SK KINH NGHIEM 2010

Teaching Procedures in dealing with error patterns 11 CAUSES OF ERRORS IN USING PAST SIMPLE TENSE IN WRITING NARRATIVES BY GRADE-10 STUDENTS OF SON LA SPECIALIZED HIGH SCHOOL PART 1...

TABLE OF CONTENT PART 1 INTRODUCTION

PART 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

I.1 Definition of error and its role in language learning and teaching 4

II Error Analysis

PART 3 METHODOLOGY

V Presentation of Data Results

VI.1 Strategies accounting for the L1 transfer errors 10 VI.2 Strategies accounting for Overgeneralization errors 11 VI.3 Teaching Procedures in dealing with error patterns 11

CAUSES OF ERRORS IN USING PAST SIMPLE TENSE IN

WRITING NARRATIVES

BY GRADE-10 STUDENTS OF SON LA SPECIALIZED HIGH SCHOOL

PART 1 INTRODUCTION

I The problem

English has been taught as a specialized subject in Son la Specialized High School for about 10 years Despite some considerable success, it is undeniable that teachers and students here have found many difficulties in their teaching and learning process The researcher of this study realized from her observation and experiences for 10 years teaching

in this school that many English specialized students in Son La Specialized High School have problems with their writing performance Students are unsuccessful with their writing products in spite of their teachers’ help and their own attempt Many students are unwilling

to deal with their writing tasks and even show great anxiety in class In dealing with students errors, one teacher may suggest correcting them as soon as they appear, another one might emphasizes ignoring them, and another one would say to find ways to help students on the basis of these errors These suggestions lead to a debate of how to cope with students’ errors in their wrting tasks to improve their wrting skill As a result, writing has become an awkward ostacles for both teachers and students here to overcome

II Aims and Significance

There have been many error studies carried out in different languages with different learners of various language backgrounds Among the researchers of this kind, Corder (1967) and Richards (1971) attached the significance of errors in theory and practice of foreign language teaching and learning According to Corder (1967), errors as traced their sources are useful in different ways for the following reasons: First of all, they tell language teachers how much progress a learner has made towards the target language and

as the result, where s/he needs help and what sort of help s/he needs Secondly, they provide evidence for researchers of L2 learning process It means that the researchers, through errors, can discover what strategies foreign language learners use in learning and acquiring a language Finally, errors can serve practically as good feedback to the learners for self-adjustment

It is clear that when studied systematically, students’ errors in acquiring L2 can give significant insights into how the language is learnt

Apart from the above researchers’ theories, there have been no studies on students’ grammar errors in writing in Son La province So there are no particular models or theoretical framework to guide English teachers working there to deal with students’ errors

in writing

In view of the preceeding discussion, this assignment attempts to:

(a) identify and analyze two main error patterns in using the Past Simple Tense, which are quite common in written texts by grade-10 students in Son La Specialized High School, one is considered to be originated in Vietnamese, the other is believed to be derived from general misuse or overgeneralization of learning strategies

(b) demonstrate the difficulties the students encounter in learning writing skill

(c) offer some practical suggestions

It is hoped that the study can be valuable to both teachers and students as the result

of taking advantages of the research findings and its recomendations for a better strategies

in English learning and teaching process

For the teachers, the study should help to provide them a deeper theoretical understanding and a closer look at the students’ writing problems from which they could seek for proper and more effective teaching methods to treat their students’ errors

For the students, it is hoped that they will increase their awareness of the causes which can lead them to errors committing in their writing process to avoid and reduce the would-be errors This also should help them feel less challenging and become more confident in writing activity and be successfull in their written tests as well

III Organization of the study

The assignment will first, provide information on the background of the problem through a literature review; next, identify and analyze the students’ errors; and last, give some possible recommendations to help reduce errors in students’ compositions

PART 2 – LITERATURE REVIEW LITERATURE REVIEW

I ERRORS IN LANGUAGE LEARNING PROCESS

I.1 Definition of error and its role in language teaching and learning

The term “error” is widely used in language learning and teaching However, ERROR is differently defined in terms of activities and areas of research by different scholars and linguists Afrah (1981, p 26) states that an error may be an incorrect activity

of information in response to some directive or request for information

According to Richards (1992, p.126), errors can be considered as the use of liguistic items in a way that a fluent or native speaker of the language regards as showing faulty or incomplete learning

Errors arise from several possible sources, two of which are “ interlingual errors of interference from the native language, intralingual errors within the target language, context of learning and communication strategies” ( Brown, 2000, p.218)

Errors play an important role in language learning and teaching Corder (cited in Brown, 1994, p 217) states that “ A learner’s errors … are significant in that they provide are significant in that they provide

to the reseracher evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in the discovery of the language”

I.2 Error versus mistake

When we see something wrong with a piece of written work, we must first try to decide whether it is an error or a mistake There are different distinction between errors

and mistakes Chomsky (1965) distinguishes these two terms as “competence errors” and

“performance errors”, in which competence errors result from incomplete knowledge or

inedequate competence of the target language, while performance errors are caused by some aspect of verbal performance such as lack of attention, fatigue or carelessness

According to Corder ( 1967, pp 24-25), there are systematic errors, which are caused by the formulation of incorrect hypotheses about the target language, and non-systematic

errors, which result from memory lapses, physical states such as tiredness, and

psychological conditions such as emotions In other words, it is broadly understood that learners make errors when they try to do something with the language which they are not

yet able to do For example, they may use the wrong form of the verbs, such as in She work

very hard instead of She works very hard, or they may transfer from their mother tongue,

such as in They came to Ha Noi, where is the capital of Vietnam instead of They came to

Ha Noi, which is the capital of Vietnam Mistakes, on the other hand, are slips of some

kind Learners have learnt something but perhaps they have temporarily forgotten it for some reason such as carelessness or tiredness So mistakes refer to an inconsistent deviation in using the target language

It is clear that it is not easy to distinguish these two terms However, it can be understood that mistakes are caused by the lack of attention, carelessness or some aspect of performance And it is also stated by Corder that mistakes are of no significance in the process of language learning, while errors are systematic and traced back to inadequate competence of the target language Therefore, they are inevitable and important to language learning and teaching

II ERROR ANALYSIS

Error analysis, the study of the errors made by second language learners, is often carried out in order to:

- identify strategies which learners use in language learning

- try to to identify the causes of learner errors

- obtain information on common difficulties in language learning, as an aid to teaching or in the preparation of teaching materials

( Richards 1992, p.127)

Error analysis, offered as an alternative to Contrastive analysis, has its value in the classroom research Whereas contrastive analysis, which may be least predictive at the syntactic level and at early stages of learning languages (Brown 1994, p 214), allows for prediction of the difficulties involved in acquiring a second language.(Richard 1974, p.172); error analysis emphasizes “the significance of errors in learners’ inter-language system” (Brown 1994, p.204) may be carried out directly for pedagogic purposes (Ellis

1995, p.51)

III.TYPES OF ERRORS

In error analysis, it is necessary to identify and describe the learner’s errors This provides the teacher valuable information on the strategies employed by the learner, from which the teacher can plan an effective correction or remedy

Richard (1974, p.172-173) divides errors into three major types, which are interference, intralingual and developmental errors

III.1 Interlingual Errors

Interlingual errors are defined as the influence of the learner’s mother tongue on

the production of the target language in the areas where the languages are remarkably different In other words, interlingual errors refer to the second language errors that reflect

native language structure The differences between the first language and the target language may affect learners in all areas such as pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and

in various ways George puts that “ one-third of the deviant sentences from second language learners could be attributed to language transfer” ( George, 1971, cited in Richards, 1984, p.5) And quite frequently, Vietnamese students write English sentences

by translating directly from Vietnamese to English word by word or just put English word

into Vietnamese syntax, because they think in Vietnamese rather in English, as in “ I am

Lado (1957, p.1) also notes that “errors are originated in the learner’s disposition to transfer the forms and meanings, and the contribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture to the foreign language and culture” There are both positive and negative transfers of a set of habits from L1 to learning habits in L2

According to Cook (1992, p.589), the L1 is present in the L2 learners’ minds, whether the teacher wants it to be there or not The L2 knowledge that is being created in them is connected in all sorts of ways with their L1 knowledge As a result, he suggests that when working with L2 learners, teachers must not treat the L2 in isolation from the L1

III.2 Intralingual Errors

Intralingual errors are those stemming from the strategies of the target language

itself They reflect general characteristics of rule learning, such as faulty generalization, incomplete application of rules and failure to learn conditions under which the rules apply ( Richards, 1974, p.174)

III.2.1 Overgeneralization

Generalization is believed to be crucially important and pervading strategy in human learning, and the meaningful learning is in fact generalization, so language learning

is a process of generalization (Brown, 2000, Richards, 1974)

However, “overgeneralization covers instances where the learner craetes a deviant structure on the basis of his experience of other structures in target language” (Richards,

1974, p.174) In other words, this kind of errors is caused by the failure to take exceptions into account because of the learners’ insufficient exposure to the target language and lack

of data from which they can derive more complex rules Another reason lies in the fact that after having found a rule which appears to work well, learners are not inclined to go looking for exceptions which will only complicate matters In other words, overgeneralization is the use of previous available strategies in new contexts Therefore, misleading and inapplicable strategies are probably found in some exceptional cases due to

superficial similarities between the two languages For example, I goed, She can sings or

We are hope, … are significant in that they provide

III.2.2 Ignorance of rule restriction

These errors usually fall into the inappropriate use of prepositions, verbs or other

grammatical items like in ‘ They are going to discuss about the new hotel project.’

III.2.3 Incomplete application of rules

Foreign language learners, like L1 learners undergo developmental stages through which they process target language rules This is the reason for their imperfect application

of the rules There are two factors that lead to this violation, including the use of questions

in classroom as elicitation techniques and the ignorance of obtaining L2 rules provided that they can achieve efficient communication

III.2.4 False concepts hypothesized

This is rooted in learners’ faulty understanding of distinctions of target language items Poor presentation based on the contrastive approach should account for the

confusion between come and go, the use of was and is as past and present marker

respectively

III.3 Developmental errors

Developmental errors reflect the strategies used by the learner to acquire the

language by forming false hypotheses about the target language from the limited experience of and exposure to it in the classroom or textbook

PART 3 METHODOLOGY

I The research questions

The study is aimed to answer the following questions:

i What are the most common errors in using the Past Simple Tense made by the

grade-10 students of Son La Specialized High School when writing narratives?

ii What are the causes of these errors?

iii What actions should be recommended for preventative and curative measures?

II Method Review

In this research quantitative research method has been used The reason for this choice is that the study is aimed to seek for answers to the mentioned questions In order to find out the most common errors in the students’ writing and their causes derived from the grade-11 students of Son La Specialized High School, this analysis should be based on statistical number It is necessary to apply the quantitative research approach, which refers

to counts and measures of things (Beg, 2001) Quantitative studies emphasize the measurement and analysis of causal relationships between variables, not process (Lincohn, 1994)

III Research Design

III.1 Subjects

Subjects to be chosen are Grade-10 students who study English as their specialized subject This class consists of 30 students and they come from different districts of Son La Province They have learnt English for at least 5 years as one of their compulsory subjects

at school

The researcher randomly selected 20 participants from this class, both male and female, to ensure the reliability of the research

III 2 Data collection

For the selection of a corpus of language, following the guidelines offered by Ellis

(1995, p.51-52), a sample of written work was collected from 20 students The students were asked to write about their most impressive holiday, one of the topics that they have learnt in their textbook with the length of 150 - 200 words in 45 minutes’ time and were allowed to consult a dictionary if required

IV Techniques of Analysis

The techniques employed in the analysis process include identification, labelization, transferation to indexes and classification

After the ministration of the instruments, the data were collected from them and analyzed to the purpose of the study to elicit answers from the research questions proposed Data collection consisted of results from 20 essays in practice Types of errors were selected for analysis based on their relative seriousness and frequency of occurrence The resulting data were investigated in detail, resulting in a number of several different categories, as predicted (Brown, 1994- p.214) The errors were then explained and thoroughly examined to find the sources of errors due to L1 and L2 transfer, paying particular attention to negative transfer

V Data presentation and analysis

The errors caused by the L1 were identified as resulting from negative transfer and non-existent linguistic items (Brown, 1994, p.194), by comparing the students’ sentence to

an equivalent one translated into the L1 The effects of negative transfer were seen in the omission of the past maker – LITERATURE REVIEWed, as in:

After a hard day they gathered and chat in an informal atmosphere.

Staying there, I feel very happy and comfortable.

The first impression with me is the warm welcome of the family.

These sentences represent a past context through the time orientation (italics) However, the present forms of the verbs (underlined) are employed to convey the past context, a very common tendency in this error pattern (20 errors)

Other sentences such as

She knows everythings about Ha Long Bay

The caves have many rock crystals which are small pieces of a substance with many even sides

I liked the people there They are very friendly and funny

… are significant in that they provide

are superficially correct at the sentence level, however, if the context, that is pastness, is taken into account, they are incorrect ( see other examples in Appendix 2, p.14)

Errors based on the overgeneralization of learning strategies were categorized in the following types:

In type 1, the students used present perfect or past perfect for past simple as in

It was the first time I have gone to sea

There was a church which had been built long ago

Type 2 involved using Ing form for past simple tense, for example,

They greeted me with all their heart, taking my hands, asking me everything about

my life and study

We went to the fields to look at the sea and fishing, walking in the small paths in the village

Type 3 involved the misuse of the negative past form of had as in

Although the village hadn’t a cinema or theatre, I still prefer village life to the life

in a big city

Last weekend I hadn’t go to school so my friend invited me to his house … are significant in that they provide

In the evening, I hadn’t anything to do so I was listened to people talking

Type 4 consisted of using the passive form for the active form, as in

I and my mother arrived in Ha Tay when the sunset was let down

In the evening, I hadn’t anything to do so I was listened to people talking

( Appendix 3)

VI Discussion

In the light of existing theories, the results and examples from the performance data, this section primarily focus on the strategies the students employ that accounted for

their errors and how the designed teaching procedures can help the students deal with these errors

VI.1 Strategies accounting for the L1 transfer errors

The students had considerable difficulties in conveying the past tense form, which

is in agreement with what was pointed by … are significant in that they provide “ as … are significant in that they provide.” The main cause is likely to be associated with the negative transfer of Vietnamese language in the form of a translation strategies in producing sentences in English The strategy was so widely employed that the students dropped the regular past tense – LITERATURE REVIEWed morpheme in situations where the context demands past tense Most students had less difficulty in constructing a first clause or sentence with correct past tense form However, when a student tried to use a conjunction,

it resulted in an error The strategy behind it would be that the student first formed a sentence using the ismple past tense, then added a conjunction and while writing the next sentence unconsciously ignored the pastness The students’ most frequent errors in this

study are evident in the use of the coordinator: and and but; sub-coordinator : because,

when, which Although attributing the source to language transfer, also commented on the

difficulties the students could have in the usage of English conjunctions

VI.2 Strategies accounting for the Overgeneralization errors

From the 4 main types of overgeneralization errors (section V), it is clear that the students overgenerated some different rules In the first type, the students misused the usage of the present perfect tense and the past perfect tense as an action which completely happened before another

In type 2, the students produced the first sentence/ clause in the correct form of the past simple tense, but had problems with the second one due to the wrong application of Ing Participles This also shows the students’ weakness in writing complex sentences

Errors of type 3, in which the students had confusion in using the negative past

form of have as hadn t’ That is originated in the overgeneralization of the negative present

form ( haven t ’ and hasn t’ )

Type 4 represents one of the most common errors among the students in Son La

Specialized High School, in which many students tend to add be before other verbs and

this results in errors

VI.3 Teaching procedures in dealing with error patterns

Ellis ( 1997-a, pp.119-123), emphasizing the significance of input, states that the

acquisition may be facilitated by teaching explicit knowledge through CR tasks assisted by the operations of noticing and comparing, which are considered necessary for acquisition to take place, and that the input can become implicit knowledge when the operation if

intergrating is added.

VI.3.1 Language input activity

Transfer errors and overgeneralization errors discussed above can be great part attributable to the lack of exposure to the English language In fact, when it comes to the writing practice of the Vietnamese EFL students, they have only one hour class every two

weeks Besides, they are short of the input of authentic materials The language they contact is specially adopted and simplified in syntax That is why it is necessary for the teacher to enlarge the exposure of authentic language Non- classroom input data should be supplied to increase the chances for students to contact English after class After listening

or reading, students may be asked to do some different tasks on writing And wide reading

is a straightforward matter of getting input

VI.3.2 Consciousness-raising (C-R)

Consciousness-raising means that “successful learning of whatever kind comes about only when what is to be leraned can be meaningfully related to something that is already known” (Rutherford, 1987, p.16) It is better to conduct the C-R activity in the intensive reading class, since the EFL teachers in Vietnam often focus on the explanation

of the text while students spend a lot of time rote learning

There is one example of C-R activity:

After reading a text, students are asked to identify all the words referring to the present and simple past tense They will be encouraged to make a useful comparison with that of the L1 and find out similarities and differences between patterns in the L1 and patterns in the L2 By being aware of the differences, teachers tend to help students to bridge the knowledge gap between the first and second language and ultimately to reduce the negative effect on the second language from the first language

PART 4 - CONCLUSION

It can be concluded from the study that the students have a lot of difficulties in

using the past simple tense in writing narratives The biggest problem is the omission of

-ed morpheme as a marker of regular verb form of the past simple tense, which is due to the

direct translation from Vietnamese Besides, the students also overgenerated the rules of the past simple tense and the usage of the present perfect tense as well as the past perfect tense which led to the misuse errors

The study also points out errors are mainly in complex sentences This reflects the students’ weakness in combining sentences or using conjunctions

These errors patterns can be dealt with by enlarging the exposure of authentic language and consciousness-raising during teaching procedures

In sum, what I have done is extremely limited, and I hope it can offer some implication for the English teaching and learning in Son La Specialized High School in some way In fact, this is only starting point for my further research on second language acquisition and development

REFERENCES

Berg, B.L 2001 Qualitative Research Method for Social Science Boston: Allyn and

Bacon