MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES, HUE UNIVERSITY ------------ MAI THI THUY LINH AN INVESTIGATION INTO GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN ESSAYS WRITTEN BY VIETNAMESE EFL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 8140111 SUPERVISOR: Assoc. TRUONG VIEN, Ph.D HUE, 2020 BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ ------------ MAI THỊ THÙY LINH KHẢO SÁT LỖI NGỮ PHÁP TRONG CÁC BÀI LUẬN TIẾNG ANH ĐƯỢC VIẾT BỞI HỌC SINH KHỐI TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG VIỆT NAM LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP DẠY HỌC BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH MÃ SỐ: 8140111 NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: PGS. TRƯƠNG VIÊN HUẾ, 2020 STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP The words contained in this thesis have not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. I certify that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, my thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself.
Signed: Mai Thi Thuy Linh Date: 18/12/2020 i AN INVESTIGATION INTO GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN ESSAYS WRITTEN BY VIETNAMESE EFL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS ABSTRACT It has been widely accepted that grammatical knowledge plays an indispensable role in language use. In hopes of describing the grammatical errors committed by Vietnamese EFL high school students, this research was conducted rigorously using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The data in this study were collected from 45 English essays, written by grade-ten students at Tran Phu high school - Phu Yen, Viet Nam. Results from students’ essays revealed that the most common grammatical errors included: word choice, plurality, verb tense and form, prepositions, articles, subject-verb agreement, to be verb, word order, and relative clauses.
Furthermore, interviews with 20 students were conducted to dig deeper into the triggers for students’ errors. The result showed that most of these errors were due to language transfer, lack of knowledge of the grammar points and meanings, students’ carelessness, overgeneralization of target language rules and lack of practice. Data from the interview with 5 high school teachers showed that the teachers often involved their students in self-assessment and peer-assessment activities to let them have a reflection upon their errors. In addition, frequent language testing and immediate feedback were given to prevent students from internalizing such errors.
The study puts forward implications for developing the English language proficiency among Vietnamese EFL high school students. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS A significant number of people contributed to the success of this thesis, and I would like to express my sincere thanks and appreciation to them all. Particularly, I would like to express my gratitude to my prominent supervisor, A/Prof. Truong Vien, Ph.D for teaching me knowledge that supported a lot for my research.
He inspired me to pursue this topic and gave me the confidence and tools I needed to do it. Without his direction and constant encouragement I would not have learned so much and would not have been able to complete this research project. I appreciate his talent and patience, he has always been a great inspiration for me, and his words and thoughts always motivate me to attain my goals. I would like to express my appreciation to the English teachers who are working at Tran Phu High school, Phu Yen Province.
Without their support and assistance, I would not have fulfilled my master study on time. Last but not least, I would like to convey my thanks to all of the students who enthusiastically supported my process of collecting data, making my study become successful and meaningful. iii TABLES OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT. iii LIST OF TABLES.
vi LIST OF FIGURES. vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. Aims and objectives. Scope of the study.
Organization of the study. Grammar and Grammatical Competence. Distinction between Errors and Mistakes. Errors made by Vietnamese learners of English.
Causes and Sources of Errors. Review of previous studies. Population and sampling. Procedure of data collection.
Data analysis procedures. Reliability and Validity. 28 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Common grammatical errors in essays written by Vietnamese EFL high school students.
Causes of the errors. Feasible measures to alleviate students’ grammatical errors. 45 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS. Implications and Recommendations.
Implications for EFL teachers. Implications for Vietnamese EFL students. Limitations and Further research. 54 v LIST OF TABLES Table 4.
Analysis of Errors produced by grade-10 students……………….28 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4. Total of Grammatical Errors………………………………. Causes of the errors………………………………….35 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CA: Contrastive Analysis EA: Error Analysis EFL: English as a Foreign Language ESL: English as a Second Language FL: Foreign Language GRW: Guided Research Writing L1: First Language L2: Second language vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Learning English as a foreign language in Viet Nam has been witnessing a spectacular increase in demands due to a wealth of opportunities it provides to the learners in many fields.
However, the challenging and often complicated process of studying English needs to be kept in mind especially by Vietnamese speakers. To some extent, Vietnamese grammar rules are fairly different from English ones. This on its own leads to a large potential of errors when Vietnamese students produce written or spoken English. Therefore, there has been a growing body of research investigating errors committed by Vietnamese EFL high school students.
It has been widely accepted that students are the ones who would undertake the mission of conquering the world; therefore, they should have a good competence in all language skills in order to be good English language users. They should not only become an expert in listening and speaking, but also in reading and writing. Moreover, it was found in many prior research papers that writing is one of main obstacles that ESL and EFL learners encounter. There are many factors that exert huge influences on foreign language acquisition, namely environment, age, motivation teacher, learners’ attitude, or parents’ attitude.
Hourani (2008) stated that grammatical problems, both errors in word order and sentence construction, were usually found in the written works of students. Similar to those of students in Malaysia, syntactic errors such as connecting words and sentence structures were often countered. According to Brown (2004), “a mistake refers to a performance error in that it is a failure to utilize a known system correctly, while an error is a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker, reflecting the interlanguage competence of the learner”. What is more, Harmer (2003) said that grammar is the description of the ways in which words can change their forms and can be combined into sentences in that language.
Grammar is one of the most crucial aspects in translation. In order to make a well structured translation, one should be mastered in grammar. As suggested by Brown (2004, p.298) “before the learner becomes familiar with the system of the second language, the native language is the only linguistic system upon which the learner can draw. Therefore, not having enough knowledge in this sense will lead learners to use their own system of syntax in the target language and this interference makes them Erroneous.” Hence, it seems impossible to learn a language without learning its grammar.
1 Likewise, J C Richards & Schmidt (2002) stated that in the speech or writing of a second or foreign language, error is the use of a linguistic item (e. a word, grammatical item, speech act, etc.) in a way which a fluent or native speaker of the language regards as showing faulty or incomplete. Because the difference between the two languages makes the learner face a great difficulty in learning and applying foreign language rules. Mother tongue interference (also known as language transfer) refers to speakers or writers applying knowledge from their native language to a second or foreign language.
When it comes to learners’ errors, Brown (2004) said that error analysis (EA) enthusiasts make a distinction between mistakes and errors, which are “technically two very different phenomena”. He also reckoned that a mistake can be self-corrected, but an error cannot. Therefore, native speakers can identify and correct them instantly because they have a deep awareness of their mother tongue structures and rules. Non-native speakers or L2 learners not only make mistakes, but also they commit errors in their writings; since their knowledge of L2 structures and rules is not sufficient.
Thus, studying a second language never becomes a simple task to accomplish. It is commonly believed that L1 has an effect on the L2 or foreign language especially regarding speaking which is concerned to be the most difficult skill to conquer. Having learners to produce a smooth, fluent and error-free sentence when making a conversation has always been the life long dream and the ambition of all EFL teachers because they are the ones who suffer from such a problem. In Viet Nam, students start learning English at the third school year of primary education.
Albeit getting exposed to English at an early stage, most of Vietnamese EFL students do not receive enough opportunities for their writing and speaking development. Therefore, they have been struggling with English language use for many years, even when they study at high school. They usually make errors in writing, especially grammatical errors which is not preferable for a senior or junior student, and these problems should be figured out. These tremendous problems of students are regarded as a motivation for the research to be conducted.
First, it is necessary to find out the types of errors that Vietnamese EFL students usually make in their writing. Next, other studies on this problem should be reviewed so that the experiment strategies that they used on their researches could be considered and be applied in this research. After the appropriate data collection method was employed, data would be collected strictly. It was immensely significant to use the most reliable and proper method for collecting data.
Thus, the purpose of this study 2 is to investigate the grammatical errors in essays written by Vietnamese EFL high school students. Aims and objectives 1. Aims This study aims to examine the grammatical errors and their causes in essays written by Vietnamese EFL high school students. Objectives To achieve the aim of the study, the following objectives are intended: 1.
To identify what types of grammatical errors are made in essays written by Vietnamese EFL high school students. To investigate the causes of the grammatical errors through the interview with students. To recommend ways to overcome the grammatical errors among Vietnamese EFL high school students. Significance The study is believed to help uncover some grammatical errors in essays written by Vietnamese EFL high school students as well as a couple of feasible causes it might have.
In this research, some workable measures will also be put forward to deal with those errors. Scope of the study The scope of this research was grammatical errors in essays written by Vietnamese EFL high school students. This research only observed grammatical writing errors in students’ language use. Other errors like spelling and punctuation were not analyzed.
English was learned as the foreign language so any deviation produced by the learners was defined as an error. Research questions This study will be investigated through the following research questions: 1. What are the common grammatical errors in essays written by Vietnamese EFL high school students? 2. What are the causes of the errors? 3.
What are feasible measures to alleviate students’ grammatical errors? 1. Organization of the study The paper is structured as follows: Chapter One: Introduction – deals with the rationale, the aims and objectives, the scope of the study, significance and the research questions. Chapter Two: Literature Review – reviews previous studies related to grammatical errors. 3 Chapter Three: Research Methodology – involves the method and procedures applied in the research.
A description of population is also included in this part.