HAIPHONG PRIVATE UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT ----------------------------------- GRAMMATICAL ERRORS MADE BY ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HAIPHONG PRIVATE UNIVERSITY WHEN SPEAKING ENGLISH AND THE SOLUTIONS Name: Vu Thi Ngoc Linh Class: NA1301 AI PHONG, 2013 1 HAIPHONG PRIVATE UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT ----------------------------------- GRAMMATICAL ERRORS MADE BY ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HAIPHONG PRIVATE UNIVERSITY WHEN SPEAKING ENGLISH AND THE SOLUTIONS Name: Vu Thi Ngoc Linh Class: NA1301 Supervisor: Nguyen Thi Thuy Thu, M.A HAI PHONG, 2013 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the process of fulfilling this graduation paper, I have received many necessary assistances previous ideas and timely encouragement from my teachers, family and friends. First and foremost, I would like to send my deep gratitude to Mrs. Nguyen Thi Thuy Thu, the supervisor of this graduation paper. Her detailed comments and useful advice have helped me shape my ides and realize my aims.
She has also provided me with many useful materials as well as encouraged and created favorable conditions for me to fulfill this research. Therefore, it is an undeniable fact that this paper would have not been completed without her invaluable support. Secondly, I would like to show my sincere thanks to Dr. Tran Thi Ngoc Lien _leading Board of Department of Foreign Language for giving me a chance to do the thesis.
Also, I would like to express my particular thanks to all the lectures of the Department whose lectures have enriched my academic knowledge of English during the past four years. In addition, I warmly thank all my friends for their encouragement and precious assistance throughout the process of writing the thesis. Their material and spiritual support is a great driving – force for me. Especially, I wish to thank over … the first and the second year students in Department for their enthusiastic and effective cooperation in the process of completing the survey questionnaires.
Finally, I am greatly indebted to my parents, who have encouraged and supported me to fulfil this graduation paper. Student Vu Thi Ngoc Linh 3 PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Language is a typical and essential product of each nation because it is the individual feature of each country. When learning a foreign language, it is necessary for learners to learn four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Thank to it, learners can master and use this foreign language. In all four skills, speaking can be considered to be the skill which requires learners to spend very much time learning and practicing. Most of the students face up with the difficulties in studying speaking at first. In fact, studying speaking well is one of the key which helps learners step by step discover this interesting language.
Moreover, English is not easy to learn because English grammar is rather complicated. In fact, many English learners have the misconception that when they have memorized many grammar structures and can write well, they can speak well. Yet, when they stand up to speak on something, things do not appear to be as easy as they expected. Sometimes, learners can speak on something and feel satisfied their speeches after finishing them.
But they rarely take notice of or even recognize some sentence problems related to grammar structures that may occur. With the hope that learners can find out some experiences of grammatical errors during speaking and of being corrected, a study on “Grammatical errors made by English major students at Hai Phong Private University when speaking English and the solutions” is chosen as the topic of this graduation paper.Aims of the study This study aims at: Providing learners an overview of English sentences and some parts of speech in English sentences (particularly Subject and Verb). Analyzing most common grammatical errors in English sentences during speaking related to Subject and Verb. Giving some causes and suggested solutions to overcome these mistakes, to help English major students in HPU with promoting and enhancing English speaking skill.
Methods of the study _ A survey was conducted for the 1st and 2nd English major students at HPU about grammatical errors when speaking English and the solutions. The survey questionnaire has been designed as the key data collection instrument of the study. Collecting and analyzing data have been used. _ Consulting several ideas with supervisor.
_ Gathering information through reference books and related Websites. Scope of the study In the communication, the mistakes made by learners are unavoidable. Thus, we had better look at the mistakes, a part of learning English, to answer the questions: causes and how to correct them. There are many different types of errors during speaking English: Lexical errors, grammatical errors, pronunciation errors, written errors… However, for the limitation of knowledge and experience, I am not capable of studying all.
Therefore, only the grammatical mistakes related to Subject and Verb are covered in this graduation paper. Design of the study The study consists of three parts: Introduction, Development, Conclusion Part I: Introduction on showing reasons to choose the study, aims, methods, scope and design of the study. Part II: The main part of the study: including four chapters Chapter I: The theoretical background of English sentences Chapter II: Common grammatical errors related to Subject and Verb in sentence Chapter III: Data collection and analysis - Comment on the interview and survey questionnaires - Data collection and analysis - Main findings Chapter IV: Some suggested solutions Part III: Summarize and make a conclusion to the main points which have been explored in the study, propose recommendations to develop the effectiveness of teaching and learning English. 6 PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND I.
Understanding speaking skill ―Speaking is the productive skill in the oral mode. It, like the other skills, is more complicated than it seems at first and involves more than just pronouncing words‖. M, 2009: 3) There are three kinds of speaking situations in which we find ourselves: _ Interactive, _ Partially interactive, and _ Non-interactive. ―Speaking in a second language involves the development of a particular type of a communication skill.
It has occupied a peculiar position throughout much of the history of language teaching. Speaking is a skill which deserves attention every bit as much as literary skills, in both first and second languages. Ours learners often need to be able to speak with confidence in order to carry out many of their most basic transactions. It is the skill by which learners are most frequently judged and through which they make and lose friends‖ (Bygate.
M, 2009: 3) According to Oxford Advanced Learner‘s Dictionary (2005), ―speaking is the activity of using voice to say something‖ 7 Speaking, as stated by Chaney & Burd (1998) is ―the process of building and sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbols, in a variety of contexts‖. ―Speaking is an interactive process of constructing meaning that involves producing and processing information‖ (Brown 1994; Burn & Joyce 1997). Sentence definitions We have used sentences all our life to communicate our ideas in both spoken and written language. There are different ways to define a sentence but we would prefer a traditional grammar-based definition: ―The sentence is the largest grammatical unit which expresses a complete thought or idea and has a definite grammatical form (one finite verb, one subject) and a certain intonation.
It could be said in another way that the sentence is a unit of speech which expresses a more or less complete thought and has a definite grammatical form and a certain intonation. Every sentence shows the relation of the statement to reality from the point of view of the speaker‖.org/wiki/Clause) Element is usually a small amount of something, thus, sentence element is a small amount of sentence. A sentence may alternatively be seen as comprising five units called elements of sentence. Structure: subject, verb, complement, object and adverbial, which are abbreviated as S, V, C, O, A.
Ex: John carefully searched the room. S A V O 8 The girl is now a student at a large university. Subject ―Subject is identified syntactically by the features of position, concord, pronominalisation and reflection in tag questions. Semantically, almost all participant roles can be associated with the subject.
It can be realized by a wide variety of group and clauses‖. (Angela Downing and Philip Locke, 2006) According to Oxford Advanced Learner‘s dictionary, ―subject is word(s) in a sentence naming who or what does or undergoes the action stated by the verb, or word(s) in a sentence about which something is stated‖. Ex: I am keeping most of my money in the blank. They are placing the blame on us.
The kettle is now on the store. As A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language stated, ―the subject is often described as the constituent defining the topic of the sentence _ that which the sentence is ―about‖ and which it presupposes as its point of departure‖. Contrary to the above definition, which is more about syntactic, this one is more about semantic part of the sentence. Subject can be expressed by a wide variety of groups and clauses but it‘s usually a noun or a pronoun.
9 Subjects determine number (singular or plural) and person concord with the verb. Concord is manifested only in those verb forms which show inflectional contrast: Ex: The librarian/ he/ she has checked the book. The librarians/ I/ you/ we/ they have checked the book. Verb Verb is word or phrase indicating an action, an event or a state, or a condition of the subject such as bring, do, eat, play, sleep, etc.
Ex: She left yesterday. He eats two sweet cakes. Did they leave yesterday? She will leave tomorrow. According to Quirk.
Of these three classes, the full verbs can act only as main verbs, and the primary verb can act as either main verbs or an auxiliary verb‖. Primary verb: have, do, be: Form: have, has, had do, does, did be, am , is, are, was, were, been, being 10 Modal auxiliary verb: can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would, ought to In addition to this, some verbs (variously termed marginal modals, semi- auxiliaries, etc) have a status intermediate between that of main verbs and that of auxiliaries. As with most meaning-based criteria, the semantic definition above is somewhat misleading. For instance, nouns divided from verbs through zero derivation (strike, kick, throw) will maintain their verbal sense of action.
Like nouns, verbs have a limited potential for taking inflectional endings. English has below inflections for verbs: _ Base form (we symbolize verbs with this inflection as V) Ex: I play that game. _ -S form : Third person singular present tense (we symbolize verbs with this inflection as Vs) Ex: Ann plays that game very well. _ Past tense (we symbolize verbs with this inflection as V-ed) Ex: Ann played that game last night.
_ Present participle form (we symbolize verbs with this inflection as V-ing) Ex: Ann is playing that game now. _ Past participle form (we symbolize verbs with this inflection as V-en) Ex: Ann has played that game since 2010. Traditionally, V-ing is sometimes called the progressive since it is often used to form the progressive verb structure, as in is playing. However, V-ing also occurs in structures traditionally known as gerunds.
Only the progressive use of ing is regard as an inflection. 11 Also, V-en has been called the past participle form of the verb. However, V-en can function as the head of the verb phrase. The ability to accept these inflections is sufficient to qualify a word as a verb in English.
However, because of both zero derivation and identical spelling of certain derivational endings, it will always be necessary to confirm that a word in a specific sentence is actually a verb. Therefore, a word is a verb if it actually ends in a verb inflection. We must distinguish between main verbs and auxiliary verbs. The main verbs can appear themselves in a verb phrase; an auxiliary verb regularly appears only preceding a main verb.
What is concord?
