Unmarked plural nouns in English and their difficulties for the 1st year students at the Faculty of Tourism, Hanoi University of Culture

Năm bảo vệ: 2011 Abstract: This paper reports on unmarked plural nouns in English and the difficulties which unmarked plural nouns cause to the 1st year students at the Faculty of Touri

Unmarked plural nouns in English and their

Faculty of Tourism, Hanoi University of Culture

Nguyễn Thanh Tâm

Trường Đại học Ngoại ngữ Luận văn ThS Chuyên ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15

Người hướng dẫn: Đào Thị Thu Trang, MA

Năm bảo vệ: 2011

Abstract: This paper reports on unmarked plural nouns in English and the difficulties which unmarked plural nouns cause to the 1st year students at the Faculty of Tourism at HUC The purpose of this study was: (1) to provide learners with grammatical features of unmarked plural nouns in English; (2) to specify difficulties which unmarked plural nouns in English cause to the 1st year students at the Faculty of Tourism, HUC; (3) to suggest some solutions to reduce the found problems so as to improve students’ English learning at the university The research was carried out by employing a midterm-test, questionnaire and interview as tools to collect data, from which major findings were drawn Statistical analysis revealed that the difficulties which unmarked plural nouns in English cause to the 1st year students occurred in two main categories: no inflectional distinction with singular form and Subject-Verb agreement These may demotivate students’ and lead to difficulties in students’ learning unmarked plural nouns in particular and their English learning in general Based on the analysis from students’ and teachers’ responses, some solutions are suggested to deal with the difficulties For students, they should be encouraged to develop their self-learning with the help of dictionary, learn on the internet, make a vocabulary notebook, and work in team For teachers, they should be more devoted to their teaching by seeking more effective teaching techniques and a range

of exercises to help students overcome the difficulties It is hoped that this research will help learners and teachers at Hanoi University of Culture to have a full knowledge of unmarked plural nouns in English to reduce their difficulties to the English teaching and learning here

Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Danh từ; Du lịch; Từ vựng

Content

PART I- INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

In the age of information technology today, English is required as a basic need in any field of life In our country, at present, learning English is not only a concern but also a practical need for

many people Therefore, more and more attention of both the general public and the government has been paid to English learning and teaching at schools, colleges and universities

Learning to master a language is a lengthy and effortful process including both learning the language knowledge: grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, etc and language skills: reading, speaking, writing and listening As the final aim of learning language in general and learning English in particular is communicative, vocabulary is one of the most essential goals to achieve However, how to learn a language, especially its vocabulary effectively is really a problem At Hanoi University of Culture (HUC), the 1st year students at the Faculty of Tourism often report

to have a lot of difficulties in learning vocabulary, especially the number category Normally, a noun is marked inflectionally as singular or plural by means of –s (and other markers such as voicing, -en endings, vowel changes or foreign plural) or Ø respectively In some nouns, however, there is no such inflectional distinction (Bache, 1997) Surprisingly, a number of plural

nouns in English have no plural endings (unmarked plural nouns) This is a big problem for

students because they cannot realize these nouns as plural by their forms It arises even more challenges for students when they often make mistakes in making the subject and the verb of the sentence agree

Up to now, no study on this matter has been carried out at HUC Therefore, the situation

encouraged the author to do a research on ‘Unmarked plural nouns in English and their

is the author’s hope that this study will be really useful for both teachers and students in teaching and learning vocabulary in general and unmarked plural nouns in particular

2 Aims of the study

- to provide learners with grammatical features of unmarked plural nouns in English

- to specify difficulties which unmarked plural nouns in English cause to the 1st year students at the Faculty of Tourism, HUC

- to suggest some solutions for students to overcome the difficulties in their using unmarked plural nouns in English

3 Scope of the study

This study is limited to provide learners with grammatical features of unmarked plural nouns in English such as definition, classification, agreement with verbs, some usage notes, etc More

importantly, it tries to serve the purpose of finding out the difficulties in using unmarked plural nouns in English faced by the 1st year students at the Faculty of Tourism, HUC and seeking for possible solutions to the problems

4 Methodology

The theoretical background in this study is based on the theoretical frameworks by different linguists Quirk (1973, 1990, 1987), Greenbaum (1990, 1996), John (1996), Swan (1995, 1984), Murphy (1994), Collins Publishers (1987, 1990, 1992), Maclin (1994), Sons (1990), etc propose such well known and convincing researches on which we will rely for the theory of plural nouns

in general, and unmarked plural nouns in particular The presentation of these linguists’ theory is

to give the readers features of plural nouns and especially grammatical features of unmarked plural nouns in English

Additionally, in order to find out the difficulties of unmarked plural nouns in English for the 1st year students at the Faculty of Tourism, HUC, this study adopts quantitative and qualitative methods Below is a description of the subjects, the instruments, and procedures for the study

4.1 The subjects

There are two types of subjects participating in the study The first type is the 1st year students at the Faculty of Tourism, HUC, and the later is the teachers who have been working with these students for years

90 of the 1st year students were chosen to take part in a questionnaire survey They came from 3 classes in the Faculty of Tourism at the university They are both male and female, at the age from 19 to 20 and have learnt English for at least 3 years at high schools

In addition, 10 teachers who are working with these students were invited to participate in an interview held by the researcher They are both male and female, aging from 29 to 50 and have taught at the university for at least 3 years

4.2 The instruments

In order to ensure the validity and reliability of the study, different tools were used, namely written test, questionnaires, and interview

Instrument 1: The mid-term test was used as a tool to investigate the difficulties of unmarked

plural nouns in English which the 1st year students have to encounter in their vocabulary

learning This test has much to do with unmarked plural nouns, and includes 4 parts presented in the following order: Gap-filling (10 points); S-V agreement (10 points); Gap-filling combined with S-V agreement (10 points); and Translation (10 points) (see appendix 3)

difficulties unmarked plural nouns in English cause to them in their vocabulary learning, what teaching methods used by their teachers they would enjoy, and what they have done to improve their knowledge of unmarked plural nouns in English (see appendix 1)

year students at the Faculty of Tourism at HUC to find out what teaching methods they are using when dealing with unmarked plural nouns in English, what difficulties they find from their students in their learning unmarked plural nouns in English, and some recommendations made

by them (see appendix 2)

4.3 The procedures

4.3.1 The mid-term test

90 written tests done by the 1st year students who came from the Faculty of Tourism, HUC at the middle of the 2nd term were chosen to mark for statistical data The test is scaled by the researcher as follows:

Very bad: 0 – 2; Bad: 3 – 4; Good: 5 – 6; Very good: 7 – 8; Excellent: 9 – 10

4.3.2 Questionnaires

90 questionnaires were delivered to 90 chosen students Each questionnaire consists of 8 items designed with both close-ended and open-ended questions which are to help respondents feel free to express their own ideas

4.3.3 Interviews

An interview was organized between the researcher and 10 teachers mentioned above The interview was a semi-structured kind with 5 items focusing on their teaching methods and difficulties they find from their 1st year students in their learning unmarked plural nouns in English The interview was recorded for later reference

4.4 Data analysis

As above mentioned, the data for this study is collected by the mid-term tests, students’ questionnaires, and teachers’ interview With the mid-term tests, students’ acquisition of

unmarked plural nouns in English can be accurately assessed Information provided from students’ questionnaires will be categorized, tabulated and converted to percentages for the convenience of analysis Moreover, information collected during teachers’ interview is added to assist interpretation

5 Design of the study

This study is divided into three main parts:

Part I: Introduction

The Introduction presents the rationale for the study, states what the study is aimed at and what specific tasks it deals with, and gives the methods by which the study was conducted together with the organization of the study

Part II: Development

The Development includes 4 chapters:

Chapter 1 is concerned with the theoretical concepts, classification and grammatical categories

of nouns in English

Chapter 2 deals with the grammatical features of plural nouns in general and unmarked plural nouns in particular

Chapter 3 analyses data collected from the subjects and instruments employed in the research along with some discussion

Chapter 4 suggests some solutions which are expected to improve the 1st year students’ learning English unmarked plural nouns in HUC context

Part III: Conclusion

The Conclusion reviews the major findings of the study, refers to some limitations of the study and suggestions for further study

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Websites:

http://www.vocabulary.com

http://www.Wikipedia/freeencyclopedia

http://www.freeenglish.com

http://easyenglish.com