Tài liệu An investigation into writing difficulties of the first year english majors at ha noi university of industry

M IN ISTRY OF EDU CA TIO N AND TRAINING HANOI UNIVERSITY K IE U N G U Y E T N G A AN INVESTIGATION INTO WRITING DIFFICULTIES OF THE FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY SU D M IT T E D IN P A R T IA L FU L FIL L M E N T OF REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS IN TESOL SUPERVISOR’S NAME: DOAN THI MINH NGUYET, MA Hanoi August 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS T A B L E OF C O N T E N T S ...............................................................................................................I A C K N O W L E D G E M E N T S ....................................................................................................... I ll A B S T R A C T ...................................................................................................................................... IV L IST S O F FIGURES AND T A B L E S .......................................................................................V LIST OF A B B R E V IA T IO N S A ND S Y M B O L S ................................................................. VI C H A PT E R 1: IN T R O D U C T IO N ................................................................................................ 1 1.1. B ackground to the stu d y .................................................................................................1 1.1.1. Writing syllabus................................................................................................1 1.1.2. The writing course book................................................................................... 2 1.2. A ims of the s t u d y .................................................................................................................3 1.3. S cope of the s t u d y .............................................................................................................. 3 1.4. S ignificance of the s t u d y ................................................................................................ 3 1.5. O utline of the th e sis ..........................................................................................................3 C H A PTER 2: LITE R A T U R E R E V IE W ................................................................................. 5 2.1. A pproaches to teaching writing in EFL/ESL programs ...................................... 5 2.1.1. Focus on syntactic accuracy approach............................................................ 5 2.1.2. Focus on text approach (the pattern approach).............................................. 6 2.1.3. Focus on the writers approach (the process approach).................................. 7 2.1.4. Focus on fluency/content approach................................................................. 8 2.1.5. Focus on purpose approach (focus on the reader approach)..........................8 2.2. EFL/ESL learner - writing difficulties......................................................................9 2.2.1. Difficulties related to features o f writing texts...............................................12 2.2.1.1. Difficulties in morphosyntactic- using.............................................................12 2.2.1.1.1. Difficulties in inflection- using............................................................... 12 2.2.1.1.2. Difficulties in structure-using................................................................ 14 2.2.1.2. Difficulties in organization.................................................................................14 2.2.1.2.1. Difficulties in support - w riting.............................................................15 2.2.1.2.2. Difficulties in rhetoric - using................................................................. 15 2.2.1.2.3. Difficulties in mechanic- using............................................................... 18 2.2.2. Difficulties related to composing processes...................................................18 2.2.2.1. Difficulties related to idea-form ing.................................................................. 19 2.2.2.1.1. Lacking id ea s................................................................................................. 19 2.2.2.1.2. Lacking writing steps................................................................................... 20 2.2.2.1.3. Lacking m otivation.......................................................................................22 2.2.2.2. Difficulties related to cognition.....................................................................23 2.2.2.2.I. Difficulties inculture-understanding....................................................... 23 2.2.22.2. Difficulties in concept-using...................................................................24 2.3. S um m a ry ................................................................................................................................24 C H A PTER 3: M E T H O D O L O G Y .......................................................................................... 26 3.1. R esearch q uest io n s ......................................................................................................... 26 3.2. S ubjects of the st u d y ......................................................................................................26 3.2.1. The students................................................................................................... 26 3.2.2. The teachers o f writing.................................................................................. 27 3.3. D ata collection instruments ......................................................................................27 3.3.1. Questionnaire 1...............................................................................................28 3.3.2. Questionnaire 2.............................................................................................. 29 3.4. S um m a ry ................................................................................................................................ 31 C H A PTER 4: R ESU LTS A ND D IS C U S S IO N .................................................................... 32 4.1. R e su l t s .................................................................................................................................. 32 4.1.1. First- year students ’previous learning experience....................................... 32 4.1.2. First-year students ’ attitude towards learning writing.................................. 33 4.1.3. First - year students ’ current learning experience........................................ 34 4.1.3.1. Students’ response................................................................................................34 4.1.3.2. Teachers’ responses............................................................................................. 39 4.2. D isc u ssio n .............................................................................................................................44 4.2.1. Regarding students ’ writing difficulties..........................................................46 4.2.2. Regarding students ’ writing activities............................................................46 4.3. S um m ary ................................................................................................................................ 47 C H A PTER 5: SU G G ESTIO N S AND C O N C L U SIO N S....................................................48 5.1. S uggestions ...........................................................................................................................48 5.1.1. To the teachers................................................................................................ 49 5.1.2. To the students................................................................................................ 50 5.1.3. To the course book.......................................................................................... 53 5.2. C o nclusions .......................................................................................................................... 55 R E FE R E N C E S.................................................................................................................................. 58 A PPEN D IX 1 ......................................................................................................................................63 ST U D E N T ’S Q U E S T IO N N A IR E ..............................................................................................63 A PPEN D IX 2 ......................................................................................................................................68 T E A C H E R ’S Q U E S T IO N N A IR E .............................................................................................68 ACKNOW LEDGEMENTS First, I would like to express my gratitude to my thesis supervisor, Mrs. Doan Thi Minh Nguyet, who read my manuscript with great care, gave thoughtful and meaningful comments and provided valuable support in the preparation and completion of this thesis. I am also grateful to the organizers of this master course, Mr. Vu Van Dai, Head of the Department of Post Graduate Studies of Hanoi University and Mrs. Nguyen Thai Ha who had given many useful comments on my thesis and also the teachers of the Department. My special thanks go to the teachers and students who were very responsive to the survey questionnaires, without whom the thesis could not have been possible. Addition, who was particularly of great help in my preparing and fulfilling of the thesis is my brother. My heartfelt appreciation is expressed to him. Last, like many other acknowledgements, mine end with references to my family. I am greatly indebted to my parents who, as always, have been wholeheartedly supportive. ABSTRACT This thesis examines the EFL writing difficulties of the first-year students majoring in English at HaUI, Hanoi University of Industry. In order to do this, questionnaires were delivered to the first-year English majors in course 2007-2011 and writing teachers of the subjects concerned to elicit data about (1) students’ English writing activities; (2) the difficulties they were faced with; and (3) their suggestions of what should be done to better the situation. The responses from the teachers and students were the bases to decide what to do to facilitate students’ EFL writing and improve the quality of their writing. The results of the study show that (1) the students did not employ necessary composing processes, they spent very little time on outlining, used translation (from their mother tongue) quite often in the process of writing, and revised drafts mainly for mechanical mistakes; (2) they still had difficulty in writing sentences and in knowing what particularly to do to produce a certain type of text. The thesis suggests that (1) students’ composing processes should be rectified in several ways: essential composing processes should not be skipped, more time must he devoted to outlining, the use o f translation must be eliminated, and revising of drafts should place more emphasis on ideas and organizational aspects, rather than on mechanical mistakes alone; (2) explicit and concrete instructions on writing a particular type of text should be given. Obviously, not only students and the syllabus are responsible for carrying out those changes but teachers, as facilitators to students’ writing, should play an active part in the works as well. IV LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES Chapter 2 ' Figure 2.1: What writers have to deal with as they produce a piece o f writing 10 Figure 2.2: R.B. Kaplan’s rhetoric patterns o f written discourse in different cultures Figure 2.3: English vs Vietnamese new item in patterns 16 17 Chapter 4 Table 4.1. Students opinions about time for writing skillsat the high school... 32 Table 4.2. The language skill(s) that first-year students think themost important ..33 Table 4.3. First-year students’ difficulties in English writing.................................35 Table 4.4. Students’ opinions about the difficulties of writing tasks.......................37 Table 4.5. Teachers’ opinions about the most important textual feature(s) to be taught to first-year students..................................................................... 39 Table 4.6. Teachers’ opinions about the levels o f difficulty o f writing task to first- year student writers.................................................................................. 40 Table 4.7. Effects of negative transfer (from students’ mother tongue) on their English writing..........................................................................................41 Table 4.8. Teachers’ opinions about the appropriate writing task for first-year students......................................................................................................42 Table 4.9. Teachers’ opinions about the most appropriate writing approach for first-year students......................................................................................43 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS EFL: English as Foreign Language ESL: English as Second Language CUP: Cambridge University Press OUP: Oxford University Press LI: first language L2: second language HaUI: Hanoi University of Industry TOEFL: Test of English as a Foreign Language. TESOL: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Language * : the absence of a compulsory element, which makes the expression inappropriate or incorrect CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION This chapter provides readers with detailed information on background to the study, the aims, the scope of the study, the significance, and the outline of the thesis. 1.1. Background to the study The students of this study had Effective Writing (by J. Withrow 1987, CPU, New York) as their writing course book. There are eight units altogether in the book but the first-year English majors covered only the first five units, including: Formal and informal letters; Writing a story; Reports; Articles; Instructions in 45, 45- minute periods. There is one class contact per week and each class is three periods long, the total length of the course is accordingly 15 weeks. While effective writing skills are so important to the first-year students, at present as well as in the future, as a teacher of writing to these first-year English majors, I have noticed that these freshmen have many difficulties in writing and there are accordingly quite a number of errors in their written works. Although these firstyear students have made considerable efforts to improve their writing skills, many of them are soon disappointed because there are difficulties in writing that they do not know how to deal with or that they cannot deal with on their own. A s a result, they are discouraged practicing the skill. They feel bored with learning writing. On that account, some thing must be done to facilitate first-year students’ writing and improve the quality of their writing. The first step to solve this problem is to find out the causes that hinder the students from English writing effectively. Having identified these causes, feasible solutions will be worked out. 1.1.1. Writing syllabus The English Department of Hanoi University of Industry was founded in 2005. There are 152 teachers of English. 52 of them are official members and the rest 100 are invited teachers. They are divided into four groups. Three groups are nonEnglish specialized and only one group is English - specialized. In English specialized group, the writing teachers have designed a writing syllabus to equip students with basic skills to write in English. There are three courses in English writing that the students majoring in English at the Department of English, Hanoi University of Industry have to take. The first course is for first-year students. Since it is the formal course in writing, the aims of the syllabus are to equip the first-year students with the necessary basic skills to write well, to form the habits of writing paragraphs and compositions or letters with correct grammar and correct language and become more confident in writing English. By the end of the first year, the English of the first-year students is of intermediate level, they are able to write well in English and also they have English good enough to communicate with the native speakers of English about everyday life activities. The writing syllabus for the English first-year students at HaUI consists of the following: Theory accounts for 14 periods, practice and discussion 29 periods, and examination 2 periods. 1.1.2. The writing course book Effective writing is a book that helps you gain some of the skills you need when you write in English. The aim of the book is to help you recognize what good writing is and to g iv e you practice writing com plete, cohesive paragraphs and compositions. The purpose, in short, is to help you make what you write more effective. (Withrow 1987a:v) In general, the current course book is good for the first-year students. Many of the exercises in the book are very helpful. The book has been highly valued by teachers and students who have used it. With this book, the students were exposed to such practical types of writing as: letter writing, report writing, which were necessary not only for their immediate needs in the academic context but also for their later purposes when they might be working in offices. With the exercises in Organizing ideas, for instance, the students could probably be very alert gradually to an essential feature of composition: Coherence, they might have learned a lot about organizational skills, but in fact, they are bad at organizing ideas. With Comparing texts, writers could learn a multitude of practical things about what to do in particular to improve their texts. In addition, Text based on a conversation and Text based on a visual got students ready for 2 what they would actually have to do in life, for writing is more a knowledgetransforming process than a knowledge-telling process. Therefore, the book seems to fit the aims of the syllabus. 1.2. Aims of the study The aims of this thesis are to investigate the writing difficulties of the first-year English majors at Hanoi University of Industry and give some suggestions to improve their writing efficiency. To achieve these aims, the following research question was sought: What writing difficulties do the first-year English majors meet in their writing in English? 1.3. Scope of the study This study is limited to the first - year students at the English Department, Hanoi University of Industry and the teachers who are currently teaching or have taught writing skill to the first - year students at the English Department, Hanoi University of Industry. 1.4. Significance of the study This study is cxpcctcd to help the first — year students improve themselves by using necessary basic writing skills and avoiding the difficulties that the students might meet during writing in English. And this study is also expected to make a guidance for teachers-themselves know the way how to teach students with the appropriate writing approaches, and teachers also can understand their students’ difficulties from the survey results and they would have a better teaching method. With the English Department, this study is expected that the leader of the Department can know the strength and the weakness of the syllabus as well as the importance of the course book for the students. 1.5. Outline of the thesis Chapter 1, Introduction, provides readers with detailed information on background to the study, the aims, the significance, the scope of the study and the outline of the thesis. 3 Chapter 2, Literature Review, reviews relevant literature about the thesis. The chapter serves as an overview of relevant research history and a guide to the position of the present study in the research community. Chapter 3, Methodology, contains the description of the method together with the information on the subjects of the study, and the description of data collection instrument. Chapter 4, Results and Discussion, displays the initial results and gives discussion on the results. Chapter 5, Suggestions and Conclusions, closes by giving some suggestions for the study and indicating some limitations of the study. 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW Chapter 2 is a review of issues relevant to ESL writing: (1) approaches to the teaching of writing in ESL/EFL programs and (2) common writing problems (difficulties) of English learners. The discussion is intended to give a theoretical sketch of what should be provided to first-year students and what the students themselves should do to improve the quality of their writing. 2.1. Approaches to teaching writing in EFL/ESL programs In this section, approaches to teaching writing in EFL/ESL programs will be considered to identify the important features (e.g., organizational knowledge, writing approaches, content) that ESL/EFL writing instruction should focus on. 2.1.1. Focus on syntactic accuracy approach One of the earliest and popular approaches to writing is the approach that focuses on syntactic accuracy. According to the syntactic accuracy approach, special emphasis is placed on syntactic mistakes in students’ written work. Those who follow this approach stress the importance of control in order to eliminate mistakes from written work. Firstly, its major teaching principle is that: Students are taught how to write and combine various sentence types and manipulation exercises [...] are used to give them the experience of writing connected sentences [...]. Gradually the amount of control is reduced and the students are asked to exercise meaningful choice [...]. At a still later stage, they may be given a good deal of guidance with language and content, but allowed some opportunities for shelf-expression. (Byrne 1991:21-22) The focus-on-syntactic-accuracy approach was highly appreciated in the early stages of writing in the 1960s and early 1970s. However, to be fair, this approach does not restrict its writing tasks to sentences drills alone: fill-in, substitutions, transformations, and completions. In the early 1970s, learners began to be exposed to controlled composition tasks, which provide the lext and ask the learners to manipulate linguistic forms within that text. 5 This approach is suitable for elementary, pre-intermediate, and intermediate classrooms where students need to practice and master a number of sentence structures. Practice exercises in sentence skills are an indispensable preparation for paragraph development and essay writing. However, if this approach is focused, the students will be in short of other skills in writing such as: brainstorming, narrowing down the topic, outlining .... 2.1.2. Focus on text approach (the pattern approach) The Pattern/Product Approach resulted from the recognition of the needs o f ESL students in the academic environment. Teachers began to try to bridge the gap between language-based classes, which focused on creating compositions instead of sentence writing (Reid 1993:29). In the early 1980s, a lot of writing books written in the light of the pattern - product approach were published with the focus on the concepts of the thesis statement and the topic sentence, paragraph unity, organizational strategies, and development of paragraphs by patterns of models: process, comparison/contrast, cause and effect, classification/partition definition, argumentation and so on. Under the influence of text linguistics, writing teachers and theorists emphasized the problems of “expressing effectively at a level beyond the sentence” in writing activities. Like the syntactic - accuracy - focused - approach, however, the focus-ontext approach concern itself with the unit at a higher discourse. Therefore, we cannot simply teach students with individual sentences and then expect them automatically to write unified and coherent paragraphs or essays. If the students are concentrating on a grammatical transformations, such as changing verbs from present to past, they “need pay no attention whatever to what the sentences mean or the manner in which they relate to each other”. (Raimes 1991:407) What is important then is the question of teaching students how to construct and organize paragraphs since paragraph, in the students’ eyes, is the basic unit of written expression. Sample exercises are: students are asked to form paragraphs 6 from jumbled sentences; writing parallel paragraphs; developing paragraphs from topic sentences. This is an approach, which is useful for academic writing where students generally need to make clear what they want to say (with the topic sentence) and what their evidence is (with supporting sentences). Once students already know what they are going to say with the topic/introductory sentence, they will not apt to “go astray”, that is writing irrelevant sentences. Without the topic/introductory sentence, students would find it difficult to make a good paragraph. This approach is suitable for firstyear majors in this study. 2.1.3. Focus on the writers approach (the process approach) The process approach is currently warmly welcomed in the TESOL world. This movement, in Richards et a l.’s definition (1993:290), emphasizes the composing processes writers make use in writing (such as planning, drafting and revising) and which seeks to improve students’ writing skills through developing their use of effective composing processes. The process-centered paradigm, [...], focuses on writing processes; teaches strategies for invention and discovery, considers audience, purpose, and context of writing; emphasizes recursiveness in the writing process; and distinguishes between aims and modes of discourse... (Connor 1987:677) The Process Movement did not succeed to the throne though initiated as early as the late 1960s and the early 1970s, until the middle of 1980s. This approach came into being between the middle and the late 1970s under the influence of LI writing research on composing processes. Unlike the two approaches above, which are fom-dominated, this approach places emphasis on what L2 writers actually do as the} write (ibid). Riciards (1987: 268) agues for its virtues: “rather than being the development of soire preconceived and well-formed idea, writing is ‘the record an idea developing". It is a process whereby an initial idea gets extended and refined”. This is a feature 7 that makes this approach different from the product approach which lays its emphasis on producing different kinds of written products and imitation of different kinds of model paragraphs or essays. Nowadays, the movement is in fashion and highly praised by many TESOL teachers as well as researchers. However, warnings have been made against the studies of the approach. Raimes (1991:409) points out: “ ... the lack of comparability across studies impedes the growth of knowledge in that field". 2.1.4. Focus on fluency/content approach This approach, which focuses on content/fluency, encourages students to write as much as possible-without worrying about mistakes to be possibly made. The top importance is that students put their ideas on paper without caring whether the ideas are semantically and/or grammatically correct. With this approach, “students - in the words of Byrne (1991:22)- feel that they are actually writing, not merely doing ‘exercises’ o f some kind; they write what they want to write and consequently writing is an enjoyable experience”. There is some difference between focus on fluency and focus on content. With a contcnt focu s, learners are said lo get help with “the language of thinking processes and the structure or shape o f content (Mohan 1986 in Raimes 1991:411). The main emphasis, still according to Raimes (o p . c i t p.410), is on the instructor’s determination of what academic content is the most appropriate. Noticeably, such content specific to English courses as language, culture, and literature is largely rejected. However, this approach does not suit with the first-year English majors at Hanoi University o f Industry, because focus on fluency/content approach is extremely useful for advanced students. With this approach, what the teacher needs to do is to lift the psychological barriers to the flow of ideas being blocked. Once students have been able to start, ideas will be pouring onto paper. 2.1.5. Focus on purpose approach (focus on the reader approach) This approach raises the question of devising “situations which allow students to write purposefully” because “in real life [...] we normally have a reason for writing and we write to or for s o m e b o d y (Byrne 1991:23). Among the prominent authors in this period was Sandra McKay who had a revolutionary contention that grammatical accuracy in writing classes was a secondary concern and stressed the importance of audience-specific assignments. The focus of this approach is on the audience and their expectations outside the language classroom; language teaching is considered “as socialization into the academic community- not as humanistic therapy”, (Horwits 1986 in Raimes 1991:411). Therefore, the categorization above is certainly not definitive. Admittedly, there has not been clear-cut borderlines between numerous approaches to writing that have been built up, extended and employed so far. Different authors have different classifications with different labels. For example, according to Silva (1990 in Santos 1991:712), there has been four major approaches to ESL writing since 1945: controlled composition, current-traditional rhetoric, process, and English fo r academic purposes, with the last two currently competing for dominance in universities. From a slightly different perspective, Shi (1986) maintains that: patientcer.tered approaches, functional approaches, process-centered approaches, and content-based approaches. In brief, there have been different approaches to ESL/EFL writing focusing on various features: morpho-syntactic accuracy, discourse (text pattern), writing processes (the writer), content (ideas, vocabulary) purpose of writing (the reader). The differences in focuses reveal that there are a great number of difficulties that ESL/EFL writers may face with. The following section considers the difficulties facing ESL/EFL writers. 2.2. EFL/ESL learner - writing difficulties This section reviews literature of the difficulties coming from the students - learning, the teachers - teaching method and also the text book - syllabus. They are interrelated diff.culties that can not be presented individually. For example, with difficulties related to features of writing text, we can see that these difficulties not only resulted from the text book itself - because of “features of writing text” but also students themselves becaise of morpho-syntactic, of organization using of the students the their writing. It is the reason why these difficulties came from both students and textbook. With 9 difficulties related to composing processes, we can see that these difficulties not only resulted from the students but also the teachers themselves - because what the teachers taught would be presented by students in the students' writing - but it also would be by students themselves who did not know how to write or how to employ appropriate composing processes in their writing. There are many difficulties involved in writing in English that may prevent second language (L2) writers from performing the skill satisfactorily. According to Byrne (1991:04), three categories of problems that make writing “a difficult activity for most people” are: psychological problems, linguistic problems, and cognitive problems. In more detail, Raimes (1983:06) draws a diagram showing “what writers have to deal with as they produce a piece of writing” as follows: SYNTAX Sentence structure Sentence boundaries’ Stylistic choices, etc. CONTENT Relevance, clarity, originality, logic, etc THE WRITERS PROCESS Getting ideas Getting started Writing drafts, revising GRAMMAR Rules for verbs, agreem en t, articles, pronounces, etc. AUDIENCE The reader/s MECHANICS Handwriting, spelling, punctuation, etc. PURPOSE O R G A N IZ A T IO N topic and support, cohesion and unity W O RD C H O IC E Vocabulary, idiom, tone. The reason for writing Figure 2.1 What writers have to deal with as they produce a piece o f writing In a research project to develop an understanding of the nature of second language (L2) writing, Silva (1993: 657) focuses on two major areas: composing processes (sub-processes: planning, transcribing, and reviewing) and features of writing texts (fluency, accuracy, quality, and structures, i.e., organizational, morpho-syntactic, and lexico-semantic). 10 Writing composition, McKay (1979: 73) has defined in a variety of ways, which include recurring phrases such as thinking process, stylistic choice, grammar correctness, rhetorical development, and creatively. [...] Central to writing are the classical rhetorical concerns of Invention (topic), Arrangement (organization), and Style (grammatical correctness and stylistic effectiveness.” Those are certainly not everything that an L2 writer may encounter. (S)he is to faced with many other difficulties as well: cultural differences, for instance. Izzo (1999:117) remarks: “Differences in the language structures, the manner of expressing thoughts, writing style, and other culturally varying factors greatly affect the writings of a foreign (second) language learner.” As for our practical purpose, the question will be addressed under two overriding headings: (1) Difficulties related to features of writing texts: which include morphosyntactic difficulties, organizational difficulties', (2) Difficulties related to composing processes: which include idea-forming difficulties, and cognitive difficulties. The logic for this division is; the difficulties of the first type are objective difficulties resulting from linguistic differences. These difficulties exist for all L2 writers, though the degree may vary from the individual to individual. The general solution is that the writer should learn to improve himself/herself, step by step correcting them. As he is becoming increasingly proficient in English, errors of this type will automatically diminish. On the other hand, while difficulties of the first type have something to do with textual features, those of the second type concern themselves mainly with the writing processes. They are somewhat more subjective: originating in the writer himself/herself, his/her writing steps, his/her knowledge, his/her writing learning, writing instruction, or the setting where the objectives of writing take place. In order to deal with these difficulties, it is essential that measures should be taken to create radical changes in the philosophies, practices and conditions of the teaching and learning writing. It should be noted that those are certainly not all the difficulties that L2 writers may be faced with; rather, EFL writers may encounter stylistic and lexico-semantic 11 difficulties as well. However, stylistics is not included in this discussion because it is so difficult for the subjects of this study - first-year students. As for lexico-semantic difficulties, it is more associated with reading than writing. 2.2.1. Difficulties related to features of writing texts 2.2.1.1. Difficulties in morphosyntactic- using Since Vietnamese and English are so typological different, there are considerable dissimilarities between the two languages that give rise to innumerable difficulties to Vietnamese writers of English (as well as English writers of Vietnamese). The grammaticalization of one language differs significantly from that of the other. In a study of English writing by Vietnamese immigrants to the United States, Byleen (1986:02) writes: “Their first language may have predisposed them to certain interference errors in English”. ... English has a more clearly defined distinction between nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. As we saw with Vietnamese, the same words can function both as adverbs and adjectives adverbs can function as noun and adjectives, all without change in form. Word order within the sentence indicates the relationship between words. (B yleen, o p . c i t p .05) 2.2.1.1.1. Difficulties in inflection- using Inflection, in the words of Richards et al. (1992:179), is the process of adding affix to a word or changing it in some other way according to the rules of grammar o f a language. Inflectional morphemes are problematic to Vietnamese writers of English because the writers’ mother tongue has no inflectional morphemes: The English morpheme is totally foreign to the Vietnamese learners. English morphemes, such as, the plural morpheme, the possessive morpheme and so on present serious problems for the Vietnamese learners of English, because they are non-existent in the structure of Vietnamese words. As a matter of fact, it is quite understandable that it is not easy for those with a non­ inflecting language background like Vietnamese writers to deal with those inflectional affixes. Since the two most variable categories of English words are verbs and nouns, Vietnamese students are liable to make inflection - related errors