Tài liệu Influence of syntactic discrepancy between english and vietnamese on written english of non english majored students at can tho university

CAN THO UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF EDUCATION ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT B.A. THESIS INFLUENCE OF SYNTACTIC DISCREPANCY BETWEEN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE ON WRITTEN ENGLISH OF NON-ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS AT CAN THO UNIVERSITY Field of study: English Language Teaching Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Student’s code: 7075917 Class: English Education – 02 Course: 33 Can Tho, May 2011 Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My thesis was completed thanks to the enthusiastic help and support of many teachers at Can Tho University, students from four non-English majored classes, my family, and my friends as well. From my innermost feeling, I would like to thank all which they have done for my study. First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Ms. Lý Thị Bích Phượng, who spent a lot of time on my thesis. She gave me not only valuable materials and knowledge, but also sincere encouragements. In spite of being busy at teaching work, my supervisor spent plenty of specious time on correcting my drafts in detail and provided me with many priceless suggestions. Therefore, if there are any mistakes in this thesis, they are my own personal mistakes. During the process of conducting the thesis, I learned from my supervisor a lot both her working principle and friendliness with students. In fact, I owe a debt of gratitude to my supervisor. Secondly, I would like to show my sincere acknowledgement to Mr. Nguyễn Thanh Tùng, Mr. Phan Việt Thắng, Ms. Nguyễn Phương Bảo Trân, and Ms. Nguyễn Phương Quyên for their permission to collect writing samples from their classes. In addition, they gave me valuable information about non-English majors’ common mistakes. In fact, this study would not have been completed without their help. I wish to express my thankfulness to Ms. Trần Thị Châu Pha for her instructions in using the Endnote programme for referencing and suggestions as well as comments on my thesis. Thirdly, I would like to express my deep thanks to Mr. Nguyễn Văn Lợi and Ms. Ngô Thị Trang Thảo who gave me advice and comments on my thesis. Fourthly, I wish to express my gratitude deeply to all teachers who taught me during my studying at Can Tho University. This study is my thanks to my teachers who shed a new light on my life. Fifthly, I wish to express my thankfulness to fifty non-English majored students for their writing papers, which were an important part in my thesis. Finally, I would like to show my gratitude to my family and my friends for their supporting and giving me inestimable advice. Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A i Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University ABSTRACT Writing is considered an important but difficult skill (Ping & Alvin, 2006) because a good writer uses a writing not only to express their stream of thoughts but also to generate, formulate, and refine their ideas in a good way (Zamel, 1982). To avoid frustrating their stream of thinking, EFL non-English majors attempt to translate their ideas from their mother tongue into English, which causes a variety of mistakes in written English because of the grammatical differences between L1 and L2 (Yan, 2010). To examine to what extent the influence of syntactic discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on written English of non-English majored students at Can Tho University, this qualitative research analysed four types of errors consisting of (1) word order, (2) omission of relative pronouns, (3) verb tenses, and (4) noun forms which resulted from contrastive syntactic features between English and Vietnamese in fifty non-English majors’ writing papers. The participants in this study were at the pre-intermediate level and at the age of 18 – 20 including thirty six females and fourteen males. The result showed that the contrastive grammatical features between English and Vietnamese had a significant influence on non-English majors’ writing. Based on the findings of this study, some recommendations for teaching writing to Can Tho University non-English majored students were outlined at the end of this study. Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A ii Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University TÓM TẮT Viết được xem là một kỹ năng quan trọng nhưng cũng là một kỹ năng khó (Ping & Alvin, 2006) bởi vì người viết tốt không chỉ sử dụng bài viết của mình để thể hiện những dòng suy nghĩ mà còn phải tạo ra, xây dựng, và chọn lọc những ý tưởng thật tốt (Zamel, 1982). Để tránh làm gãy những dòng suy nghĩ, sinh viên không chuyên ngành Anh văn thường cố gắng chuyển các ý tưởng của họ từ tiếng mẹ đẻ sang tiếng Anh, điều này gây ra nhiều lỗi trong văn viết tiếng Anh do sự khác nhau về mặt ngữ pháp giữa hai ngôn ngữ (Yan, 2010). Để kiểm tra ở mức độ nào sự tương phản giữa cấu trúc ngữ pháp của tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt ảnh hưởng đến các bài viết tiếng Anh của sinh viên không chuyên ngành Anh văn tại Đại học Cần Thơ, bài nghiên cứu định tính này sẽ phân tích mức độ phạm bốn loại gồm (1) trật tự từ, (2) lượt bỏ đại từ quan hệ , (3) chia thì, và (4) các hình thức danh từ mà gây ra bởi sự tương phản giữa cấu trúc ngữ pháp của hai ngôn ngữ trên năm mươi bài viết được thu thập từ năm mươi sinh viên không chuyên. Những sinh viên không chuyên ngành Anh văn trong bài nghiên cứu này đang ở trình độ sơ cấp và ở độ tuổi từ 18 đến 20 gồm ba mươi sáu sinh viên nữ và mười bốn sinh viên nam. Kết quả của bài nghiên cứu cho thấy sự khác nhau giữa cấu trúc ngữ pháp tiếng Anh và tiếng Việt có ảnh hưởng đáng kể đến chất lượng bài viết của sinh viên. Dựa trên kết quả của bài nghiên cứu này, một vài đề nghị được đưa ra cho việc dạy kỹ năng viết cho sinh viên không chuyên ngành Anh văn tại Đại học Cần Thơ. Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A iii Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................i ABSTRACT (English) .................................................................................... ii ABSTRACT (Vietnamese).............................................................................. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ................................................................................iv LIST OF TABLES ..........................................................................................vi LIST OF FIGURES.........................................................................................vii Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................1 1.1. Rationale ..................................................................................................1 1.2. Research question.....................................................................................2 1.3. Hypotheses ..............................................................................................2 1.4. Objective of the study...............................................................................3 1.5. Significance of the study .......................................................................... 3 1.6. General organisation of the study ............................................................. 3 Chapter 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE.........................................................8 2.1. An assumption of errors resulted from syntactic differences between English and Vietnamese ..........................................................................4 2.1.1. Word order ...................................................................................4 2.1.2. Omission of relative pronouns .......................................................5 2.1.3. Verb tenses ....................................................................................6 2.1.4. Noun forms ...................................................................................7 2.2. Related studies .........................................................................................9 Chapter 3: RESEARCH METHOD.................................................................15 3.1. Research design ....................................................................................15 3.2. Subjects ................................................................................................15 3.3. Instrument ............................................................................................15 3.4. The procedure of data analysis..............................................................16 Chapter 4: RESULT AND DISCUSSIONS ....................................................17 Chapter 5: CONCLUSIONS, LIMITATIONS AND IMPLICATIONS ...........24 5.1. Conclusions .......................................................................................... 24 5.2. Implications ......................................................................................... 25 Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A iv Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University 5.3. Limitations .......................................................................................... 25 5.5. Directions for further research ............................................................. 26 REFERENCES ............................................................................................... viii APPENDIX .................................................................................................... x Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A v Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University LIST OF TABLES ---------- Table 1: A comparison of the analyses of L1 and L2 showed eight syntactical areas bearing signs of direct interference of L1 on L2. (Bhela's study, 1999) Table 2: Types and numbers of errors in 50 writing samples of the Can Tho University first-year English-majored students (Thai’s thesis, 2006) Table 3: Frequencies of the seven mistakes resulted from different structures between English and Vietnamese (Nguyen’s thesis, 2005) Table 1: Some unpredicted kinds of errors from the fifty non-English majors’ writings Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A vi Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University LIST OF FIGURES -------Figure 1: The percentage of errors made in fifty non-English majors’ writing papers. Figure 2: The percentage of each type of error in the total number of the four types of errors in fifty non-English majors’ writing papers. Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A vii Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University REFERENCES Ager, S. (2011). A brief introduction to writing and writing system. Retrieved February 22, 2011, from www.dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/fichero_articulo?codigo=211104&orden=0. Bhela, B. (1999). Native language interference in learning a second language: Exploratory case studies of native language interference with target language usage. International Education Journal. Retrieved February 20, 2011, from www.ehlt.flinders.edu.au/education/iej/articles/v1n1/bhela/bhela. Bloomfield, L. (2004). The importance of writing. Retrieved February 22, 2011, from the Commentary Page of the Philadelphia Inquirer http://plagiarism.phys.virginia.edu/essays/The%20Importance%20of%20Writin g.html. Cao, X. H. (1992). Some Preliminaries to the Syntactic Analysis of the Vietnamese Sentence. Mon-Khmer Studies, 20, 137-151. Creswell, J. W. (2008). Educational Research (3rd ed.). Lincoln: Pearson Education International. Dam, P. (2001). Old habits die hard: Persistent errors in English written by Vietnamese speakers. Retrieved January 24, 2011, from http://www.viethoc.com/Ti-Liu/bien-khao/khaoluan/analyzingsomepersistenterrorsinenglishmadebyvietnamesespeakers. Ellis, R. (1997). Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ho, D. V. (2009). English and Vietnamese articles. A Contrastive Analysis, 1, 3-5 Krifka, M. (2005). Aspects of Clause Structure in Vietnamese. 13-24. Kubota, R. (1998). An investigation of L1-L2 transfer in writing among Japanese university students: Implications for Contrastive Rhetoric. Journal of Second Language Writing, 7, 69-100. Le, H. V. (2009). The word order in Vietnamese and English noun phrase. A contrastive analysis, 1, 2-13. Leong, P., & Alvin (2006). Free and Situational Writing. Singapore: Learners Publishing. Liu, X. (2008). The use and effect of L1 in L2 writing. Second Language Writing, 6(5), 50-52. Ngo, N. B. (2001). The Vietnamese Language Learning Framework. Linguistics, 1, 17-19. Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A viii Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University Nguyen, Đ. H. (1995). Vietnamese syntax and Vietnamese morphology. Retrieved January 27, 2011, from http://scholar.google.com.vn/scholar?q=Nguy%E1%BB%85n,+%C4%90.+H.+ (1995).+Vietnamese+syntax+and+Vietnamese+morphology&hl=vi&as_sdt=0 &as_vis=1&oi=scholart. Nguyen, N. X. L. (2005). Mother Tongue’s Interference in Writing English as a Foreign Language. Can Tho, Can Tho. Nguyen, T. C. (2004). Ngữ pháp tiếng Việt (Vol. 2): Nhà xuất bản Quốc gia Hà Nội. Thai, T. X. H. (2006). Verb Errors in writing EFL of the first-year English-majored students at Can Tho University. Can Tho, Can Tho. Theam, O. T. (2008). Omission of the relative pronouns. Retrieved February 20, 2011, from www.lshk.org/arf2008/doc/arf2008_abstract.pdf. Thomas, E. B. (1962). The most common mistakes in English usage. New York: Chilton. Tran, M. T. (2003). English and Vietnamese Verb Forms and Verb Classes. A contrastive Analysis, 28(1), 12-19. Turton, N. D. (1995). ABC of Common Grammatical Errors. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Education LTD. Walsh, K. (2010). The Importance of Writing Skills. Retrieved January 20, 2011, from http://www.emergingedtech.com/2010/11/the-importance-of-writing-skillsonline-tools-to-encourage-success/ Wolfersberger, M. (2003). L1 to L2 Writing Process and Strategy Transfer: A Look at Lower Proficiency Writers. Second Language Writing, 7(6), 2-9. Yan, H. (2010). The Role of L1 Transfer on L2 and Pedagogical Implications. A Contrastive Analysis, 6(3), 97-103. Yunping, Y. (2004). Problems in Developing Students' Writing Strategies: An Investigation of Syntactical and Lexical Errors from Students' Compositions. First Language Interference, 16. Zamel, V. (1982). The process of discovering meaning. TESOL Quarterly, 16(2), 195209. Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A ix Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University APPENDIX The following are typical writings extracted from fifty writing samples of Can Tho University non-English majors Topic 1: Write a letter to your friend telling him or her about your new school  Dear Thao, How are you? After a long separation, I didn’t write to you. Do you have sad? I have to tell a interesting story but you want hearing? Present I am studying Can Tho University. It’s very big and beautifull. CTU has three campus and I am studying in campus two. It’s very building as the library, the dormitory, C2 building… Firstly, the library is equipped one thousand new computer connect to the internet. Update resource very rich as: book, journal, e-books, and email journals. Its able to help me very much. Secondly, the dormitory has very rom and present CTU is building add 5000 residence for students. If you can stay, you will give low price and you will feel convenient. The next, you go to the C gateway, you will see C2 building. This is pedagogy. It’s include very ology as: primary education, math… and lecturer are very friendly and devoted. After you listen, how do you feel? Do you like? You will write a letter to me and you don’t forget talking about your impression when I told. Love, Huong Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A x Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University Topic 2: Write a paragraph to talk about your new friend Writing 1: Thao Nguyen is my new friend in my English class. She is 19 year old. She is a student in Can Tho University. She is from Vietnamese. She live in dormitory at Can Tho University. She like read book, listen to music and shopping. Her email address is [email protected]. We are usually chat and send messages. So, I feel very happy. Thao Nguyen is the girl very lovely and beautiful. Writing 2: Thuan is my new friend in my English class. She come from Vinh Long. She is 19 year old. She is student in Dai Hoc Can Tho University. Now, she live in 3/2 street, Can Tho city. Her telephone number: 0165218242. She very like read book and listen to music. She major in Elementary Education. With me, she is beautiful and lovely. I very happy when I have a friend as Thuan. Topic 3: Write a demand letter to ask for an advice to deal with your problem in your study or life.  Hello everybody, My name is Khang. I’m a first-year student of CTU. I love to learn E when I was in primary school. But I have a problem. I can’t listen, can’t speak to E very good. I like read E books, but I have trouble due to the each of vocabulary. In my E class, I feel very happy and comfortable because I talk to teacher and listen to teacher. What should to do to improve my E listening and speaking skill? Can anyone give me some advice? Thank you very much! Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A xi Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION The introduction to the study is comprised of six parts. The first part is the rationale which is the general statement of the problem. The research question, hypotheses, the objective of the study are mentioned in part 2, 3, and 4, respectively. The fifth one discusses the significance of the research. The organisation of the study is outlined in the last part of this chapter. 1.1. Rationale Writing plays an important role in communication because it helps us convey feelings, transfer information and express ideas (Ager, 2010). The importance of writing is also indicated by Walsh (2010, p.2) as follows: Writing is important because it’s used extensively in higher education and in the workplace. If students don’t know how to express themselves in writing, they won’t be able to communicate well with professors, employers, peers, or just about anyone else. From Walsh’s viewpoint, it can be drawn out that teaching writing to both English majored and non-English majored students is necessary. However, putting pen to paper to write down what we think is a difficult process. In this era, with development of modern technology, our life becomes more and more comfortable; however, the marvels of modern technology cannot still assist us in writing well without our effort (Bloomfield, 2004). To Vietnamese learners, the writing process of transferring information from Vietnamese to English has been challenging to them. Learning English in the Vietnamese environment is considered one of the reasons why non-English majored students attempt to translate their ideas from Vietnamese into English without paying attention to the contrastive features between the two languages (Bui, 2002 cited in Tran, 2003). For non-English majored students, the more difficult they find to make use of English grammatical points, the more frequently they apply their first language’s syntactic competence to the second language writing. This problem can reveal that writers at low English proficiency level directly depend on their mother tongue's syntax in written English in order to keep their stream of thinking and avoid failure in using language (Arndt, 1987; Cumming, 1989; Raimes, Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A 1 Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University 1985; Uzawa & Cumming, 1989, as cited in Wolfersberger, 2003). In fact, EFL students’ writing is influenced by patterns and structures of their first language (L1) because they transfer their preferred patterns into their written English, which often results in patterns that are unacceptable in written English. In order to investigate to what extent the differences between English syntactic structures and Vietnamese ones affect non-majored learners’ English writing, this paper will analyse four common errors in non-English majors’ writings which were caused by contrastive syntactic features between English and Vietnamese and the quality of fifty writings collected from non-English majored at Can Tho University. 1.2. Research question “To what extent does the discrepancy between English and Vietnamese syntactic features influence written English of non-English majored students at Can Tho University?” The four types of errors consisting of word order, omission of relative pronouns, verb tenses, and noun forms were resulted from the different syntactic features between English and Vietnamese. In order to examine to what extent Vietnamese syntax influences English writing of non-English majors, the fifty writing papers from four general English classes were collected in order to analyse the frequency of making these four types of errors. 1.3. Research hypotheses Based on the related studies by Bhela (1999), Yunping (2002), Nguyen (2005), and Thai (2006), it was hypothesised that non-English majored students would make the four types of errors comprised of word order, omission of relative pronouns, verb tenses, and noun forms in their writings. It was also hypothesised that the contrastive syntactic structures between English and Vietnamese would have a significant influence on written English of non-English majored students. 1.4. Objective of the study Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A 2 Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University The objective of this study is to examine to what extent the grammatical differences between English and Vietnamese influence written English of non-English majors by investigating the proportion of making four kinds of errors composed of word order, omission of relative pronouns, verb tenses, and noun forms in fifty nonEnglish majored students’ writing papers. 1.5. Significance of the study It is assumed that if non-English majored students are instructed to recognise the contrastive structures between the first language (L1) and the second language (L2), they will be able to avoid making types of errors related to the negative interference of L1 on L2 (Yunping, 2002). This study was hoped to provide Vietnamese learners with the right types of errors in English writing caused by the discrepancy between English and Vietnamese syntactic structures and some recommendations for avoiding making these errors in written English. The finding of this study was also hoped to be pedagogically significant for teaching basic writing skills to non-English majors. 1.6. General organisation of the study The study consists of five chapters as follows. The first chapter includes the general statement of the problem, the statement of hypotheses, the objective, research problems, and the significance of the research. The organisation of the study is outlined in the last part of chapter one. In chapter two, an assumption of the four types of errors resulted from syntactic differences between English and Vietnamese will be presented. In addition, some related studies will be mentioned in this chapter to find out similarities and differences among the former studies and how the present study relates to previous papers. Through findings of related studies and gaps between them, the reasons for choosing the research topic will be justified at the end of this chapter. The research design, the procedure of data analysis, participants, and instruments will be outlined in chapter three. Chapter four will be a process of analysing data gathered from fifty participants. Then, the finding of the present study will be also reported in this chapter. The last chapter will contain conclusions, implications, limitations inferred from this paper and directions for further research. Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A 3 Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University Chapter 2: REVIEW OF LITERATURE This chapter is comprised of two parts. The first one is an assumption of the four types of errors caused by different syntactic features between English and Vietnamese. The second part of this chapter is a summary of some related studies and journals to explore similarities and differences among the previous papers and examine how this study relates to former studies. 2.1. An assumption of errors resulted from syntactic differences between English and Vietnamese 2.1.1. Word order According to Krifka (2005), Vietnamese is an isolating language because all of the Vietnamese morphemes are isolated words, which is different from English. In other words, English and Vietnamese are the two contrastive languages in some cases. In terms of word order of these two languages, Ngo (2001) states that in Vietnamese, the adjective follows the noun it modifies, but this order is reverse in English. The following are some illustrations of this issue: Vietnamese: sách mới; anh của tôi; văn học Việt Nam hiện đại new book; my brother; modern Vietnamese literature English: Regarding the contrastive features between English and Vietnamese word order, Le (2009) also points out the same viewpoint that in English noun phrases, most adjectives precede the head noun, but in Vietnamese, the order is inversive as in the examples below: a/ All beautiful dreams those Quantifier demonstrative adjective Tất cả những giấc mộng Quantifier demonstrative head noun b/ All fresh flowers in Uncle Ho’s garden adj head noun prepositional phrase Quantifier Tất cả bông hoa Quantifier head noun tươi thắm adj Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A head noun đẹp đó adjective trong vườn Bác prepositional phrase 4 Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University Due to this syntactic difference, Vietnamese students are often confused when using English noun phrases. They tend to apply word order in Vietnamese noun phrase structures to English; that is, they usually put the adjective after the noun to express an English noun phrase, which is a common error in using English (Ngo, 2001). 2.1.2. Omission of relative pronouns Regarding omission of relative pronouns, according to Theam (2008), when the relative pronouns “who, whom, which and that” function as predicates, they can be omitted as in the following example. Example (1): This is Tom. You met him yesterday. This is Tom who you met yesterday. => This is Tom you met yesterday. When reducing relative pronouns which are subjects, the verb needs to be changed into the present participle or past participle depending on each particular case (Theam, 2008). In Vietnamese daily conversations, the speakers tend to leave out relative pronouns without changing verb forms as in example (2). This makes Vietnamese students have trouble in omitting English relative pronouns appropriately and correctly. This issue is described by the example below. Vietnamese (2) Món quà tốt nhất để tặng cho một người mà có mọi thứ là chuông báo trộm.  Món quà tốt nhất để tặng cho người có mọi thứ là chuông báo trộm. (Omission of the relative pronoun) English (2) The best gift to give a person who has everything is a burglar-alarm.  Right: The best gift to give a person having everything is a burglar-alarm.  Wrong: The best gift to give a person has everything is a burglar-alarm. It can be referred from the example that when the writers want to omit relative pronouns, they are required to master the grammatical rules mentioned above, which are challenging to the non-English majors at pre-intermediate level. Therefore, non- Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A 5 Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University English majors at their level will make this type of error if they lack the competence in this grammatical point which is different from English one. 2.1.3. Verb tenses The error related to English verb tenses is considered a serious error of nonEnglish majors (Thomas, 1962). Bui (2002, cited in Tran, 2003) also states that contrastive grammatical features between English and Vietnamese in terms of subjectverb agreement, tense and aspect, and marginal verbs are the main factors making Vietnamese learners problematic in using English grammar. English verbs follow a rule in which a verb must agree in number and person with its subject. For instance, English verbs are inflected to mark the third person singular of the simple present tense with the inflectional morpheme “-s / -es” (Cao, 1992). The consequence of having no rule of subject-verb agreement in Vietnamese grammar makes Vietnamese learners confused when they are exposed to using this target language in English Nguyen (1995). In addition to this problem, according to Nguyen (1995), the existence of tense markers is one of the contrastive features between English and Vietnamese tenses. In English, the verbs are added with an appropriate inflectional morpheme based on the time expression or context of the sentence. For instance, the verb in past tense is inflected with the inflectional morpheme “-ed”, and “-ing” is added to the verbs when they are in present participle. Considering the distinction above, Cao (1992) explains that the Vietnamese language lacks complicated structures of tenses and moods. As a result, Vietnamese grammar shows the time of the action by putting tense making particles before the main verb. In some cases, this syntactic contrast prevents non-English majors from using intricate English tenses because of their fear of making errors. The following are some examples illustrating this problem. (1) Hắn đã gặp một bạn cũ tuần rồi. [He past-marker meet one friend old week just past] => “He met an old friend last week.” (2) Ông thầy đang dạy ngữ pháp tiếng Việt. [Mr. teacher present-marker teach syntax language Viet] => The teacher is teaching Vietnamese syntax. Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A 6 Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University Explaining the issue mentioned above, Ngo (2001) states that Vietnamese grammar is based on word order and sentence structures rather than morphology, which is similar to many other languages in Southeast Asia. Vietnamese uses grammatical particles such as “đã, đang, sẽ” to express tenses whereas most of the inflected languages in Western countries use morphology, particularly inflections for verb conjugation. Another problem in expressing the tense is that in some situations, the Vietnamese tend to leave out tense markers (Krifka, 2005) as in the example below. English: Why didn't you come to class yesterday? Vietnamese: Vì sao hôm qua anh đã không đi học? English: I didn't come to class because I was sick. Vietnamese: Hôm qua tôi đã không đi học vì tôi đã bị ốm. According to the prescriptive grammar of Vietnamese, the particle “đã” is expected to use in this situation. However, in reality, the conversation becomes unnatural if the speaker follows this grammatical point. To the Vietnamese, the time expression “hôm qua” is adequate to understand that the utterances are in the past. Therefore, the particle “đã” is often left out in daily conversations. Because of this habit, Vietnamese learners of English have the tendency to leave out grammatical particles such as “đã, đang…” in Vietnamese and inflectional suffixes “-ed”, “-ing”, “s /es” in English. It is the reason why Vietnamese learners produce a variety of errors in the use of English tenses. (Nguyen, 1995) 2.1.4. Noun forms In Vietnamese, there is no particular definition of articles. That causes many controversial views about whether or not articles exist in Vietnamese (Ho, 2009). According to Vo (2008, cited in Ho, 2009), there are 13 articles in Vietnamese: 1. con: con gà, con voi, coi chuột, etc. 2. cái: cái nhà, cái bàn, cái ghế, etc. 3. ngôi: ngôi nhà, ngôi chùa, ngôi đền, etc. 4. ngọn: ngọn núi, ngọn đồi, ngọn sóng, etc. Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A 7 Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền Influence of Syntactic Discrepancy between English and Vietnamese on Written English of Non-English Majored Students at Can Tho University 5. cánh: cánh tay, cánh đồng, cánh rừng, etc. 6. tay: tay quần vợt, tay chơi, tay nghề, etc. 7. đấng: đấng anh hào, đấng nam nhi, etc. 8. nhà: nhà văn, nhà thơ, nhà buôn, etc. 9. bản: bản sao, bản danh sách, bản liệt kê, etc. 10. quả: quả cam, quả quýt, quả xoan, etc. 11. cây: cây dừa, cây mít, cây xoài, etc. 12. tấm: tấm áo, tấm phản, tấm danh thiếp, etc. 13. chiếc: chiếc lá, chiếc khăn, chiếc nón, etc. However, Tuong (2004, cited in Ho, 2009) argues that the words listed above are not Vietnamese articles. He also states that these 13 words are classifiers used to modify head nouns. Because the classifiers do not exist in English, there are no equivalents between the two languages in this case. According to Ho (2009), although there have been contrastive viewpoints on Vietnamese articles, there is a unique view that using classifiers or articles in Vietnamese is optional depending on the speaker. Example: Vietnamese: Anh gửi lá thư dùm em chưa? English: Have you sent the letter for me yet? In this situation, the noun “letter” is a definite noun. Using the definite article “the” in this sentence is obligatory in English. In Vietnamese, if the speaker wants to focus the noun, they often add the classifier “cái” to the noun like “Anh gửi cái lá thư dùm em chưa?” Using the classifier “cái” to emphasise the noun “letter” is optional in Vietnamese. Because of this feature, Vietnamese learners tend to leave out the articles in English, which causes errors of the English noun form (Ho, 2009). The next contrastive grammatical feature between English and Vietnamese is the form of plural nouns. In English, the plural ending “s / es” is added to countable nouns in order to form plural nouns (Turton, 1995). On the contrary, Vietnamese plural nouns do not require any endings. In other words, Vietnamese nouns remain unchanged in both singular and plural forms. Instead of adding plural endings, Supervisor: LÝ THỊ BÍCH PHƯỢNG, M.A 8 Student: Nguyễn Thị Mộng Tuyền