investigation

Sentence is

overly

Is learner available for consultation?

Obtain from him authoritative interpretation and make authoritative reconstruction of sentence in target language

Translate first language back into target language to

provide plausible reconstruction

Figure 2 : The process of recognizing and identifying errors

(Extracted from ‘Error Analysis’ Papers in Applied Linguistics

CHAPTER FOUR

PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA

Applying the methods and instruments presented in the previous chapter, the necessary datahas been collected The tables in this chapter show the number of errors in the use of eachtype of cohesive devices, its percentage in the total number of errors and the source fromwhich it stems The sources are categorized in three groups: intra-lingual source (errors thatare caused by interference between English items), inter-lingual (errors that are caused bythe interference of Vietnamese into English), and mixed (errors that are not attributedprecisely to any single source).

Table 4.1: The number of errors in the use of cohesive devices

Percentage(%)

Table 4.2: Errors and their Causes

inter-lingual intra-lingualmixed

4.1 ERRORS IN THE USE OF REFERENCE

As shown in Table 4.1, reference errors contribute the biggest percentage of 61.6% in allerrors, in which 34% belongs to the demonstrative, 16.83% to the personal and 10.77% tothe comparative; they will be discussed in detail, one by one from the most to the leastpopular.

4.1.2 Errors in the use of demonstrative reference

The number of errors in the use of demonstrative references accounts for 34% of all the

errors in the use of cohesive devices (Table 4.1) These errors are in the use of the, there,

this The table below shows these errors in detail.

Table 4.3: Errors in the use of demonstrative reference

Errors in the use of demonstrative reference “the”

Table 4.4: Errors in the use of the definite article

Type of errors with ‘the’ Number

Refer to Table 4.3, the number of errors in the use of definite article unfolds the fact that thistype of errors is the most problematic Making errors with definite article, the students eitheromit it when it is required or apply it but in wrong ways, the numbers of these errors are 59and 22 respectively as shown in Table 4.4

This type of errors is a typical one as it is found in the works of most students in the study.The main reason for these errors is the influence of the mother tongue (or first languageinterference) As mentioned in the previous chapters, errors in second language learning canarise when a linguistic feature in the target language is unknown in the source language Inthis case, definite article in English (the target language) is a linguistic feature unknown inVietnamese (the source language) Having a look at the structures of noun phrases in Englishand Vietnamese, the problem seems obvious In the structure of English noun phrases, theelements preceding Head are: Deictic (including articles), Numerative, Epithet andClassifier; while in Vietnamese, the preceding Head elements do not include Deictic, Epithet

and Classifier This is the reason why Vietnamese students tend to forget articles, especiallydefinite article, when producing noun phrases in English

Definite article does not contain any information in itself, its meaning is that the noun itmodifies has a specific referent, and that the information required for identifying the referentis available in the environment including the structure, the text, the situation and the culture.For this reason, definite article can be considered as one of “small words” which one mayforget to use it when it is necessary or fail to spot errors in its use when revising his\herwork.

Table 4.5: Errors in the omission of ‘the’

Type of errors in the omission of ‘the’ Number

the noun phrase which was a synonym or near-synonym of the items they had mentionedearlier in the text They seem to forget to use definite article once they are caught in the flowof events or information they want to provide The followings are examples of this type oferrors in students’ papers:

- … Mr X stood outside her garden to follow her cat … Now he was sure that the

reason for her sadness was mainly cat….

- … After a few minutes, Little Red Riding Hood came, knocked at the door and

said “Granny, Granny! Open the door for me, please!” The wolf tried to answer bycopying her grandmother’s voice While asking grandmother some questions, littlegirl found something strange ….

- … Suddenly the vampire laughed and I knew that was Jane She took vampire

mask to trick me….

The errors with the use of omitting homophoric and cataphoric are:

- … First thing I will do is that… (cataphoric is ommited)- He came from United States (homophoric is omitted)- I tried last time to unlock the door (cataphoric is omitted)- She was best in the class (cataphoric is omitted)

Students hardly omit ‘the’ as homophoric and cataphoric reference as in these uses ‘the’ ismostly attached to the noun phrase it refers to as a structure For example, the headmaster of

my school, the King, the longest lesson, etc.

Table 4.4 also presents the fact that students made 22 errors of inappropriate use of the intheir writing With this type of errors, students tend to use definite article ‘the’ instead ofindefinite one (‘a/an’ or zero article) Consider the following extracts from their writing.

- In a nice morning, I with three other girls decided to play truant as usual.

Suddenly, while climbing over the fence of our school, we heard the whistle with a

strong shouting: ‘Stop, girls!’ ‘Oh, the school guard!’ I said.

- In a bar one night, Mr X was talking to a workman who told him that Mrs Ramsay

had a very dear cat The workman added that Mrs Ramsay was very interested in it;

she even regarded it as the kid ….

The nouns or noun phrases following the underlined ‘the’ in the above extracts are not

previously referred to any items either in the situation or text, therefore it must be replaced

by 'a' or no article depending on the noun following it 'Whistle' in the first extract is

mentioned the first time in the text, and it is not a synonym, near-synonym of or related to

any word in the preceding text, so instead of 'the', there should be the indefinite article 'a' as'whistle' is a singular countable noun In the second extract, ‘kid’ appears the first time in the

story and it does not have any relation with any word from the beginning if the story, so the

use of ‘the’ preceding it is not appropriate, and the should be replaced by ‘a’ Thus, ‘the’ is

not required in these examples, the students who committed these errors may be too anxiousabout how to use English articles correctly in communication, which resulted in a confusionamong the use of these items (i.e English articles) Another factor contributing to the causes