000028823 SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING WRITING SKILLS TO INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS AT THE HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES THROUGH ERROR ANALYSIS MỘT SỐ GỢI Ý CHO VIỆC DẠY KỸ NĂNG VIẾT CHO SINH VIÊN TRUNG CẤP TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ HÀ NỘI THÔNG QUA

000028823 SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING WRITING SKILLS TO INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS AT THE HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES THROUGH ERROR ANALYSIS MỘT SỐ GỢI Ý CHO VIỆC DẠY KỸ NĂNG VIẾT CHO SINH VIÊN TRUNG CẤP TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ HÀ NỘI THÔNG QUA PHÂN TÍCH LỖI

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HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES

POST-GRADUATE DEPARTMENT

DISSERTATION

TRAN VAN TRONG

HANOI 1999

HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES

POST-GRADUATE DEPARTMENT

DISSERTATION

SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING

WRITING SKILLS TO INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS

AT THE HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES

THROUGH ERROR ANALYSIS

A FIELD STUDY REPORT SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS (TESOL) AT HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES

By TRAN VAN TRO NG

THONG TIN ĨHƯVIỆN

Hanoi 1999

SUBMISSION OF DISSERTATION

Title of dissertation:

SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR TEACHING WRITING SKILLS TO INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS AT THE HANOI UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN STUDIES (HUFS) THROUGH ERROR ANALYSIS

Supervisor: Nguyen Thi Thom, M A.

Candidate: Tran Van Trong

Hanoi University of Foreign Studies English Department

Date of submission: December 1999

Certificate of Originality of Study Project Report

I certify my authorship of the study project report submitted today - entitle:

Some Suggestions for Teaching Writing Skills to Intermediate Students

at the Hanoi University of Foreign Studies Through Error Analysis.

In terms of the statement of requirement for thesis and field study reports

in Masters' programmes issued by the Higher Degree Committee

(signature of author)

November, 1999

Writing is always said to be a difficult skill Much research, therefore, has been done in this area This study has been conducted to explore and analyze this problematic field in the context of intermediate students' writing at HUFS Apart from a data collection analyzed, much useful information was gathered from teaching and learning writing in the English Department of HUFS

The writer uses procedures of error analysis to investigate the learners’ errors, and then gives some suggestions for how to show learners their errors Literature indicates that students are unlikely to learn writing enthusiastically because of theoretical, grammatical and cultural factors Based on these findings, some suggestions for teaching writing skills are given for teachers of intermediate students in the English Department in particular and at HUFS in general

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I would like to express my gratitude to all who have made this study possible First of all to my supervisor, Mrs Nguyen Thi Thom, M.A (TESOL), an experienced teacher, who at my urging turned her hand to writing

1 also thank Dr Pham Kim Ninh and Mr Tran Quang Huy M A and for their help and wonderful materials they provided me to work with

My deepest appreciation goes to all the teachers of the English Department for their suggestions, encouragement and support As experienced teachers who have been teaching English for many years, they have greatly contributed to my research work

Many thanks are sent to Ms Diane Fox, M.A TESOL, Portland State University, U.S.A for reading the draft, proposing the right terms and giving constructive advice during her short visit to Hanoi University of Foreign Studies

My special thanks also go to my wife and children for their able and valued assistance

Finally, I wish to express my thanks to those who have kindly helped

me with source material for writing this dissertation

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CHAPTER V 53

Puge 6

CHAPTER I:

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Aim and scope of this study

In recent years, there has been a boom in learning English in Vietnam People go to English classes for different purposes, in full time, part-time and evening classes Since English has become the most important foreign language, it is widely taught at schools, colleges and universities throughout the country English has made a great contribution

to many aspects of life such as: economy, politics, diplomacy, social life, etc, and therefore, English is one of the compulsory subjects tested for high school graduation examination, from the North to the South

1.2 The necessity of this study

Trying to meet the demand for learning English in Vietnam poses a big question: "How to teach English well?" for the educators in general and teachers of English in particular As we are teachers of English, we are fully aware that English must be taught more effectively Actually, there ¿ire more and more foreign companies coming to Vietnam with a hope of having a chance to co-operate with Vietnam in investment as well

as in manufacturing For these reasons, training people with a good knowledge of English is an urgent need That is, the trainees must be good

at English in four skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing However learners always regard the writing skill as the most difficult to master since it requires extreme accuracy in language use

Being a teacher in the English Department at HUFS for more than twenty years, the author knows that so many learners have difficulties in writing English It seems to be hard work for most learners to express their own ideas in writing As a result, the learners are not interested in any work involving writing It is clear that, many university leavers have lost the opportunity of having a good job just because of a written test

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even though they are fairly good at the other three skills of speaking, reading and listening Writing is also the main reason students at HUFS fail at exams or get bad marks Thus, the writing skills to be dealt with in this study are essential, and it is necessary for the teachers to help the learners improve and master their writing skills.

The study is titled "Teaching writing skills to the students at the Intermediate level at HUFS", with some suggestions for teaching writing

1.3 Objectives of the study

The author hopes to help learners clearly understand their weakness

in writing skills so that they themselves can improve their writing skills The goals of this study:

- Finding out reasons learners have poor writing;

- Finding out what difficulty learners are facing;

- Finding some suggestions for teaching writing skills to the learners Hopefully, this study may contribute to improving the teaching ofwriting skills at HUFS

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O V ER VIE W OF THE LITERATURE 2.1 General ideas of writing

The reason for this is that we write for a reader, so that writing involves the encoding of a message of some kind: that is, we translate our thoughts into language And because our readers are not present, and in some cases may not even be known to us, we have to ensure that what we write can be understood without our help This is very important in

writing Then, we are able to communicate successfully with our readers through the medium of writing

2.1.2 Types of writing

Many attempts have been made to classify writing According to John Harris(1993), traditionally, writing was divided into exposition, argument, description and narration This division has been a main factor

CHAPTER II

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in setting the writing curriculum in schools Harris also showed that pupils have to write essays for science reports or literature Although their writing is highly valued in schools, it plays little or no part in the world outside Actually, the learners' writing papers do not reflect the demand of the society Consequently, the learners' writing papers may be valuable or good at school, but they might be useful for only a small part of the population and they may not have any real place in the society H am s (1993) also presented the idea that in recent years experienced educators have been reshaping the writing curriculum They have done this for the following reasons.

First, education now is regarded as the right of all pupils, so the writing curriculum must be based on forms that are more practical The author (Harris, 1993) also remarked: "Writing must reflect and reinforce the types of learning”

Secondly, according to Harris (1993): "The most comprehensive attempts to describe development in writing have used relatively unsophisticated measures such as overall length of text, average sentence length and syntactic complexity” These measures are unreliable because each one depends on the types of writing undertaken, so a more sophisticated approach is needed

Thirdly, assessment of achievement in writing is not a simple matter,

as it is closely linked to the type of task undertaken

Recently, the writing curriculum in schools has been greatly changed and has become more practical and satisfactory owing to improvement of the education content

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2.1.3 Reasons for writing

Tricia Hedge (1988) notes that a good deal of writing undertaken is

an aid to learning, for example, to consolidate the learning of new structure or vocabulary or to help the learners remember new items of language In this context, the role of writing is much different from its role in any other subject; it allows learners to see how they are progressing and to get feet back from the teacher, and it allows the teacher

to monitor and diagnose problems Successful writing depends on more than the ability to produce clear and correct sentences According to Tricia Hedge (1988), "Classroom writing tasks should reflect the ultimate goal of enabling students to write whole texts which form connected, contextualized and appropriate pieces of comm unication”

2.1.5 Why writing is difficult

It is clearly understood why writing is a difficult activity for most learners, both in the mother tongue and in a foreign language or a second language The problems which are caused by writing can be considered under three headings - psychological, linguistic and cognitive - although these inevitably overlap to some extent

2.1.5.1 Psychological problem

Writing is essentially a solitary activity and the fact that we are required to write without the possibility of interaction makes the act of writing difficult (Donn Byrne, 1991: 4)

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2.1.5.2 Linguistic problem

In writing, learners have to compensate for the absence of other linguistic features: they have to keep the channel of communication open through their own efforts and to ensure, both though their choice of sentence structure and by the way the sentences are linked together and sequenced, that the text learners produce can be interpreted on its own (Donn Byrne, 1991: 4)

2.1.5.3 Cognitive problem

Writing is learned through a process of instruction: learners have to master the written form of structures which are important for effective communication in writing Finally, writing is a task which is often imposed on learners, perhaps by circumstance This not only has a psychological effect, it may also pose a problem in terms of content, of what to say To solve this problem it will be necessary to strike some sort

of balance which prevents learners from going beyond their linguistic attainment in the foreign language and yet will still provide them with writing activities which satisfy them on an intellectual level (Donn Byme, 1991: 4)

2.1.6 Why do we teach writing?

Writing is a skill which is both limited in value and difficult to acquire so we should clearly understand the purpose in teaching it

- Right at the beginning of a course oriented towards oral proficiency, writing serves a variety of pedagogical purposes

- The introduction and practice of some forms of writing enables us

to provide for different learning styles and needs

- Written work helps to provide the learners with some tangible evidence that they are making progress in the language It is not likely to

be true index of attainment, but it satisfies a psychological need

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- Writing also provides variety in classroom activities, serving as a form of preparation for oral work At the same time, it raises the amount

of language contact through work that can be done out of class (Donn Byrne, 1991: 6)

- Writing is often needed for formal and informal testing Generally, oral ability can be measured through oral tests But in some cases, a written test may be appropriate: for instance, making notes while listening It is obvious that while we should concentrate on oral skills in the early stages, we can identify and concentrate on forms of writing which have a practical value, the relevance of which should be easily apparent to the learners Writing is a skill worth developing in the foreign language The problem is how to do this in a way that lets learners understand the purpose of writing and make progress through their performance of realistic and relevant tasks

2.2 Principles for teaching writing

2.2.1 Approaches to teaching writing

- Five major approaches are examined in this section:

1) The learners are merely given a topic of some kind and asked to produce a "composition" without help Attempts to teach writing focus on some problematical aspects of the writing situation

2) Because learners make mistakes when they are allowed to write what they want, accuracy- oriented approaches control mistakes so as to eliminate them from written work Learners are taught how to write and combine various sentence types and exercises like the ones below are used

to give them experience of writing connected sentences For example,

A (1) man (2) walked (3) down the street A (4) girl (5) was waiting for him outside a (6) As he approached, she smiled (7) and said, "Hi, how are you?"

(1) Medium, young, well-dressed

Puge 13

(2) with a moustache, in a bowler hat

(3) hurriedly, rapidly, quickly

(4) pretty, fair-haired, dark-skinned

(5) in high-heeled shoes, with an umbrella

(6) chemist's, bicycle, coffee

(7) attractively, pleasantly, in a friendly manner

Gradually, the amount of control is reduced and the learners are asked to exercise meaningful choice (in the example mentioned above) Then, they may be given a good deal of guidance with language and content, but allowed some opportunities for self-expression

3) Without worrying about making mistakes, the important thing is

to get one's idea down on paper In this way learners feel that they are actually writing, not doing "exercises" of some kind They write what they want to write and as a result, writing is an enjoyable experience Most people write less well if they are obliged to write about something Many learners write badly because they do not write enough and for the same reason they feel uncomfortable

4) This approach stresses the importance of the paragraph as the basic unit of written expression and it is therefore mainly concerned with teaching learners how to construct and organize a paragraph It uses a variety of techniques, singly and in combination, such as:

+ Forming paragraphs from jumbled sentences;

+ Writing parallel paragraphs;

+ Developing paragraphs from topic sentences

Clearly, this approach identifies and tries to overcome one of the central problems in writing: getting learners to express themselves effectively at a level beyond the sentence

5) In real life, people have a reason for writing and they write to or for someone

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These are factors which have been neglected in teaching and practicing writing.

2.2.2 The state of the art

Recently, classroom methodology has been heavily influenced by the communicative approach Receptive skills are also given more prominence and learners are exposed to a wide range of spoken and written language A good deal of recommended writing practice reflects the main concern of this approach, even though in practice both teachers and textbook writers deal with the classroom situation grammatically, and therefore, retain a good deal of controlled practice

No less interesting and significant are some of the "side effects" of the communicative approach For example :

+ Learners get more opportunities to read and this kind of exposure

to the written language is beneficial to writing

+ The factual nature of much reading and listening material is also useful for related writing activities

+ Learners are encouraged to work in pairs and groups and to share writing tasks (Donn Byrne, 1991: 23)

2.2.3 The role of guidance

In view of the many difficulties that learners face in learning how to write a foreign language, the key principle of guiding them in various ways towards a mastery of writing skills and sometimes controlling what they write is not to be dismissed lightly We should consider more carefully what kind of guidance we should give them, particularly in relation to various problems they have when writing By using texts, we can make writing activities much more meaningful for the learners and thereby increase their motivation to write well By so doing learners can see well not only why they are writing but also write in a manner appropriate to the communicative goal of the text

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One way of helping the learners is by making writing tasks more realistic, by relating practice to a major purpose instead of asking them to write for the sake of writing Writing activity can derive in a natural way from some prior activity such as conversation We have looked, so far, at guidance in term of what kind of framework - linguistic and contextual -

we can provide in order to make writing tasks more purposeful and useful, rather than in terms of the support Clearly, our approach should be as eclectic as possible, using those forms of guidance which are appropriate

to different kinds of writing at different levels of attainment

However, one thing that needs special emphasis is that guidance need not imply tight control over what the learners write If we accept that errors in speech are not only inevitable but a natural part of learning a language, then we should accept that they will occur in writing too If the learners are given opportunities to write what they want to write, they will learn this skill

2.2.4 The needs of the learners

2.2.4.1 Teach the learners how to write

It is all too often assumed that learners can write reasonably well in their mother tongue and have also acquired some proficiency in the spoken language Since writing is a different way of communicating from speech, it requires a special teaching

2.2.4.2 Provide adequate and relevant experience o f the written language

Writing has to be preceded and accompanied by wide exposure toappropriate models of written language The learners cannot be expected

to produce other varieties of the written language appropriate to letters or reports if they have only seen dialogue in their textbooks

2.2.4.3 Show the learners how the writing functions as a system o f communication

Exposure to the written form of the language by itself is notsufficient The learners must be aware of how to comm unicate through the

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written medium and how this differs from speech Particularly, they need

to be shown that any piece of writing is addressed to a specific reader having a communicative purpose

2.2.4.4 Teach the learners how to write texts

Writing involves the ability to organize sentences into a coherent whole or text Most writing practice should teach from the start those devices of the written language which are needed to write various types of text Possibly, the practice of these devices should be within the framework of a text which has a definite communicative goal so that the learners see the purpose of what they are writing The learners can also be given opportunities to practice organizing their ideas to form acceptable paragraphs

2.2.4.5 Teach the learners how to write different kinds of texts

Donn Byme (1988)remarks that the learners may not be expected to master all the different varieties of the written form of the language So many of them would not be relevant to their needs And it is also not enough to try to teach them a kind of "neutral" general purpose form of written expression Our goal should not be to teach different kinds of writing (such as descriptive, narrative, expository and so on) but rather to see that these are practised within the wider context of text

2.2.4.6 Making writing tasks realistic and relevant

Most writing tests lack reality for the learners because they do not give them the feeling that they are writing to or for somebody The use of text as the basic format for practice is only part of the solution Teachers have to attempt to identify those forms of writing which are most likely to

be relevant to the learner's needs

2.2.4.7 Integrate writing with other skills

Writing is often relegated to the end of the teaching unit and used

mainly for homework This is unlikely to make the learners want to write Teachers should introduce writing activities that lead naturally into or from the use of other skills, so that the learners see writing as a real activity

2.2.4.8 Use a variety o f techniques and practice formats

This is very important as the learners are bored by the same type of activity Also, as we can see, some techniques and formats are appropriate

to certain levels; for instance, letter writing is suitable for use in the early stages because it permits the learners to make some use of the spoken form of the language within a new framework In terms of developing writing skills, we can not be sure how effective any single technique is

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2.2.4.9 Provide appropriate support

We have already shown the importance of guidance and how broadly

it can be interpreted in the writing program in a variety of ways However,

we should consider that writing tasks are imposed and that the learners may not have either the relevant ideas, when this involves some contribution on their part, or be stimulated by the tasks to think of them The problem is compounded by their having to work on their own Actually, there are many solutions to this problem and they need to be explored in a flexible way Specially, the use of techniques and procedures which have proved valuable for other areas of our work, like pair and group work, need to be examined within the context of the writing program

2.3 Process of writing

2.3.1 Creating and developing the text

Harris(1993) notes that the most difficult part of a piece of writing is the opening Drafting allows a writer to start with whatever part of the projected whole comes most easily Teachers can help their learners to overcome the awful sense of paralysis by making them get something down corresponding to a part of their plan and then see how they feel about it If the learners are word-processing they can learn how to manipulate blocks using the "cut and paste" command As the learners proceed with creating a text, they think of new ideas and they also link ideas together After having created a first version, changes, revisions, deletion, addition and moving to a different place may be needed According to Harris, for most writers, writing is a process that requires a great deal of concentration and application; for this reason teachers and educators should be sympathetic readers The teachers not only offer the learners strategies for making changes but also act as supportive readers They try to understand the writer's intention and help him to write more

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effectively Of course, the learners need to be supportive readers, too Moreover, the learners have to read the writing papers carefully and then share them with peers By so doing, teachers will certainly help their students greatly in their learning and writing.

2.3.2 Editing

Editing involves the careful checking of the text to ensure that there are no errors of spelling, punctuation, word choice and word order Publishing pupils' work can be conducted by displaying them on the walls

of the classroom Sharing of work with peers will help to keep motivation and concentration at a high level This approach to editing in the classroom will create a much more positive attitude than the traditional method of the teacher's correction of the pupil's text Needless to say, by sharing the writing, the poor writers will have chance not only to see their weakness but also improve their writing skills They, therefore, will certainly benefit a lot from doing this task From this point of view, classroom activities are very necessary because individuals or groups may take advantage of having opportunities to share their writing with others

It is clear that sharing writing is one of the successful ways for both poor and good students to improve their writing skills

2.3.3 Writing behavior

Having researched into writing behavior, Krashen highlights the particular differences between the habits of good and poor writers First, good writers not only plan but also spend more time thinking, making notes and creating a draft They tend to be more flexible in using techniques, whereas poor writers do less

Secondly, good writers are likely to make changes to the content, organization and wording of the text while poor writers tend to make few alterations

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Finally, good writers always scan back over what they have already written while poor writers rarely review their writing According to Krashen, teachers need to encourage the less successful writers to gain better habits and guide students to re-read as part of the whole approach to writing.

In short, writing is a process that involves some stages Writers need

to have this experience and to develop their own approach to writing

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ERROR ANALYSIS

3.1 General ideas

Research on error analysis covers many errors that the learner seems

to make notwithstanding his language back ground These errors are potentially important for understanding the process of second language acquisition, and for helping students see and understand their own mistakes in writing

This chapter will look at some problems in teaching and learning of writing, in both writing sentences and essays It begins with a discussion

of the role of writing skills through an analysis, of errors made on students' writing papers in the English Department

3.2 Errors, mistakes and lapses

3.2.1 Errors

For Corder (1973), an error can be defined as a sign that the learner

has not m astered the code of the target language So errors are badly in need of correction Errors can be made in different ways by the learners while writing or speaking

Error analysis developed as a branch of applied linguistic in the 1960s, and set out to demonstrate that many errors were not due to the learner's mother tongue but reflected universal learning strategies Error analysis was therefore offered as an alternative to constructive analysis

In the study of second and foreign language learning, errors have been studied to discover the processes that the learners make use of learning and using a language Error analysis can be defined as the study and analysis of the errors made by second-language learners

Clearly, error analysis can be conducted to identify the causes of learners' errors and to get information on common difficulties in language learning

CHAPTER III

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3.2.2 Mistakes

Both native speakers and learners of a language make mistakes of varying degrees of seriousness Corder (1973) has claimed that the most obvious example of these failures committed by native speakers are "social gaffes" (Corder, 1973: 259); but one does not usually refer to the learner's mistakes as "gaffes", because one does not expect him to know the appropriate linguistic behavior for all circumstances (Corder, 1973: 259).Corder makes a distinction between errors and mistakes, using the latter term for "errors of performance" (Corder, 1967: 25); the implication

is that these mistakes do not tell the researchers anything about the learner's "transitional" linguistic system (Corder, 1971: 162) He also claims: "mistakes are of no significant to the process of language learning However, the problem of determining what is a learner's mistake and what

is a learner's error is one of some difficulty and involves a much more sophisticated study and analysis of error than is usually accorded" (Corder, 1967: 25)

3.2.3 Lapses

All speakers, whether native or not, make slips or “lapses” as Corder calls them The teachers can for practical purposes ignore them, unless they occur so frequently that the hearer becomes disturbed by them, or communication is disrupted, or they are not the kind lapses commonly made by native speakers Corder has pointed out that “ it may not always be easy to distinguish between a learner’s errors and his lapses.” (Corder, 197: 161) In practice teacher’s method of record keeping can assist in deciding whether a given problem represents an error or a lapses

3.4 Classification of errors

In order to understand easily and clearly, the types of errors were counted and classified using an adaptation of the categories developed by Corder (1972: 278) and Brown (1980: 170) These categories were based

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on the levels of language: "Phonology and orthography", "Lexicon",

"Grammar" and "Discourse” Brown (1980: 170)

Even though it was difficult to distinguish different levels of errors, this kind of classification would be useful for developing correction techniques for pedagogical purposes

To analyze the learners' errors in terms of those for categories, a large number of errors could be referred to the category "gram m ar” Therefore, it was best to subdivide this category into smaller sections as follows:

- Errors in word order

Similar types are also found in error analysis literature: For example, Richards in his charts exemplifies intralingual and developmental errors (Richards, 1974: 182 - 188), Jausz Arabski in his book uses errors as indications of the development of Interlanguage (Arabski, 1979)

The main idea here is to question how it has come about that an error

of a certain sort has occurred; or that errors of that sort often occur What one should do here is to outline a num ber of major sources of learners' errors which are significant in a teacher's or learners' "Interlanguage” systems (Selinker, 1969) or "transitional" systems (Corder, 1971: 162)The learner's "Interlanguage” (Selinker, 1969) or "Transitional dialect" (Corder, 1971: 162) will differ from normal languages in other ways Tire learner will probably not have the same confidence in it as a native speaker would have in his language Learners will react to the facts mentioned above differently depending on personality and situation (for

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example, their need to use the target language) The learners may simply attempt a translation of the mother tongue into English or try to work things out by "analogy" with what they already know of English, which leads to "overgeneralization" (Corder, 1973 : 288)

It is usual in error analysis to identify three principal causes for errors:

1) Interlingual errors

2) Intralingual errors

3) False concepts hypothesized(Richards, 1971)

* Interlingual errors

"Language transfer" (Selinker, 1969) gives rise to interlingual errors,

in which the learner’s errors are accounted for by interference from the mother tongue Brown claims that "The beginning stages of learning a second language are characterized by a good deal of Interlanguage transfer (from native language)" (Brown, 1980:173)

* Intralingual errors

These errors do not reflect features of the mother tongue, but result from the learning process itself Learners tend to make inductive generalizations about the target language system on the basis of the data

to which they are exposed This is often spoken of in the context of "over- generalization" (Richards, 1974:174)

* False concepts hypothesized

A third source of error is assigned to faulty teaching techniques or materials In a classroom context, the teacher or the textbook can lead the learner to make faulty hypothesis about the language, what Richards called "false concepts", and what Stenson termed "induced errors" (Stenson, 1974:54) Clearly, errors which we can not readily class as inter

- or intra - lingual can not be confidently assigned for this reason to this

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category Only prolonged observation of sets of learners in the learning situation permits the identification of such causes of errors.

In addition to the classification discussed above Marina K Burts papers deal with errors - "from the listener's or reader's point of view"; (Burt, 1975: 53) She has focused on the distinction between errors that cause miscommunication and those that do not and classified learners' errors in two main types: "global errors" and "local errors" (Burt, 1975: 56-57) She has considered only the syntax of English in exemplifying these two types of errors:

a) Global Errors

"Errors that significantly hinder communication are those that affect overall sentence organization" (Burt, 1975: 56)

The common global errors are as follows:

- Wrong word order

- Missing, wrong, or misplaced sentence connectors

- Missing cues to signal obligatory exception to pervasive syntacticrules

- Overgeneralizing pervasive syntactic rules to exceptions (in transformational term, not observing selectional restriction on certain lexical items) (Burt, 1975: 56)

b- Local Errors: "Errors that affect single elements (constituents) in a sentence do not usually hinder communication significantly, such as errors in noun and verb inflection, articles, auxiliaries and the formation

of quantifiers" (Burt, 1975:57)

Teacher of English can use the hierarchy of errors proposed by Burt

to determine what is the most important to correct in the classroom Burt makes the important claim that "the correction of one global error in a sentence does more to make clear the speaker's intended message than the correction of several local errors in the same sentence" (Burt, 1975:62)

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3.5 How errors are collected

In order to study the common errors committed by learners, I have collected fifty writing papers from fifty students in the English department

5/ Prepositional errors: wrong, missing and superfluous preposition.6/ Article errors: this class of errors refers to wrong, missing and superfluous articles

7/ Verbal errors: errors in the use of tense, mood, voice and other forms

8/ Errors in concord: this class of errors refers to misuse of singular and plural forms with the nouns; and verbs in tenses

9/ Word order errors: wrong order of components in a sentence

10/ Discourse errors: errors derived from misunderstanding the original passage, relating to a level above the sentence

This particular kind of classification was suggested in the study so that a system of code letters could be developed for the language teachers

to put in the margin while correcting students' written work

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3.7 Data error analysis

Tabulation of the error as described in 3.4 and 3.6 it is possible to show the major types of error in a chart This chart shows the percentage

of various types of error, which are further discussed below

Spelling and punctuation mistakes are included in the study to show the difficulties Vietnamese learners have in this area In terms of understanding the structure of English, these mistakes are less important than the others That is why these types of mistakes are dealt with first.Other types of errors are arranged in the chart according to the frequency of occurrence

Table 1: Learners' errors (from students in the English Department)Types of error Number of errors Percentage Rank order

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them to avoid so many spelling mistakes Omission of ending sounds might derive from phonological errors as it is common for the learners to mispronounce consonant clusters and drop final consonants and they often

write: "alway" instead of "always" or "nowaday" instead of "nowadays".

- Nicklaus is like fine wine, he gets better with time

A semi-colon is required between independent clauses that have been linked with a conjunctive adverb and transitional phrase

Nicklaus is like fine wine; he gets better with time

3.7.3 Lexical errors

Lexical errors are the most frequent errors in the learners' writing papers The specula lexical error is the lack of differentiation between

"state" and "mood" Twenty out of fifty students use "state" instead of

"mood” in the following sentence:

I can forget my own troubles and come back to my normal state.Actually, these lexical items are sometimes synonyms The

difference between them is that "state" usually means condition of a person or thing, whereas "mood" might refer to a state of feeling

Therefore, "state" was wrongly used in the context mentioned above That

is why it should be:

- I can forget my own troubles and come back to my normal mood

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A similar example shows the learners lack of differentiation between

"to do" and “ fo com m it" The students have confused "do" and "commit"

in this context According to the author's observation, this error could be referred to as "false concept" (Richard, 1971) For example:

- What could prevent people from doing crimes ?

This should be written as follows:

- What could prevent people from committing crimes ?

The misuse of "afraid" instead of "frightened" in the following

passive sentence:

- It makes everyone afraid of putting in jail

Learners confused the meaning of the word "afraid" and "frightened"

though they are sometimes synonyms so the learner thought that "afraid" and "frightened" could be interchangeable.

That is whv the correct sentence could be:j

- It makes everyone frightened of being put into jail.

Another example shows the learner's lack of differentiation between

"it is ” and "there is".

- It is no doubt that .

The students confused the meaning of "it is" and "there is" so they

thought they could be interchangeable In this context, the sentence should be written as:

- There is no doubt that

Analyzing the learners' writing papers, one could make a list of words that were confused by the learners because of subtle differences in their meaning

normal state/normal mood

afraid/frightened

make/commit

it is/ there is

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