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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ THU HƯƠNG AN INVESTIGATION INTO ORAL ERRORS IN ENGLISH SPEAKIN

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

LÊ THU HƯƠNG

AN INVESTIGATION INTO ORAL ERRORS IN ENGLISH SPEAKING CLASSES OF 10TH - FORM NON-ENGLISH MAJORS AT PHAN BOI CHAU SPECIALIZING HIGH

SCHOOL, NGHE AN (Nghiên cứu lỗi nói của học sinh lớp 10 không chuyên ở trường

THPT chuyên Phan Bội Châu, Nghệ An)

MA MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

LÊ THU HƯƠNG

AN INVESTIGATION INTO ORAL ERRORS IN ENGLISH SPEAKING CLASSES OF 10TH - FORM NON-ENGLISH MAJORS AT PHAN BOI CHAU SPECIALIZING HIGH

SCHOOL, NGHE AN (Nghiên cứu lỗi nói của học sinh lớp 10 không chuyên ở trường

THPT chuyên Phan Bội Châu, Nghệ An)

MA MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: The reason for learning English

Table 2: Students’ attitude toward English speaking skills

Table 3: Students’ ability of speaking English in classrooms

Table 4: Frequency of students’ oral errors in English speaking classes

Table 5: Types of students’ oral errors in English speaking classes

Table 6: The omission of the inflectional suffixes in English speaking classes

Table 7: The errors of mispronouncing the voiceless /s/

Table 8: The errors of adding “s” or other sounds to a certain number of words Table 9: The error of mispronouncing /s/ for /∫/

Table 10: The error of mispronouncing the fricative sound /ð/

Table 11: The error of mispronouncing vowel sounds

Table 12: Teachers’ attitude toward students’ oral errors and oral error correction Table 13: Types of students’ oral error correction

Table 14: Teachers’ techniques used to correct students’ oral errors

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION………i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF TABLES iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS ……….v

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS……… viii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationales of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Research questions 2

5 Methods of the study 2

6 Significance of the study 3

7 Design of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

I Overview 4

I.1 Definition of speaking 4

I.2 The characteristics of speaking 4

I.3 The importance of speaking 5

I.4 Learners’ errors 6

I.4.1 Definition of error 6

I.4.2 Oral error 6

I.5 Errors and Mistakes 6

I.6 Causes of Errors 7

I.6.1 Mother-Tongue Interference 7

I.6.2 Overgeneralization 9

I.6.3 Interlanguage 11

I.6.4 Simplification 12

I.6.5 Teaching materials and methodology 12

I.7 Techniques used to correct learners’ oral errors 13

I.7.1 Self- correction 13

I.7.2 Peer- correction 13

I.7.3 Teacher Correction 14

CHAPTER II: METHODS OF THE STUDY 15

II.1 Background of the study 15

II.1.1 Description of the teachers of English at PBC Specializing High School 15

II.1.2 The students at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School .15

II.1.3 The current situation of English teaching and learning at PBC Specializing High

School 16

II.1.3.1 The materials of teaching and learning 16

II.1.3.2 The teaching and learning English speaking skills 16

II 2 Data collection 16

II.2.1 The instruments for collecting data 16

II.2.2 Procedures and method of the study 17

CHAPTER III: THE STUDY 18

III.3 Data analysis, findings and discussion 18

III.3.1 The reality of Students’ English speaking at PBC Specializing High School .18

III.3.1.1 The reason for learning English 18

III.3.1.2 Students’ attitude toward English speaking skills 19

III.3.1.3 Students’ ability of speaking English in classrooms 19

III.3.1.4 Frequency of students’ oral errors in English speaking classes 20

III.3.1.5 Types of students’ oral errors in English speaking classes 21

III.3.1.6 Factors causing students’oral errors in their English speaking 26

III.3.2 Strategies for correcting students’ oral errors at PBC Specializing High School 29

III.3.2.1 Teachers’ attitude toward students’ oral errors and oral error correction 29

III.3.2.2 Teachers’ decisions on what to correct 30

III.3.2.3 Teachers’ techniques used to correct students’ oral errors 31

III.4 Some suggested solutions to correct students’ oral errors effectively 33

III.5 Summary 35

PART C: CONCLUSIONS ……… 36

I Conclusions 36

II Implications 36

III Limitations of the study 37

IV Suggestion for further study 38

REFERENCES 39 APPENDICES

APPENDIX A: TEACHER SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE I APPENDIX B: STUDENT SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE II APPENDIX C: CLASSROOM OBSERVATIONS VI

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationales of the study

English has been playing an important role in the world’s social life In Vietnam, English is widely used by not only foreigners but also Vietnamese people as a language of work and business There have been an increasing number of people desiring to know English with the hope of keeping up with the latest modern technology in the world English has now been taught not only at all universities and colleges, but also at almost every senior high school and it is considered as a compulsory subject at secondary school

Therefore, teaching and learning English is now considered as a necessity

in the society with the aim of mastering an international language Being aware

of the importance of teaching and learning English, methodology for teaching learning English as a foreign language has been considerably changing in order

to enhance the abilities of English language learners, especially speaking English

to meet the needs required by their work

At Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School, English is a compulsory subject in the curriculum and it is considered as a major subject for the high school examination It is taught with the purpose that students have some basic knowledge of English in order to communicate and to use it as a key to science and technology However, there still exist many difficulties facing English language teachers in Vietnam in general and English language teachers at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School in particular in teaching speaking skills to students

In the teaching situations, the students usually keep quiet in speaking lessons; they mind speaking English There are many students who have good knowledge of grammar, can do reading and writing exercises wonderfully but

they cannot express themselves in English and find it hard to response spontaneously and naturally

One of the reasons for this is that students often make oral errors in speaking As we know, it is inevitable for learners to make errors in their learning process At Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School I have found that most of the non-English majors who specialize in natural subjects such as: Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology… or social subjects such as: Literature, History and Geography often make oral errors in their speaking For most students, they find speaking especially important yet most challenging one although they are given more chances to practise speaking English during all English lessons They are always passive and not familiar with, even afraid of taking part in pair-work or group-work activities in classrooms In addition, many students feel shy and ashamed when making errors in speaking As a result, there are various kinds of oral errors appearing in students’ English speaking

Those are the reasons that inspire me with the desire to conduct An

investigation into oral errors in English speaking classes of 10 th - form English Majors at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School, Nghe An

Non-2 Aims of the study

This research is designed to investigate Students’ oral errors and the strategies of oral correction at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School, Nghe

An It has 4 purposes:

* to clarify the reality of students’ English speaking in classrooms

* to find out kinds of oral errors that students make when they speak English in classrooms

* to gain an insight into the teachers’ attitude toward students’ oral errors and oral error correction

* to help teachers develop their possible strategies for oral error corrections

3 Scope of the study

The study concentrates only on investigating students’ oral errors in their English speaking classes and teachers’ strategies of oral error correction at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School, Nghe An The study mainly focuses on the learners in the tenth form at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School, Nghe An

5 Methods of the study

In the process of carrying out the study, the instruments for collecting data

in this research are classroom observations In addition, questionnaires are used

to collect data for the study

6 Significance of the study

I want to conduct the research on this issue because 10th - form English Majors at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School, Nghe An make too many errors in their English speaking classes Therefore, the results of the study can be of a great significance for both teachers and students in the field of correcting students’ oral errors effectively in English language teaching and learning in general and in English speaking classes in particular

Non-7 Design of the study

This paper is divided into three main parts:

Part A is the INTRODUCTION In this part, the rationales of the study, the

aims, research questions, the scope of the study, methods of the study and also its design are presented

Part B is the DEVELOPMENT which includes 3 chapters Chapter I deals

with some theoretical background that is relevant to the purpose of the study: students’ oral errors, common factors causing students’ errors, the techniques for

correcting students’ oral errors in classrooms Chapter II describes the situation

where the study was conducted and the informants involved in the study It includes the teachers of English, the students, the textbook, the current teaching and learning situation The method of data collection and its procedures are also presented in this chapter

Chapter III presents the results stastistically to find out about the teachers and

students’ attitudes toward errors and error correction as well as some correction techniques This chapter is by far the most dominant one in which some suggestions for correcting students’ oral errors effectively in English speaking classes

Part C is the CONCLUSION which includes the obtained results, implications

of the study and suggestions for further research

APPENDICES and REFERENCES are presented in the last pages of the study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW

I Overview

This chapter presents some issues related to oral errors and oral error correction in language teaching and learning It provides definitions of the concepts used in the study

I.1 Definition of speaking

Bygate defines “Oral expression involves not only the use of the right sounds in the patterns of rhythm and intonation, but also the choice of words and inflections in the right order to convey the right meaning.” (cited in Mackey

1965: 266)

According to Brown and Yules’s (1983) spoken language consists of short, fragmentary utterances, in a range of pronunciation There is often a great deal of repetition and overlap between one speaker and another, and speakers usually use non-specific references They also point out that in speaking the loosely-organized syntax, and non-specific words and phrases are used, spoken language is, therefore, made to feel less conceptually dense than written language

More importantly, speaking, a productive skill, is known to have two main types of conversation namely, dialogue and monologue, which are rather different In monologue, you give uninterrupted oral presentation while in

dialogue you interact with one or more other speakers for transactional and international purposes

It is noticeable from the two productive language skills that speaking is different from writing in both processing conditions and reciprocity conditions

“First, spoken language is affected by the time limitations, and the associated problems of planning, memory, and production under pressure Second, it is reciprocal activity, which has a crucial effect on the kinds of decisions to be made.” (Bygate 1987: 11-12)

I.2 The characteristics of speaking

According to Bygate, M (1985), in almost speaking, the person to whom

we are speaking is in front of us and able to put us right if we make mistakes He

or she can generally show agreement and understanding or incomprehension and disagreement as well Unlike readers or writers, speakers may need patience and imagination, too While talking, speakers need to take notice of the other and allow listeners chance to speak It means that we often take turns to speak

To be more specific, Bygate (1987) assumes that conversation can be analyzed in terms of routines, which are conventional ways of presenting information

In Bygate’s opinion, there are two kinds of routines They are information routines and interactional ones

Information routines may be described to involve two sub-routines:

expository and evaluation The former includes description, narration, comparison and instruction The latter consists of explanation, prediction, justification, preference and decision

Interaction routines are routines based not so much on sequences of kinds

of term occurring intypical kinds of interactions These routines, thus, can be characterized in broad terms including the kinds of turns typically occurring in given situations and the order in which the components are likely to occur So, telephone conversation, interview conversations casual encounters, conversations at parties, lessons, radio or television interviews, all tend to be organized in characteristic ways

To sum up, in learning speaking skills, the learners can be much more confident with clear understanding and governing these skills Moreover, the oral skill depends much on knowledge of language they can learn such as grammar, pronunciation and vocabulary

In addition, learners rely on common conventional expression of communicating specific meanings, particularly on the language environment It

is clear that practice in classroom might not be similar to oral communication outside classroom In a foreign language classroom, practice is rather simple and far from real life

And it is undeniable that speaking is a key to communication By considering what good speakers do, what speaking tasks can be used in class, and what specific needs learners report, teachers can help learners improve their speaking and overall oral competence

I.3 The importance of speaking

Speaking plays an utmost important role among the four language skills since it helps to identify who knows or does not know a language Pattison (1992) points out that when people mention knowing or learning a language, they mean being able to speak the language In a social context, social role are

likely to be taken by those who learn and know how to speak, but not by those who do not have this skill It cannot be denied that speaking deserves as much attention as or even more attention than written skill In order to carry out many

of the most basic transactions, it is necessary for learners to speak with confidence

I.4 Learners’ errors

I.4.1 Definitions of error

I.4 Error

Error is the use of a linguistic item (e.g a word, a grammatical item, etc)

in a way which a fluent or native speaker of the language regards as showing faulty or incomplete learning Errors are sometimes classified according to vocabulary (lexical error), pronunciation (phonological error), grammar (syntactic error), misunderstanding of a speaker’s intention or meaning (interpretive error), production of the wrong communicative effect If a student cannot self-correct a mistake in his or her own English, but the teacher thinks that the class is familiar with the correct form, we shall call that sort of mistake

an error

I.4.2 Oral error

In our educational system, English is viewed as a foreign language for teaching and learning at all school levels When students use English for communication in classrooms, they will certainly make errors in their speaking Therefore, oral error can be defined as an error that students often commit when they speak English

In the light of error analysis, a clear-cut definition of language error in spoken English is that oral error is the use of a linguistic item in a way, which indicate faulty or incomplete learning According to Liski and Duntanen (cited in Lennon, 1991, p72) “oral error occurs where the speaking fails to follow the pattern or manner of speech of educated people in English speaking countries”

I.5 Errors and Mistakes

It is quite difficult to differentiate mistakes and errors A distinction is

sometimes made between an error, which results from incomplete knowledge, and a mistake made by a learner when writing or speaking and which is caused

by lack of attention, fatigue, carelessness, or some other aspect of performance

In a simple way, we can have this distinction: A mistake is a slip of the tongue or

the pen; the learner knows the correct form but has temporarily forgotten it A

learner can probably correct his/her own mistakes An error, on the other hand,

occurs because the learner doesn’t know the correct form and so cannot produce

it at this stage of learning

I.6 Causes of Errors

There have been many causes of learners’ errors or mistakes when they learn English The following are generally among the major ones:

I.6.1 Mother-Tongue Interference

Wilkin (1972:190) claims that we should be able to identify the tongue of a group of pupils basing solely on the reocurring mistakes that we had noticed By this it is meant that these mistakes of different individuals share some characteristics which can be traced back to an external source the mother-

mother-tongue Especially for Vietnamese learners, it looks as though the mother tongue

is the main cause of errors since many significant differences between English and Vietnamese can be found: the nouns in Vietmamese are not inflected for number, the verbs are not inflected for tense or person, the word order does not always fit into the English language system It is on this basis that contrastive analysis appeared Under the light of this hypothesis, it is widely accepted that “a learner of a second language transfers into his performance in the second language the habits of his mother tongue” (Corder 1974:130), and that the similarity between the two contact languages would facilitate an individual to learn the L2, and the differences would hinder the L2 learning process In the former case, where parallel features of the two languages correspond exactly, positive transfer from the L1 to L2 is concerned, and in the later case it is said that “negative transfer” or interference involves and causes errors to occur or even reoccur

While it is easily accepted that the first language does interfere the second language learning, there is also a disagreement among researchers on the nature

of interference process In other words, there is considerable controversy over the definition of interference For Dulay and Burt (1976:71), interference is defined as “the automatic transfer, due to habit, of the surface structure of the first language onto the surface of the target language” Moreover, there are many ways in which mother tongue can be directly transferred onto the target language and the foreign language learner tends to transfer not only forms, but also meanings and cultural aspects of the native language to the target language (Lado 1957:21)

George, on the other hand, expresses doubt on the idea of direct interference from the mother- tongue and attributes errors to the redundant

features of the language as a direct source By this one may imply that the highest level of difficulty occurs and causes errors when there is an absence of a language item from either language, or when both languages possess similar but unidentical features (1972:45)

Corder (1974:130) does not emphasize on the differences of the languages

in contact On the other hand, he explains the similarity of many errors to the forms of the mother tongue in terms of strategy that the learner uses when learning a foreign language A foreign language learner, when processing the data and inducing rules which he is constantly testing for their validity, is hypothesizing that language two is like language one until he discovers the correct rule by making errors and having it corrected

One of the reasons why learner tends to transfer into his performance in the foreign language the habits of his mother tongue is given by Corder: “If one does not know some rule of the second language then one either keeps silent or uses the most similar available rule, i.e of one’s mother-tongue” In other words,

he tends to use words and structures from his own language and try to make them fit into the foreign language (Edge 1989:7)

For Dulay et al, this kind of L1 interference is due to the performance pressure Besides, the limited L2 environment is to blame, especially in Vietnamese classroom settings where English is learnt as a foreign language Another source of L1 interference is the manner of eliciting verbal performance

A teacher may give students a task, a translation exercise for instance, where they are required to think in both the mother tongue and the target language; hence increasing their reliance on the structures of the mother tongue Finally, the monitor use is taken account This is reflected in the learner’s use of vocabulary of the target language to fill the native language structures, the result

of which is erroneous utterances similar to word-for-word translation (1982:108-110)

Although there seem to be no disagreements on the sources of mother tongue interference, it is not surprising that error analysis projects have yielded widely contradictory results Undoubledly, this is partly due to differences of definition It is presented in Lott (1983:258) that while Dulay and Burt state a percentage of fewer than 5 percent of errors classified as interference, some other researchers attribute as many as 80% of errors to interference Lott himself votes for about 50% of errors as owing to intereference

The advantages of the mother tongue in the foreign language learning are admitted “It is economical and productive for L2 learners to transfer their previous knowledge of language to the new task” since the first language provides “a rather rich and specific set of hypotheses” which learners can use Obviously, they donot have to discover everything from zero (Littlewood 1998:

25, 26) This is why it is worth looking at the mother tongue as one of the main sources where we can find the explanation for some of the second language errors

I.6.2 Overgeneralization

Littlewood (1998:23) claims that generaliztion is a fundamental learning strategy in all domains including language “In order to make sense of our world,

we allocate items to categories; on the basis of these categories, we construct

“rules” which predict how the different items will behave” He also states that our predictions may sometimes be wrong for one of the following two main reasons: (1) The rule we construct does not apply to this particular item, though

we have allocated the item to the appropriate category (2) The item actually belongs to quite a different category and we must have allocated it wrongly

In both cases the overgeneralization will cause the wrong prediction which will lead to learners’ errors In terms of foreign language learning, Littlewood (1998:23) suggests that the learner is employing similar strategies to those used

by first language learners One of the strategies is certainly overgeneralization which enables the learner to make errors similar to those produced by the child

in the mother tongue This is why we can find a set of errors such as “She cans sing” “He singed” and “many mans” occurring regardless of whatever the mother tongue of the learner is Thus, transfer and overgeneralization are not distinct processes They represent aspects of the same underlying learning strategy Both results from the fact that the learner uses what he already knows about the language, in order to make sense of new experience In the case of transfer, the learner uses his previous mother tongue experience as a means of organizing the target language data In the case of overgeneralization, it is his previous knowledge of the second language that the learner uses

Overgeneralization errors are largerly due to learner limited exposure to the target language Mc Keating (1981:231) claims that the learner tries to reduce the learning load by searching for patterns and regularity in the target language and formulating rules But he may over-generalize his rules and fail to take exceptions into account because his exposure to the language is limited and he has insufficient data from which he can derive more complex rules It is well supported by Hubbard et al (1983:141) who states that the learner processes new language data in his mind, and based on evidence, produces rules for its production When the data are inadaquate or the evidence is only partial, he may well produce errors Followings are the two typical examples of this type of

errors A learner of English who has learnt a rule for forming plurals may predict that a noun can be made plural by adding “-s” He then says “two mouses” without knowing that “mouse” is one of the exceptions to the rule which he has overgeneralized Similarly, he may produce “comed” and “goed” until he learns that “come” and “go” require irregular past tense forms

Overgeneralization is associated with redundancy reduction A learner may reduce many items which are redundant to conveying the intended meaning This phenomenon may especially occur with items which are contrasted in the grammar of the language but which do not carry significant and obvious contrast for the learner The “-ed” marker, for example, often appears to carry no meaning for the learner since pastness is usually lexically indicated So the learner tends to reduce the learning load by simplifying the linguistic structures, which leads to the production of a wide range of sentences such as “Yesterday I

go to university and I meet my new professor” (Richards 1974:175)

Overgeneralization is also closely related to other sources of errors proposed by Richards (1974), notably ignorance of rule restrictions, false concept hypothesized and incomplete application of rules

According to Richards, some of the learner deviant structures indicate that the learner has failed to observe the restrictions of existing rules, i.e he has applied the rules to contexts where they do not apply Abbott, in support of this view, affirms that ignorance of rule restriction is another reason for over-generalization The rule that the learner has found appears to work so well that

he tends to ignore counter-examples to the rule which will only complicate matters It means that the learner will keep applying his overgeneralized rules provided he can get his intended meaning across

The interest in communication may give a reason for learner incomplete application of rules When trying to produce acceptable utterances, the learner uses structures whose deviancy represents the degree of development of the required rules He is said to have motivation to achieve communication which may exceed motivation to produce grammatically correct sentences (Richards 1974:177) Typical examples of this kind of developmental errors are the errors

in making questions and responding to questions, as in “Where you went?” or

“Do you read much?” –Yes, I read very much”

There is also a group of developmental errors deriving from false concepts hypothesized These errors result from “faulty comprehension of distinctions in the target language” Richards (1974) shows how the misunderstanding of differences between language items leads to learner errors He has found many deviant structures in his learners’ output which show their failure to correctly distinguish between the present simple and present continuous tense, and between the usage of some confusable words such as so/too/very; do/make; and teach/learn For him, most errors of this class can be traced back to contrastive-based teaching which will be discussed in more details in subsequent section

I.6.3 Interlanguage

In some circumstances, the concept of “interlanguage” is useful in classroom language teaching and learning Interlanguage, in Allwright & Balley’s words (1991), stresses the systematic nature of the learners’ linguistic development between two languages Larsen-Freeman & Long (1991) remark that interlanguage might better be understood if it is thought of as a continuum between the L1 and L2 along which all the learners traverse At any point along continuum, the learners’ language is systematic, i.g rule-governed, and common

to all learners, any difference being explicable by differences in their learning experience Selinker (1972) uses the term “interlanguage” to describe a language system that clearly differs from the mother tongue and the foreign language, which the learners are studying In his words, interlanguage refers to the seperateness of a foreign language learner’s system that has a structurally intermediate status between the native and target languages He also views interlanguage as a dynamic system, and a product of psychological structural language process that interfere in two languages Additionally, Nemser (1971) expresses the same general phenomenon in language learning but stresses the successive approximation to the target language in his term “approximate system”

With the name “idiosyncratic dialect”, Corder (1971) demonstrates that each learner has his own individual characteristics in language learning that the others do not have The learner basing on the system of his mother tongue and the language he is learning forms a new language system This is neither the system of the native language nor the system of the target language, but instead falls between the two; it is a system based on the best attempt of learners to provide orders and structures to the linguistic stimuli surrounding them Thus,

errors the learner commits are not predictable and called “developmental errors”

I.6.4 Simplification

In addition to interlanguage, simplication can be seen as another factor that causes learners’ errors According to Widdowson (1984), simplication is considered as a communication strategy and he divides it into 2 types The learners will form the first type of simplifications when they want to express something in a new way The second type is due more to the limitation of

learners’ ability in language learning than to the construction of the rules They often reduce some essential elements of a sentence or sentences as when speaking Larsen-Freeman and Long (1991, p58) view simplification as

“redundancy reduction by omitting elements such as “plural marker omitted from a noun preceded by a cardinal number larger than one In their example “I studied English for 2 year”, they indicate that the omission of the plural marker following the noun year could be termed redundancy reduction, as no information is lost, i.e the cardinal number already signals plurality

I.6.5 Teaching materials and methodology

Besides the above-mentioned factors that interfere the process of language learning, the teaching materials and methodology is one of the most important causes

The teaching process itself may affect the English language learning If we are to achieve a perfect teaching method, the errors or mistakes will never be committed in the first place, and therefore the occurrence of errors is merely a sign of the present inadequacy of our teaching techniques (Corder, 1981) Moreover, according to those who support the behaviourist theory, errors have

no positive contribution to the learning of any skill including language To them,

an error is the evidence of failure, of ineffective teaching or the lack of control If materials are well chosen, graded and presented with meticulous care, there will never be any errors (Hubbard, 1984)

I.7 Techniques used to correct learners’ oral errors

Gower and Walters (1983, p167) suggest the three common ways for the teachers to correct learners’ oral errors in classrooms

I.7.1 Self- correction

Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Ngoc (2001: 20) stated that: correction means giving students the chance to correct themselves If they are going to become more accurate they must learn to monitor themselves They may have just made a slip and will welcome the opportunity to put it right Sometimes they need some assistance from teacher in knowing where the mistake is and what kind of mistake it is, before they can self-correct”

“Self-Self-correction is very important because it gives the students a chance for self-correction when it is thought that a mistake is what we called slip In addition, self-correction helps the students to remember easier

I.7.2 Peer- correction

If the student still cannot get it right, it is probably because she doesn’t know how to So with a gesture, hold his/her attention and get another student to help out This has the advantages of:

* involving all the students in the correction process

* making the learning more co-operative generally

* reducing student dependence on the teacher

* increasing the amount the students listen to each other

* giving the better students something to do

However, there exist two more problems with peer-correction Therefore, peer- correction must be done carefully Firstly, when the teacher asks for peer-correction from the whole class, it might be that the same two or three people always want to answer If this is the case, teachers need to call on other students who do not volunteer, or to give more help with the correction themselves It is

not good for the class if the same few students do the correction all the time The idea of peer-correction is to encourage cooperation, not to put one or two students in the traditional place of the teacher Secondly, if students are not used

to correcting each other, they may find it very difficult to change their habits They may just listen negatively for mistakes They may feel that they are being criticized by people who have no right to criticize them They may feel that the teacher is not doing his or her job properly In this sort of atmosphere, peer-correction is useless if damaging

I.7.3 Teacher Correction

Sometimes, we may feel that we should take charge of correction because the students are extremely mixed-up about what the correct response should be

In that case we can re-explain the item of language, which is causing the trouble This will be especially appropriate when we use that a majority of the class are having the same problem After the re-explanation we can move to choral and individual repetition (if necessary) before moving on

Remember that the objective of using correction techniques is to give the student(s) a chance to (know how to) get the new language right It is important, therefore, that when we have used these techniques we should ask the students who originally made the mistake to give us a correct response

CHAPTER II: METHODS OF THE STUDY

II.1 Background of the study

This chapter discusses the context that determines the study of oral errors

of 10th - form Non-English Majors at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School

The researcher starts by describing the situation where the study was conducted and the informants involved in the study It includes the teachers of English, the students, the textbook, the current teaching and learning situation The subjects and the method of data collection are also discussed in detail

II.1.1 Description of the teachers of English at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School

There are 12 teachers of English aged between 24 and 54 In general, most

of English teachers have been trained in Vietnam (only one teacher studied Master Degree abroad), many of them studied Mater Degree at Hanoi University

of Languages and International Studies and some are now studying for M.A Degrees there In general, they are well-trained and rather professionally experienced with at least 4 years in teaching

II.1.2 The students at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School

The research was carried out at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School with the participation of 10th form students whose majors are Mathematics, Physics, Literature, History, Geography, Biography and Chemistry, especially classes specializing in History and Geography come from rural areas so their

English is bad To those students, English was not their majors but a compulsory subject in the courses Most of the students have been studying English for at least five years at secondary schools (from grade 6 to grade 10), some of them have been learning English since they attended primary schools Others learned French or Russian at Lower- Secondary School and only started learning English

at Higher Secondary Schools Most of them can do grammar very well but they have difficulties in mastering four language skills Of the four skills, as many of them revealed, they find speaking especially important yet challenging one That was the reason why most of students feel bored, not interested in English speaking classes and gradually make more and more oral errors

II.1.3 The current situation of English teaching and learning at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School

II.1.3.1 The materials of teaching and learning

At Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School, English is one of the compulsory subjects in the curriculum and students have to pass at the national examination by the end of grade 12 to be qualified for the secondary school diploma

“Tieng Anh 10” textbook consists of sixteen units for two terms Each unit focuses not only on four different language skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing but also such language elements as pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary

Speaking lesson is the second one in each unit introduced just after reading lesson These speaking lessons are under the tendency theme-based and task-based approaches In general, the textbook provides students with a variety

of topics and speaking activities with the aim of helping students improve their speaking skill To be more specific, some of the topics have raised a lot of

interest and enthusiasm in teachers as well as pupils However, there are some speaking topics that are unfamiliar and far from the students’ background knowledge Consequently, the students lose their interest, don’t want to involve

in English speaking classes

II.1.3.2 The teaching and learning English speaking skills

It can be seen that communication is the goal of English language teaching The proper purpose of English language teaching is to help students develop their communicative ability This makes teaching and learning speaking skills seem to be an important part in any English courses Like many other high schools in Vietnam, teaching and learning speaking skills at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School are affected by some constraints such as large class size, not well-equipped classrooms, students’ unfamiliarity with CLT, students’ low participation in class All the factors make the teaching and learning speaking skills more challenging

II.2 Data collection

II.2.1 The instruments for collecting data

The instruments used to collect data were two questionnaires for both teachers and students and classroom observations

Questionnaires

Firstly, the questionnaires were employed to collect important information about students’ attitudes toward the importance of learning English and their ability of speaking English in classrooms Secondly, the researcher could receive

students’ oral errors, the causes of oral errors and their techniques to correct students’ oral errors in classrooms

Questionnaire 1 including 8 questions was delivered to 10 teachers

Questionnaire 2 including 10 questions was for 240 students

Classroom observations

The second type of data collection in the study was classroom observations In this study, observation was used as an instrument for collecting oral errors Number of observations was 10 The reasons of using classroom observations were justified as follows:

Firstly, the researcher was aware of the importance of collecting data on what actually went on in the classrooms Secondly, the researcher could assess the teachers’ implementation of using techniques for correcting students’ oral errors and students’ participation in their language teaching and learning Finally, information from classroom observations enabled the researcher to clarify and confirm what was collected from the questionnaires

II.2.2 Procedures and method of the study

The study was done through the following steps:

Questionnaire 1: 10 copies of questionnaire 1 were distributed to the teachers of English at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School

240 copies of questionnaire 2 were also distributed to the students who are in the tenth Non -English Majors at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School Before the questionnaires were given to the informants, the researcher took time to explain the purpose of the questionnaires, the requirements of the informants The data collected from questionnaires, classroom observations were analyzed quantitatively

CHAPTER III: THE STUDY

III.3 Data analysis, findings and discussion

III.3.1 The reality of Students’ English speaking at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School

III.3.1.1 The reasons for learning English

With the aim of finding out the reality of students’ English speaking in classrooms, two hundred and fourty copies of the survey questionnaires were distributed to students from seven classes majored in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Literature, History, Geography

In the questionnaire, the participants were asked to response to questionnaire items showing reasons for learning English The result is presented

in the table below:

The reason for

learning

English

students (240)

The result from table 1 shows that many students at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School are aware of benefits of learning English The portion 25% of the students learn English to pass the examinations and 45% says it is a compulsory subject reveals that a greater number of the students are not really motivated in learning English It can be seen from the statistics that 25% of them learn English because they think it will be helpful to get a good job in the future Only 5% of the students state that they learn English to listen to songs, read books, magazines in English In other words, not many students at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School love English and learn it as a hobby

III.3.1.2 Students’ attitude toward English speaking skills

The importance of

English speaking skills

students (240)

Table 2: Students’ attitude toward English speaking skill

The data collected is featured by the students’ high awareness of importance of speaking skills in their English learning 50% and 47,5% of them state that speaking skills is a very important and important skills respectively Whereas only 1,25% of them think that speaking skills is not important And number of students who think speaking is of little important make up only 1,25%

III.3.1.3 Students’ ability of speaking English in classrooms

Speaking skill is a difficult and challenging language skill Speaking English well requires students to master not only linguistic competence but also communicative competence To master these competence students need to practise English regularly Besides, teachers are very important factors who give students chances of practising speaking in classrooms such as creating an English speaking environment and encouraging students to take part in speaking activities energetically and dynamically However, from the classroom observations, the researcher realizes the fact that most of the students have a low ability of speaking English in classrooms

Table 3: Students’ ability of speaking English in classrooms

According to the figure 3, the majority of informants, 65% said that their ability of speaking English in classrooms was bad, 25% of them thought that their English speaking ability in classrooms was normal, the rest, 10% had a

good English speaking ability in classrooms Thus, from the data analyzed the researcher might come to the conclusion that English speaking ability of 10th - form Non-English Majors at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School is not good Through the classroom observations reveal that although pair-work and group-work activities are often taken place in classrooms, students often use the native language when they work together With the purpose of helping students

to master English linguistic competence for examinations, most of the teachers focus on structures, grammar and vocabulary rather than spend much time developing their students’ English listening and speaking skills

III.3.1.4 Frequency of students’ oral errors in English speaking classes

From the questionnaire and classroom observations of the teachers, the researcher can say that most of the students make oral errors when speaking English in classrooms However, the students’ oral error frequency is very different The following table is an illustration of that error frequency according

to the ideas from questionnaire of teachers at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School

Frequency of students’ oral errors

in English speaking classes

Options No of teachers

(10)

%

Sometimes 3 30%

Table 4: Frequency of students’ oral errors in English speaking classes

The table describes that 70% of the students always make errors and the rest, 30% sometimes make errors in their English speaking As in the book

“BAE Language Teaching Methodology” (2003, p39) Nguyen Bang asserts that making errors is sometimes acceptable and encourageable because it shows that real learning has been taken place in classrooms and students can contribute their learning positively to the lessons

III.3.1.5 Types of students’ oral errors in English speaking classes

Looking at figure 5, it is clear that 100% of the teachers agreed that their students made pronunciation errors in their English speaking classes, 40% of the teachers demonstrated their ideas about the errors of literal translation, missing words and redundancy

Types of students’oral

errors

teachers (10)

In order to have a clear and exact result of students’ oral errors the researcher got information from classroom observations to find out and classify students’ oral errors effectively After collecting information from classroom observations, the researcher found out that students’ oral errors made when speaking English in classrooms also fell into 4 categories: pronunciation, literal-translation, missing words and redundancy However, the most frequent ones were pronunciation errors, some of which involved sounds especially the ending sounds, intonation and stress Therefore, only some typical common errors of pronunciation are chiefly focused on and analyzed in this research

From the classroom observations, the researcher can conclude that most of the students commit the following common sound errors when speaking English

in classroom

The first kind of error is the omissions of ending sounds Most of the students speak English without any ending sounds or omit the sound of the inflectional suffixes like /s/ and /z/, or /t/ and /d/ in their speaking The following table shows some examples of the ending sound errors or the omission of the inflectional suffixes in English speaking classes

The second one is also related to the ending sound errors or the final position consonant errors As Deshayes (2005) remarks “the most common pronunciation problem for Vietnamese learners of English is articulating consonant sounds at the ends of words” (p5) He also emphasises that “many Vietnamese speakers of English often drop off these important consonants, changing not only the pronunciation, but also grammar” Hence, the final position consonant errors often appear in students’ speaking at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School when they speak English in classrooms They are unable to make a distinction between voiced and voiceless fricatives, especially the voiceless usually substituted /z/ in their speaking They produced voiceless fricates but not voiced ones We can see these types of errors clearly in the

Table 7: The errors of mispronouncing the voiceless /s/

The third error that 10th - form Non-English Majors at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School made in their English speaking is that they often add

“s” or other sounds to a certain number of words, or pronounce /s/ for /∫/ These

are the examples illustrating the error of adding “s” or other sounds to a certain

Table 8: The errors of adding “s” or other sounds to a certain number of

Table 9: The error of mispronouncing /s/ for /∫ /

The next errors is the affricative sounds in English like /t/, /dz/, /z/, /θ/, /ð/ students don’t often affricate these consonants, they only have a tendency to pronounce them like other sounds in Vietnamese For example, many of 10th - form Non-English Majors at Phan Boi Chau Specializing High School often change the fricate /ð/ sound into similar sound /d/ or /z/ in Vietnamese