Luận văn ellipsis in english an analysis of errors made by secondary school students = phân tích lỗi thường gặp của học sinh THPT trong việc sử dụng phép tỉnh lược trong tiếng anh

i ii vinh university foreign language department ---------------------- ellipsis in english: an analysis of errors made by secondary school students (phân tích lỗi thờng gặp của học sinh thpt trong việc sử dụng phép tỉnh lợc trong tiếng anh) graduation thesis field: linguistics Supervisor: Vũ Thị Việt Hơng, M.A. Student : Võ Thị Thuỳ Linh, 43A2 Vinh, 2006 Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Vò ThÞ ViÖt H¬ng, M.A, who has helped me to shape the idea of the study and given me valuable guidance, corrections and encouragement for accomplishment of the thesis. I would also like to express my sincere thanks to all of my teachers at the Foreign language department of Vinh University for their lectures on the area which enables me to gain a lot of theoretical as well as practical knowledge. Finally, I am particularly grateful to my parents and my friends for their encouragements and spiritual support to my process of writing of the thesis. Vinh, summer, 2006 Vâ ThÞ Thuú Linh iii list of abbreviations Ell. : Ellipsis Etc. : Et cetara * : Unacceptable expressions iv list of tables Table 2.1. Results of exercise 1 Table 2.2. Result of erxercise 2 Table 2.3. Result of exercise 3 Table 2.4. Results of exercise 4 Table 2.5. Number of errors and their causes in exercise 1 Table 2.6. Number of errors and their causes in exercise 1 Table 2.7. Number of errors and their causes in exercise 1 Table 2.8. Number of errors and their causes in exercise 1 Table 2.9. The overall results v tables of contents Acknowledgements i Lists of abbreviations ii Lists of tables iii Tables of contents iv Part I. Introduction 1 1.1. Rationale of the study 1 1.2. Aims of the study 2 1.3. Research questions of the study 2 1.4. Subjects of the study 2 1.5. Procedure of the study 3 1.6. Scope of the study 3 1.7. Method of the study 3 1.8. Design of the study 3 Part II. Content Chapter I. Theoretical background 5 1.1. Ellipsis as a cohesive device 5 1.1.1. The concept of ellipsis 5 1.1.2. Nominal ellipsis 5 1.1.2.1. The structure of the english nominal group 5 1.1.2.2. Ellipsis within the nominal group 6 1.1.3. Verbal ellipsis 7 1.1.3.1. The structure of the english verbal group 7 1.1.3.2. Ellipsis within the verbal group 8 1.1.3.3. Lexical ellipsis 9 1.1.3.4. Operator ellipsis 10 1.1.4. Clausal ellipsis 11 1.1.4.1. The structure of the english clause 11 1.1.4.2. Modal ellipsis and propositional ellipsis 11 1.1.4.3. Direct respones 13 1.1.4.4. Indirect responses 14 1.2. Summary 14 1.3. Errors in language learning process 15 1.3.1. The notion of errors 15 1.3.2. Errors and mistakes 15 1.3.3. Error analysis 18 1.3.4. Causes of errors in second language learning 18 1.3.4.1. Interlingual errors 19 1.3.4.2. Intralingual errors 20 Chapter II. the study 23 2.1. Research setting 23 vi 2.2. Data collection 23 2.3. Preliminary results and data collection 24 2.3.1. Results of exercise 1 24 2.3.2. Results of exercise 2 24 2.3.3. Results of exercise 3 25 2.3.4. Results of exercise 4 26 2.4. Errors and theirs causes 26 2.4.1. Errors and theirs causes in exercise 1 26 2.4.2. Errors and theirs causes in exercise 2 29 2.4.3. Errors and theirs causes in exercise 3 32 2.4.4. Errors and theirs causes in exercise 4 35 2.4.5. General tendency 38 Chapter III. Findings and discussion 39 3.1. Major findings 39 3.2. Implications for teaching and learning English ellipsis 40 3.2.1. Implications for teaching English ellipsis 40 3.2.1.1.Suggestions for presentation 40 3.2.1.2.Suggestions for practice 43 3.2.1.3.Suggestions for production 44 3.2.2. Implications for learning English ellipsis 45 3.3. Suggestions for further research 45 Part III. conclusion 46 References Appendix vii part I: introduction 1.1. Rationale of the study In recent years, together with the increasing need for English learners, great efforts have been made in order to improve the quality of English teaching and learning. Searching for an implementation of new and more effective teaching methods is one part of these great efforts. Special attention has also been paid to research in different areas of the teaching and learning English. Given the fact that descriptions and analyses of students' errors play a crucial role in the improvement of the teaching and learning, error analysis has been an interesting area which has attracted the attention of an increasing number of researchers. Since the Vietnamese and English languages have very district grammar systems, Vietnamese learners of English tend to encounter a lot of difficulties in their acquisition of the target language. Among these difficulties is the use of ellipsis in English. As a cohesive device, ellipsis plays an important role in the making of discourse. Perhaps, for this reason, concerning English discourse, ellipsis seems to have been given a great deal of attention. This is revealed in the works of Halliday and Hasan (1976), Brown and Yule (1983), Halliday and Hasan (1985), Cook (1989), Mc Carthy (1993) and so on. In Vietnam, there have been a number of studies and B.A graduation theses by ELT methodologists and students focusing on cohesive devices and error analysis, such as Huynh Huu Hien (1997), Nguyen Thi Thuy Hong (2002). However, to my best knowledge, very little research has been done on error analysis in the area of ellipsis. Therefore, based on the outcomes of the previous contrastive analysis studies concerning cohesive devices, an analysis of errors in using ellipsis is intended to be an effort contributing to filling the gap. The second reason for conducting the present research originated from the fact that many secondary-school students make mistakes in different aspects of ellipsis in English. It is obvious that failure to use ellipsis usually results in 1 students producing long, clumsy or unnatural sentences in English. For example, Vietnamese learners of English may produce utterances as: A: Have you done what I told you? B: Yes, I have done what you told me. Instead, the native speakers use a short and natural answer: Yes, I have. Meanwhile, there seems to be a neglect of ellipsis in teaching materials, especially at low levels. Therefore, another aim of this research is to identify the possible causes of errors and to suggest some ways of overcoming them so as to help students produce better discourse in English. 1.2. Aims of the study The study reported in this thesis aims to: _ Identify common errors in using English ellipsis as a cohesive device in writing made by secondary school students. _ Find out the major causes and sources of these errors based on the analysis of the frequent errors made by these students. _ Make some suggestions for teaching and learning English ellipsis. 1.3. Research questions of the study The study in this thesis is carried out in order to answer the following research questions: 1. What errors do secondary school students commit in using ellipsis in English? 2. What might be the causes and sources of the errors in using ellipsis in English? 3. What suggestions can be made in the learning and teaching processes in order to help students acquire the use of ellipsis in English? 1.4. The subjects of the study The subjects for the study include 100 students from two twelfth classes (12C and 12D) at Sam Son secondary school. They learn English as a compulsory 2 subject at school. Most of them have learnt English for 6 years and their knowledge of English is a full grammatical aspect. All of the students have enough condition to take part in the test. 1.5. procedure of the study For the characteristics of this particular study, the procedure for error analysis can be described in detail as follows: Firstly, all the 100 student participants were asked to do the test under the same conditions. The time allowance for doing the test was 90 minutes. Students were not allowed to use any reference books or dictionaries, and they did the test under the researcher's supervision. The data collected were then analyzed using descriptive method. Descriptive statistics were used to obtain information on how the subjects performed the task, and how often ellipsis errors occurred. The exploration was based on the theoretical discussion of learner's errors presented in chapter I. 1.6. Scope of the study _ Analyze errors through the tests. _ Classify errors into typical types. _ Find out related reasons. 1.7. Method of the study We would apply the quantitative methodology in this research using a test to collect students' errors which are to be analyzed. It is expected that 4 exercises will be used. The test will be designed in the written form involving different language contexts to provoke receptive and expressive errors in ellipsis. The test will be done by a sample of approximately 100 students from two twelfth classes randomly chosen in Sam Son high school, without using any reference books or dictionaries and under my supervision. 1.8. Design of the study The thesis consists of three parts. 3