Luận văn thạc sĩ VNU ULIS common errors in the use of the english passive made by the grade 10 non english majors at tran phu specialised high school, hai phong

Abbreviations E.A: Error analysis Lists of tables and charts Chart1: The change in the position of constituents in passive transformation Table 1: Passive verbs in different tenses Tab

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

BÙI THỊ THUẬN

COMMON ERRORS IN THE USE OF THE ENGLISH PASSIVE MADE BY THE GRADE 10 NON-ENGLISH MAJORS AT TRAN PHU SPECIALISED HIGH

SCHOOL, HAIPHONG

NHỮNG LỖI THƯỜNG GẶP Ở THỂ BỊ ĐỘNG CỦA HỌC SINH KHÔNG CHUYÊN KHỐI 10 TRƯỜNG THPT

CHUYÊN TRẦN PHÚ, HẢI PHÒNG

M.A MINOR THESIS

HANOI - 2012

Major: Linguistics Code: 60.22.15

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

BÙI THỊ THUẬN

COMMON ERRORS IN THE USE OF THE ENGLISH PASSIVE MADE BY THE GRADE 10 NON-ENGLISH MAJORS AT TRAN PHU SPECIALISED HIGH

SCHOOL, HAIPHONG

NHỮNG LỖI THƯỜNG GẶP Ở THỂ BỊ ĐỘNG CỦA HỌC

SINH KHÔNG CHUYÊN KHỐI 10 TRƯỜNG THPT CHUYÊN TRẦN PHÚ, HẢI PHÒNG

M.A MINOR THESIS

Major: Linguistics Code: 60.22.15 Supervisor: NGUYÔN HUYÒN MINH, M.A

HANOI - 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of contents Abbreviations Lists of tables and charts

PART I - INTRODUCTION

PART II – DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER III – DATA PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION 37

References Appendix 1 Appendix 2

Abbreviations

E.A: Error analysis

Lists of tables and charts

Chart1: The change in the position of constituents in passive transformation Table 1: Passive verbs in different tenses

Table 2: The statistic of correct answers Table 3: Types of errors found in the study Table 4: Unnatural translation due to unchanging the voice Table 5: Errors of forming the past participle

Table 6: Wrong translation samples with “bị, được”

Table 7: Errors of using some special passive voice structures Table 8: List of special structures

Table 9: Unnatural translation with some special structures

PART I – INTRODUCTION

I Rationale of the study

According to statistics of recent studies, people who master English will see greater possibilities of success in doing research, getting promotion, and doing business They also confirm the relationship between English competence and high salary or increased trade Accordingly, the importance

of English is undeniable because it has become the most popular language in all over the world This is the reason why English is now an obligatory subject in every high school in Vietnam

In fact, many students are finding this subject more difficult than they used to think A lack of grammar can be one of major obstacles to mastering this second language There is an irrefutable fact that grammar is an integral part of every language, and English grammar is not an exception How would you study other specific fields in English without mastering grammar?

English grammar includes many beautiful and unique aspects which we cannot find in other languages To Vietnamese learners, English grammar sometimes makes them confused due to the differences between English and our mother–tongue As a result, they have a lot of difficulties in communicating, especially in reading and writing in English

The passive voice is considered to be one of the hardest grammatical items for Vietnamese learners to master Although there are a lot of pages, books, chapters which have been written about the passive voice, many students of English still have trouble explaining its usage in understandable ways In my experience in teaching English at Tran Phu Specialised High School in Hai Phong City, students often make common errors in using

passive voice and causes of these errors have not been discovered yet

The analysis of students’ errors is of great importance in teaching English

It helps teachers identify students’ strategies of language learning and their

level of proficiency so that teachers can find out suitable ways to improve current situations

These are the reasons why I have decided to carry out a small study on common errors in the use of the English passive made by the grade 10 non-English major students at Tran Phu Specialised High School

II Objectives of the study:

The study is aimed at firstly achieving deeper understanding of English passive voice, and above all, figuring out typical errors made by the students

at Tran Phu Specialized High School in using passive voice Besides, the thesis is to find out causes of the typical errors in using passive voice and working out solutions to teaching students passive voice effectively

Hence, the research is to answer the following questions:

+ What are the typical errors made by non – English majors at Tran Phu Specialized High School?

+ What are probable causes for these errors?

+ What are possible solutions to help the students overcome these errors?

III Scope of the study:

The study is focused on the passive voice However, it is not my ambition to cover every issue of the passive voice Within this small thesis, I desire to give readers some aspects of passive voice: a description of the passive voice sentence, uses, passive transformation constraints, and the formation of passive voice A comparison between English passive sentences and their Vietnamese equivalents is also mentioned

Moreover, second language learners are various and different in the way of making errors However, because of limited size, the study will concentrate on giving an analysis of errors made by only 70 students from two non-major classes at Tran Phu Specialised High School

IV Methods of the study:

This study is a quantitative survey research In fact, a combination of data instruments is employed in an attempt to attain all the objectives above

All the theory is attested by the exact data collected from a written test and a questionnaire for students which is presented in the later parts of the study

From the analysis of the data, the problems will be found and the solutions will be given

V Organization of the study:

The study consists of three parts: Introduction, Development and Conclusion

- Part I (Introduction) shows the rationale, the objectives, the scope, the methods and the organization of the study

- Part II (Development) includes three chapters Chapter I reviews the literature related to English passive voice and error analysis Chapter II provides the methodology which takes a closer look at the subjects, the background, and the methods in use Chapter III analyzes actual errors made

by the subjects This chapter also discusses the causes of these errors and suggests some solutions to the improvement of teaching this grammatical item

- Part III (Conclusion) summarizes the content of the research and gives some suggestions for further study

PART II – DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I – LITERATURE REVIEW

1 An overview of voice in English

1.1 Voice

Verb plays a vital role in English It involves many verbal categories such

as mood, tense, aspect, and voice Among these aspects, it appears that voice

is one of the most dominant parts of English grammar Accordingly, numerous grammarians have studied voice and defined what voice is in their own way Followings are some typical definitions, which are usually used in teaching and learning English

“Voice is a grammatical category which makes it possible to view the action of sentence in two ways without change in the facts reported.”

In the first sentence, the subject “Jim’s daughter” is the person who performs the action “draw” Conversely, in the second sentence, “that picture”

does not perform the action “That picture” is created by the action of drawing

1.2 Active and Passive Voice

English has two voices, the active voice and the passive one, to indicate the relationship between the subject and the action described by its verbs

of “watching”

1.2.2 Passive Voice

“The passive voice serves to show that the person/thing denoted by the subject of the sentence is not the agent (the doer) of the action expressed by the predicative verb but is the object of this action The subject of a passive verb does not act but it acted upon, it undergoes an action”

(Gordon, E.M., 1972:25) E.g.: This program is being watched by about 30 million people (b)

On the contrary to sentence (a), the inanimate subject “this program” in (b) cannot perform the action of watching Actually, it is affected by this action

The performer is now put at the end of the sentence after “by phrase”

Sentence (b) is treated in grammar as a passive sentence

1.2.3 Differences between active voice and passive voice

Comparing active voice and passive voice, several marked distinctions are noticed In terms of structure, the crystal difference is the verb form The following instances will elaborate this:

John bought this clock (c) This clock was bought by John (d)

Look at the sentences, in (c), the main verb is in active form “bought” while in (d)- the corresponding passive one of (c), verb of active sentence (c) is replaced by the verb “to be” and the past participle of the active verb

The second major difference is the order of the components in the sentence

The change in the position of the constituents can be pictured as followed:

Chart1: The change in the position of constituents in passive transformation

The third difference is that unlike the active sentence, in passive construction, it is easy to leave out the person or thing doing the action if the speaker does not want to specify who the agent is

In addition, the two above sentences also differ semantically and lexically

In (c) the focus is on “John” while in (d), the emphasis is on “this clock” The focus has changed from “John” to “this o’clock” That is to say the information which is more important to be informed will be made the subject

of a sentence to draw attention

Therefore, the active construction is often considered to be more direct, powerful and vivid as the performer is known and placed at the initial In contrast, the passive voice is supposed to be indirect, unemphatic, and vague because the performer is likely to be unnamed or named only in a minor sentence element

Moreover, active and passive sentence sometimes are not totally equal in meaning There are shifts in the range of meaning especially when the active

Active S (John)

Passive S (this clock)

Passive verb (was bought)

Optional agent (by John)

Active O (this clock) Active verb

(bought)

sentence contains quantifiers Compare the paired active and passive sentences below to see different interpretations to be given

“Six people in the room read three novels.” (i.e it may be up to 18 novels read by six people.)

“Three novels were read by six people in the room.” (i.e only three specific novels that six people read.)

1.3 English passive voice

1.3.1 Description of English passive voice 1.3.1.1 Procedures

The structure of the passive voice is very simple:

Subject + auxiliary verb (be) + main verb (past participle)

In active sentences, the thing doing the action is the subject of the sentence and the thing receiving the action is the object In passive sentences, the thing receiving the action is the subject of the sentence and the thing doing the action is optionally included near the end of the sentence The main verb

is always in its past participle form

1.3.1.2 The verb forms

Like an active verb, a passive verb can occur in different verb tenses The passive verb forms can be systematized as follows:

Was + Pii Were

Will

+ be + Pii Shall

M+be+Pii

Progessive

Am

Is + Pii Are

Was

being+Pii Were

Shall

M+have+been+P ii

(Thomson and Martinet, 1986:265)

Table 1: Passive verbs in different tenses

It should be noted here that the progressive forms of the present perfect, past perfect, future and future perfect are very rarely used in the passive since we usually avoid saying “be being” and “been being”

E.g.: You will be doing geometry next term (NOT: Geometry will be being done next term.)

1.3.1.3 A preposition plus agent

The subject of an active sentence can be introduced in the corresponding passive one by means of “by” phrase It is notable that the subject of the active sentence now either remains noun phrases or changes into objective pronouns

E.g.: My daddy made this cake

 This cake is made by my daddy

E.g.: She saw John yesterday

 John was seen by her yesterday

In a passive clause, we usually use a phrase beginning with “by” if we want to mention the agent –the person or thing that does the action, or that causes what happens

E.g.: All the trouble was caused by your mother

I was shocked by your attitude

Also, the method can be mentioned using an –ing form after “by”

E.g.: Much of their strong taste can be removed by changing the cooking water

Note, however, that usually the passive is used without a by-phrase In fact,

only about 20% of passive sentences mention the agent According to Michael Vince (34:2003), there are several reasons for this

E.g.: Mike’s motorbike was stolen last night

If we knew who had stolen it, we would mention the name of the person But

we do not know and the agent is not mentioned

E.g.: Bicycles are widely used in the city instead of public transports

If the agent is “people in general” or “you”, the agent is not mentioned

E.g.: One protester was arrested

It is not necessary to add the words “by the police”, because we know that it is always the police who do this However, it is necessary to add these words if

we want to

E.g.: A lot of grammar books are sold every year

Exactly who sells the books is not important If it was important, we could use

by and the name of the people or shops who sell the books

E.g.: It has been decided to reduce all salaries by 10%

Using a passive is a way of avoiding the naming of a specific person who is responsible for an action In particular, in descriptions of processes, there is emphasis on the actions performed, rather than on the people who perform them

E.g.: Then the packets are packed into boxes of twenty – four

However, we can include the agent in the following situations:

E.g.: By tradition, any sturgeons that are caught by British ships must be offered to the Queen

E.g.:

The survivors were picked out of the water by a cruise liner which had heard

of their distress call

I remembered being taken to the fair by my father, who rarely showed any interests in such things

people

E.g.: Life on the Mississippi was written by Mark Twain

In fact, the by + agent phrase is commonly used to talk about works of arts,

well – known inventions, discoveries, historical events, and famous achievements

E.g.: It’s unbelievable! This quiz was solved by a seven - year old boy

In some cases, by is replaced by with, which is often used especially with such past participles as: crammed, crowded, packed, and filled

E.g.: The train was packed with commuters

Actually, by and with are not generally interchangeable in the following

After the past participles of some stative verbs, including some which are used

like adjectives, other prepositions can be used instead of by

E.g.: We were worried about/by her silence

Are you frightened of spiders?

1.3.2 Constraints on the passive transformation

Although most active sentences can have corresponding passive sentence, there still exist some exceptional active sentence that cannot have passive transformation

* Verb Constraints:

Not all verbs can have passive voice forms Passive structures are not possible with intransitive verbs which cannot have objects because there is nothing to become the subject of the passive sentence

E.g.: The baby cried

According to Randolph Quirk (1985:136), in addition to copular and intransitive verbs, some transitive verbs, called “middle” verbs, do not occur

at least in one some senses in the passive They include:

- Verbs of possession: have, belong to, etc

E.g.: She has an Alsatian dog (NOT: An Alsatian dog is had by her.)

- Reciprocal verbs: resemble, look like, agree with, equal, mean, etc

E.g.: She resembles a princess (NOT: A princess is resembled by her.)

- Verbs of containing or their opposite: contain, hold, compose, lack, comprise, etc

E.g.: You lack tact (NOT: Tact is lacked by you.)

- Verbs of suiting: suit, fit, become, etc

E.g.: This coat doesn’t fit me (NOT: I am not fitted by this coat.) However, other state verbs especially those of volition or attitude, can easily occur in the passive E.g believe, intend, know, like, love, mean, need, own, understand, want

E.g.:

The company is owned by an American company

Old postcards are wanted by collectors

In reverse, for some verbs only the passive voice is possible

One more important point is that the passive is not possible for many idioms

in which the verb and the object form a close unit:

The ship set sail (NOT: Sail was set.)

We changed buses (NOT: Buses were changed.)

* Object constraints:

- With clauses as objects, sentences take the passive with “it” – subject That

is to say clauses are introduced by anticipatory “it” and remain in post – verbal position in the passive sentence

E.g.:

John thought that she was attractive

~* That she was attractive was thought by John

However, the passive often becomes acceptable in these cases:

It was thought that she was attractive

OR: She was thought to be attractive

- Co-reference between a subject and a noun phrase object blocks the passive correspondence This constraint occurs with reflexive, reciprocal, and possessive pronouns when co-referential to the subject The following sentences cannot have passive transformation:

E.g.: John could see himself in the mirror

E.g.: We could hardly see each other in the fog

E.g.: The woman shook her head

There are several criteria to classify the formation of the English passive voice In terms of sentence pattern, passive transformations are allowed in only three following structures:

S-V-O (-A) S-V-Oi-Od (-A) S-V-O-C (-A)

1.3.3.1.1.Formation from the S-V-O (-A) pattern

* The object is a noun phrase:

It is usually possible for the direct object of the active sentence to become subject of the passive

E.g.: She cut the cake  The cake was cut (by her)

* The object is a finite clause:

The normal passive analogue has “it” and extraposition Another way is the subject of the finite clause can become the subject of corresponding passive sentence We use these structures when we cannot say or do not need to say who the speaker is

E.g.: People say that Henry is in love with Claire

 It is said that Henry is in love with Claire

OR: Henry is said to be in love with Claire

* The object is a non – finite clause:

Non-finite clause objects without subject include verbs which take either participle or infinitive The passive analogue is rare with these verbs

E.g.: I intend to go

~* To go was intended (by me)

(Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973:365) The exceptions are with a few verbs notably “agree, arrange, decide” only if there is extraposition “it”

E.g.: They decided to buy the car

~ It was decided to buy the car by them

Additionally, to certain kinds of verbs such as: agree, insist, recommend, recommend, advise, etc., the passive can be expressed by a finite clause:

“that…should”

E.g.: He decided to sell the house

 He decided that the house should be sold

(Thomson & Martinet, 1986:264)

1.3.3.1.2.Formation from the S-V-Oi-Od (-A) pattern:

Many verbs carry two objects in an active sentence One object is usually a concrete or abstract thing, the other is usually a person or sometimes both of two objects are things Normally, the direct object becomes the subject of the corresponding sentence in most cases as we are more interested in people than things Also, the indirect object is always a noun phrase while the direct one may be a noun phrase, a finite clause or a non – finite clause

* The direct object is a noun phrase When direct object and indirect object are noun phrases, the active sentence has two passives:

E.g.: A friend gave me the information

 I was given the information by a friend

OR: The information was given me by a friend

Of the two passives, the second is usually replaced by the corresponding prepositional phrase: The information was given to me by a friend

There’s an exception, however, with the verb “wish” when normally only the indirect object is used:

E.g.: They wished us a pleasant holiday

~ We were wished a plesant holiday (by them)

* The direct object is a finite clause

- Where the indirect object is obligatory, the active sentence can be passivized, with the indirect object as the subject of the passive sentence:

E.g.: John convinced me that he was right

 I was convinced (by John) that he was right

(Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973:371)

- Where the indirect object is optional, the passive is normally expressed by extra position “it”

E.g.: John showed (me) that he was honest

 It was shown (to me) that he was an honest man

E.g.: John mentioned (to me) that they were sick

 It was mentioned (to me) (by John) that they were sick

( Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973:371)

* The direct object is a non – finite clause

The subject of the non-finite clause can become the subject of a passive superordinate clause

E.g.: They persuaded John to see me

 John was persuaded to seem me

( Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973:371)

* The direct object is a prepositional phrase Ditransitive verbs whose direct object must be introduced by a preposition normally allow one passive, with the indirect object as subject:

E.g.: We reminded him of the agreement

~ He was reminded of the agreement

(Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973:371)

* Idiomatic expressions consisting of Verb + noun phrase + preposition There are two passive forms of the sentence, since either of two noun phrases can become the subject of a passive sentence

E.g.: They had made good use of the house

~ Good use had been made of the house

~ The house had been made good use of

(Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973:372)

1.3.3.1.3 Formation from the S-V-O - C (-A) pattern:

* The object complement is a noun phrase:

The active sentence can be passivized with the object becoming the subject

of the passive sentence

E.g.: She made him a good husband

~ He was made a good husband (by her)

* The object complement is an adjective phrase:

E.g.: I made her very angry

~ She was made very angry

* The object complement is an infinitive clause:

- The object complement is a to – infinitive clause:

E.g.: The professor assumed the student to know some French

~The student was assumed to know some French

(Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973:362) Nevertheless, verbs of liking/loving/wanting/wishing that takes objects in the to-inf clause form their passive with the passive to-infinitive

E.g.: He wants someone to wash the dishes

~ He wants the dishes to be washed

In reverse, with verbs such as “recommend, beg, order, urge” that contain

an object in the to-infinitive clause, the passive can be formed in two ways:

E.g.: He urged Mary to buy the tickets well in advance

~ Mary was urged to buy the tickets well in advance

~ He urged that the tickets should be bought well in advance

- The object complement is a bare – infinitive clause:

Some verbs of perception take the bare infinitive in the active: feel, hear, notice, observe, see, smell, watch In the passive, the bare infinitive is

replaced by the to – infinitive:

E.g.: I heard them shout something

~ They were heard to shout something

Note also that three causative verbs take a bare infinitive in their infinitive clause: have, let, make Among these verbs, only “make” allows an ordinary transformation

E.g.: They had/let/made Bob teach Mary

~ They had Mary taught (by Bob)

~ They let Mary be taught (by Bob)

~ Bob was made to teach Mary

(Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973:365)

* The object complement is an –ing participle clause:

- The verbs of perception also occur with the –ing participle clause

E.g.: I watched Bob teaching Mary

~ Bob was watched teaching Mary

- With some verbs which are followed by an object in the ing-participle clause, the passive can also be in the ing participle clause:

E.g.: I watch Mary being taught by Bob

This is often found in the passive transformation especially with verbs such

as “like, dislike, hate, remember, forget.”

E.g.: She dislikes him kissing her on her cheek

~* He is disliked (by her) kissing her on her cheek

~ She dislikes being kissed on her cheek

E.g.: I found him using my car

~ I found my car being used by him

* The object complement is an –ed participle clause:

E.g.: The tourists found the chairs occupied

~ The chairs were found occupied (by the tourists.)

(Quirk & Greenbaum, 1973:367)

1.3.3.2 Other forms with passive meaning

* Stative passive Passive verb forms consist of two kinds: dynamic passive and stative passive

E.g.:

Ann broke the window yesterday

The window was broken by Ann  Dynamic passive Now the window is broken  Stative passive

We use dynamic passive to express an action whereas stative passive may be used to describe an existing situation or state In the stative passive:

Prepositions other than by can follow stative passive verbs

E.g.:

Ann is interested in Chinese art

Mary is married to Alex

Moreover, there are examples of idiomatic usage of the passive form in common, every day English These sentences have no equivalent active sentences:

E.g.: I don’t know where I am I’m lost

E.g: I can’t find my purse It’s gone

* Get + past participle

Get + past participle is also used to make passive structures, in the same way

as be + past participle

E.g.:

My watch got broken while I was playing with children

He got caught by the police driving at 120 mph

I get paid on Fridays

This structure is mostly used in an informal style, and it is not often used to talk about longer, more deliberate, planned actions

E.g.: Our house was built in 1827 (NOT: Our house got built in 1827.) E.g.: Parliament was opened on Thursday (NOT: Parliament got opened on Thursday.)

* Need + Ving The Ving form after “need” has passive meaning This case can be expressed in the passive: need + passive infinitive

e.g.: The bicycle needs oiling

~ The bicycle needs to be oiled

* The causative

Have/get + object + past participle This typical describes a service performed for us by someone else

E.g.: I’ve just had/got my car serviced I have/get it done every winter

It can also describe something unfortunate that happens to someone

E.g.: We had/got our car broken into last month

Get is more likely to be used than have when:

E.g.: I really must get my hair cut

E.g.: I eventually got the car fixed at the Fast Service Garage

E.g.: Get your hair cut

Note that get should not be used in the present perfect passive, where it would be confused with have got

* The pseudo - passive

A few verbs are active in form but passive in meaning under certain circumstances

E.g.: The book didn’t sell well, so it wasn’t reprinted (The book was not sold well…)

E.g.: These clothes can wash well (These clothes can be washed well.) These are examples of idiomatic usage of such verbs It is noticeable that the

doer is not mentioned In other word, there is not by – phrase in this special

(1) That old man repaired my car very quickly

 My car was repaired very quickly by that old man

(2) Ông lão ấy sửa xe ô tô của tôi rất nhanh chóng

 Xe ô tô của tôi được ông lão ấy sửa rất nhanh chóng

In addition, both in English and in Vietnamese, the agent of the action is rarely indicated in the passive especially when the agent is unspecified or indefinite

E.g.: Hanoi, Haiphong and other cities can be destroyed

(Hà Nội, Hải Phòng và các thành phố khác có thể bị tàn phá.) The agent is only expressed when it is important to mention who or what something is done by:

E.g.: I was shocked by her attitude

Tôi được Hà phỏng vấn

Finally, in the two passive voices, the active – passive relation is similar to each other The object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the passive sentence

E.g.: I cut the cake

 The cake was cut by me

E.g.: Quân giải phóng đánh tan tàn quân địch

 Tàn quân địch bị quân giải phóng đánh tan

1.4.2 Differences

The most prominent difference in the Passive Voice between two languages lies in the point that there is no Passive voice with its exact name in Vietnamese while it is considered as one of the main grammatical features and widely used in English The thing is that whether the reserved order of the transitive verb and the objective noun is the form expressing the Passive in Vietnamese or not Through the grammatical analysis we all come to the same conclusion that the units of the sentences mentioned above are not the grammatically passive form They are not structural words denoting passive meaning

E.g: Nam bị Tân đánh

In addition, the Vietnamese passive often expresses the speaker’s positive and negative feelings according to the subjective opinion of the speakers or writers while there is no signs of emotional meaning can be found in English versions In Vietnamese, when the action brought pleasantness to the receiver,

“được” or “tặng” was used to form passive constructions On the contrary, when the action brought unpleasantness to the receiver “chịu”, “bị” or “phải”

… was used to form passive constructions depending on the level or certain case of action

E.g:

Cô ấy được thưởng (She was rewarded.)

Nó bị đòn (He was hit.)

Moreover, the English people like using passive constructions in order to avoid mentioning the agent of the action but this type is unlikely used in Vietnamese The passive meaning is usually expressed by lexical meaning

Frequently we meet constructions that are active in form but passive in content, provided that the subject put before the notional verb is an inanimate word

E.g: Bài toán làm rồi

This sentence is a grammatically active construction but we can not deny that it carries passive meaning for the mathematics is only done by someone not by itself Hence we have a passive construction in this case This way of speaking is very popular in Vietnamese but very rare in English except in case with such verbs as: to open, to get and a few others

E.g:

The door opened, she came in

I get bad marks

Finally, Vietnamese passive voice and English equivalents is different in terms of the position of the agent “By – phrase” is normally put at the end of the sentence in an English passive sentence In contrast, in a Vietnamese passive sentence, the position of the agent is not fixed

E.g.:

(a) Lan được mẹ dẫn đi xem xiếc

(b) Khách sạn này được thiết kế bởi một kiến trúc sư người Pháp

However, sentence (b) is not commonly used in Vietnamese

2 Error and error analysis

to the group commit the error Children’s errors have been seen as

“transitional forms”, the native speakers’ ones are called “slips of the tongue”

and the second language (L2) errors are considered “unwanted forms”

(George, 1972)”

Moreover, a distinction should be made between “mistake” and “error”

According to Corder (1971), the error is what takes place when the deviation arises as a result of lack of knowledge whereas the mistake comes up when learners fail to perform their competence

According to Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (1992) a learner makes a mistake when writing or speaking because of lack of attention, fatigue, carelessness, or some other aspects of performance

Mistakes can be self-corrected when attention is called Whereas, an error is the use of linguistic item in a way that a fluent or native speaker of the language regards it as showing faulty or incomplete learning In other words,

it occurs because the learner does not know what is correct, and thus it cannot

be self – corrected

To distinguish between an error and a mistake, Ellis (1997) suggests two ways The first one is to check the consistency of learner’s performance If he sometimes uses the correct form and sometimes the wrong one, it is a mistake

However, if he always uses it incorrectly, it is then an error The second way

is to ask learner to try to correct his own deviant utterance Where he is unable

to, the deviations are errors; where he is successful, they are mistakes

2.2 Error analysis

So as to thoroughly understand the process of second language acquisition, the errors a student made should be analysed carefully The father of EA, Corder (1967) gives an adequate explanation for the significance of learners in three different ways “The first to the teacher in that they tell him, if he undertakes a systematic analysis, how far towards the goal the learner has progressed, and consequently what remains for him to learn Second, they provide to the researcher evidence of how language is learned or acquired,

what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in his discovery of the language Thirdly, (and in a sense this is their most important aspect) they are indispensable to the learner himself, because we can regard the making of errors as a device the learner uses in order to learn.”

Brown (1987) gives the definition of EA as follows: “The fact that learners

do make errors and these errors can be observed, analysed, and classified to reveal something of the system operating within the learner led to a surge of study of learners’ errors, called “error analysis”.”

Ellis (1985:297) says that error analysis is a procedure use by both researchers and teachers It involves three steps:

(1) Identifying errors

In this step, we have to compare the error sentences (the writer mentions it

as “original sentence”) with that seem to be normal or “correct” sentences in the target language which correspond with them (the writer mentions it as

“reconstruction”) This sometimes seems not to be easy when we misunderstand what the learner means to say Moreover, in this stage, enough attention should be paid to the distinction between “error” and “mistake” that was discussed in the earlier part

(2) Describing errors The next step is where the errors are described and classified into kinds

According to Ellis, there are two ways to classify errors The first way is classifying the errors through grammatical categories The second way is try

to identify general ways in which the learners’ utterances differ from the reconstructed target – language utterances

(3) Explaining errors This is the last step of EA – explanation stage In this step, a researcher tries

to find the sources of errors In other word, attempts will be made to explain how and why a sentence called to be erroneous

2.3 Causes of errors

According to Richard (1971), there are three causes of competence errors:

Interlingual errors, intralingual errors and developmental errors

the only previous and the most familiar linguistic system available that the learner can draw upon when he is forced to perform the second language because at this stage his linguistic competence is limited; thus the interference

is inevitable Besides, there are four other factors that lead to interference errors The second factor is the difference between the two languages

Another factor is the learner’s inadequate exposure to the target language environment In other words, he only communicates with non-native teachers and his classmates and has few chances to talk with native speakers The next factor is the types of tasks the learner is required to fulfill such as: writing an essay, translating a sentence, etc which have mother tongue influence rooted

in them The last one is that the learner has a habit of thinking in their first language and then change his idea into the second language Therefore, what

he produces is badly influenced by his first language

more and more intralingual transfer – generalization within L2 would occur

These errors reflect the general characteristics of rule learning such as faulty generalization, incomplete application of rules and failure to learn conditions under which rules apply:

* Overgeneralization: covers instances where the learner creates a deviant structure on the basis of his experience of other structures in the target language

E.g.: He can swims (The sentence should be: He can swim There is an over form of verb singular for third person )

* Ignorance of rule restrictions: is failure to observe the restrictions of existing structures, that is, the application of rules to contexts where they do not apply