VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HO CHI MINH CITY AN GIANG UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNDERGRADUATE THESIS DIFFICULTIES AND COMMON GRAMMATICAL AND MECHANICAL ERRORS IN ACADEMIC ESSAY WRITING OF ENGLISH-MAJORED SOPHOMORES AT AN GIANG UNIVERSITY NGUYEN HOANG HAI SON AN GIANG, 6-2022 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY HO CHI MINH CITY AN GIANG UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES UNDERGRADUATE THESIS DIFFICULTIES AND COMMON GRAMMATICAL AND MECHANICAL ERRORS IN ACADEMIC ESSAY WRITING OF ENGLISH-MAJORED SOPHOMORES AT AN GIANG UNIVERSITY NGUYEN HOANG HAI SON I.A, HUYNH CHI XUAN HUYEN AN GIANG, 6-2022 Thesis Title: DIFFICULTIES AND COMMON GRAMMATICAL AND MECHANICAL ERRORS IN ACADEMIC ESSAY WRITING OF ENGLISH-MAJORED SOPHOMORES AT AN GIANG UNIVERSITY By: NGUYEN HOANG HAI SON Field of Study: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Advisor: M.A, HUYNH CHI XUAN HUYEN Accepted by the Faculty of Foreign Languages, An Giang University on … June 2022 ………………………………………… (Dr. Tran Thi Thanh Hue) Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages Examination Committee ………………………………………………Advisor (M. HUYNH CHI XUAN HUYEN) ……………………………………………… Faculty Examiner 1 (Ph. PHAN THI THANH HUYEN) ………………………………………….
Faculty Examiner 2 (Ph. NGUYEN DUC HANH) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to extend my deepest thanks to individuals and institutions for all the support they have given me and my undergraduate thesis. First and foremost, I would like to express my genuine appreciation to my respectful supervisor as well as mentor – Ms. Huynh Chi Xuan Huyen.
Throughout the time at An Giang University, it was my luck as well as pleasure to have a chance to be instructed by Ms. Huynh Chi Xuan Huyen in many courses. Her professional manner in teaching has led me to wonderful achievements in academic records. With this thesis, not only did she inspire me to register for it in the first place but also share her valuable insight into Research Methodology to me.
During the time of conducting this thesis, she – despite being occupied by her hectic working schedule – was giving me her endless support whenever I was in need. Her direct supervision has made an invaluable contribution to the development and completion of my undergraduate thesis. Secondly, I would like to give a special thank to Ms. Nguyen Thi Anh Guong, Mr.
Nguyen Duc Hanh, Ms. Ly Thi Minh Trang, Ms. Nguyen Thi Anh Nguyet, Ms. Truong Nhu Ngoc, and my beloved supervisor Ms.
Huynh Chi Xuan Huyen for their important assistance in helping me gather data for the thesis. They were so kind to give me access to valuable sources of data from the courses and classes under their supervision. Moreover, they also showed me their passionate enthusiasm of a teacher in encouraging English-majored sophomores to help me fill in the questionnaire. Without their help, my undergraduate thesis will not go this far.
i Thirdly, I want to send my best regards to Mr. Le Do Thai who was in charge of the course on Research Methodology. He had imparted me with inspiring lessons from the course as well as instructed me on using SPSS for data analysis. Moreover, I also want to express my gratitude to Mr.
Nguyen Tien Ngo who is my admiring teacher for offering me materials for referential purposes. Lastly, I would like to thank all the participants who took part in this study. Your cooperation is an indispensable part of the completion of this thesis. ii DECLARATION I hereby declare that the thesis entitled “Difficulties and Common Grammatical and Mechanical Errors in Academic Essay Writing of English-Majored Sophomores at An Giang University” represents my own work and that has not been previously submitted to any other university or institute in application for admission to degrees or other qualifications.
_____________________________________________ June 2022 Nguyen Hoang Hai Son iii ABSTRACT English is gradually becoming an indispensable language in the modern world. Out of the four skills in English, writing is the most difficult one. Especially, the difficulty of writing mostly lies in academic writing. Hence, this study is carried out with an aim to help students come to be aware of the difficulties, and grammatical and mechanical errors in academic writing, especially essay writing.
Moreover, this study also aims at providing teachers with useful information about the status quo of students, especially sophomores in writing essays so that they can make good use of such information in their teaching. This quantitative study uses the questionnaires and error analysis of writing samples to figure out the difficulties, and common grammatical and mechanical errors in writing essays of students with the participation of 156 English-majored sophomores at An Giang University and a collection of 20 essays from those students. After surveying students’ perception on five categories of difficulties using a questionnaire, the findings reveal that all the difficulties listed in the questionnaire are encountered by students. The most common difficulty among those is time restriction.
The linguistic category is the most common category of difficulties in which three most recognized difficulties are vocabulary restriction, mother tongue’s influence, and limited paraphrasing ability. The commonly committed types of grammatical errors from students are singularity/plurality, verb forms/tenses, sentence structures, prepositions, articles, word classes, and conjunctions. Three types of mechanical errors often made by students can be listed as punctuations, spelling and capitalization. iv The study also reflects its shortcomings and makes recommendations for changes and further studies.
Keywords: difficulties, grammatical errors, mechanical errors, academic writing, essay writing v CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS. vi LIST OF TABLES. ix LIST OF FIGURES. xi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS .1 Rationale of the study .2 Statement of the problem .3 Research aims and research questions .4 Significance of the study .5 Structure of the thesis.2 Academic essay types .3 Criteria for essay writing evaluation .4 Difficulties in essay writing .1 Linguistic category taxonomy .2 Surface strategy taxonomy .3 The comparative taxonomy .4 Communicative effect taxonomy .2 Source of errors .2 Ignorance of rule restrictions .3 Incomplete application of rules .4 False concepts hypothesized .1 Difficulties in essay writing .2 Common grammatical s and mechanical errors in essay writing .2 Analyzing sophomores’ essay samples .4 Data collection procedures .6 Validity and reliability.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS .1 Findings about the difficulties in essay writing .6 Overall perception of the participants .2 Discussions of the difficulties in essay writing .3 Findings about common grammatical and mechanical errors in essay writing .2 Singularity/ Plurality errors .3 Word class errors .6 Sentence structure errors .4 Discussion of errors in essay writing .1 Summary of the results .4 Recommendations for further research. 101 APPENDIX A: WRITING RUBRICS. 107 APPENDIX C: BẢNG KHẢO SÁT. 113 APPENDIX D: WRITING SAMPLES.
119 APPENDIX E: PLAGIARISM CHECK BY TURNITIN. 132 viii LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1. A sample linguistic category taxonomy. Example of regularization errors.
Simple addition errors. Classes of the participants. Genders of the participants. Academic backgrounds of the participants.
Reliability statistics of the questionnaires for students. Reliability statistics of the questionnaires for students. One-sample statistics of the linguistic difficulties. One-sample test of the linguistic difficulties.
Descriptive statistics of items in the linguistic difficulties. One-sample statistics of the psychological difficulties. One-sample test of the psychological difficulties. Descriptive statistic of items in the psychological difficulties.
One-sample statistics of the pedagogical difficulties. One-sample test of the pedagogical difficulties. Descriptive statistics of items in the pedagogical difficulties. One-sample statistics of the cognitive difficulties.
One-sample test of the cognitive difficulties. Descriptive statistics of the cognitive difficulties. One-sample statistics of the other difficulties. One-sample test of the other difficulties.
Descriptive statistics of the other difficulties. One-sample statistics of the students’ overall perception. One-sample test of the students’ overall perception. Descriptive statistics of the overall mean of 5 categories of difficulties.
Descriptive statistics of all items in the questionnaire in descending order. Group statistics of the difference in the overall perception between DH21AV and DH21TA. Independent samples test of the difference in the overall perception between DH21AV and DH21TA. Group statistics of the difference in the overall perception between male and female.
Independent samples test of the difference in the overall perception between male and female. Descriptive statistics of the difference in the overall perception between students with different academic backgrounds. Singularity/ Plurality errors. Word class errors.
Sentence structure errors. 85 x LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1. Is writing essays necessary?. What do you think about writing essays?.
What do you think about Grammar in writing essays?. What do you think about Mechanics in writing essays?. Overall perception of students with different academic backgrounds. 86 xi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AGU: An Giang University FFL: Foreign Language Faculty L2: Second Language L1: First Language IELTS: International English Language Testing System ELT: English Language Teaching TOEFL iBT: Internet-based Test of English as a Foreign Language TOEIC: Test of English for International Communication CAE: Certificate in Advanced English CPE: Certificate of Proficiency in English GRE: Graduate Record Examination TESOL: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages EFL: English as Foreign Language ESL: English as Second Language xii CHAPTER 1.
INTRODUCTION The introduction of the thesis contains the research rationale, the statement of the problem, the research aims and questions, the significance of the research, and the thesis outline.1 Rationale of the study In the globalization era, writing has been increasingly popular as a means of communication in various forms such as emails, letters, contracts, and other important documents. In education, it is more obvious to realize how important writing, or specifically academic writing, is. For example, writing, such as essays and reports, is a popular assessment form in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) curriculum, according to Paltridge (2004). Despite the importance of academic writing, it is not an easy task, as Arndt (1991) claims.
Bracewell (1980) also explains that “writing is the most complex and demanding of all cognitive activities undertaken by human beings”. According to Nunan (1989), “writing is an extremely difficult cognitive activity which requires the learner to have control over various factors”. That is the reason why writing can be the most difficult skill L2 learners have to deal with. In fact, difficulties in writing are usually found in academic writing which requires formal styles and a variety of topics and as a result, writers need a wide-ranging knowledge of grammar, vocabulary, different topics and certain writing techniques.
It is agreed that academic writing is a difficult skill to be achieved especially in second language acquisition. Besides, it is even more challenging at the university level. Students at the university level seem weaker in their writing skills, according to Alharbi (2019). In the field of EFL and ESL, most research reports that learners of English at the university level face adversities in writing skill (Bacha, 2012; Horwitz, Horwitz, & Cope, 1986; Khalil, 2002; Kharma & Hajjaj, 1997; Tahaineh, 2010), as cited in Alharbi (2019).
Moreover, in the writing process, it sounds impossible to separate writing in a foreign language from making errors. People cannot learn languages without making errors (Dulay & Burt, 1982 as cited in Nguyen, 2020). Many studies suggest that the most common errors that students make often involve grammar and mechanics (Fatima, 2015; Frodesen, 2009; Al-Khairy,2013; Alfaki, 2015; Ridha, 2012; Jordan, 1997; Yuliah, Widiastuti & Meida, 2019), cited Nguyen (2020). 1 It can be easily seen that digging into the difficulties and errors in essay writing has long been an area that attracts many researchers to conduct their studies.
Not only did these studies yield satisfying results but also reveal many aspects of this research area. Despite this, few similar studies are carried out in Vietnam in general and at An Giang University (AGU) in particular. Therefore, this study would be a valuable contribution to the body of this research area.2 Statement of the problem At AGU, it is not until the second year that English majors are introduced to writing essays, and essay writing skills will be accompanied them for several semesters.