An investigation into common errors in paragraph writing of the 10th grade students at hong linh high school masters thesis in education

Aims This study aims to identify some discourse features of English paragraphs written by HLHS students as well as find out the mistakes they often make when writing English paragraphs

NGUYEN THI THU THUY

AN INVESTIGATION INTO COMMON ERRORS

AT HONG LINH HIGH SCHOOL

MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION

NGUYEN THI THU THUY

AN INVESTIGATION INTO COMMON ERRORS

AT HONG LINH HIGH SCHOOL

Major:Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)

Code: 60.14.01.11

MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION

Supervisor: TRAN BA TIEN, Ph.D

published elsewhere

Author

Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy

tireless help, I couldn‟t have completed the study on time

My gratitude also goes to all of the instructors in my MA program at the Foreign Languages Department, Vinh University With their precious and professional lectures and tutoring, I can understand difficult basic concepts related

to English teaching methodology,

I am also grateful to all my friends and colleagues and my beloved family, who gave me useful advice on writing process

Finally, I wish to acknowledge the kind help of the 10 th students at Hong Linh High School who helped me to collect data, and their valuable support for finishing the study

Vinh, September 2014

Nguyen Thi Thu Thuy

study were morphological errors, lexical errors, syntactic errors and mechanical errors The study also shows the errors of paragraph organization due to the fact that students at HLHS lack access to the theory of building a paragraph such as building topic sentences, developing supporting ideas Based on the findings, implications for enhancing the effectiveness of English paragraph teaching and learning writing are put forward It is hoped that the results of the study can be beneficial for both students and teachers

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Pages

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii

LIST OF TABLES viii

LIST OF FIGURES ix

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Scope of the study 2

1.3 Aims and objectives 2

1.3.1 Aims 2

1.3.2 Objectives 2

1.4 Research questions 3

1.5 Organization of the study 3

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4

2.1 Previous studies 4

2.2 Theoretical background 6

2.2.1 Teaching writing 6

2.2.1.1 Definition of writing 6

2.2.1.2 The reason for teaching writing 6

2.2.2 Approaches to writing teaching 7

2.2.2.1 Product approach 7

2.2.2.2 Process approach 7

2.2.3 Principles of teaching writing 9

2.3 Teaching paragraph writing 9

2.3.1 Definitions of Paragraph 9

2.3.2 Classifications of paragraph 10

2.3.2.1 Informative paragraph 11

2.3.2.2 Descriptive paragraph 11

2.3.2.3 Narrative paragraph 12

2.3.2.4 Persuasive paragraph 12

2.4 Writing process of paragraph 12

2.5 Error and error analysis 14

2.5.1 Error and error analysis 14

2.5.2 Sources of errors 18

2.5.3 Errors in writing 20

2.5.4 Error classification 20

Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY 24

3.1 Study setting 24

3.2 Participants 26

3.3 Research methods 26

3.4 Research procedures 26

3.5 Description of the sample 27

3.6 Data analysis 27

3.7 Reliability validity 27

Chapter 4 FINDING AND DISCUSSION 28

4.1 Error analysis 28

4.1.1 Morphological errors 29

4.1.1.1 Verb errors 30

4.1.1.2 Noun ending errors 34

4.1.1.3 Article or determiner errors 35

4.1.2 Lexical errors 37

4.1.2.1 Errors in word choice 39

4.1.2.2 Errors in word form 39

4.1.2.3 Preposition errors 40

4.1.2.4 Pronoun errors 40

4.1.2.5 Spelling errors 41

4.1.3 Syntactic errors 42

4.1.3.1 Word order 43

4.1.3.2 Omitted words or phrases 45

4.1.3.4 Run-ons - comma splices 46

4.1.3.5 Fragments incomplete sentence 48

4.1.3.6 Unidiomatic sentence construction 49

4.1.4 Mechanical errors 51

4.2 Paragraph organization 52

4.2.1 Topic sentence 53

4.2.2 Supporting sentences 54

4.2.3 Concluding sentence 56

4.3 Some solutions to the problem 58

4.3.1 Suggestions on teaching how to write a paragraph 58

4.3.2 Suggestions on reviewing grammar and practicing writing 59

4.3.3 Suggestions on making drafts 60

4.3.4 Suggestions on teachers‟ error correction 61

4.3.5 Suggestions on teachers‟ checking 61

4.4 Summary 62

Chapter 5 CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 64

5.1 Conclusions 64

5.2 Implications 65

5.3 Limitations 67

5.4 Suggestions for further studies 67

REFERENCES 68

APPENDIX 71

LIST OF TABLES

Pages

Table 2.1 Common ESL Writing Errors Based on Ferris‟ (2005) Model 22

Table 2.2 Description of Major Error Categories (Ferris, 2005) 23

Table 4.1 Categories of errors in the paragraphs written by HLHS students 28

Table 4.2 Morphological errors 29

Table 4.3 Verb Errors 31

Table 4.4 Noun ending errors 34

Table 4.5 Article or determiner errors 36

Table 4.6 Lexical Errors 38

Table 4.7 Syntactic errors 42

Table 4.8 Mechanical Errors 51

Table 4.9 Topic sentence display 53

Table 4.10 Organization of Supporting Sentence Display 55

Table 4.11 Concluding sentence display 56

Table 4.12 Summary of Errors in Writing by HLHS Students 62

LIST OF FIGURES

Pages

Figure 4.1 Errors in the paragraphs written by HLHS Students 29

Figure 4.2 Morphological errors 30

Figure 4.3 Verb errors 31

Figure 4.4 Noun ending errors 34

Figure 4.5 Article or determiner errors 36

Figure 4.6 Lexical errors 38

Figure 4.7 Syntactic errors 43

Figure 4.8 Mechanical Errors 51

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the importance of the English writing skill at high schools in Vietnam The writing skill is part of the English syllabus at high schools In a school-year at high school, there are 105 periods for teaching English in which there is one fifth for teaching writing Writing

is one of the five parts of every unit in English textbooks from grade 10 to grade 12

Writing an English paragraph is a main activity as a result of the writing lesson in the tenth form Some kinds of writing are writing descriptions, writing about people‟s background, writing about the advantages and disadvantages of something Writing paragraphs is basic to students‟ development of their writing skill later Writing a letter, writing a composition and writing an essay are based on writing a paragraph because they are constituted from some paragraphs Hence it is very important for students to be taught how to write a paragraph

However, knowledge of how to write an English paragraph is not presented

in the English textbooks Although the students are required to write a paragraph, they have not been trained to construct a well-organized paragraph Though writing

a paragraph has been put into the eighth form textbooks, building a paragraph is still strange to HLHS students They learn to write paragraphs with some help from their teachers Sometimes their writing is nearly based on a model given out at the first part of a unit in the textbooks or on a reading passage At the end of each writing lesson, they have to complete their writing task Correspondingly, the result of teaching the English writing skill is still unsatisfactory and students still have many dificulties in writing English

While teaching English I find that my students have difficulties in writing Some of these difficulties are problems related to grammar and vocabulary at sentence level How to organize sentences into a larger unit like the paragraph is an

even more important problem A survey of English paragraphs written by HLHS students indicates that their academic writings lack unity and coherence as they tend

to pay attention to accuracy at the sentence level rather than to the development of appropriate discourse organization Many difficulties in writing lead students to be more susceptible to producing errors

For this reason, I choose to do research on the topic “AN INVESTIGATION

INTO COMMON ERRORS IN PARAGRAPH WRITING OF THE 10TH GRADE STUDENTS AT HONG LINH HIGH SCHOOL”.

This thesis is carried out with the hope that the research results will provide

certain linguistically useful practical knowledge for teachers in charge of the English writing skill at high schools and improving the students‟ skill in writing an English paragraph Therefore, I perform a study to evaluate the writing skills of my students in writing a paragraph in English and identify their errors in order to develop guidelines for correction and improvement of their writing skills

1.2 Scope of the study

The study investigates English paragraphs written by the tenth form Vietnamese students at HLHS, particularly focusing on the discourse features of the English paragraph The study is confined to the investigation of linguistic errors and organization in an English paragraph In addition, the study is also restricted to these discourse features in descriptive paragraphs and narrative paragraphs

1.3 Aims and objectives 1.3.1 Aims

This study aims to identify some discourse features of English paragraphs written by HLHS students as well as find out the mistakes they often make when writing English paragraphs and put forward some solutions

1.3.2 Objectives

The objectives of the study are to:

- Investigate the discourse features of English paragraphs written by HLHS students (layout, lexical features and syntactic structures)

- Identify problems faced by the HLHS students in the process of English paragraph writing

- Provide suggestions for teaching and learning English paragraph writing

to HLHS students

1.4 Research questions

Examination of the English paragraphs written by HLHS students aims at answering the following research questions based on the analysis of students‟ written products:

1 What are the types of errors in English paragraphs written by HLHS students?

2 What are the features of organization of English paragraphs written by HLHS students?

3 What are some suggestions for the teaching and learning of English paragraph writing at HLHS?

1.5 Organization of the study Chapter 1- Introduction

This part introduces the study It consists of the rationale, the scope of the study, the aims, the objectives and the research questions

Chapter 2- Literature Review and Theoretical Background

This part provides the previous study and the theoretical background for the research questions raised in the study It also includes the working definitions of the

key terms in the study

Chapter 3- Methodology

This part concerns itself with the research design, the research methods, data

description and the procedures of collecting and analyzing the data

Chapter 4- Findings and Discussion

This part deals with error analysis, finding errors in students‟ writing and their organization of English paragraphs, suggestions for the teaching and learning

of writing English paragraphs

Chapter 5- Conclusions and Implications

This part gives the summary of the development of the study and presents the conclusions drawn from the study This is followed by the implications for teaching and learning English and some suggestions for further research

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

2.1 Previous studies

Error analysis (EA), offered as an alternative to Contrastive Analysis, has its value in classroom research Whereas contrastive analysis allows for prediction of the difficulties involved in acquiring a second language, error analysis may be carried out directly for pedagogic purposes It was S.P Corder (1967) who first advocated in ELT/applied linguistics community the importance of errors in language learning process He introduced the distinction between systematic and unsystematic errors Unsystematic errors appear in native speakers‟ language and he called them “mistakes” Systematic errors, which appear in nonnative speakers‟ language, were called “errors” He states that only

“errors” are significant to the language learning process Dulay and Burt (1974) propose the three categories of errors: developmental, interference and unique In their work, Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982) show that acquiring

language is a process of “creative construction” In defining “transfer” and

“interference”, Dulay et al ( 1982) refer to the former as the use of patterns of the

first language in the production of the second language Up to now, so many researches have been done on English errors and mistakes, especially on grammatical and lexical errors “Common Mistakes in English” written by Fitikites (1961), “Right Words Wrong Words” by Alexander (1994) and

“Dictionary of Common Grammatical Errors” published by Thong Ke publishing house (1998) present a large number of errors and mistakes in English such

as grammatical, lexical, phonological errors

EA with a discourse analysis perspective makes use of DA A result of EA is made to show the causal factors of the errors and how the errors may happen

in students‟ writing or speaking Based on Corder‟s theory (1981), the reason that students usually make errors in writing is the wide differences between the native language and English as the foreign language to be learned Hence,

these differences cause interference (they usually carry over the speech habit of their native language into a second language), over-generalization (they create a

deviant structure on the basis of their experience of other structures in the target

language) and ignorance (they fail to observe the restrictions of existing structures) in

learning English Gass and Selinker‟s theory (1994) of steps in conducting an EA consists of collecting the data, identifying errors, classifying errors, quantifying

errors, analysis of source, and remediation in Second Language Acquisition

In Vietnam, the appearance of EA seems to be much later However, as regards the study of discourse and discourse analysis, there is a variety of linguists who have made every effort to embark in pursuing and applying this new approach into Vietnamese There are more doctoral dissertations and more master theses related to DA and many pieces of research on errors of particular groups of learners For instance, in “An Investigation into Common Written Errors Made

by High-School Pupils in Danang”, Vo Khac Tien presented most types of common written errors made by high-school pupils in Danang such as misspellings, punctuation errors, lexical errors, verbal errors, prepositional errors, article errors, errors in concord, morphology errors and word order errors Tran Thi Ngoc Hien in her research “An Investigation into the Common Grammatical Errors Made by the Tenth Form Students at Danang High Schools”, presented most common grammatical errors (errors in tenses, errors in reported speech, errors in conditional sentences, errors in concord, errors in relative clauses, errors in preposition, errors in noun phrase, and errors in the structure “be used for + V-ing”) made by tenth form students in Danang

In brief, EA in the fields of applied linguistics is the study of kinds and quantity of errors that occur In second language acquisition (SLA), EA studies the types and causes of language errors Based on the preceding research reports, it can be seen that researchers have investigated errors at different levels Errors may also be classified according to the levels of language: phonological errors, vocabulary or lexical errors, syntactic errors, and so on They may be assessed according to the degree to which they interfere with communication

2.2 Theoretical background 2.2.1 Teaching writing

2.2.1.1 Definition of writing

There are various opinions of writing given by different researchers Each one has their own idea about writing Tribble (1996, p 3) considers writing as language skill involving not just a graphic representation of speech, but the development and presentation of though in a structured way But Byrne (1988, p 1) considers writing as the act of forming graphic symbol only such as letters or combination of letters Besides, Sokolik (2003, p 88) defined writing as a physical and mental act It means that writing requires writers to commit words or ideas and to convent ideas, think about how to express them, and organize them into statements and paragraphs She also considers writing is a process and product, and writing aims at expressing and impressing The writers have to generate ideas, organize, draft, edit, read, re-read to produce a product-a paragraph, an essay or a report and writers try to express their ideas, feeling to impress their readers in certain ways Writing involves many different aspects According to Roger, Phillips and Walters (1995, p 113), writing involves seven aspects They are handwriting, spelling, punctuation, sentence construction, organizing a text and paragraphing, text cohesion and style All aspects are carefully considered by any writers

2.2.1.2 The reason for teaching writing

According to Harmer (1998, p 79), teaching writing to students of English include some reasons as follows

Firstly, it is reinforcement Most of students gain great benefits from seeing the written language especially the visual demonstration of language construction is valuable for both their understanding and committing the new language to their memory So it is very useful for them to write sentences using new language after they have just studied it

Secondly, language development is also a reason for teaching writing It seems that the actual process of writing helps students to learn language better The

highest level of writing skill involves critical thinking To deal with their mental activities, students have to construct proper written texts using all their learning experience

Thirdly, the most important reason for teaching writing is that it is a basic productive language skill Obviously, students need to know how to write a letter, how to write a report, etc Therefore, they need to know some writings‟ conventions such as punctuation, paragraph construction, forms of paragraph

2.2.2 Approaches to writing teaching

In the field of writing, product and process approaches are the most popular

task (Huong, T.T, Minh N.T.T.etal, 2007, p 57)

In general, product approach focuses on the end result of the learning process - what it is that the learner is expected to be able to do as a fluent and competent user of language With this approach, the favorite class activities are engaged in imitating, copying, and transforming models of correct language

Steel (2002) provides four steps as a model for this approach:

Stage 1: Students study a model text and mimic its highlighted features Stage 2: Students are involved in controlled practice of the highlighted features, usually in isolation

Stage 3: Students work to organize ideas

Stage 4: Students choose from a choice of comparable writing tasks Individually, they use the skills, structures and vocabulary they have been taught to produce the product to assess their English progress

2.2.2.2 Process approach

Process approach encourages students‟ communication of ideas, feeling and experiences (Stanley, 2002)

Writing is now a multistage process with teacher intervention as needed, and

is evaluated according to how well it fulfills the writer‟s intentions (Reid, 1993)

Also teaching and learning writing focus on the process rather than the final

product (Huong, T.T, Minh N.T.T.etal, 2007, p 58)

Process approach focuses more on the various class activities which are believed to promote the development of skilled language use With the process approach, writers are encouraged to get their ideas on paper in any shape or form without worrying too much about formal correctness It also encourages collaborative group work among students as a way of enhancing motivation and developing positive attitudes towards writing Moreover, process approach encourages the development of critical thinking skills, which help them to have chances to challenge their social reality (Nunan, D, 1991, p 87)

Roger, Phillips and Walters (1995, p 115) provide some guidelines for a process writing activity

Introduction: Teachers create a piece of writing for students to write by the way of stimulating students‟ interests through listening, speaking or reading activity Then teacher asks students to discuss the text type, definite the readers who are they and definite the content that the writer is going to inform, etc

Working with ideas: Using maps, picture or sketch, etc to ask students brainstorm in order to get ideas After noting down, students need to decide which ideas can be kept and which ones should be rejected and develop them before ordering them logically

Planning: Teachers ask students to remind the typical feature and structure of the text type they are writing, for example of paragraph: introduction to the topic with a topic sentence, the supporting ideas for the topic sentence and the writer‟s conclusion

Drafting: The students start to write the first paragraph from their plans They may use dictionary to find words, grammatical structures if they need

Editing: With the teacher comments, students correct and improve their first paragraph by looking at content, language accuracy, organization, etc

Re-writing: Students write out the final version and teachers have to decide

to give the final correction and responses to the students‟ writings

2.2.3 Principles of teaching writing

There are several principles of writing According to Huong, T.T, Minh N.T.T.etal (2007, p 58), teachers should consider some of following principles when teaching writing

First of all, teachers should provide many opportunities for students to write Students‟ writing skills just improve when they practice writing a lot So, just asking students to practice in writing lesson is not enough Teacher can create writing tasks from listening, reading and speaking lesions with different style of writing such as letter writing, e-mail writing, etc

Then, teachers should make their feedback to students helpful and meaningful by the way of giving comments in detail at the end of students‟ writings And teachers‟ comments should help students to be independent writers It means that teachers‟ comments should help students to correct their errors instead

of correcting their errors

Moreover, to evaluate students‟ writings clearly and exactly, teachers should make criteria for each item such as spelling, accuracy of vocabulary, use of cohesive devices, etc

Besides, as often as possible teachers should create the right conditions for students‟ generation of ideas, and teachers always consider themselves as a resource for information and language when necessary

Lastly, teachers should provide students communicative writing activities With this kind of activities, students write with the answer to the three questions: What they are writing? (genre), for whom? (audience) and why (purpose) This is useful for students because these writing activities in the class tend to resemble communicative writing tasks in the real life

2.3 Teaching paragraph writing 2.3.1 Definitions of Paragraph

There are various definitions of a paragraph but in general a paragraph can

be understood including topic sentence and supporting sentences (if necessary) to make the main idea clearer

According to Oxford Advanced Genie (2002), a paragraph is “a section of a piece of writing, usually consisting of several sentences dealing with a single subject The first sentence of a paragraph starts on a new line” But Alice & H Ann (1996, p2) think that “A paragraph is basic unit of organization in writing in which

a group of some related sentences develop one main idea A paragraph can be as short as one sentence or as long as ten sentences The number of sentences is unimportant However, the paragraph should be long enough to develop the main idea clearly” Besides, Feist (1996, p 6) reckons that “A paragraph as a group of sentences that develop a single idea We write in paragraphs to make the organization of our ideas clear to our reader If you think about paragraph writing as

a step-by-step process, it will help you sort through the confusion The first step of the writing process is to gather your ideas and facts”

In fact, besides elements of unity and coherence, a paragraph should have three main parts They are the topic sentence, supporting sentences and the concluding sentence

What is a topic sentence? A topic sentence is usually the first sentence that summarizes the main idea of a paragraph It states the most important thing that you want to say about your topic In the other words, a topic sentence consists of controlling idea of the paragraph (Feist, 1996, p 17) To write a good topic sentence, writer should put it in a complete sentence

What are supporting sentences? They are the sentences those include the ideas related to the topic (Feist, 1996, p 23) Supporting sentences may develop various aspects of the topic such as causes, effects, reasons, example, etc All the supporting sentences are connected together by cohesive devices What is a concluding sentence? It is usually a single sentence But some paragraphs may require more than one concluding sentence The conclusion is usually placed at the end of paragraph It summarizes or restates the main point you made

2.3.2 Classifications of paragraph

According to Feist, there are four main kinds of paragraph: informative, descriptive, narrative and persuasive

2.3.2.1 Informative paragraph

An informative paragraph is a paragraph that informs information For

example, “Write a paragraph to inform your friend about your missing a date” To

write a good informative paragraph, writers need to ask themselves three questions:

1 What do I want to explain? (The answer is also the topic sentence)

2 What steps are needed to do this activity?

Signal words for chronological order are:

(Adapted from Feist,1996, p 43)

2.3.2.2 Descriptive paragraph

A descriptive paragraph tells what something or someone is like For

example: “Describe a film” or “Describe a friend” It helps readers see, feel, taste,

smell and hear the things being described The topic sentence gives the overall impression Supporting sentences include specific details about the person or thing being described According Feist, students may be guided to write a descriptive paragraph following necessary steps

1 Observe the subject of paragraph carefully Try to give sensory details That is the thing you can see, touch, feel, and taste

2 Write a topic sentence that gives your overall impression of the subject

3 Write supporting sentences that contain vivid details

2.3.2.3 Narrative paragraph

A narrative paragraph is a paragraph that tells about something that

happened For example, “Write a paragraph that tells what happened to you last weekend” This kind of paragraph is used in newspapers, stories, and novels A

narrative paragraph is usually arranged in chronological order It answers following questions:

1 Who was involved?

2 What happened?

3 Where did it happen?

4 When did it happen?

2.4 Writing process of paragraph

To perfectly complete a paragraph, the writer needs to conduct four main stages The first is prewriting, the second is draft writing, the third is revising drafts and proofreading is the last one

There are different tables, charts or articles showing the paragraph writing process like Ann Raimes, Alice & H Ann But in general, when a paragraph is written, the writer needs to concern about some main steps that cannot be lacked They are shown by the following chart

Start Here X

The graph of writing process

In the pre-writing stage, writers need to choose and narrow a topic to a specific focus then they generate ideas That is called brainstorming This process can get them to start the writing more easily and quickly It means that if they conduct the stage, it helps them save time in later stages of the writing process

After brainstorming, listing step is conducted Students think about their topics and make a list of any words and phrases coming into their mind on a paper They think

of as many ideas as possible in a very short time “Don‟t stop free flow of ideas by judging or editing them before you write them down” (Alice & H Ann 1996, p 5)

The next step is free writing Students can write any ideas about their topics

to find out a specific focus While students are writing, their minds will come out other related ideas from the ones that they have Writers should write the ideas

Proof-reading

down as many as possible without worrying about any mistakes When they run out

of ideas, they need to reread their paper and underline the main ideas that they think will develop All of these activities are to ensure that whether writers are looking for a narrow topic or not because to find out a narrow topic is very important It helps them to choose an appropriate and adequate idea to develop

Draft writing stage is the actual writing stage It is just an extension of the

pre-writing stage The students transfer the information or issues they have gathered and organized them into a simple paragraph Until this stage, they may not be exactly certain which direction their ideas will go However, this stage allows them

to settle on the subject the paper will take

Revising or editing is usually the most difficult stage of the writing process, especially for beginning writers Revising can include adding, deleting, re-arranging and substituting words, sentences, and even making transparency Even the most excellent authors also need to spend the majority of their time on this stage of the writing process to read again and again in order to find out and edit their writings better, that will be easy for them to remember the mistakes they make and avoid them in the next writings

It is important to gain proofreading skills for students as this improves a

student‟s writing over time Proof-reading stage is a chance for the writer to scan

his or her paper for mistakes in grammar, punctuation, and spelling

2.5 Error and error analysis 2.5.1 Error and error analysis

According to Crystal (2003) “Error is a term used in psycholinguistics referring to mistakes in spontaneous speaking or writing attributable to a malfunctioning of the neuron-muscular commands from the brain It is thus distinct from the traditional notion of error, which was based on the language user‟s ability

to conform a set of real or imagined standards of expression.” (p 165) Whereas, for the error analysis, he defines as follows: “In language teaching and learning, error analysis is technique for identifying, classifying and systematically

interpreting the mistakes made by someone learning a foreign language, using any

of the principles and procedures provided by linguistics.”

Corder (1971), suggests that errors are “the result of some failure of performance They may contain what are often called slips of the tongue, false starts, changes of mind, and so on They may be the result of failures in memory.” (p 162) Norrish (1983, p 7), like Corder, defines „an error‟ as a systematic deviation that happens when a learner has not learnt something and consistently „get (s) it wrong‟ Corder (1981) also states that the learner‟s errors are significant in three ways: (1) To the teacher, they tell him or her how far toward the goal the learner has progressed and what remains to be learned, (2) To the researcher, they provide the evidence of how language is learned or acquired and what strategies the learner employs in language learning, and (3) To the learner himself, they can be regarded as a device the learner uses to learn a language It is a way the learner employs to test the hypothesis about the nature of language

Dulay et al (1982) also see the significance of the learner‟s errors They view that studying the learner‟s errors serves two main purposes: (1) It provides important information from which inferences about the language learning process can be made, and (2) It indicates which part of the target language is most problematic to the learner and which types of errors affect the learner‟s ability to communicate effectively

Based on those understandings, I assume that doing or having an error is related with whether each human has good understanding or not of knowledge in their mind Therefore, the study of error is part of the investigation of the process of language learning

It provides us with a picture of the linguistic development of a learner and may give us the indications as to the learner‟s strategies to understand the second language SLA stands in contrast to first language acquisition It is the study of how learners learn an additional language after they have acquired their mother tongue

EA is a type of linguistic analysis which concentrates on the learners‟ errors

It contains a comparison between the errors made in the target language (TL) and

that TL itself There are some essential terms used in EA: Interlanguage,

Language Transfer

- Interlanguage: The term “interlanguage” is defined as the linguistic

system the learner produces in the process of learning another language Selinker (1972) points out that since the utterances produced by a language learner are not identical to those produced by a native speaker of the TL who attempts to express the same meaning as the learner, it could be hypothesized that there must be a separate linguistic system governing the language performance of the learner in the process of learning TL This linguistic system is what he called “interlanguage.”

- Language Transfer: The term “transfer” was first technically defined by

behaviorist psychologists as “the automatic, uncontrolled, and subconscious use of past learned behaviors in the attempt to produce new responses” (Dulay et al, 1982,

p 101) Odlin (1989) defines language transfer as “the influence resulting from similarities and differences between the TL and any other language that has been previous (and perhaps imperfectly) acquired” According to Selinker (1972),

language transfer is one of the processes of interlanguage construction and may

play an important role in the development of an individual‟s interlanguage outside the scope of merely being a learning or communication strategy Although there is

considerable debate about the extent of this role in interlanguage construction,

many researchers agree that L1 transfer is involved to some capacity in a learner‟s

interlanguage continuum

It has also been used by educational psychologists to refer to the use of past knowledge or experience in new situations For example, learners may use their past knowledge in L1 when they learn L2 If they know how to read in one language, they do not have to learn written symbols representing sounds in L2 In this case,

“the basic concepts and skills involved in reading are said to transfer to the new language” ( Dulay & Burt, 1982, p 101) In SLA, it is believed that the learner‟s first language significantly influences the SLA

Based on the above definitions, two types of language transfer arebdistinguished: positive and negative transfer

Positive transfer or facilitation is any facilitating effects on acquisition due

to the influence of cross-linguistic similarities It is believed that much of the influence of the native language or of some other language that the learner has previously learned can be of great use, especially when the differences between the native language and the target language are relatively few Linguistic similarities produce positive transfer in several ways For example, similarities between native language and target language vocabulary facilitate reading comprehension Similarities in syntactic structure assist in grammar learning and similarities between writing systems will provide a good start for learners in reading and writing the target language

Negative transfer or interference is as cross linguistic influences resulting

in errors, overproduction, underproduction, miscomprehension, and other effects that constitute a divergence between the behaviour of native and non-native speakers of a language In other words, negative transfer is the use of a native language pattern or rule which leads to an error or inappropriate form in the target language Several studies in the field of second language acquisition and error analysis have reported negative transfer or interference from the native language

as the prime cause of errors

In EA, distinction is made between two types of intralingual errors and interlingual or transfer errors

- Developmental or intralingual errors are those due to the language being

learnt (TL), independent of the native language According to Richards (1992), they are “items produced by the learner which reflect not the structure of the mother tongue, but generalizations based on partial exposure to the TL” The learner, in this case, tries to “derive the rules behind the data to which he/she has been exposed, and may develop hypotheses that correspond neither to the mother tongue nor to the TL” According to Dulay et al (1982), this type of errors reflects the learner‟s

competence at a particular time and indicates the general characteristics of language acquisition rather than reflecting the learner‟s incompetence to distinguish between the two languages Richards (1974) studied errors produced by speakers of a variety

of first languages and found that errors of this type are frequent across the learners‟ language backgrounds They reflect the general characteristics of rule learning such

as overgeneralization,ignorance of rule restrictions, incomplete application of rules, and false concepts hypothesized Like Richards, Dulay & Burt (1974) also found that a large number of errors were developmental errors

- Interlingual or transfer errors are those attributed to the native language

There are interlingual errors when the learner‟s L1 habits (patterns, systems or rules) interfere or prevent him/ her, to some extent, from acquiring the patterns and rules of the L2 (Corder (1971, p 158-171) Interlingual errors are errors “similar in structure to a semantically equivalent phrase or sentence in the learner‟s native language” (Dulay et al(1982, p 171)

These errors result from “interference” or “transfer” from the mother tongue Therefore, they reflect the native language structure

Interference (negative transfer) is the negative influence of the L1 on the

performance of the L2 learner (Lado, 1964)

In the error analysis of my thesis, I will find both intralingual errors and interlingual errors in which the students have an incomplete application of rules, false concepts hypothesized in language structure and interference of their mother tongue

2.5.2 Sources of errors

Many linguists have tried to identify the sources of errors Among them was Selinker (1972), who identifies five sources of errors: (1) Language transfer, (2) Transfer of training, (3) Strategies of second language learning, (4) Strategies of second language communication, and (5) Overgeneralization of TL linguistic material

Corder (1971, p 158-171) exposes three sources of errors: (1) Language transfer, (2) Overgeneralization or analogy, and (3) Methods or materials used in the teaching (teaching- induced errors)

According to Richards and Simpson (1974, p 3-18), there are seven sources of errors: (1) Language transfer: to which one third of the deviant sentences from second language learners could be attributed, (2) Intralingual interference: which has four types and causes (overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restrictions, incomplete application of rules and semantic errors), (3) Sociolinguistic situation: motivation and setting for language learning, (4) Modality: modality of exposure to the TL and modality of production, (5) Age: learning capacities vary with age, (6) Successions of approximate systems: since the circumstances of language learning vary from a person to another, so does the acquisition of new lexical, phonological, and syntactic items, and (7) Universal hierarchy of difficulty: this factor has received little attention

in the literature of SLA It is concerned with the inherent difficulty for man of certain phonological, syntactic, or semantic items or structures Some forms may be inherently difficult to learn no matter what the background of the learner

James, C(1998) identifies three main diagnosis-based categories of error: (1) Interlingual: interference happens when “an item or structure in the second language manifests some degree of difference from, and some degree of similarity with the equivalent item or structure in the learner‟s first language”, (2) Intralingual: Learning strategy-based errors and Communication strategy-based errors, and (3) Induced errors: they “result more from the classroom situation than from either the student‟s incomplete competence in English grammar (intralingual errors) or first language interference (interlingual errors).”

Dulay, H and Burt, M (1974, p 129-134) report four types of “goofs”: (1) Interference-like goofs, (2) L1 developmental goofs, (3) Ambiguous goofs (either interference-like or L1 developmental goofs) and (4) Unique goofs (neither interference- like nor L1 developmental goofs)

In short, from all the above linguists‟ ideas which pay attention to identification of the sources of errors, I will accept sources of errors for my thesis like these: (1) Interlingual interference, (2) Intralingual interference, (3) Sociolinguistic situation, and (4) Induced errors

2.5.3 Errors in writing

In writing, learners easily make errors because information has to be transmitted without any aid from other sources than the language itself Thus errors produced in writing related to a feature of discourse organization Errors affect texts larger than the word, namely phrase, clause, sentence and ultimately paragraph In other words, they are referred to as (1) phrase structure errors, (2) clause errors, (3) sentence errors, and (4) intersentence errors (cohesion) In the development of a paragraph, the fourth type of errors, cohesive errors, often occurs Halliday and Hasan (1976) identify five types of cohesion: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion While cohesion is based on grammar or meaning, between parts of a piece of writing, coherence, on the other hand, refers to a reasonable connection or relation between ideas, statements, etc In addition, James (1998) concludes that coherence is related primarily to content, to the conceptual relatedness of propositions

2.5.4 Error classification

a) Pit Corder’s classification

In the 1970s, many linguists such as Nickel, Richards, Schumann and Stenson attempted to classify second language errors and find out the causes Corder (1986) was the first person who offered the concepts: Error of competence

and error of performance According to him, Errors of performance are the results

of mistakes in language use and manifest themselves as repeats, false starts, corrections or slips of the tongue Errors of performance occur frequently in the speech of both native speakers and second language learners They are especially likely to occur when the speaker suffers from stress, indecision or fatigue And

Errors of competence show the learner‟s transitional competence They are the

result of the application of rules by second language learner which do not (yet) correspond to the second language norm

Corder also suggested a criterion for distinguishing these two kinds of errors: second language learners can recognize and correct errors of performance, but not errors of competence

b) Burt and Kiparsky’s classification

Different from Corder, Burt and Kiparsky (1972)‟s classification is concerned with communication They classify errors into two kinds: global errors and local errors Global errors are errors that hinder and cause problems with communication They affect overall sentence organization Common global errors are wrong word order, missing, misplaced sentence connectors, missing cues to signal obligatory exception to pervasive syntactic rules, over generalizing pervasive syntactic rules to exceptions Local errors are errors that affect single element in a sentence They do not hinder and cause problems with communication, such as errors in noun and verb inflection, articles, auxiliaries and the formation of quantifiers

c) Edge’s classification

Edge, J (1986) did not use the term “error” However, his classification had some points like Corder‟s He defined “mistakes” as the cover term for all ways of being wrong as a foreign language learner He divides them into three types: slips, errors and attempts

Slips are mistakes that the learner can self-correct if they are pointed out Slips are caused by carelessness of the learner Errors are mistakes the learners

cannot self correct even if they are pointed out And we can recognize what the

learners wanted to produce Attempts are mistakes that cannot be understood They

are committed because the learners have no idea of the right structures to express what they wanted to say

d) Lewis and Hill’s classification

Unlike other linguists, Lewis, M and Hill, J (1985) pay more attention to errors in spoken language, in pronunciation and in fluency than accuracy They said that generally, language teachers focus on some kinds of errors such as poor pronunciation, wrong word choice, and especially, structural errors These errors are really important, but there are other important kinds of errors that should be considered They are stress, intonation, register appropriateness and omission

e) Richards, John Talbot Platt and Heidi Weber’s classification

According to Richards et al (1985), errors are classified into vocabulary (lexical error), pronunciation (phonological error), grammar and sentence (syntactical error), misunderstanding of a speaker‟s intention or meaning (interpretive error), and production of the wrong communicative effect through the faulty use of a speech act or one of the rules of speaking (pragmatic error) that make the term „error analysis‟ exist in language learning process so that we can find out how well people (s) knows a language A difference between an error and a mistake

is that error results from incomplete knowledge, whereas a mistake is made by a learner when writing or speaking and is caused by lack of attention, fatigue, carelessness, or some other aspect of performance

f) Ferris’s classification

According to Ferris (2005), errors can be classified into global and local errors Global errors are major errors in sentence structure, which makes a sentence difficult or impossible to understand, whereas local errors are minor

mistakes, which do not cause problems of comprehension In Ferris‟s

classification, syntactic errors are considered global errors Mechanical mistakes and lexical errors, on the other hand, are local errors Morphological errors can

be global errors, but when they do not hinder readers‟ understanding of the content, they are local errors

Table 2.1 Common ESL Writing Errors Based on Ferris’ (2005) Model

Morphological Errors → global / local errors (Verbs: Tense, Form,

Subject-verb agreement Nouns: Articles/determiners, Noun endings (plural/possessive)

Lexical Errors → local errors (Word choice, Word form, Informal usage, Idiom

error, Pronoun error)

Syntactic Errors → global errors (Sentence structure, Run-ons, Fragments) Mechanical → local errors (Punctuation, Spelling, Capitalization)

Table 2.2 Description of major error categories (Ferris, 2005)

agreement errors

Noun ending errors

Plural or progressive ending incorrect, omitted, or unnecessary; includes relevant subject-verb agreement errors

Article errors Article or other determiner incorrect, omitted, or unnecessary

Wrong word

All specific lexical errors in word choice or word form, including preposition and pronoun errors Spelling errors only included if the (apparent) misspelling resulted in an actual English word

Sentence structure

Errors in sentence/clause boundaries (run-ons, fragments, comma, splices),word order, omitted words or phrases, unnecessary words or phrases, other unidiomatic sentence construction

Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY

3.1 Study setting

The goal of teaching and learning foreign languages is providing the learners with a means of communication or in other words, improving the communicative competence for learners To acquire the communicative competence, four language skills (reading, speaking, listening and writing) are taught regularly at schools and universities, among which writing skill is very important because it is a productive skill It is also because of the fact that besides speaking, people frequently have to communicate with each other in writing Moreover, writing helps learners learn other skills better “First, writing reinforces the grammatical structures, idioms, and vocabulary that we have been teaching our students Second, when they write, they have a chance to be adventurous with the language, to go beyond what they have just learned to say, to take risks Third, when students write, they necessarily become very involved with the new language; the effort to express ideas and constant use of eye, hand and brain is the unique way of expressing their idea They discover a real need for finding the right word and the right sentence The close relationship between writing and thinking makes writing a valuable part of any language courses” (Raimes, 1938, p 3)

At Hong Linh High School, paragraph writing is conducted for the 10thgrade students because it is one of the fundamental and basic writing skills Paragraph writing is the background for students to learn other writing skills in the next year For example, they will learn to write letters, biography, and reports It is the fact that students at Hong Linh High School in general and the 10th grade students in particular are very weak at paragraph writing There are some reasons why English major students face a number of problems when studying paragraph writing First, most students were not familiar with paragraph writing When they were at secondary school, they only practiced writing at a very low level like sentence-

building, sentence-rewriting Second, they have just got acquainted with very informal writing styles So when they write a paragraph, they make many mistakes

of vocabulary, grammar, organization as well as the way of idea expression

As revealed in the questionnaire, each student has his own difficulties But the most serious ones are limitations of English vocabulary and grammar, weakness

in expressing ideas and using linking words

The students‟ paragraph writing revealed that students always make vocabulary and grammatical mistakes They use the wrong words when they write a paragraph because of their misunderstanding the meaning of words so they face a

lot of confusion in vocabulary use A student wrote: “My most difficulty in paragraph writing is to choose the right words” Obviously, mastering the usage of

English vocabulary and structures is very difficult for every student, so a new and appropriate teaching strategy needs applying soon in order to help students enhance their knowledge of language

Weakness in expressing ideas is also a big problem for the students Students get accustomed to the way of Vietnamese thought, so their ideas come out indirectly and lengthily They do not focus on the main point of the problem, they write a lot but the sentences are not connected, so their writings are vague and illogical The students themselves feel very difficult to write a good paragraph in English

Moreover, linking words cause some difficulties for students As we all know, linking words play an essential part in writing because they are used to link the ideas

in paragraph to make the writing transparent and understandable Without linking words, the writing is confusing and illogical because the ideas in the paragraph are

unconnected together And without using linking words such as and, but, however, although, etc., the students cannot compose a paragraph logically and clearly

Last but not least, there are students who feel it very difficult to make a good topic sentence They cannot write a sentence which includes all the ideas they want

to mention later So showing them the best way to write a topic sentence is also important element in teaching paragraph writing because the writing is good or bad depends a lot on the topic sentence

Because of those difficulties, teaching paragraph writing is really a challenge What the teacher should do now is to develop effective teaching strategies that help students work out the way of writing a paragraph and help them avoid mistakes It is

a big problem for teachers of English at Hong Linh High School

To find the best answer, I would like to search for the common errors and the causes of those errors that the students are likely to make After that I recommend some appropriate teaching strategies and useful exercises in my study with the hope that students at Hong Linh High School can only avoid their errors in writing paragraph but also improve their paragraph writing skill

3.2 Participants

The participants of the research consist of 240 students at Hong Linh High

school They are the 10th grade students at Hong Linh high school in Ha Tinh province, Vietnam They are Vietnamese students from the age of 15 and 16 speaking Vietnamese fluently English is compulsory subject in Vietnam, and students start learning as a foreign language from 6th grade to 12th grade In class, students exhibit at different proficiency and levels of four skills: listening, speaking, reading, writing

3.3 Research methods

The design of the study is based on the combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches The qualitative approach is used in describing an analyzing data to find out the distinctive features of English paragraphs written by HLHS students in terms of the common errors On the contrary, the quantitative approach

is useful for determining the percentage of some common errors

3.4 Research procedures

The following steps will be included:

(1) Giving topics to HLHS students to write English paragraphs

(2) Collecting data from the participants

(3) Analyzing the data

(4) Synthesizing the analysis and drawing conclusions

(5) Suggesting some implications for teaching and learning English

3.5 Description of the sample

There are 240 tenth form students at HLHS taking part in the process of the study The participant students were divided into three groups, each of which wrote about a different topic The length of each paragraph is approximately 100 words The time allocates for writing a paragraph for each topic about 30 minutes

Three topics for writing paragraphs are:

Topic 1: Write a paragraph to describe the number of students in District A entering universities from 2007 to 2012 from the table

Number of students entering

Topic 2: Write a paragraph about a famous person you know well

Topic 3: Write a paragraph to describe a film you have seen

In this study, I collect paragraphs written by 240 tenth form students at HLHS All the participants were given the topic to write within the time set The participants were asked to write their paragraphs on their own without discussing with their friends

of data, not invented examples, the quality of the data is quite reliable Additionally,

in this study, the researcher sets out the work from the analysis of evidence, statistics, frequencies, then comes to conclusions, so the result of the research is not presupposed In other words, the research has reliability and validity

Chapter 4 FINDING AND DISCUSSION

4.1 Error analysis

Error analysis is a type of linguistic analysis that focuses on the errors learners make According to Richards et al (1985), errors are classified based on vocabulary (lexical error), pronunciation (phonological error), grammar and sentence (syntactical error), misunderstanding of a speaker‟s intention or meaning (interpretive error), and production of the wrong communicative effect through the faulty use of a speech act or one of the rules of speaking (pragmatic error) that make the term „error analysis‟ exist in language learning process

The most common errors in writing that the students make are grammatical errors, such as lack of maintaining subject - verb agreement, lack of mastering the use of verb tenses, using article errors, using incorrect or vague pronoun references, and paying no attention to avoid punctuation errors, and so on

The errors in the paragraphs written by HLHS students were categorized based on Ferris‟ (2005) Analysis Model of Her “common ESL writing errors” which fall into four categories: morphological errors, lexical errors, syntactic errors, and mechanical errors

Table 4.1 Categories of errors in the paragraphs written by HLHS students

Error Rate Error Rate Error Rate Morphological

Error 502 32.6% 228 20.5% 603 33.1% 1333 29.8 % Lexical Error 418 27.2% 325 29.3% 539 29.6% 1282 28.7 %

Syntactic Error 543 35.3% 540 48.6% 618 33.9% 1701 38.0 %

Mechanical

Figure 4.1 Errors in the paragraphs written by HLHS Students

As can be seen in Figure 4.1 and Table 4.1, the number of syntactic errors (1701) is the highest The number of morphological errors (1333) is more than that

of lexical errors (1282).Meanwhile, the mechanical error (with 155 instances) takes the smallest proportion, just one-tenth of syntactic errors (3.5% versus 38.0%) In each topic, there is a nearly similar rank Syntactic error ranks first and the last one

is mechanical error However, the second position changes between morphological error and lexical error Only in topic 2 (writing about a person), the number of lexical errors is bigger than that of morphological errors The errors of each category will be clarified in detail in the subsequent

Rate (in all errors)

Noun Ending Error 121 45 79 245 18.4 % 5.5 %

Article or Determiner Error 92 57 169 318 23.9 % 7.1 % Total of Morphological