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 th-ờng gặp học sinh thpt viƯc sư dơng phÐp tØnh l-ỵc tiÕng anh) graduation thesis field: linguistics Supervisor: Vũ Thị Việt H-ơng, M.A Student : Vâ ThÞ Thuú Linh, 43A2 Vinh, 2006 iii Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Vũ Thị Việt H-ơng, 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 iv list of abbreviations Ell : Ellipsis Etc : Et cetara * Unacceptable expressions : v list of tables Table 2.1 Results of exercise Table 2.2 Result of erxercise Table 2.3 Result of exercise Table 2.4 Results of exercise Table 2.5 Number of errors and their causes in exercise Table 2.6 Number of errors and their causes in exercise Table 2.7 Number of errors and their causes in exercise Table 2.8 Number of errors and their causes in exercise Table 2.9 The overall results vi tables of contents Acknowledgements Lists of abbreviations Lists of tables Tables of contents i ii iii iv Part I Introduction 1 2 3 3 1.1 Rationale of the study 1.2 Aims of the study 1.3 Research questions of the study 1.4 Subjects of the study 1.5 Procedure of the study 1.6 Scope of the study 1.7 Method of the study 1.8 Design of the study Part II Content Chapter I Theoretical background 1.1 Ellipsis as a cohesive device 1.1.1 The concept of ellipsis 1.1.2 Nominal ellipsis 1.1.2.1 The structure of the english nominal group 1.1.2.2 Ellipsis within the nominal group 1.1.3 Verbal ellipsis 1.1.3.1 The structure of the english verbal group 1.1.3.2 Ellipsis within the verbal group 1.1.3.3 Lexical ellipsis 1.1.3.4 Operator ellipsis 1.1.4 Clausal ellipsis 1.1.4.1 The structure of the english clause 1.1.4.2 Modal ellipsis and propositional ellipsis 1.1.4.3 Direct respones 1.1.4.4 Indirect responses 1.2 Summary 1.3 Errors in language learning process 1.3.1 The notion of errors 1.3.2 Errors and mistakes 1.3.3 Error analysis 1.3.4 Causes of errors in second language learning 1.3.4.1 Interlingual errors 1.3.4.2 Intralingual errors 5 5 7 10 11 11 11 13 14 14 15 15 15 18 18 19 20 vii Chapter II the study 2.1 Research setting 2.2 Data collection 2.3 Preliminary results and data collection 2.3.1 Results of exercise 2.3.2 Results of exercise 2.3.3 Results of exercise 2.3.4 Results of exercise 2.4 Errors and theirs causes 2.4.1 Errors and theirs causes in exercise 2.4.2 Errors and theirs causes in exercise 2.4.3 Errors and theirs causes in exercise 2.4.4 Errors and theirs causes in exercise 2.4.5 General tendency 23 23 23 24 24 24 25 26 26 26 29 32 35 38 3.1 Major findings 3.2 Implications for teaching and learning English ellipsis 3.2.1 Implications for teaching English ellipsis 3.2.1.1.Suggestions for presentation 3.2.1.2.Suggestions for practice 3.2.1.3.Suggestions for production 3.2.2 Implications for learning English ellipsis 3.3 Suggestions for further research 39 39 40 40 40 43 44 45 45 Part III conclusion 46 Chapter III Findings and discussion References Appendix 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 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: What errors secondary school students commit in using ellipsis in English? What might be the causes and sources of the errors in using ellipsis in English? 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 subject at school Most of them have learnt English for 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 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 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 37 affected by the negative interference from their mother tongue when remaining the 2nd occurrence of head noun in translated sentence Thus, the cause of errors committed in this question might have resulted from mother tongue interference In question 6, students did not have their answers and 74 students could not give the correct answer The errors in this question were the omission of subject + auxiliary where they were impossible The repeated subject + auxiliary she will were omitted in the students' answer: She sings very well, but I don't think sing tonight In this question the ellipted item should be the lexical verb sing According to Quirk et al (1972), ellipted of repeated subject is only acceptable if the lexical verb is BE and this lexical verb is also omitted Besides, in this question it is required to have subject after the clause I don't think This error might have been the result of the mixture of poor language knowledge and incomplete application of rules In one word, after the investigation into errors committed in VietnameseEnglish translation, it has been found that errors in using nominal, verbal and clausal ellipsis consist of interlingual, intralingual and mixed type The interlingual errors are derived from mother tongue interference The intralingual ones are derived from incomplete application of rule The mixed type error was the mixture of poor language knowledge and incomplete application of rule The major cause in translation exercise is mother tongue interference As the table 2.8 below shows, the interlingual errors make a great number: 188 errors (approximately 46.5%) In terms of types of ellipsis, the errors are distributed nearly the same in all three areas: 127 errors (31.4%) in nominal ellipsis, 135 errors (33.4%) in verbal ellipsis and 142 errors (35.2%) in clausal ellipsis (See table 2.8) 38 Types of causes Interlingual Mother Nominal Verbal Clausal All three areas ell ell ell of ell 63 61 124 142 142 64 74 138 127 135 142 404 31.4% 33.4% 35.2% tongue interference Intralingual Incomplete application of rules Mix of poor language knowledge and incomplete application of rules Total Percentage Table 2.8 Number of errors and their causes in exercise 2.4.5 General tendency The exercises in the test have examined the students' ability to use different types of ellipsis: nominal, verbal and clausal ellipsis The results of the students' performance and error frequencies in each exercise (section) have been discussed in 2.7.1, 2.7.2, 2.7.3 and 2.7.4 above To establish the general tendencies of error commitment, the overall results of the students' performance have been presented in table 2.9 below Types of ell Total of Total of Correct Incorrect Percentage item tokens Nominal 746 330 416 55.8% Verbal 678 322 356 52.5% Clausal 861 325 536 62.3% of errors Table 2.9 The overall results The statistics in table 2.9 show that clausal ellipsis is the most difficult area, with the overall error frequency of 62.3% Nominal ellipsis ranks second to clausal ellipsis, with the error frequency of 55.8% Verbal ellipsis seems to be the less, nevertheless the error frequency is still considerable: 52.5% All of the errors may be looked at from different sides They are interlingual as they resulted from language transfer; and they are intralingual as the result of inadequate knowledge and faulty use of different items of the target language 39 chapter III: findings and discussion In the previous section, the causes of errors have been found and it has been evidenced that Vietnamese learners committed a great number in using ellipsis In this chapter, major findings will be presented and some implications for teaching and learning process will be presented as well with a view to preventing errors 3.1 major findings The results from the study show that students commit a lot of errors in using ellipsis Their errors are misomission of ellipted item (in exercise and 3), misplacement of ellipted item (in exercise2) and most of the students not use ellipted item when translating sentences from Vietnamese into English to produce coherent sentences in real situations After a thorough investigation, it has been found that many students had problems in understanding and using English ellipsis The results of four exercises indicate that students' errors belong to two main types: interlingual and intralingual errors The interlingual errors are caused by mother tongue interference The causes of intralingual errors are of various types including overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restrictions, incomplete application of rules and false concept hypothesized Among these intralingual errors, incomplete application of rules seems to be the biggest source of errors for students in their attempt to use ellipsis in English Poor language knowledge is also a significant cause leading to errors (69 out of 316 errors in exercise 1, and 118 out of 198 errors in exercise of the instrument) As the results of the study showed, students had difficulties in using ellipsis in English, depending on the types of exercises that they were asked to This tends to show that students did not really master the use of ellipsis in English What is more, the fact that mother tongue had great negative influences on students' use of different types of ellipsis in different exercises seems to 40 suggest that students need more guidance and knowledge about similarities and differences between ellipsis system in English and Vietnamese Therefore, suggestions to help students acquire the use of ellipsis in English might include: _ More attention should be paid to ellipsis in teaching as well as in learning _ Detailed and systematic introduction of all types of ellipsis in English _ Detailed discussions on the similarities and differences between ellipsis system in English and Vietnamese _ Designing of different tasks for students to use all types of ellipsis in different situations 3.2 implicationS for teaching and learning english ellipsis In order to help students improve their knowledge of ellipsis so as to avoid possible errors, we would like to make some suggestions for teaching and learning ellipsis in English discourse 3.2.1 Suggestions for teaching English ellipsis 3.2.1.1 Suggestions for presentation One of the most important outcomes of this study is that it has been proved that Vietnamese students incompletely understand the meaning of ellipted items in English Thus, when teaching, relevant and brief guidelines should be included for general understanding to identify all the ellipted items and to draw students' attention to these items The teacher should give a brief explanation when ellipsis is used in some situations by asking in such a way to make the elliptical item explicit For example, when coming across an expression like: Although told to stop, he kept on working; the teacher can give such questions like: Who was told to stop? or What is the relationship between he and told to stop? To answer these questions, the learners have to search the discourse backwards When the learners have found out the answers, it is the teacher's duty to point out that in the expression: Although told to stop, he kept on working, the subject he and auxiliary verb was have been ellipted to avoid repetition and create cohesive links between two clauses in the sentence This may give a rise to some more questions such as Why we need to omit these elements? or When is the 41 ellipsis of subject and auxiliary verb used?, etc After that, depending on the level of the learners, the teacher may stop or go on to give general or detailed descriptions of ellipted items The method of presentation in teaching English ellipsis is one of the important factors that help students master the use of ellipted items The first thing related to the meaning and use of ellipted items is that individual ellipted item can have different meanings in different contexts Thus, in order to help students avoid producing deviant structures of overgeneralization, incomplete application of rules, etc; the teacher, when presenting a new structure, should also give a revision of the learned ones related to the present structure and point out the similarities and differences between them For example, in the sentence: I may see you tomorrow or I may phone later in the day; the subjects I in both clauses are co-referential and the second clause is linked with a coordinator or, so the 2nd occurrence of the subject I is omitted for purpose of coherence In other cases, if the clause is introduced by a subordinator and linked by a coordinator such as She didn't tell him the bad news because he was tired and because he looked unwell; the omission of the 2nd occurrence of subject he alone is impossible The omission of this repeated subject is only acceptable with the ellipsis of the 2nd occurrence of the subordinator because: She didn't tell him the bad news because he was tired and looked unwell It is suggested that ellipted items should be presented in different contexts so that the learners could distinguish the use of ellipted items in real situations The second thing related to the meaning and use of ellipted items is the interpretation of them With the results of the study, it would be better to combine the interpretation and the positions of ellipted items in the presentation stage of the teaching process The interpretation and positions of ellipted items should not be only clarified with explainations but also illustrated by concrete examples The following example is an example of a presentation of a typical ellipsis within sentence: 42 Joan will cook the meals today and Barbara may cook the meals tomorrow  Joan will cook the meals today and Barbara may tomorrow With this presentation, it should be pointed out that the realized item cook the meals must be in the first clause because only the first part of predication is ellipted When the predication is ellipted completely, there is a choice between the realized items in the first clause or in the last Joan will cook the meals today and Barbara may cook the meals today  Joan will cook the meals today and Barbara may Or: Joan will, and Barbara may, cook the meals today The third thing of significance is that the students not often use ellipted items in production of language In translation, the students tend to transfer every word from Vietnamese into English and repeat all the words already used in the first clause Thus, it is better to present the ellipted items and their employments in a system of types of ellipsis with the interpretation of these items For example: One bright morning when I was nineteen, I packed all I had on my back, (I) left my village and (I) walked up to London for gold and glory In this presentation, the meaning and use of the ellipted items I are presented in a system of types of ellipsis: nominal ellipsis To sum up, in presentation stage, the teacher should present the use of ellipsis in English in a system with careful explainations and give examples in different contexts Besides, during the presentation stage, the teacher should predict all negative transfer of the students' mother tongue and errors they often commit; and point them to the students This can be done by making comparison between the target language and mother tongue 43 A good and clear presentation will help the students master the meanings and forms of English ellipted items and make them feel more confident when using this cohesive device to make their writing coherent 3.2.1.2 Suggestions for practice All of the above presentation techniques in teaching English ellipsis would be more beneficial to students' acquisition with the assistance of practice exercises Practice exercises should be designed in different contexts to enable students to master the meanings, forms as well as the use of ellipted items The following exercises are suggested in A University Grammar of English by Randolph Quirk and Sidney Greenbaum (1976) Here, only exercises that are suitable for secondary students are taken These exercises aims at checking students' knowledge of English ellipsis Type 1: The aim of this type of exercise is to help the students focus on the meaning of ellipted items Expand the following ellipted sentences so as to make their meaning clearer E.g See anything interesting?  Did you see anything interesting? Anybody telephone? Had a good time? Sorry, had to find my coat Surprised you didn't hurt yourself more seriously Anything matter with your foot? Type 2: The aim of this type is to increase the students' awareness of syntactic features of ellipsis Omit the words or phrases, which can be ellipted in the following sentences and say for each sentence whether it is a nominal, verbal or clausal ellipsis E.g Ann works much harder than most of her friends work  Ann works much harder than most of her friends (Verbal ellipsis) 44 Peter ate a cheese sandwich and he drank a glass of beer We wanted fried fish, but they gave us boiled fish I found more blackberries than you found She was poor but she was honest It's cold in December in England, but it's cold in July in New Zealand Yesterday John was given a railway set, and Sue was given a doll Type 3: The aim of this type is to show the students the relationship between the English ellipsis items and their Vietnamese equivalents Translate the following sentences into English using elliptical constructions Đừng đến em không muốn Kia mũ Jane, mũ Xin lỗi, đến muộn Anh bắt đầu anh sẵn sàng Bây không xem phim nh-ng tr-ớc th-ờng hay 3.2.1.3 Suggestions for production The aim of all the language teaching process is communicative objectives, which are directly brought about in the production stage Thus, the production stage should be paid great attention to and taken into consideration It is a fact that Vietnamese students fail to employ ellipted items in a natural way They are inflexible in applying a wide variety of ellipted items and tend to be unconfident in using ellipsis In order to overcome this limitation, the teacher should create as many real situations as possible for students to produce language messages These situations should be familiar to students in their everyday life Notices and advertisements are significant forms for production The following are examples: Instructions: In groups, write a short notices for the school/office for the following items: You want to sell a bicycle Give a description and say how much you want for it You are looking for someone to share your flat Give details of the flat, the rent, and who contact to 45 You found a watch lying in the street Say exactly where and when you found it, describe the watch, and say how the owner can reclaim it (Mary Stephens; 1986:55) Implications for learning English ellipsis The above- mentioned methods are useful for teachers who teacher a foreign language However, in order to master the use of ellipsis, students should try their best to study and they must be aware of their learning strategies when learning a foreign language They should: _ Be aware of basic cohesive devices, especially ellipsis, and know how they can be used in different contexts _ Practise a lot with exercises related to ellipsis and try to make a habit of using ellipsis naturally in real situations _ Study English ellipsis in system in terms of three types of ellipsis _ Master the basic similarities and differences between ellipsis in English and in Vietnamese _ Share knowledge, experiences with the teachers and classmates 3.3 Suggestions for further research Due to the constraints in time, study material as well as limited knowledge, the thesis cannot completely cover all of the problems in learning English ellipsis Thus, on the basis of the study, it is suggested that future research should include tasks which are designed to test different types of ellipsis separately in different sections as well as to test mixed types of ellipsis in a comprehensive test 46 part III: conclusion The thesis has reviewed English ellipsis and its subtypes have also been described Based on the theory of ellipsis of some famous researchers, the results of previous contrastive analysis studies on ellipsis between English and Vietnamese, the study is a full analysis of errors made by secondary school students in the three areas of ellipsis: nominal, verbal and clausal ellipsis The study is carried out with a view to investigating how familiar secondary school students are to ellipsis, how ellipsis is taught at secondary schools and then what suggestions can be made to avoid errors committed in using ellipsis by the students The error analysis has proved that secondary school students commit a lot of errors in using ellipsis With the quantitative method, all of the errors collected by the means of an elicitation instrument full of contextual questions have been classified in terms of linguistics and their causes have been revealed Errors collected consist of two main types: interlingual and intralingual errors In terms of error causes, intralingual errors are traced to four major causes: overgeneralization, incomplete application of rules, ignorance of rule restrictions and false concept hypothesized Among these causes, incomplete application of rules seems to be the most common one The cause of interlingual errors is mother tongue interference Besides, poor language knowledge is also a noticeable cause leading to a great number of errors Together with error analysis process, some suggestions have been raised in order to prevent and reduce errors covering three stages of the teaching process The presentation stage should be given in a way that could help the students fully understand types of ellipsis consisting of such important aspects as the meanings, forms and use of ellipted items Contexts are an essential factor to clarify the existence of the above aspects Negative transfer from Vietnamese should be predicted and pointed to students with a specific comparison between 47 the two languages Furthermore, practice is also recommended as a technique to deal with errors Several types of exercises with meaningful contexts and communicative purpose have been suggested for practising Production, the final stage, should be done with real-life situations and carefully exemplified by the teacher with a view to encouraging students to use ellipsis Finally, suggestions for further research in the field of ellipsis have been raised with the hope that the ideas and suggestions of the study will be useful to those who wish to carry on research in this area and those who are concerned with the field of error analysis 48 references References in English Borsley, R (1991) Syntactic Theory, Edward Arnold, London Brown, G & Yule, G (1983) Discourse Analysis, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Cook, G (1989) Discourse, Oxford University Press, London Corder, S (1967) The Significance of Learners' Errors, IRAL Corder, S.P (1974) Error Analysis, The Edinburgh Course in Applied Linguistics, Vol 3, Oxford University Press Halliday, M.A.K & Hasan, R (1976) Cohesion in English, Longman, London Hien, Huynh Huu (1997) Ellipsis in Discourse - a Contrastive Analysis of English and Vietnamese, M.A.Thesis, Vietnam National University - Hanoi Foreign Language College Hong, Nguyen Thi Thuy.(2002) The Use of Ellipsis in Written English by the Third_Year Students of English at Hanoi Open University: Problems and Solutions, M.A.Thesis, Hanoi University of Foreign Studies Hubbard, Jones, Thornton, Wheeler (1987) A Training Course for TEFL, Oxford University Press 10 James, C (1998) Errors in Language Learning and Use, Addison Wesley Longman Limited 11 James, M.H (1987) Methodology in TESOL, Cambridge University Press 12 Mc Carthy, M (1991) Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers, Cambridge University Press 13 Quirk, R et al (1972), A Grammar of Contemporary English, Longman Group Ltd, Essex 14 Quirk, R and Greenbaum, S (1976) A University Grammar of English, Longman Group Ltd 49 15 Quirk, R and Greenbaum, S (1976) A University Grammar of English_ Workbook, Longman group Ltd 16 Richards, J.C (1971) A non-contrastive Approach to Error Analysis, Error Analysis Perspective on Second Language Acquisition, Longman, London 17 Richards, J.C, Platt, J and Platt, H (1992) Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics 18 Segal, E (1993) Love Story, Youth Publishing House, Hanoi 19 Stephens, M (1986) Practise Writing, Longman Group Ltd 20 Swan, M (1995) Practical English Usage, Oxford University Press, London References in Vietnamese Diệp Quang Ban (1989) Ngữ Pháp Tiếng Việt, Nhà Xuất Bản Giáo Dục, Hà Nội Trần Ngọc Thêm (1985) Hệ Thống Liên Kết Văn Bản Tiếng Việt, Nhà Xuất Bản Khoa Học Hà Nội 50 51 vinh university foreign language department - - vâ thÞ thïy linh ellipsis in english: an analysis of errors made by secondary school students (phân tích lỗi th-ờng gặp häc sinh thpt viƯc sư dơng phÐp tØnh l-ỵc tiÕng anh) graduation thesis field: linguistics Vinh, 2006 ...ii vinh university foreign language department - - ellipsis in english: an analysis of errors made by secondary school students (ph©n tích lỗi th-ờng gặp học sinh thpt việc sư dơng... school students commit in using ellipsis in English? What might be the causes and sources of the errors in using ellipsis in English? What suggestions can be made in the learning and teaching processes... consequences of unsuccessful language" Error analysis is the study and analysis of errors made by second language learners Error analysis examines errors in the system in order to determine the underlying