Topic Common grammatical errors in writing English made by the Englishmajored students of the class 15DTA of the Saigon International University

Writing is one of the most common communication forms used not only in daily life but also in education and working places. In order to deliver a full meaning of a piece of writing, writers should pay attention to grammar because it is a key factor for that purpose. Considering the importance of grammar in writing English, the research was carried out in the aim of finding out whether there are grammatical errors made by the Englishmajored students in the class 15DTA in the Saigon International University. In fact, the researcher discovered there are four common errors relating to grammar, collected from the students’ essays: Subject Verb Agreement (22.17%), Noun (21.18%), Verb Tense and Form (17.73%) and Article (17.73%). Some solutions were suggested in order to assist students to overcome this problem.They include practicing writing, reading English books, news or other materials and consulting grammar books

COMMON GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN WRITINNIVERSITY

Hochiminh City – 2019

………

GRADUATION THESIS

Major

English Language

Topic

Common grammatical errors in writing

English made by the English-majored

students of the class 15DTA of the Saigon

International University

Supervisor

Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy,

M.A

Student

Nguyen Trung Van

ID: 97011501082

Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A

DECLARATION

I am Nguyen Trung Van hereby declare that the work presented in this Graduation

Thesis is uniquely prepared by me

I also confirm that, the thesis paper is only prepared for my university requirements not for any other purposes It might not be used with the interest of the opposite party of the corporation

_

Nguyen Trung Van

ID: 97011501082

Course: 8

Class: 15DTA

Major in English Language

The Saigon International University

Date submitted: ………

Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I had received many helps when I completed my graduation thesis

Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Ms Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy, whose encouragement, guidance and willingness motivated me from the beginning to the end and enable me to finish this work

Secondly, I would like to give the appreciation from the bottom of my heart to The Saigon International University for providing me a professional learning environment and facilities, as well as all teachers in the English Language major for giving enthusiasm and sympathies to lift me to be the better one as I am today

In addition, because of my limited knowledge, shortcomings and mistakes cannot be avoided so I expect to receive helpful advice from teachers to make the paper more perfect

In short, I really thank to all people helping me to finish this graduating paper

Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A

SUPERVISOR’S COMMENTS

ADVISOR: ………

SIGNED: ………

Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A

PANEL’S COMMENTS

PANEL: ………

SIGNED: ………

Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A

TABLE OF CONTENT LIST OF CHARTS AND FIGURES 2

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 2

Abstract 3

Chapter 1: Introduction and background of the study 4

I Rationale 4

II The significance of the study 5

III The scope and limitation of the study 6

IV Research questions 6

Chapter 2: Literature review 7

I Definitions of terminology 7

1 Definition of English Writing 7

2 Definition of Grammatical errors 8

II Review of previous works 22

Chapter 3:Methodology 24

I Research design 24

II Description 24

III Participants 24

IV Tools to collect data 25

Chapter 4: Findings and discussion 27

I The common grammatical errors in writing English of the students 27

II Some suggestions to overcome the issue 39

Chapter 5: Conclusion and recommendation 46

I Conclusion 46

II Recommendation 47

Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A

REFERENCES 49

APPENDIX 53

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1 30

Figure 1 31

Figure 2 42

Figure 3 43

Figure 4 45

Figure 5 45

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A

Abstract

Writing is one of the most common communication forms used not only in daily life but also in education and working places In order to deliver a full meaning of a piece of writing, writers should pay attention to grammar because it is a key factor for that purpose Considering the importance of grammar in writing English, the research was carried out

in the aim of finding out whether there are grammatical errors made by the English-majored students in the class 15DTA in the Saigon International University In fact, the researcher discovered there are four common errors relating to grammar, collected from the students’ essays: Subject - Verb Agreement (22.17%), Noun (21.18%), Verb Tense and Form (17.73%) and Article (17.73%) Some solutions were suggested in order to assist students to overcome this problem.They include practicing writing, reading English books, news or other materials and consulting grammar books

Key terms: grammar, grammatical errors, writing

Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A

Chapter 1:

Introduction and background of the study

I Rationale

Although English is not the most commonly spoken language in the world, it is used widely by many people and in a great many large countries due to its merits According to

a survey updated by Benjamin Elisha Sawe in 2019, there are roughly 1.39 billion people reported to speak English globally By knowing English, you can get exposed to a great deal of information owing to more than 50% of the content today written in English on the Internet (Zauzulak, 2015) Besides, this language offers people more job opportunities since when facing with applicants having the English proficiency, recruiters may have them involve in international tasks (Binh T., 2015) The journalist also stated in this article that English learners can approach the top universities in the world

Among the four skills of the English language, writing is considered to be the most essential because of its perks, namely giving more logical and convincing arguments, granting a person opportunities to later reflect on their points of view and re-evaluate them, and preparing for school and employment, etc (Chappell, 2011) Furthermore, the writer Kelly Walsh (2010), the founder of the website emergingedtech.com, pointed that writing is really important on the grounds that writing in English is used greatly in higher education and working environment According to his hypothesis, he supposed that students who were unable to write in English properly could not communicate with their professors, employers, colleagues or anyone else He also added that in such professional environment it entails communication via writing as communication is conducted through proposals, memos, e-mails, letters, applications and reports, etc

Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A

In this researcher, the researcher would like to mention one of the important factors in English writing, which is grammar According to the author David Crystal whose books are Making Sense of Grammar, grammar is said to become “the structural foundation” in order to express ourselves and have other crucial functions, namely fostering precision, detecting ambiguity and exploiting the richness in the English expression (Crystal, 2004) Moreover, a doctor from KIIT University, Dr Pradeep Kumar Debata, also emphasized the importance of grammar as he stated in his study in 2013: “Grammar is a sure ground

of reference when linguistic habits fail us So grammar is indispensable for the student.” Owing to the significance of the grammar, the researcher’s aim to choose the topic is to

University still make grammatical errors in the written English in order to draw their attention to such errors so that they can determine strategies by themselves to overcome the shortcomings

II The significance of the study

On account of the purpose of choosing this topic mentioned in the previous part, the

English in SIU Not only these students but the researcher and other students who is learning English will greatly benefit from this study as the students can acknowledge their grammatical errors, which may be made while writing English, so as to they have ourselves appropriate solutions and consult several suggestions to surmount them as well

as improve our English proficiency

Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A

III The scope and limitation of the study

This work only focuses on finding the common grammatical errors collected from the essays written by the 8th course English-majored students studying at the Saigon International University

Meanwhile, while researching this topic, the author is restrained in time (short-term investigation), lack of experience from Vietnamese undergraduated students There is also lack of profound topic-related documents from Vietnamese editor offices so the author is searching all the foreign literature Therefore, the part of solutions in this topic is the suggestion from the writer

IV Research questions

In this analysis, the purpose of it is to figure out which are the common errors relating to grammar that the SIU students studying the English language as their major make while writing in English In attempt to learn these errors, two following questions were constructed and it is essential to answer them:

1 What are the common grammatical errors that are made by the English-majored students studying in the class 15DTA of the Saigon International University?

2 What are suggestions to overcome the problem?

Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A

Chapter 2:

Literature review

I Definitions of terminology

1 Definition of English Writing

Writing is one of the fundamental factors in linguistic study In order to achieve the ability of fluent English communicating, writers should fathom the primary concept of writing In the work of Celce-Murcia (2001), the writer quoted: “Writing is the ability to express one’s idea in writing in a second or foreign language and to do so with reasonable coherence and accuracy is a major achievement” Meanwhile, Pincas (1982) defines writing is a way of communicating a message to a reader for a purpose which can

be to express one’s self, to provide information for one’s reader, to persuade one’s reader,

or to create a literary work According to Palmer (1994), there are myriad formations of writing created raging from an easily understandable piece of work to more advanced level of writing consisting of a hierarchy system of words, phrases, clauses, sentences into coherent and cohesive paragraphs

Writing English could be utterly sophisticated as numerous stages needed undertaking in order to create correct sentences which can be effortlessly comprehended Regarding the process of writing, it should be of 5 phases initiating from prewriting (brainstorming before composing), drafting (translating thoughts and ideas into sentences and paragraphs), sharing (reading the work aloud to share with listeners), revising (including expanding the ideas, clarifying the vague points and reorganizing the information) and finally, editing (the stage entailing spelling, punctuation, syntax and structure of the writing work) (Palmer, 1994)

Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A

Moreover, it is the firm belief of Harmer (2002) that there are several factors which need

to be taken into consideration in the writing procedure, namely language use comprising grammar, lexical resources, and connectives; punctuation and layout; spelling; checking for repetition of words and/or information; deciding which information should be included in each paragraph, and creating structure of the paragraph; logging various ideas and opting the most valued for inclusion This leads to the conclusion that to execute impeccably aforementioned stages, writers ought to take time management in generating ideas into account

2 Definition of Grammatical errors

To provide more evident meaning of this term, this part should be of the clarification the word “errors” and “grammar” respectively

1.1 What is error?

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, it defines error as “a mistake, esp in a way that can be discovered as wrong, or the making of such mistakes” whereas it is the definition

of error made by the Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries stating that error is “a mistake, especially one that causes problems or affects the result of something”

Errors can be understood as the distinction from mistakes From the point of view made

by Brown (1994), he stated that mistake is specified as "a failure to utilize a known system correctly" while "a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker, reflecting the interlanguage competence of the learner" is considered to be errors

He pointed out that errors are likely not to be evident enough for learners to figure out as they require guidance so as to learn the errors and correct them, leading to the assumption that “learners cannot learn language without systematically committing errors first”

Supervior: Nguyen Thi Bich Thuy M.A

It is true that mistakes and errors are different from each other Mistakes, nevertheless, seem to imply errors, which is mentioned in the work of Harmer (2007) as he cited from the study of Julian Edge (1989):

Julian Edge suggested that we can divide mistakes into three broad categories: ‘slips’ (that

is mistakes which students can correct themselves once the mistakes has been pointed out

to them), ‘errors’ (mistakes which they can’t correct themselves - and which therefore need explanation) and ‘attempts’ (that is when a student tries to say something but does not yet know the correct way of saying it) (p.137)

Harmer (2007) also noted that errors are one of the categories which the most matters and derive from “two instinct sources” which are L1 “interference” and developmental errors While errors may be made by L1 ‘interference’ as learners find the use of the English language perplexing owing to associating both the L1 and English language knowledge in learning, there are developmental errors in which learners ‘over-generalize’ a new rule of the grammar point which they have learned Yet, when they acquire the flaws in their self-made new rule, he or she then can conduct the correct form For instance, one of the

developmental errors is the mistake in the sentence “*she is more nicer than him” which students made when adding “more” In this case, the word “more” is over-generalized

and learners get confused with the rule that they have been taught However, this sort of errors is “a part of a natural acquisition process” (Harmer, 2007)

Meanwhile, Norrish (1983) did differ errors from mistakes in his study working on errors

in which he considered errors “systematic deviation” as learners seem to consistently make due to their deficiency of learning “correct forms” On the other hand, the definition

of mistakes is demonstrated as an “inconsistent deviation” In this case, learners have been taught “correct forms” and used these forms accurately sometimes but other times,