iii ABSTRACT This study focuses on the analysis of errors in the use of English articles made by first-year students at Hung Yen Industrial College with an aim to recommend some selected implications for better teaching of English articles. The analysis was based on the data collected from two tests: a free-response test, writing a composition and a multichoice test provided by 90 non-major first-year students of Hung Yen Industrial college. Errors were described and classified according to linguistic category and strategies employed by the students. The greatest frequency of errors occured in the definite article in both tests.
The omissions of both definite and indefinite articles were most found in the compositions but the wrong selections of definite article instead of the indefinite in the multi-choice test. Explanations for the causes of the errors were done: interlingual or intralingual and developmental causes. Suggestions for improvement in teaching English articles are offered based on the findings. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS E.
That is L1 First language L2 Second language EFL English as a foreign language Ø Zero article LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com v LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Summary of English articles (p.5) Table 2: Bickerton’s semantic table for noun phrase reference (p.9) Table 3: General information of the writing corpus (p.25) Table 4: Frequencies of articles supplied in the written work by article type (26) Table 5: Non-pass and pass students of Test 2 (p.26) Table 6: Distribution of choices by the students in Test 2 (p.27) Table 7: Distribution of explanations on the right choices by the students in Task 1 (p.27) Table 8: Errors classified according to linguistic categories (p.29) Table 9: Errors classified according to the strategies employed by the students (p.30) Table 10: Strategies and causes of errors (p.36) Table 11: Interlingual versus intralingual and developmental errors (p.37) LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com vi TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY. iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS. iv LIST OF TABLES. v TABLE OF CONTENTS.
vi PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study. Aims of the study. Scope of the study.
Methods of the study. Significance of the study. Design of the study. 3 PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.
An overview of English article system. Definitions of English article. Types of English articles. Usage of English articles.
The determiners in Vietnamese language. Error and error analysis. The notions of errors in language learning. Classifications of errors.
14 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. Significance of error analysis. Stages in error analysis. Causes of errors in second language learning.
Causes of interlingual errors. Causes of intralingual and developmental errors. 18 CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 2. Setting of the study.
Instruments of data collection. Data collection procedures. Methods of data analysis. 24 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS, DISCUSSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 3.
Findings and discussions. General evaluation of the students’ performance. Recognition of errors. Description of errors.
Explanation of errors. Recommendations for instructional materials. Recommendations for teachers’ presentation. Limitations and suggestions for further study.VIII MULTI-CHOICE TEST .VIII LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -1- PART A: INTRODUCTION 1.
RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY The English article system is one of the most difficult aspects of English grammar for students of English as a second language to understand. English articles occur very frequently and incorrect use may affect communication negatively. Also an L2 writer may prefer to be accurate, when he/she has to write. Master (2002) attributes this difficulty to three facts about the article system: First, the English articles, the, a and zero, are the most commonly used words in English, making constant rule application difficult over a long discourse; Second, function words are often spoken with such weak stress that they are inaudible and consequently are very difficult for non-native speakers to discern, which affects the availability of input in the spoken mode; and third, the article system stacks multiple functions onto a single morpheme, which constitutes a considerable burden for the learner who usually looks for a one-to-one correspondence between form and function, especially in the early stages of language learning.
In addition, because they rarely carry significant information, they can usually be deleted in telegraphic speech, including telegrams and newspaper headlines. Thus, unlike content words, function words are generally overlooked by learners when processing language primarily for meaning. According to Pienemann (1998), the difficulty of the meaning expressed by an article is determined by the novelty and abstractness of the concept, not to mention learners’ changing hypotheses about article usage at different stages in interlanguage development and the potential influence of the native language which may further complicate the task. The idea of doing my research came from the following reasons.
First, researchers such as Newman (1977, cited in Master, 1988) and Barry Lush (2002) analyzed the composition errors of EFL learners and found that of all error types, the most common were related to definite and indefinite articles. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -2- Second, the English article system is so difficult to acquire for students with article-less languages like Vietnamese as their first language. It is also understood that these errors are mostly caused by the fact that no such independent grammatical category as the article exists in Vietnamese on which the learners could lean when learning the use of the English article system. This, of course, holds true generally, but we still come up against the problem of which parts of the English article system are especially difficult for Vietnamese learners to understand and learn.
AIMS OF THE STUDY This study is carried out with the aims: To identify the students’ common types of error in using English articles. To find out the causes of error committed by Hung Yen Industrial College’s students when learning and using English articles. To work out possible solutions to the problems identified. RESEARCH QUESTIONS In order to achieve the above mentioned aims, the study will be conducted to answer the three following research questions: 1) What are the common types of article errors made by first-year students at Hung Yen Industrial College? 2) What are the possible causes of the errors the students make in the use of English articles? 3) What are the recommendations for the teachers to teach English articles effectively? 4.
SCOPE OF THE STUDY The research will deal with errors in the use of English articles on the first-year student writings at Hung Yen Industrial College. The subjects selected for this study are 90 general EFL learners. LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. METHODS OF THE STUDY In order to complete the paper, the main research methods employed are: - Statistical methods are used to find out and classify the learners’ errors - Descriptive methods are used to describe the actual errors committed by the learners 6.
SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY The study will be useful not only to the author and her colleagues in improving the teaching quality, but students will also benefit from it. The result of the study will serve as a foundation for the possible solutions to students’ errors in using English articles. Furthermore, the study will make some contribution to the field of teaching methodology. DESIGN OF THE STUDY The study has three main parts as follows: Part A provides a brief introduction to the issue and an overview of the paper.
Part B includes three chapters, namely Literature Review (Chapter 1), Research Methodology (Chapter 2) and Data Analysis and Discussion (Chapter 3). In greater details, Chapter 1 reviews the theoretical backgrounds to English article system, error and error analysis in second language learning. Chapter 2 describes the methods used to carry out the study. It also includes an overview of the context of the study.
Chapter 3 presents and analyzes the data collected, and offers possible solutions to errors made by students at Hung Yen Industrial College. Some suggestions for the betterment of teaching and learning English article system are also provided. Part C summarizes the main issues so far touched upon in the research, the limitations of the research and some suggestions for further studies. Following the chapters are the references and one appendix.
LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -4- PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. An overview of English article system The article in English has always been considered one of the most formidable problems to overcome in teaching English grammar to foreigners and its misuse is one of the most evident grammatical signs that a person is not a native speaker of English. In this part, I will present an overview of English article system. Definitions of English article An important subset of adjectives in English is the determiner, a category of words that indicate which noun is being discussed.
The determiner in English consists of articles (a/an, the), possessives (my, your, their, etc), demonstratives (this, that. According to Richards and Schmidt (2002), determiner is a word which is used with a noun and which limits the meaning of the noun in some way. The most common kind of determiner in English is the article. And Alexander (1998) defines that “articles are determiners which affect the meaning of the noun, and make it clearer by showing which particular thing we are referring to” (p.
Types of English articles In Thomson and Martinet (1986:15-22), English articles are classified into two types: definite article the and indefinite article a/an. However, Quirk and Greenbaum (1987) adds one more type, that is zero article Ø. Yotsukura (1970) seems to be the first person who suggests adding another category beside the zero article. So English articles include a/an, the and Ø (the null or zero marker).
The two categories of the article are traditionally called indefinite and definite articles. Singular count nouns take a or an as indefinite articles. Plural nouns and non-count nouns take as their indefinite article. All categories of nouns take the as the definite marker.
This system is summarized in the following table: LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com -5- INDEFINITE ARTICLE DEFINITE ARTICLE Singular a/ an The Count noun Plural Ø The Non-count noun Ø The Table 1: Summary of English articles According to Whitman (1974), “thinking about the articles in such terms as: A/an is the indefinite article and the is the definite article” (p.253) is considered a misunderstanding or misconception. He also explains that The misconception involved lies in thinking that a/an and the are essentially the same thing (that is, “articles”), differing only along a dimension of “definiteness/ indefiniteness” or “specificity/ nonspecificity”. A/an and the are, in fact, entirely different syntactic entities, quite unrelated to each other except for that fact that both occur within the same general structure (p254). However, for reasons of conformity with other grammarians and textbooks, the terminology “indefinite” or “definite” will be kept.
For example, if we say, ‘I have a book you may be interested in,” we are referring to a definite, specific book. Nonetheless, we use the indefinite article a to signal that the book is not known by the listener. Definite article “The definite article the never varies in form whether it refers to people or things, singular or plural” (Alexander, 1998:55). Ann is in the garden.
Please pass the wine. (the wine on the table) (Thomson and Martinet, 1998:19) According to Halliday and Hasan, The definite article has no content. It merely indicates that the item in question is specific and identifiable; that somewhere the information necessary for identifying it is recoverable (1976:71). LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.