MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY DO NGOC THUY YES - NO QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH: MAJOR LINGUISTIC FEATURES AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS C©u hái Cã-Kh«ng trong tiÕng Anh: Nh÷ng ®Æc ®iÓm ng«n ng÷ næi tréi vµ mét sè gîi ý s- ph¹m M. THISIS Hanoi - 2013 1 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY DO NGOC THUY YES - NO QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH: MAJOR LINGUISTIC FEATURES AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS C©u hái Cã-Kh«ng trong tiÕng Anh: Nh÷ng ®Æc ®iÓm ng«n ng÷ næi tréi vµ mét sè gîi ý s- ph¹m M. THISIS Field : English Language Code : 60220201 Supervisor : Associate Professor Vo Dai Quang, PhD. Hanoi - 2013 2 DECLARATION I hereby declare that no part of the enclosed Master Thesis has been copied or reproduced by me from any other's work without acknowledgement and that the thesis is originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor.
Hanoi, 21st November 2013 Candidate Do Ngoc Thuy Approved by Associate Professor Vo Dai Quang, PhD. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 3 During the process of writing this thesis, I have been fortunate to receive supports and assistance from a variety of people. First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Vo Dai Quang , for his encouragement and guidance throughout the research.
Without her well-designed plan and meticulous review of the drafts, this thesis would not have been completed. I would also like to thank the head master of my colleagues in the Hon Gai high school, for offering me this opportunity to teach and apply this study for one semester on a class of English major students at the high school. Additional thanks go to the students who actively participated in this study and willingly shared their experiences with me. Last but not least, my gratitude is extended to my family: to my parents, to my husband and to my son and for their love and support to a daughter, a wife and a mother whose mind was not always free to give the attention they needed.
I would like to thank all people who took part in achieving this work. Hanoi, 2013 Do Ngoc Thuy TABLE OF CONTENTS 4 Declaration.ii List of abbreviations.iii Table of contents .iv Part 1: INTRODUCTION. Rationale of the study. Aims of the study.
Scope of the study. Methods of the study. Design of the study. Significance of the study.11 PART II: DEVELOPMENT.12 Chapter 1 : LITERATURE REIEW.
Review of previous works related to the theme of the thesis. Review of theoretical preliminaries employable as tools for the current research. Sentence types communicatively classified. Types of questions structurally classified.
Types of YES - NO questions. Theme-rheme structure in questions. Given-New information structure in questions. Presupposition + sought-for information as pivotal concept in the study of YES - NO questions.
YES - NO questions proper vs. rhetorical YES - NO questions. expectation as semantic component in YES - NO questions. Research - governing principles.
Research approach : inductive; qualitative. Date-related issues. Date collection instruments. Date analysis techniques.
Major and supporting methods.34 Chapter 3 : FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. Structural features of YES - NO questions. YES - NO questions of the form AUXILIARY + S + Predication. Declarative questions : Statement said with a RISE.
Semantic features of YES - NO questions. YES - NO questions of the form AUXILIARY + S + Predication. Pragmatic features of YES - NO questions. YES - NO questions employed as information-seeking questions.1 YES - NO questions of the form " AUXILIARY + S + Predication".
YES - NO questions employed as rhetorical questions. YES - NO questions of the form AUXILIARY + S + Predication. Types of errors and mistakes commonly committed by students at Hon Gai high school using YES - NO questions and possible solutions. Grammatical errors & mistakes.
Lexical errors & mistakes. Prosody-related errors & mistakes. Brief summary of the thesis. Specific conclusions on the thesis objectives.
Conclusions on objective (i). Conclusions on objective (ii). Conclusions on objective (iii). Conclusions on objective (iv).
Suggestions for further study.64 7 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS - L2 : Second language - ESL : English as second language. - EFL : English as foreign language. - MCQ : Multiple choice questions. Rationale of the study To a conversation succeed we need to understand throughly accurate implicit meaning behind each speaker.
Normally, every type he used to say usually exhibit a certain means. Such as profiles narrative used to describe, spacious an incident yet due. The imparative are used to express a command, requests. The interrogative are used to ask.
However, meaning true of language is not composed of surface text must be placed in certain specific context. In principle, the basic function of a question general and yes - no question in particular is to ask an unknown information. However, beside the purpose, question " Yes - No" captures the many other functions depending on context as invitations, suggestions, requests. During the time working as a teacher of English, I have had a hard time correcting students' errors and mistakes in using YES - NO questions in English.
Most of these common errors and mistakes centrer round linguistic features of this question type. This is the reason why I have make up my mind to choose this topic as the theme for my MA thesis in English language. Aims of the study This thesis is an attempt to: (i) To arm myself with some certain knowledge of the linguistic features of YES - NO questions. In my opinions, this amount of knowledge would facilitate me a lot in the teaching of English to Vietnamese learners of English; (ii) To provide an insightful look into effective uses of YES - NO questions of learners of English in general and students at the school where I am now working in particular.
Research questions 9 With a view to fulfilling the above-mentioned aims, the following are set out as research objectives with these 4 research questions as particular elaborations: (i) What are the possible types of English YES-NO questions structurally considered? (ii) What are the major linguistic features of each of the identified YES-NO questions? (iii) What are the causes of the main types of errors and mistakes commonly committed by learners of English in general and by students at Hon Gai high school in particular? (iv) What are the possible solutions to the established types of errors and mistakes? 1. Scope of the study The research is to be confined to the intended areas below: (i) Types and sub-types of English YES - NO questions. (ii) The reality of English language teaching & learning at Hon Gai high school. Methods of the study It is common knowledge that the employment of research methods is mostly determined by specific research aims and objectives.
The strengths of any method can be exploited to the full if appropriately applied for the right aims and/or objectives. Bearing this in mind, in this thesis, one or more method(s) is/are intended to be employed for each of the objectives set forth. (i) Descriptive method and entrospective method are intended for objectives 1& 2. (ii) Survey research and error analysis are to be used for objective 3 10 (iii) Action research is to be applied for objective 4 since this type of research is aimed at bring about improvement, positive changes for teaching & learning.
Design of the study - In addition to the REFERENCES and APPENDICES, the thesis consists of three main parts, ie. INTRODUCTION, DEVELOPMENT, and CONCLUSION. - The INTRODUCTION part addresses the following points to the research: rationale, aims, research questions, study scope, research methods, thesis design, and significance of the research. - The DEVELOPMENT part consists of three chapters, LITERATURE REVIEW, METHODOLOGY, FINDINGS and DISCUSSIONS.
- The CONCLUSION part is made up of three sections: (i) Brief Summary of the main issue dealt with in the thesis (ii) Specific conclusions on each of the research objectives (iii) Suggestions for further research. Significance of the study (i) Theoretically, this thesis is an attempt to bring about a systematic account of major linguistic features of YES - NO questions in English, which might, to the possible extent depending specified purposes, serve as theoretical basis for application into other researches for practical purposes. (ii) Practically, to some certain extent, this thesis result would help English teachers tackle problems related to errors and mistakes likely to be committed by Vietnamese learners of English. 11 PART II: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1 : LITERATURE REVIEW 1.
Review of previous works related to the theme of the thesis In general, in English, there are diverse yes-no questions in English whose frequency of use very high. Yes-no questions are found in A University Grammar of English by Quirk,R and Greebaums (1978) [192], Pragmatics by Yule, George (1996). In addition, some these in Vietnamese University also involve description yes- no questions. Among these there are " Pragmatics" by Vo Dai Quang (2005), " Questions in English in contrastive equivalent in Vietnamese" by Nguyen Dang Suu (2001).
Review of theoretical preliminaries employable as tools for the current research 1. Sentence types communicatively classified: According to Randolph Quirk Sidney Greenbaum, simple sentences may be divided into four major syntactic classes, whose use correlates with different communicative functions: (i) Statements are sentences in which the subject is always present and generally precedes the verb: John will speak to the boss today. On exceptional statements not containing a subject (ii) Questions are sentences marked by one or more of these three criteria: (a) The placing of the operator immediately in front of the subject: Will John speak to the boss today? (b) The initial positioning of an interrogative or who-element: 12 Who will you speak to? (c) Rising intonation: You will speak to the boss? (iii) Commands are sentences which normally have no overt grammatical subject, and whose verb is in the imperative: Speak to the boss today (iv) Exclamations are sentences which have an initial phrase introduced by what or how, without inversion of subject and operator: What a noise they are marking We use the following adjectives for these four types: (i) Declarative, (ii) interrogative, (iii) imperative, and (iv) exclamatory. Note: There is an important exception to (ii a) above.
It is only in relatively formal use that negative questions have the subject immediately after the operator. Did John not send the letter? Normally the negative particle comes between operator and subject, but almost invariably with contraction: Didn't John send it? (?* Did not John send it?). Focusing adjunct can also appear between operator and subject, and they make it possible for a preceding not to remain uncontracted: Did not even a single student come to the lecture? ( formal ). Types of questions structurally classified: (i) WH-questions Randolph Quirk Sidney Greenbaum state: Wh - questions are formed with the aid of one of the following interrogative words ( or Q-words): Who/whom/whose, what, which when, where, how, why As a rule, 13 (1) The Q-element (i.e clause element containing the Q-words) generally comes first in the sentence.
(2) The Q-words itself takes first position in the Q-element. The only exception to the second principle is when the Q-word occurs in a prepositional complement. Here English provides a choice between two constructions, one formal and the other less so. In formal style, the preposition precedes the complement, whereas in colloquial style, the complement comes first and the preposition retains the position it has in a declarative sentence: On what did you base your prediction? ( formal ) What did you base your prediction on? We may perhaps express this difference more neatly by saying that colloquial English insists that the Q-word come first, while formal English insists that the Q-element as a whole comes first.
(ii) YES - NO questions Yes - no questions are usually formed by placing the operator before the subject and giving the sentence a rising intonation: The boat has left - Has the boat left?