Tài liệu Common errors and causes in sentence writing of firstyear English majors

LAC HONG UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE RESEARCH REPORT COMMON ERRORS AND CAUSES IN SENTENCE WRITING OF FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT LHU Student: NGUYEN THI MY PHUOC Class: 15AV112 BIEN HOA, DECEMBER 2019 LAC HONG UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE RESEARCH REPORT Common errors and causes in sentence writing of first-year english majors at LHU Student: NGUYEN THI MY PHUOC Advisor: PHAM THI NGHIA, MA BIEN HOA, DECEMBER 2019 COMMON ERRORS AND CAUSES IN SENTENCE WRITING OF FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT LHU CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ............................................................................................ 1 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ....................................................................................... 2 LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS ............................................................................. 3 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 4 1. Statement of the problem ...................................................................................... 5 2. Purposes of the study ............................................................................................. 6 3. Significance of the study ........................................................................................ 7 4. The scope of the study ............................................................................................ 7 5. Research Questions ................................................................................................ 8 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................................... 9 1. The overview of writing ......................................................................................... 9 2. Errors .................................................................................................................... 10 2.1. Error definition .............................................................................................. 10 2.2. Error significations ........................................................................................ 10 2.3. Error analysis ................................................................................................. 11 3. Classification of writing sentence errors ............................................................ 12 3.1. Sentential level errors .................................................................................... 13 3.2. Word level errors ........................................................................................... 18 4. Causes of errors in sentence writing skill .......................................................... 24 4.1. The influence of the mother tongue. ............................................................ 25 4.2. Characteristics of teaching and learning writing ....................................... 26 4.3. Incomplete application of rules .................................................................... 28 CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY .......................................................................... 30 1. Objectives .............................................................................................................. 30 2. Methodology ......................................................................................................... 30 2.1. Research approach ........................................................................................ 30 2.2. Research design .............................................................................................. 30 3. Population and sampling ..................................................................................... 30 4. Data collection instruments ................................................................................. 31 5. Procedure and time frame ................................................................................... 32 6. Data analysis method ........................................................................................... 32 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ON THE FINDINGS .................... 34 1. Errors Frequently Found in English Sentences Written by first-year majors at LHU ....................................................................................................................... 34 1. 1. Punctuation marks........................................................................................ 35 1.2. Spelling ............................................................................................................ 37 1.3. Articles ............................................................................................................ 37 1.4. Word choice .................................................................................................... 38 1.5. Prepositions .................................................................................................... 39 1.6. Nouns............................................................................................................... 39 2. Causes of the Errors............................................................................................. 40 2.1. Sources of data ............................................................................................... 40 2.2. Results gained from the data ........................................................................ 48 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS ............................. 50 1. Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 50 2. Recommendation: ................................................................................................ 50 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 53 APPENDIX 1.............................................................................................................. 588 APPENDIX 2.............................................................................................................. 599 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT In order to complete the research on the topic "Common errors and causes in sentence writing of first-year English majors at Lac Hong University", excepting my effort, I have received a lot of help and encouragement from so many people who I would like to express my thanks and respect to. First of all, my greatest respect is for the Board of Directors of Lac Hong University. Thanks to their creating an encouraging education environment, students are enabled to boost knowledge and improve skills. Secondly, I would like to express my sincere thanks and deep gratitude to Ms. Pham Thi Nghia, who has been devoted to giving me useful guidance and support, and constantly encouraged me throughout the research process. Furthermore, I wish to heartily thank to all teachers in Faculty of English language of Lac Hong University for helping me to cultivate my valuable knowledge and sharpen necessary skills so that I can complete this research successfully. I would also like to thank Mr. Tran Vo Thanh Tung, Ms. Trinh Dieu Hien, Mr. Nguyen Duc Duy Tan as well as students from 4 classes of 18AV for enthusiastically facilitating me in conducting the survey. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family and friends for always encouraging, sharing, helping me enthusiastically and contributing ideas to finish my essay. Although I have tried my best to complete my thesis but there may still be many shortcomings, I am looking forward to receiving valuable contribution and suggestions from teachers so that I can gain experience for future research. 1 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS LHU: Lac Hong University EA: Error Analysis L1: First language L2: Second language ESL: English as a Second Language 2 LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS List of tables Table 1. Types, frequency, percentage, and rank of the sentential level Pages 34 errors found in the English sentences Table 2. Types, frequency, percentage, and rank of the word level errors 35 found in the English sentences Table 3: The students’ methods of studying sentence writing skill 44 Table 4: The students’ means of studying sentence writing skill 44 List of charts Pages Chart 1: The students’ awareness about the importance of writing 42 Chart 2: The interest of students in writing English sentences 43 Chart 3: The students' frequency of borrowing reference documents from 45 library at LHU Chart 4: The frequency of students' asking for correcting their writings 46 Chart 5: The students' procedure of writing sentences 47 Chart 6: Difficulties in writing English sentences 48 3 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Nowadays, English is a language commonly used in international transactions. Vietnam is not out of this trend. According to Quality Training Solution website, Vietnam education system has made English a compulsory subject in school seats since the elementary years. Moreover, many companies and organizations in Vietnam, especially multinational companies, organizations require employees to have English proficiency (the higher the better). Therefore, many students have found the necessity of learning English to meet the needs of modern society. Also, Quality Training Solution website mentioned that English is the international language and is considered as the easiest language to learn among the foreign languages that Vietnamese people can access. In the four basic skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing, writing is considered to be the most difficult skill to master (Hengwichitkul, 2009), Watcharapunyawong & Usaha (2013), Rattanadilok Na Phuket & Othman (2015). To obtain the style of writing in a proper and coherent manner, students need to master grammar points and accumulate vocabulary. Depending on purposes of study and work, the writing style will be different, which makes many students encounter many difficulties in writing, especially for first-year students due to their limited vocabulary and knowledge of English. Within the scope of this study, the researcher will point out and analyze the causes of errors that first-year students often make when they write English sentences. Next, the author would like to offer a few suggestions to help students avoid making mistakes when learning writing sentences skill. 4 1. Statement of the problem In the world, there have been many studies related to the subject “Common errors and causes in sentence writing of first-year English majors”. In fact, A Hinnon (2015) claimed that there are “more than 50 articles on first-year student writing errors published in academic journals since 1780”. Studies conducted in China, Thailand, India, and Korea indicated that the students have many difficulties in their first writing of English sentences. Findings showed that the main cause of writing error is the interference of the mother tongue (Jenwitheesuk, 2009) and that the two problems that concerned first-year students the most were grammar and vocabulary (Mojica, 2010). In a recent study of Sattayatham and Ratanapinyowong (2008), for first-year students, “writing is more complex in that it tests students” ability to use a language and the ability to express ideas” In Vietnam, although writing English courses are on curricular of most universities, the research topics or official scientific reports on this issue are still less well-documented. This is considered as a challenge for university students in Vietnam in general and in Lac Hong University in particular who have been trying to develop their writing skills. With the different language, unique culture and socio-political characteristics, great-reference-value researches related to the theme “Common errors and causes in sentence writing of first-year English majors” published worldwide cannot be fully applied to the educational context in Vietnam. Therefore, the actual study about it is extremely essential in this context. In the curriculum of Faculty of English language at Lac Hong University, there were many basic skills taught, of which writing is one of the most important skills. For first-year students, there are two courses of writing, writing 1 and writing 2, which mostly focus on writing sentences. The two courses are arranged to provide a steady foundation for students to write academic papers, scientific thesis, because a good graduation thesis is always made up of good sentences. In fact, when students want to write an essay in English well, they have to know how to write good paragraphs. To 5 write a good paragraph, they have to know how to write good sentences that are grammatically correct and full of semantics. So, the core of good English writing starts with writing a good sentence. To write a grammatically correct sentence, they have to firstly grasp the basic principles of English grammar such as phrases, clauses and sentences. Next, they have to choose the type of sentence: single sentence, compound sentence or complex sentence to convey intending information. In other words, the sentence must be grammatically and logically correct in meaning. However, first-year writing courses are often a challenge to students. Also, this will be even more difficult when the students lack both language knowledge and language competence. As the result, "students who feel incompetent at writing avoid writing. They do not practice. They do not get better" (Stephen Tchudi, 1997, p.35). This leads to low scores in the exams; hence, the situation of re-learning, retesting is fairly high. Besides, Lac Hong University more and more attracts many new students come to attend. For the Faculty of English language in particular, the number of freshman is around double in two recent years. For these above difficult states, the author chose the topic" Common errors and causes in sentence writing of first-year English majors at Lac Hong University " to do research, from which the author would like to find out suggestions to improve students” sentence writing skill. 2. Purposes of the study The study aims to analyze the common errors in sentence writing skill of freshmen in Faculty of English Language at Lac Hong University. Besides, the objective of this study is to identify the causes of these errors. From that, the researcher can find effective solutions to help students synthesize and apply theory to solve problems arising when they learn writing sentences. A deeper purpose is to limit the reexamination status of students so that they are motivated to study and stick to the four years of study at the school. 6 3. Significance of the study Indeed, first-year students often face many difficulties in writing a sentence. Students often get confused when thinking of which grammatical structure to use as well as what phrases are appropriate for the writing, thus making mistakes is unavoidable. In terms of learning, by pointing out the common errors in writing sentences of first-year students and analyzing the causes, the author hopes English learners in general as well as first-year students at Lac Hong University in particular will overcome the errors to build sentences that are easily understandable and clear. In term of teaching, this study can help teachers and administrators of the Faculty of English Language have a more comprehensive view of the writing situation of freshman students, which is very helpful to them in improving their teaching methods and lesson design more effective. Another significant thing is that the Lac Hong University in general and the school's English Faculty in particular are increasing the number of students attending. Especially in the past two years (2018 - 2019), the number of first-year students of the faculty doubled compared to the previous years. This changes the distribution of teaching subjects. Besides, teachers in the Faculty always want to cultivate experience by undertaking different subjects. Among of them are writing 1 and writing 2. Therefore, the author hopes this study will be somewhat helpful for teachers who first taught writing and are interested in teaching writing. 4. The scope of the study Because of the limited time, the research can only focus on the sentence writing skill of first-year students - Faculty of English Language - Campus 2 - Lac Hong University. Therefore, the results may be partly subjective. 7 5. Research Questions 1. What types of errors are found in writing sentences of first-year English majors at Lac Hong University? 2. What are some common causes of those errors made by first-year English majors at Lac Hong University? 3. What are some suggestions to improve student’s sentence writing skill? 8 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. The overview of writing As mentioned above, writing is a complex task; it is the “most difficult of the language abilities and skills to acquire (Allen & Corder, 1974, p. 177). Therefore, many linguists were interested in this topic to do research. From their studies, there are dozens of definition of writing mentioned. Nevertheless, it is not easy to choose which one is the best accurate. According to Swarts, Heidi, Linda S. Flower, and John R. Hayes (1984, p.61), “writing is simply the act of expressing what you think or saying what you mean”. However, writing is not a simply process like you’re your thinking by written it down. Writing involves more than just producing words sentences. Lannon (1989, p. 9) defined writing as “a process of transforming the materials discovered by research inspiration, accident, trial and error, or whatever into a message with a definite meaning. In the similar vein, Weigle (2007) recognized the complex of writing process. The author stated that writing is a process of creating ideas, opinions, relationships among linguistic formats, and structures. The author further indicated that when writing, writers must combine and apply a lot of knowledge and skills categories. He added that this process will often be interrupted and affected when the writers seek for appropriate structures and vocabulary. Apparently, writing requires more time and effort of learners (Liu and Braine, 2005). Writing is one of the most important skills in acquiring a second language in general and English in particular (Reid, 1995 and Ferris, 2005). Writing skills include the development of ideas, expressions of language, and experiences on different writing topics. Each learner has ideas, language proficiency and understanding of different topics. For most of learners, writing is regarded as productive skills that are “difficult to acquire” (Tribble, 1996, p. 3). "Effective writing requires a number of 9 things: a high degree of development in the organization of ideas and information; a high degree of accuracy so there is no ambiguity of meaning; the use of complex grammatical devices for focus and emphasis; and careful choice of vocabulary, grammatical patterns, and sentence structures to create a style which is appropriate to the subject matter and the eventual readers”. To be able to create a piece of writing that intended audiences can understand and acquire, writers should know how to write a connected series of words and sentences which are logically and grammatically linked. 2. Errors 2.1. Error definition Errors are always the main concern in teaching foreign languages. Corder (1971, p.152) stated that errors are “the result of some failure of performance”. In the similar vein, Norrish (1983, p.7) defined “an error” as a systematic divergence that happens when a learner has not learnt something and consistently “get it wrong”. In a study of Richards (1989), “errors” are identified as the faulty use of linguistic items that express incomplete learning. For further definition, James (1998, p.1) identified a language error as “an unsuccessful bit of language”. In the 20’s, the study into error by Brown (2007) demonstrated that errors are the “noticeable derivation from grammar of a native speaker, reflect the competence of the learner” and reveal “a portion of learners’ competence in the target language” (p.285). There are a number of error definition; however, the definitions mentioned in studies of Richards (1989) and Brown (2007) are considered the most appropriate base. 2.2. Error significations Many linguists proposed that errors are not always bad at all, but significant in some extents. According to Corder (1967), student-made errors are useful for both teachers and students. For teachers, errors are evidence of the student’s learning language progress. Teachers can refer to it to help students with their writing skills. For students, errors can be served as resources for their language learning. In addition, 10 “errors enrich our knowledge on the nature, the process and the steps of second language acquisition and consequently on the planning of courses incorporating the psychology of second language learning” (HM Al-Saadi, 2000, p.16). The author added that from errors, there is an entailment that “a careful analysis of errors is an indicator for both teachers and learners of what has been learned and what still needs to be worked on and what not yet being acquired” (p. 16). 2.3. Error analysis There have been many linguists and educators who have participated in this field to find out the effective methods. For many years, Error Analysis has attracted attention a number of scholars in the field of second language acquisition. Crystal (1987) considered The EA as a technique to identify, classify and systematically interpret the unacceptable errors made by learners. This method emphasizes “the significance of errors in learners’ interlanguage system” (Brown, 1994, p. 204). I Abushihab, AH El-Omari, (2011) defined EA as “a branch of applied linguistics” which has two functions: theoretical and practical (p. 545). The EA method examines the types of errors and their causes depending on the level of language proficiency, from small errors like missing words and word repetition to big errors in language knowledge or language skills. The EA method is used by many authors in the research. It helps researchers better understand the learning and constructing language process. James (1998), Nonkokhetkong (2013), Hinnon (2014) assessed that the analysis of errors found in student” pieces of writing can be very beneficial. Not only can it help reveal the strategies used by learners to learn a language, it also assists teachers as well as other concerning people to know what difficulties learners encounter in order to improve their teaching (Dulay, Burt and Krashen, 1982). In fact, the EA helps teachers analyze errors made by EFL and ESL learners when they learn a language and helps learners pass the assessment from many different aspects. In a study of James (1998), he proposed that EA is the analysis of learners' errors by comparing what the learners 11 have learned with what they lack. It also deals with giving the explanation of the errors in order to accurately reduce them. The most significant contribution of Error Analysis lies in its success in elevating the status of errors from undesirability to that of a guide (Ellis, 1995). The different procedures for EA are stated as follows: - Corder (1981, p.36) suggested three steps of the EA. Step 1. Identifying errors Step 2. Descripting errors Step 3. Explaining errors - Choon (1993) recommended three key steps of the EA. Step 1. Identifying errors Step 2. Classifying errors Step 3. Determining how much errors deviate from the target language norm - Ellis (1994) suggested an alternative as the following: Step 1. Defining the samples Step 2. Identifying errors in the samples Step 3. Classifying the errors Step 4. Explaining the errors Step 5. Evaluating the errors 3. Classification of writing sentence errors In discussing the classification of writing sentence errors, Halliday and Hasan (1976, p.48) divided writing errors into five types: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion. Based on the features of writing errors, James (1998) proposes five categories of errors which include grammatical errors (adjectives, adverbs, articles, nouns, possession, pronouns, prepositions and verbs), substance errors (capitalization, punctuation and spelling), lexical errors (word formation and word selection), syntactic errors (coordination/ subordination, sentence structure and ordering), and semantic errors (ambiguous communication and miscommunication). 12 For more specific types of writing, Bitchener, Young & Cameron (2005), and Darus & Subramaniam (2006) identified that there are 12 types of errors that students often make in writing English sentences. They are: singular and plural nouns, tenses, verbs, subject-verb agreement, word order, articles, word types, verb forms, capitalization, missing words, preposition and punctuation. In another studies by Hengwichitkul (2006) and Runkati (2013), writing sentence errors are classified into two main types. At the sentential level, the errors include subject-verb agreement, tenses, word orders, relative clauses, passive sentences, parallel structures, punctuation, fragments and run-ons. At word level, the errors include nouns, articles, prepositions, word choices and spellings. To sum up, in recent studies, the analysis of errors found at the sentential level and the word level was adopted. 3.1. Sentential level errors 3.1.1. Fragment This is a very common mistake, which is writing incomplete sentences. According to the definition of a sentence in academic English, there must be a subject and a verb. Sentence fragment confuses readers because it does not fully express an idea. Example: Running for the bus that was turning the corner. This is not a sentence, "that was turning the corner" is just a modifying attribute for the noun "the bus", and just clarifying the meaning for "the bus ". 3.1.2. Subject-verb agreement This is an error when the verb is not divided according to the subject. In English, it is a mandatory rule that the verb must agree with the subject. A singular subject takes a singular verb whereas a plural subject takes a plural verb (R Wee, J Sim and K Jusoff, 2010). For example: The number of students registered in the class are 20. The correct answer is: The number of students registered in the class is 20. 13 The following structures are prone to this error. - The number/ a number of - Neither/ either - A majority of - All, every, none… The rule is as follows: Some of the following structures come with the plural verb. - A number of + plural noun (“a number of” in this case means: many) Ex: Recently, a number of students are dropped out. - The adj indicates a group of people (the rich, the poor, the blind, the elderly) Ex: The rich are usually greedy for honors. - A majority of + plural noun Ex: A majority of students are not good at writing. - Collective nouns when referring to the members of that collection. Ex: The staff are in disagreement about the findings. - None of + plural noun Ex: None of the students have finished the exam yet. - No + Noun (plural) Ex: No children in my group cause troubles. Some of the following structures come with singular verbs. - The number of + Noun + Verb (singular) Ex: The number of students dropping out is on the decrease. - No + Noun (uncountable) + Verb (singular) Ex: No work was done. - None of the + Noun (uncountable) + Verb (singular) Ex: None of the above coffee is sold. - Either / Neither + V (singular). Ex: Neither of them is the thief. - Each / Every + Noun (singular) + V (singular) 14 Ex: Every student has to finish the test on time. - Each / Every / One + of + Noun (plural) + V (singular) Ex: Each of the students has to submit the task by next Monday. - Everyone / everybody / everything + V (singular) Ex: Everyone is tired. 3.1.3. Word order Word order refers to the way words are arranged in a sentence. The English word order is strict and inflexible. This means that the order of words in an English sentence rarely changes: the subject almost always appears before the predicate. The error of word order can be simply understood as placing the word or term in the wrong position and accidentally losing the original meaning of the sentences (L White, 1985). For example: From the graphs, it can be concluded that are young people much more mobile than previous generations. “That are young people much more mobile than previous generations” in this sentence is not a relative clause but a That-clause so that the clause “young people are much more mobile” is correct. 3.1.4. Run-on sentence This error is caused when writers combine 2 or more independent clauses together without using punctuation or conjunction (for, and, or, then, rather ... than, as ... as, both ... and, ...) logically. Ex: “He does not like going out he stays in.” 3.1.5. Tense misuse In English, each tense has its own formula and usage, but because they are not sure of basic grammar knowledge, learners often make mistakes when writing grammatical sentences. 15