An analysis of errors made by high school student in the use of subject verb agreement in english writing = phân tích lỗi sai của học sinh PTTH về sự tương hợp giữa chủ ngữ và động từ trong văn viết tiếng anh

Vinh university Foreign language department An analysis of errors made by high school students in the use of subject- verb agreement in english writing ( phân tích lỗi sai học sinh PTTh tơng hợp giũa chủ ngữ động từ văn ViÕt tiÕng anh) graduation thesis Field: linguistics Student: Cao ThÞ Việt Hà, 44A2 Supervisor: Vũ Thị Việt Hơng, M.A Vinh 2007 Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Vị ThÞ ViƯt H¬ng, M.A, who gave me the enthusiastic help and encouragement to complete this thesis I would also like to express my sincere thanks to all of my teachers at Foreign language department of Vinh university for their lectures which enable me to gain a lot of theoretical and practical knowledge Furthermore, I want to thank many teachers and students at Ngun Du high school- Hµ TÜnh province, who helped me carry out the investigation of the study Finally, I am really grateful to my parents and my friends for their encouragement and support to my process of writing of the thesis Vinh, summer 2007 Cao Thị Việt Hà Symbols and abbreviations SVA: subject- verb agreement L1: the first language L2: the second language c a: contrastive analysis e a: error analysis s: subject V: verb i.e: that is e.g: for example etc: et cetera *: the place of error List of tables Table 2.1 Table 2.2 Table 2.3 Table 2.4 Table 2.5 Table 2.6 Table 2.7 Table 2.8 Table 2.9 Table of contents: Acknowlegements Symbols and abbreviations List of tables Table of contents Part 1: IntRoduction Rationale of the study Aims of the study Subjects of the study Scope of the study Method of the study Design of the study Part II: Content Chapter I: Literature review 1.1 The overview of subject- verb agreement in English grammar 1.1.1 Subject and its features 1.1.2 Verb- verb phrase and its features 1.1.3 Definition of subject-verb agreement 1.1.4 Types of English subject- verb agreement and their principles 1.1.4.1 Grammatical concord 1.1.4.2 Notional concord 1.1.4.3 Proximity principle 1.1.4.4 Special agreement problems 1.2 Errors in language and learning process 1.2.1 The notion of error 1.2.2 Errors and mistake 1.2.3 Error analysis 1.2.4 Causes of errors 1.2.4.1 Interlingual errrors and mother tongue interference 1.2.4.2 Intralingual errors and developmental errors (1) overgeneralization (2) incomplete application of rules (3) ignorance of rule restrictions (4) false concepts hypothesized 1.2.5 Error correction Chapter II: The study 2.1 Research questions 2.2 Research setting 2.3 Description of subjects 2.4 Description of Data collection 2.5 Procedure 2.6 Preliminary results and data analysis 2.6.1 Results of section of test 2.6.2 Results of section of test 2.6.3 Results of section of test 2.6.4 Results of test 2.6.5 General tendency 2.7 Errors and their causes 2.7.1 Errors and their causes in section of test 2.7.2 Errors and their causes in section of test 2.7.3 Errors and their causes in section of test 2.7.4 Errors and their causes in test Chapter III: Findings and Implications 3.1 Major findings 3.2 Implications for teaching and learning SVA in English writing to Vietnamese high school students 3.2.1 Suggestion for teaching SVA in English writing 3.2.1 Suggestion for presentation 3.2.1.2 Suggestion for practice 3.2.1.3 Suggestion for production 3.2.2 Suggestion for learning SVA in English writing Part III: Conclusion References Appendix Appendix Symbols and abbreviations SVA: subject- verb agreement L1: the first language L2: the second language c a: contrastive analysis e a: error analysis s: subject V: verb i.e: that is e.g: for example etc: et cetera *: the place of error Part 1: Introduction Rationale for the study For a long time, English has confirmed its position as an international language It is considered as a useful tool to communicate with each other Therefore, it is not surprising when the number of English learners is growing more than ever Together with the increasing need of studying English, great efforts have been made in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning this subject Textbooks have been renovated, new methods have been applied and various aspects of teaching English have been covered Realized that description and analysis of students' errors play an important role in the practical teaching and learning, error analysis has been an interesting area which has attracted the attention of an increasing number of researchers In fact, there are many famous ones on this field Typically, Corder and Richards have made great contribution to the development of error analysis area- a main branch of applied linguistics Since Vietnamese and English have very distinct grammar systems, Vietnamese students tend to encounter alot of difficulties in acquiring the target language Among these difficulties is the use of subject- verb agreement (SVA) in English writing It can not be denied that SVA is an important element in grammar The correct use of SVA contributes to producing accurate sentences Besides, SVA is so popular that nearly every sentence requires it Therefore, special attention has been paid to this item of grammar This is revealed in the works of Swam (1980), Quirk (1972), Maclin (1996) and so on In Vietnam, there have been a number of studies and B.A graduation theses by some linguists and students, focusing on SVA, such as NguyÔn Đăng Liêm (1975), Lơng Nh Huế (2002) However, they mainly focus on the theory of SVA To the best of my knowlege, very little research so far has been done in Vietnam on the error analysis in the area of English SVA In the thesis by L¬ng Nh HuÕ, although the writer predicted difficulties that Vietnamese students may face in learning SVA and made some suggestions, no causes of errors have been found That is why this study should be carried out Another reason for my conducting this research results from my own experience of practising teaching English at NguyÔn Du high school, Hµ TÜnh province Failure to use SVA is a recurring problem in the students' writing It is the fact that the students usually make a lot of errors involving SVA when they write a paragraph or an essay If this continues, it can be a major obstacle to their success Besides, there seems to be a neglect of SVA in teaching materials , especially at low levels For all the reasons above, in this thesis, the writer would like to make an analysis of errors made by high school students in the use of subject- verb agreement in English writing Aims of the study The study reported in this thesis aims to: - Identify the errors in using SVA in English writing made by high school students - Find out the causes of these errors - Make some suggestions for teaching and learning SVA in English writing Subjects of the study The subjects of the study include 200 students at NguyÔn Du high school, Hµ TÜnh province One hundred of them are in the tenth form The rest are the students who are in the eleventh form They learn English as a compulsory subject at school All of them are qualified enough to the test Scope of the study Due to limitation of time and other objective factors , I not hope to cover all the aspects of SVA In this thesis, I only would like to deal with the error analysis of SVA in English writing The study is carried out at Ngun Du high school, Hµ TÜnh province Method of the study In this study, the writer used the methods below: - Investigating method - Contrastive analysis - Analytic and synthetic - Descriptive method Design of the study Except for the acknowledgement, the table of contents and the references as well as the appendix, this thesis includes three main parts Part I: Introduction In the introductory part, the rationale of the study is presented The aims, subjects, scope and method of the study are then identified The design of the study is also provided Part II: Content This part consists of three chapters: Chapter I: Literature review This chapter will deal with a review of the relevant literature related to the issue under the investigation It has two sections The first one focuses on the overview of SVA in English grammar The second briefly presents the theory about the sources of errors which help us explain what factors caused errors committed by students in using SVA in English writing Error analysis , the basic tool for analysing the data is also included Chapter 2: The study The methodology used to collect data for the research will be presented in this chapter It includes the information of research setting, participants, and data collection techniques Besides, it presents some preliminary results of the study, the analysis of errors committed and the general tendency Chapter III: Findings and implications This chapter will summarise some major findings The application of the study with some implications for teaching and learning English SVA is also presented Part III: Conclusion This is the final part of the thesis It summarises what has been presented in the thesis and includes some suggestions related to English SVA for further research 10 Table 2.1 Results of section 1of test 2.6.2 Results of section of test Section of test proposes the students to make sentences using the prompts This section is a more difficult one compared with section because in addition to understanding the different uses of SVA, the students need to have good knowledge of other structures In this exercise, the focus is on four types of SVA Like the first section, the test requires answers and the maximum number of correct answers is 800 Howerver, the result of this section is really worse than the one of section 1, with the average percentage of errors 46.2% Table 2.2 indicates to us that the highest number of errors committed in this section is found in notional concord with 111 errors, making up 55.5% Not surprisingly, the students have a lot of difficulties in using proximity principle with 45% of errors It is interesting to see that errors in special agreement decrease considerably from 57% in section to 48.5% in this one Once again, the students made the fewest errors in grammatical concord with only 20% of errors This reveals their ability to master this type of SVA.(See Table 2.2) Testing point Grammatical concord Notional concord Proximity principle Special agreement Sentence Number correct Percentage Incorrect Number Percentage number 80 14 75 55 55% 45 45% 27 71 60 48 430 27% 71% 57.5% 60% 48% 53.8% 73 29 40 52 370 73% 29% 48.5% 40% 52% 46.2% Total 80% 89 206 14% 75% 20 44.5% 86 25 Table 2.2 Results of section of test 2.6.3 Result of section 33 20% 111 194 86% 25% 55.5% This section requires the students to put the verb in brackets into the correct tense It covers many aspects of the uses of SVA in English Table 2.3 shows that in total, the students made 336 errors The average percentage of wrong answers is 42% It is also clear from the table that the students have found it more difficult to use notional concord 109 errors in this item were made, accounting for 54.5% It reflects the fact that the ability to use notional concord of the students is limited And the students made 105 errors in proximity principle, making up 52.5% An interesting detail found in table 2.3 is that the percentage of errors made in special agreement (38.7%) ranks to the rd position, which is not like in section Notably, the students did not seem to experience alot of difficulties with grammatical concord They made the smallest number of errors (6 errors or 94%).(See table 2.3) Testing point Grammatical Sentence number concord Notional concord Proximity principle Special agreement Total Number Correct Percentage 94 Incorrect Number Percentage 94% 6% 65 26 91 65% 26% 45.5% 35 74 109 35% 74% 54.5% 41 54 95 41% 54% 47.5% 59 46 105 59% 46% 52.5% 42 42% 58 70 70% 30 184 61.3% 116 72 72% 28 464 58% 336 Table2.3: Results of section of test 58% 30% 28% 42% 38.7% 2.6.4 Result of test 2: This test was designed to explore the students' ability to use SVA in VietnameseEnglish translation It is proved that the students seemed to find it more difficult than the first test (grammar test) Actually, the statistics presented in table 2.4 shows that in total, 371 errors are made, accounting for 46.4%- the greater percentage than that of test As can be seen from table 2.4, the students faced the most difficulty in using notional concord with a great number of errors (104 errrors or 52%) A smaller number of errors were made in special agreement (96 errors or 48%) There are also a considerable number of 90 errors committed with the proximity principle, making up 45% It is surprising to see that apart from test 1, grammatical concord in test caused much trouble to students 34 Although its percentage of errors( 40.5%) is the lowest in test 2, it shows a remarkable increase in errors in comparison with the result of test 1.(See table 2.4) Testing point Sentence Grammatical number 29 90 119 29% 90% 59.5% 71 10 81 71% 10% 40.5% 42 54 96 42% 54% 48% 58 46 104 58% 46% 52% 58 52 110 58% 52% 55% 42 48 90 42% 48% 45% 60 44 104 60% 44% 52% 40 56 96 40% 56% 48% concord Notional concord Proximity principle Special agreement Total Correct Number Percentage Incorrect Number Percentage 429 53.6% 371 Table 2.4 Results of test 46.4% 2.6.5 General tendency The exercises in the test have examined the students' ability to use different types of SVA: grammatical concord, notional concord, proximity principle and special agreement The results of the students' performance and error frequencies in each exercise have been discussed in 2.6.1, 2.6.2, 2.6.3, 2.6.4 above A thorough analysis has been made on some specific items To establish the general tendencies of error commitment, the overall results below of the students' performance have been presented in table 2.5 below ¬ ¬ Types Total of Total of Correct Incorrect Percentage Grammatical items tokens 500 383 117 of errors 23.4% concord Notional 900 466 434 48.2% concord Proximity 700 379 321 45.9% principle Special 11 1100 580 520 47.3% agreement Table 2.5 35 The statistics in table 2.5 shows that notional concord causes students the most confusion with the overall error frequency of 48.2% Students also have much difficulty in solving the special agreement 47.3% of errors were made through tests A smaller percentage of errors committed with proximity principle was 45.9% Grammatical concord seemed to be the easiest The error percentage of this type is 23.4% Perhaps, the big frequency of appearance of this kind of SVA makes the students become familliar to it and therefore, there is a decrease in the number of errors However, it is remarkably noted that errors were not equally distributed among items within each type of SVA For example, in test 2, sentence and were designed to test the students' ability to use the grammatical concord But the error frequency for sentence is 71%, whereas errors of sentence make up only 10% This may be explained that each context containing grammatical concord offers the different level of difficulty 2.7 Errors and their causes ¬ 2.7.1 Errors and their causes in section of test As stated earlier, 315 errors made in the use of English SVA in section make up an average percentage of 39.4% In question "The police showing him the way to the theater now", verbs given here are "is; has been; are" The expected answer is "are", but 33% of the students chose "is" to complete the sentence They seemed to rely too much on the regular rule that plural nouns are formed by adding "s" or "es" to the end of singular nouns In fact, there is the existence of some exceptions The noun "police" is always plural although its form does not show any sign of the plural noun This error is due to ignorance of rule restrictions In question "Traffic a big problem in cities" The best solution is to choose "is" to fill in the blank Clearly, this question is the simplest in the test It tests the grammatical concord in number, a typical subtype of SVA However basic it is, 10% of the students made errors Due to their poor language knowledge, some students ' answers were "are", whereas some chose "be" because of incomplete application of rules These students may have found that they could gain effective communication by using a simple rule ( bare infinitive) In question "Nobody, not even the teachers listening to this song now" For this sentence, the proximity principle must be applied, as reviewed in chapter Although, 36 "nobody" is a singular indefinite pronoun, the phrase "the teachers" preceded by the verb is plural Therefore, the plural verb "are" must be chosen However, many students were not aware of this rule 49% of the students were incorrect when their choice was "is" There is no doubt that poor language knowledge results in their errors In question "Every man and woman asked to vote every year", verbs given here are "is" "are" and "have been" The rule "a compound subject joined by "and" is plural " was acquired beforehand However, 31% of the students seemed to apply that rule into the new context again "Every man and woman *are asked to vote last year", regardless of the fact that when this compound subject is preceded by" every", it is considered seperately, and a singular verb is needed This error may have resulted from overgeneralisation In question "My life and Hard times about amusing incidents in James Thurber 's chidhood " 30% of the students chose the plural verb "tell" for SVA wrongly.Whenever they meet such a subject like "S1 and S2", they are likely to mistake it for the plural subject because there are two things in their mind In fact, there are some exeptions "My life and Hard times" is the title of a work, which is always singular even when they have a plural form In other words, the verb "tells" must be taken here In this case, the students' errors are due to ignorance of rule restrictions In question "A number like 10 billion hard to comprehend " threw the students into confusion most The students failed to distinguish "a number" which refers to a singular unit from the one which mentions about individual parts As a result, while the corect answer must be "is", 84% of the students chose the plural verbs "are" or "have been" wrongly The cause of these errrors is false concepts hypothesized In question "Tom, accompanied by his friends going to the meeting tonight" The key here is "is" But 46% of the students chose "are" wrongly The students may consider "S1 +accompanied by+S2" a plural subject like the pattern "S1 +and +S2" Overgeneralization might have caused this error In question "Not only my parents, but also my aunt with that idea", 32% of the students made errors when they chose the plural verb: agree or have agreed Instead of this, "agrees" must be taken It is the fact that the students can not master the proximity principle "Not only+S1, but also +S2+V(S2)" , which leads to their errors In other words, errors of this type are believed to be caused by their poor language knowledge 37 To sum up, after a thorough investigation of errors committed in section 1, five causes of errors have been found: overgeneralisation, ignorance of rule restrictions, false concepts hypothesized, poor language knowledge and a mixed type Among them, false concept hypothesized is considered to be the predominant cause of errors in using SVA 26.7% of errors involving with this cause represents the highest percentage On the other hand, errors caused by a mixture of poor language knowledge and incomplete application of rules reaches the smallest percentage 3.2% Table 2.6 below describles all erors in using SVA in section Causes of errors Total number of Percentage Overgeneralization Ignorance of rule errors 77 63 24.4% 20% restrictions False concepts 84 26.7% hypothesized Poor language knowledge 81 25.7% Poor language knowledge and incomplete 10 3.2% Intralingual application of rules Total 315 Table 2.6: Causes of errors in section of test 2.7.2 Errors and their causes in section of test The errors committed in section are also in areas of SVA: grammatical concord, notional concord, proximity principle and special agreement Students seemed to have little difficulty in answering question Only 20% of the students gave wrong answers as "Gold and silver *is precious tournaments", instead of the expected one "Gold and silver are precious tournaments" It has been borne in their mind that "gold" and "silver" are uncount nouns which need singular verbs With that way of thinking, they may have deduced that "gold and silver" are singular too This error is due to overgeneralization In contrast, question gave the students the most trouble While the correct answer is "Here come the buses", 73% of the students made errors by using the singular verb "comes" Their answer was "Here *comes the buses" It is obvious that they could not locate 38 the subject exactly because they lacked knowledge of inverted sentences Poor language knowledge may be the cause of this error Problems still arise when the students solved question The correct sentence is " The class often disagree among themselves about plans" However, 86% of the students gave wrong answer "The class often *disagrees among themselves about plans" In this situation, they could not recognize whether "the class" refers to a singular unit or individual members That they couldn't make a clear distinction between these meanings have resulted in their errors in SVA It is due to false concepts hypothesized In question 4, the expected answer is "Everything looks new and beautiful today" However, 29% of the students used the plural verb "look" wrongly It is known that in Vietnamese "mäi thø- everything" is plural Habits in the first language made the students deduce that "everything" in English is also a plural indefinite pronoun, despite the fact that it is singular Clearly, it is sort of interlingual errors which result from mother tongue interference In question 5, the correct answer is " Twenty miles is the length of the race" However, 40% of the students made incorrect sentences like that "Twenty miles *was the length of the race" They chose "are" for SVA, which is a wrong answer These students may have considered "ten miles" as plural because of the plural form In fact, though the actual presence of the grammatiacal marker for "twenty miles" is plural, it is still singular since it is thought as a singular unit of distance Thus "twenty miles" in this sentence requires the singular verb "is" for SVA, as reviewed in chapter This error is due to overgeneralization In question 6, 52% of the students made incorrect sentences "The Bat and the Ball *sell good beer and food" With the appearance of "and", they mistook "The Bat and the Ball" for a plural subject, which leads to their wrong usage of the plural verb In fact, there are some exceptions "The Bat and the Ball" is known as the name of a pub It is a singular unit and therefore needs a singular verb "is" Overgeneralization caused this error 25% of the students committed errors when they wrote sentence "The piano, as well as the organ *are played at a big concert" Instead of "are", the correct verb must be "is" Like in section of test one, the students overgeneralize the structure "the piano and the organ" into the new context of item With that way of thinking, " The piano, as well as the organ" is also plural This error results from overgeneralization 39 For question 8, the expected answer is "Noone except his fellows are here" Nevertheless, 45% of the students gave incorrect answers "Noone , except his fellows *is here" In this situation, the students failed to master the proximity principle "Noone, except +S2+ V(S2)" This error is due to their poor language knowledge In conclusion, errors in SVA found in section are believed to be caused by mother tongue interference, overgeneralization, false concepts hypothesized and poor language knowledge Table 2.7 below shows all these errors ¬ ¬ [ Causes of errors Total number of Interlingual Mother Intralingual Percentage errors 29 7.8% 137 86 37% 23.2% tongue interference Overgeneralization False concepts hypothesized Poor language knowledge 118 31.9% Total 370 Table2.7 : Causes of errors in SVA in section of test It is clear from table 2.7 that 118 errors caused by poor language knowlege make up 31.9% This is the highest percentage of errors committed in section Intralingual errors stand at 223(137+ 86), accounting for 60.2% They take a much bigger proportion than interlingual errors (only 29 errors or 7.8%) 2.7.3 Errors and their causes in section of test As presented in table 2.3, 315 errors have been committed in using English SVA, accounting for the average percentage of 42% There are many different reasons related to this problem, that can be thoroughly analyzed as follows: In question "Aerobics (be) difficult for me", while the key is "is", 35% of the students gave wrong answer "are" Ignorance of rule restrictions caused this error The students failed in taking exceptions of plural nouns into account They consider all nouns ending in "s" plural, which is a wrong view Actually, "aerobics" denotes a kind of sports It is plural in form but singular in meaning, thus it requires a singular verb, as reviewed in chapter 40 In question "There (be) a book and five pens on the table", 59% of the students hastily put "be" into the plural form "are" , which is incorrect In their mind, "a book and five pens" is the same as "five pens and a book" and both of them need the plural verbs In fact, the proximity principle must be applied, i.e "is" is the key of this question This error is due to overgeneralization In comparison with other questions, sentence "He (read) The Times everyday" seems to be the easiest in this exercise SVA in this sentence belongs to grammatical concord, which is really basic However, 6% of the students still committed errors While the correct answer is "reads", some students seemed to be so lazy that they kept the bare infinitive- read This type of error is caused by incomplete application of rules Especially, it is mainly due to mother tongue interference In Vietnamese, "®äc- read" can go with any person Naturally, the students have carried their habit of their first language into the second language, which leads to their error In question "Several of the students just (decide) to withdraw from the course" It is acknowledged that there is a structure " several of + plural noun+ plural verb" But many students are ignorant of this Instead of using "decide" in this sentence, 58% of the students put the verb into the singular form "decides" Obviously, this error is due to their poor language knowledge In question "Bread and butter (become) my favourite after-school snack until now", 74% of the students made errors when their answer was the plural verb " have become" It should be noted that the case of "noun and noun"- the italic subject is an exception "Bread and butter", despite of being joined by "and" refers to only a singular unit, thus it takes the singular verb "has been" There is existence of a list of some nouns like this, which the students don't pay attention to Once again, this error results from ignorance of rule restrictions In question "A great number of visitors there to enjoy the beautiful scenery recently", 30% of the students gave wrong answer "has come" They acquired the rule "the number of+ plural noun+ singular verb " beforehand And they applied it into a new context of item It was wrongly deduced that " a great number of + plural noun" also needs a singular verb In fact, the key must be "have come" Overgeneralization is the cause of this error 41 In question " A majority of students (believe) that we are in no danger", 46% of the students chose the singular verb "believes" The misunderstanding of the meaning of "majority" combined with "a" preceding it made them deduce that the subject is singular and a singular verb is needed Here the proximity principle must be applied, i.e the correct answer is "are" Poor language knowledge causes this error In question " On the lawn (be) some beds of roses", many students could not locate the subject exactly.That is the reason why 28% of them chose "is" as their answer incorrectly, instead of "are" It is obvious that this error is the consequence of their poor language knowledge In summary, causes of errors made by the students in this section are attributed to overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restrictions, poor language knowledge, and a mixture of mother tongue interference and incomplete application of rules It is important to note that poor language knowledge continues to be the main cause of errors Errors caused by this amounts to 39.3% of the total Poor language knowledge thus should be taken into consideration to the learning and teaching process Another significant point is that errors derived from ignorance of rule restrictions (109 errors) far outnumber those resulting from overgeneralization (89 errors) Table 2.8 below illustrates the statistics involving these errors Causes of errors Intralingual Total number of errors 89 109 restrictions Mother tongue interference and incomplete 26.5% 32.4% Overgeneralization Ignorance of rule Percentage 1.8% application of rules Poor language knowledge 132 39.3% Total 336 Table 2.8: Causes of errors in SVA in section of test 2.7.4 Errors and their causes in test The fact is that a total amount of 371 errors made in using SVA through test indicates to us that the students have found a lot of problems in producing the correct forms of verbs in translation 42 In sentence "Mọi ngời chuẩn bị đón tÕt", 40% of the students gave wrong answers "Everybody *are preparing for Tet" It is agreed that in Vietnamese, "mäi ngêieverybody" is considered plural It makes Vietnamese students deduce incorrectly that " everybody" in English is also a plural noun In fact, it is singular and needs a singular verb Mother tongue interference is the cause of this error In sentence "Cả Mary lẫn cha mẹ cô cha tõng xem bé phim nµy", it must be translated into Vietnamese as "Neither Mary nor her parents have ever seen this movie before" However, 42% of the students used the verb "has" wrongly It is obvious that they failed to master the pattern: Neither +S1+ nor+ S2+ V (S2) This error results from their poor language knowledge In fact, 71% of the students gave wrong translation for sentence "ChiÕc quần bò xanh máy giặt" Their answer was "My blue jeans *is in the washing machine" In Vietnamese, "quần bò- jeans" is a singular noun And the students seemed to transfer the knowledge of their mother tongue to the target language In their mind, "jeans" in English is also a singular noun, despite the fact that it is always plural and requires a plural verb form This error is due to mother tongue interference Once again, mother tongue interference is the cause of the students' errors when 56% of them translated sentence " Năm mơi phút không đủ thời gian để làm bµi kiĨm tra nµy" into Vietnamese Their answer was " Fifty minutes *are not enough to finish this test" It is acknowledged that in VietNam, "năm mơi phút" is always plural and this affected their way of thinking about "fifty minutes" It may have been deduced that "fifty minutes" in English is also plural although in fact, it refers to a singular unit of time and therefore needs a singular verb "is" In sentence "Tổ chức hoạt động đợc năm rồi", the correct answer must be "This organisation has activated for years" But instead of using "has", 58% of the students selected *"have" in their translation, which is a wrong answer It is likely that they could not make a distinction between "this organisation", which refers to a singular unit and the one which indicates individual members This error is because of false concepts hypothesized Sentence "Bi- a môn thể thao a thích t«i" was translated into English as "Billiards *are my favourite sports" by 46% of the students, instead of the correct one "Biliards is my favourite sports" It is known that there are some nouns which are plural in 43 form but singular in meaning, as reviewed in chapter Among them, billiards is an example However, the students did not take these exceptions of plural nouns into account This error is due to ignorance of rule restrictions Sentence "C« Êy häc giái tiÕng Anh" was translated into English "She *study English well" by 10% of the students The expected one is "She studies English well" This error is due to the mother tongue interference In fact, Vietnamese verbs have no conjugation, i.e "häc" can go with any person This greatly affects how Vietnamese students conjudgate English verbs In sentence 8, the correct translation is "Not John but Peter and Robert are whispering" However, 48% of the students wrongly used "are" instead of "is" The reason is that the students failed to master the structure "Not +S1+but+ S2+V(S2)" Clearly, this error is due to their poor language knowledge In sum, after a thorough investigation of errors, it has been realized that the causes of errors in this section include mother tongue interference, false concepts hypothesized, ignorance of rule restrictions and poor language knowledge Among them, mother tongue interference is obvious to be the main cause of errors in using SVA, with the highest percentage of errors (47.7%).( See table 2.9 below) ¬ Causes of errors Total number of errors 177 tongue Percentage 47.7% Interlingual Mother Intralingual interference False concepts 58 13.6% hypothesized Ignorance of rule 46 12.4% restrictions Poor language knowledge 90 Total 371 Table2.9: Causes of errors in SVA in test 44 24.3% [ Chapter 3: Findings and Implications It is obvious that Vietnamese high school students faced with alot of difficulties in using English SVA In this chapter, major findings will be presented and some implications for the teaching and learning process will be suggested with a view to providing certain solution to the problems involving SVA 3.1 Major findings The results from the study show that students commit a lot of errors in using English SVA After a thorough investigation, it has been found as follows: In term of types of errors, a majority of students failed to master notional concord Diversity of various uses of notional concord really make students confused Among its subtypes, errors involving the collective nouns are made with the highest frequency Actually, it is very difficult for the students to make a distinction between the collective noun which refers to a singular unit, and the one which denotes individual members That leads to their errors in SVA Besides, students also have difficulty in many cases of special agreement, although a smaller number of errors have been made with this item Results presented in chapter indicates that most errors of this kind of SVA are found in items of indefinite pronouns that always take singular verbs, title of work as subject, inverted structures and so on 45 Proximity principle seems to cause less trouble to students in comparison with those types of SVA above Many kinds of the proximity principle are covered in both tests Most of these errors are mainly caused by poor language knowledge Because the students not know exactly in what cases the proximity principle is applied, they make errors Grammatical concord is thought to be simpler for the students Not many errors are found in concord in number and person However, there are also some irregular cases which make the percentage of errors increase In terms of error causes, the following findings have been obtained: - Most of errors collected belong to intralingual category and there are three main causes which are arranged in the following order of importance: ignorance of rule restrictions, false concepts hypothesized, and overgeneralization - Poor language knowledge is believed to be a main cause of errors - There are also mixed types of causes of errors 3.2 Implications for teaching and learning SVA in English writing to Vietnamese high school students: The most common SVA errors and possible causes have been discovered From the major findings above, some following suggestions are made to improve the quality of teaching and learning SVA in English writing at high shool 3.2.1 Suggestion for teaching SVA in English writing The investigation results point out that the main cause of students' errors in using SVA is poor language knowledge If the teaching process is improved, many errors can be avoided Therefore, we- teachers should take a greater care of our teaching activities ¬ 3.2.1.1 Suggestion for presentation First of all, teachers should provide students with comprehensive knowledge of SVA and activities which can be used to consolidate their knowledge of SVA They should teach students all the rules that the writers need to follow in order to make subjects and verbs agree in English According to Agee and Kline (1985), there are 10 situations with detailed rules as follows: Subjects joined by "and" are plural However, singular subjects followed by as well as, together with, along with and so on not become plural 46 Subjects joined by or and nor are considered seperately The subject closer to the verb determines whether the verb should be singular or plural Prepositional phrases after the subject not change the subject Here and there are not subjects These words signal a delayed subject with which the verb must agree These subject pronouns are always singular Another Everybody Noone Anybody Everyone Somebody Anyone Everything Someone Anything Much Somebody Each Neither Something Either Nobody Nothing These subject pronouns may be either singular or plural, depending on what is being discussed All Any Enough Most None Some These subject pronouns are always plural Both Few Many Several Some subjects may appear plural but they are considered singular in most cases Collective nouns like team, audience, group, etc take plural verbs if they indicate individual members, and require singular verbs if they denote a singular unit 9.Patterns ( a number of, the number of ) follow the rules below - A number of + plural noun + plural verb - The number of + plural noun + singular verb 10 Nouns such as scissors, trousers and so on are always plural They need plural verbs Teachers should remember that the more clearly the teacher explain the sentence structures, the fewer errors or confusion the learners will make It is very useful to use the structure tables to show the form of SVA We He She are is students a student 47 ... reasons above, in this thesis, the writer would like to make an analysis of errors made by high school students in the use of subject- verb agreement in English writing Aims of the study The study... description and analysis of students'' errors play an important role in the practical teaching and learning, error analysis has been an interesting area which has attracted the attention of an increasing... causes 2.7.1 Errors and their causes in section of test 2.7.2 Errors and their causes in section of test 2.7.3 Errors and their causes in section of test 2.7.4 Errors and their causes in test Chapter