An investigation of common written errors in english compositions made by vietnamese students at the national college of education HCM city under the influence of native language transfer

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY AN INVESTIGATION OF COMMON WRITTEN ERRORS IN ENGLISH COMPOSITIONS MADE BY VIETNAMESE STUDENTS AT THE NATIONAL COLLEGE

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HO CHI MINH CITY OPEN UNIVERSITY

AN INVESTIGATION OF COMMON WRITTEN ERRORS IN ENGLISH COMPOSITIONS MADE BY VIETNAMESE STUDENTS AT THE

NATIONAL COLLEGE OF EDUCATION HCM CTITY UNDER THE

INFLUENCE OF NATIVE LANGUAGE TRANSFER

A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT

OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS (TESOL)

Submitted by NGUYEN NGOC THUY Supervisor: Dr LE HOANG DUNG

Ho Chi Minh city, October 2011

ABSTRACT

This thesis investigates the language transfer errors in the written

compositions of the students at National College of Education-HCM city The purpose is to find out the degree of the influence of mother tongue on their writing

and the change of the extent of errors when writing compositions with different

complexity and length

For this purpose, twenty students were asked to take part in the present research by means of writing a composition and taking an interview after the completion of the written work Twenty pieces of English compositions written on different topics were collected, identified, analyzed and explained with a focus on

various categories of cross-linguistic errors By the use of error analysis method and contrastive analysis the interlingual errors and error sources have been

scrutinized The most typical Vietnamese interference errors in using English are also described in detail, and the most significant differences between English and the Vietnamese languages are listed

The findings of this research can be summarized as follows There is a

strong influence of the native language on the written abilities of the students learning English as a second language, and the influence becomes greater when the students have to deal with longer and more complicated compositions It was also found the highest ranking transfer errors of the students in terms of frequency were verb, noun, preposition, expression and determiner

Suggestions for English language learning at National College of

Education—HCM city have also been given in this thesis

iti

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page Acknowledgment (ii)

1.1 Background of the study ¬ = 1 1.2 Purpose ofthe Study .- HH nh nh 3 1.3 The scope of this sfudy - cu nh na 4 1.4 Organization of the theSIS HQ HH kh, 4

2.1 Overview Of CYTOLS 20 cece cece eee seen renee ene eee ene t nese nese nent ees 6 2.2 Classification Of €rTOTS nh 9 2.3 Theory of language transÍ€r con ven 15

2.3.1 BehaviorIst theOrY con HH nh ky hy 16 2.3.2 Contrastive theory c2 HH» kh ven 17

2.3.3 Cognitive th€OFY HH HH nh KH nà nh he ánh ``20 2.4 The negative influence of language transfer on non-native speakers 21 2.5 Negative language transfer by Vietnamese students 24 2.5.1 Morphological transf€r - - ch 25 2.5.1.1 Morphological pluralization of nouns 25 2.5.1.2 Morphological change of adjectives and comparatives 26 2.5.1.3 Morphological change Of perSONS 27

2.5.1.4 Morphological change of verbs cccssece cece ene e ener eee ees 2.5.1.5 Misuse of parts of speech -. ch 2.5.2 Syntactical transfÍer -.-. -«ss⁄ HH Le eeeeaee 2.5.2.1 Misuse of articles cece eee eee eee nee eens eee eees Nghi

2.5.2.2 Omission of the auxiliary verb “5e ”” cày 2.5.2.3 Wrong Word order nh

2.5.3 Lexical trafISÍ€T cọ HS HH HH nh nh kg 2.5.3.1 Misuse of collocaflOns chen 2.5.3.2 Misuse Of prepOSItIOPS co HQ nh hen

2.5.3.3 Confusion between “/here be” and “havể”

2.5.3.4 Tautologous expressions in making complex sentences

2.5.3.5 Lack of subject pronouns or obJect pronouns

VN? co tớai

2.7 Conceptual framework .ccccceeecceeeeeeseeeseeeesseeeeseeeneees Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research method . c HH HH SE kh nhe, 3.2 Method of data analysis ‹ -

3.3 Participants 2.2.0 0 cece cece cence eee ence ence tee nee eee eeene een eneeeneeess 3.4 Data and source Of đafa c co cằ cà Chapter 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 54 4.1 Analysis Of afa LH HH HH HH HH ng nu 4.1.1 Analysis of overall errors in terms of the causes of errors

4.1.2 Analysis of overall errors in terms of the core parts of speech

4.2 Research question Ì_ cu,

54

57

: Summary table of the used set of error categories

Examples of interference errors in morphological

pluralization Of nouns . -« «se

Examples of interference errors in morphological

change Of adj€CfIV€S_ nen

Examples of interference errors in morphological

change of personal pronouns _ -

Examples of interference errors in morphological

Change Of VerDs .c cece eee ee eect eee ee eens ete e eee e nee ee eee nn eee

Examples of interference errors in the misuse of

parts Of SDeech HH HH nà nh nh nh

Examples of interference errors in the misuse of articles

Examples of interference errors in the misuse of

the auxiliary verb “Để ”” HH khu nh sen

Examples of interference errors in the sequence of words

Table 2.10: Examples of interference errors in determining

the positlon Of adJ€CfIV€S cuc nhe

Table 2.11: Examples of interference errors in determining

0039930010200 023 In ằằ-< -

Table 2.12: Examples of interference errors in word order

in structures containing units of measurement

Table 2.13: Examples of interference errors in the misuse

Table 2.14: Examples of interference errors in the misuse of prepositions

Of collOCcatiOns_ - con

Table 2.15: Examples of interference errors in the confusion

between “there be” and “have” ccc cccccccccceccccccccccaucceces

Table 2.16: Examples of interference errors in tautologous expressions 39

Table 2.17: Examples of interference errors in the lack of pronouns in making complex sentences kh ky eae 40 Table 2.18: Summary table of types of writing errors caused by the Table 3.1: Table 3.2: Table 3.3: Table 3.4: Table 3.5: Table 4.1: Table 4.2: Table 4.3: Table 4.4: Table 4.5: Table 4.6: Table 4.7: influence of mother tongue .- - 41

The topics of composition used for study_ 50

Errors made and explained by students GI in the interview 87

Errors made and explained by students GII in the interview 92

Classification of the errors made by students GI 103

Classification of the errors made by students GII 109

Statistical table about errors "¬ 53 Overall errors made by both groups of students in terms o£the causes OŸ eTTOFS 55

Errors made by the students of both groups in terms of the core parts of speech - 56

Overall errors made by both groups of students in terms o£the core parts Of speech - 57

Overall interlingual errors made by the students_ 59

Errors occurring due to cross-linguistic influence in the GI and GII students” compositlons_ 121 Overall interlingual error and interlingual error rate

of the students GI and GÏT c.c-cccc-c 64

LIST OF FIGURES

Fig 2.1: Conceptual framework of the research_ - 46

Fig 4.1 :Percentage of error Caf€BOTI€S c c2 56

Fig 4.2: Overall errors made by the students in a particular category 59 Fig 4.3: Proportion of interlingual errors to intralingual errors

made by the studenfs_ Sàn 61

Fig 4.4: Relative frequency of interlingual error cafۯOrles 63 Fig 4.5: Interlingual error rate made by the students GI and GIL 66

ix

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LI - the first language

L2 — the second language

EFL — English as foreign language

‘SLA — second language acquisition

Gl — the first writing group of 10 college students

GII — the second writing group of 10 college students

GI.1 — the first college student of the first writing group GII.1 — the first college student of the second writing group adj.— adjective

Chapter One INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the study

The influence of one’s native language on second language acquisition has been widely studied by various researchers in the world With respect to this issue, Edge (1989:7) assumed that when people do not know how to say something in a foreign language, one possibility is to use words and structures from their own language and try to make them fit into the foreign language In other words, the learners use their previous mother-tongue experiences as a means of organizing the

second language data Sharing the same opinion, Brown (1994:105) said that in early

stages of learning a second language, before the system of the second language is familiar, the native language is the only linguistic system in previous experience upon which the learner can draw In addition, transfer errors are found to be more frequent with beginners than with intermediate students because the beginners have less previous second language knowledge to draw upon in making hypotheses about rules and might therefore be expected to make correspondingly more use of their first language knowledge (Taylor, 1975, cited by Ellis, 1994:62)

In Vietnam the demand for English for the purpose of communicating with the outside world and accessing advanced science and technology has greatly been increased in the recent years English has been taught in the secondary school

curriculum as a compulsory school subject At the tertiary level, English for special

purposes has been taught in the training program However, Vietnamese students’ exposure to the foreign language is in general confined to a few hours per week of formal classroom instruction, and the use of Vietnamese in the process of teaching

English is common in Vietnam (Nguyen, 2006) In such teaching and learning

situations, the influence of the Vietnamese mother tongue is inevitable In fact, this

influence has been investigated by a number of Vietnamese educators and researchers

In an article in the monthly magazine “Language and Life”, Pham (2004) indicated that

it was the similarities and differences between the structures of English and Vietnamese languages that exerted both positive and negative influence on the process

of learning English of Vietnamese students when she studied the word order in English

and Vietnamese verb structures Nguyen (1995, cited by Mahendran, 2010:67)

conducted a case study to demonstrate first language transfer in Vietnamese learners of

English He examined a particular language form, namely oral competence in English

past tense making He tried to determine the role of L1 transfer in the acquisition of this English linguistic feature as a function of age, time of exposure to English, and place and purpose of learning English In his work “The investigation and comparison

of languages” Le (2004) compared the similarities and dissimilarities between English

and Vietnamese sentence structures, and pointed out that Vietnamese learners’

problems are deep-rooted in differences between English and Vietnamese language, causing obstacles to Vietnamese learners Dam (2001) presented a paper at the annual

conference of National Association for Bilingual Education, Arizona, in which he analyzed a number of persistent types of interference errors found in English written by Vietnamese learners, whereby he claimed that the mother-tongue influence is

undeniable He also stated that these errors appeared to occur when the structures of Vietnamese and English are strikingly different

In general, not much work in this field has been done in Vietnam to date, most

of the work being performed by overseas authors (Le, 2006) Moreover, these

researches could not cover all the written errors that students usually make in details More studies need to be conducted to evaluate the effects of native language exerted on Vietnamese learners of English As a teacher of English at the National College of

Education-HCM city for several years, while marking compositions the researcher has

to deal with a wide range of different error types made by her students It has been found that it looks very much as if her students, who have a low English proficiency

level, are very often resorting to their knowledge of the structure of Vietnamese when

they do not know how to express an idea in English A better understanding of the L1 influence in the process of EFL writing is needed to help teachers understand students’ difficulties in learning English and find out appropriate teaching strategies or methods

to help students learn English more effectively For this reason, the author of the present study decides to continue doing research on this issue to have a deeper insight into the influence of language transfer on common writing errors made by the students

at the College of Education-HCM city with the hope that this research can help the teachers find ways to deal with learners’ transfer errors more comprehensively

1.2 Purpose of the study

The purpose of this study is to investigate into the influence of mother tongue

on the types of writing errors made by the college students, and basing on the results

obtained from the research, some suggestions would be proposed so that they can serve

as practical implications for teachers to improve the teaching and for students to deal

with language transfer errors Firstly, it aims to study a number of written English

errors made by the Vietnamese students at a college under the influence of native language transfer as well as to find out some possible causes of the students’ error- making Secondly, it aims to determine how the language transfer errors vary according to the length and complexity of the writing compositions

To this end, the following research questions are pursued in this thesis:

(1) What kinds of errors do Vietnamese students at The National College of

Education—HCM city encounter in their English writing under the influence of

native language transfer?

(2) In what way is the amount of negative language transfer related to the

length and complexity of the compositions?

1.3 The scope of this study

The present study will not take up all items involved in the issue of language

transfer because it is just going to analyze the students’ errors The research scope of this thesis is limited to the analysis of just the students’ writing compositions in the language classroom at a college, with a focus on lexical, morphological, syntactical and spelling written errors at the word or phrase levels Phonological errors are not taken

into account because they are very difficult to identify in written texts In addition,

although the transfer of knowledge can either enhance (positive transfer) or inhibit (negative transfer) the correct acquisition of the second language in varying degrees (Gass & Selinker, 2001:72), the research is confined to the investigation of the negative influence of mother tongue because it is the negative influence that causes errors commonly made in writing compositions by the students having low English proficiency level

1.4 Organization of the thesis

This thesis is composed of five chapters as follows: First, chapter 1 deals with the background to the present study, including a brief description of the problem of language transfer among Vietnamese students and the research questions guiding this study The purpose of study, the scope of study and the organization of the thesis are

also presented in this chapter Next, chapter 2 consists of a literature review to situate

the study into the current context, giving a general overview of the theory of language

transfer, negative language transfer by Vietnamese students, theory of errors and error analysis, and some other issues concerning this research Then, chapter 3 presents a detailed plan to collect adequate and reliable data for analysis including the selection of

subjects, research instruments, procedures of data collection and data analysis After that, chapter 4 describes the results from the study Some discussions about these

results are found in this chapter In the end, chapter 5 summarizes the major findings of the study The contributions and limitations of the study are listed Some recommendations are also given for teachers to improve students’ writing skill and reduce their errors in writing Finally, suggestions for further studies are included

Chapter Two REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

Chapter two, the review of literature, relates the current study to the larger

context of previous researches on language transfer in L2 acquisition It presents

different definitions and approaches linguists took towards errors as well as the ways of classifying errors by several scholars It also examines how learners’ mother tongue affects the study of a foreign language In addition, in this chapter a number of

examples of interference errors made by non-native learners, and specially, some

persistent types of interference errors made in English by Vietnamese students are given In the end, it discusses various approaches towards the study of error and in particular, the error analysis method used in the present thesis

2.1 Overview of errors

Errors are considered crucial to the language learning process as they inform

us about some of the hypotheses that learners are formulating (Schachter, 1991:89), They contain valuable information on strategies that learners use to acquire language

and can play an important role in the study of foreign languages (Selinker, 1992:150)

In addition, it is noticeable that errors can provide “important evidence for the strength

and weakness of a particular native language influence” (Odlin 1989:23) In Corder’s

(1974, cited by Xu, 2008:37) seminal paper “The significance of learners’ errors”, he

stated that errors are significant in three aspects: 1) they tell the teacher what needs to

be taught; 2) they tell the researcher how learning proceeds; and 3) they are a means whereby learners test their hypotheses about the L2.” Therefore, in order to understand what errors and how Vietnamese EFL students tend to make, a systematic analysis of

errors is important and necessary To this end, the term “error” should first be defined.

Linguistic experts have proposed various definitions of error Errors are even viewed differently at different periods A classical definition was given by Corder

(1981, cited by Awasthi, 1995:40) considered “error” as the “breach of code”, that is,

they are the signs of an imperfect knowledge of the code, for the learners have not yet internalized the formation rules of the foreign languages Burt et al (1982:139) refer to

“error” as a systematic deviation from a selected norm or set of norms In the Vietnamese education system, the selected norms are mainly standard British English and standard American English Lennon (1991:182) defined an error as “a linguistic form or combination of forms which in the same context and under similar conditions

of production would, in all likelihood, not be produced by the native speaker counterparts” Rod Ellis (1997:17) says that errors reflect gaps in a learner’s knowledge; they occur because the learner does not know what is correct

There are some other terms which may be confused with “error”, especially

the term “mistake” Commonly, mistake and error have been understood as

synonymous, but in language analysis, they have different implications Corder (1981, cited by Ananda Shrestha, 1989:2) says “it will be useful to refer to errors of

performance as “mistakes” which is not significant to the language learning process,

and reserve the term “error” for the systematic errors of the learner from which his knowledge of the language can be reconstructed.” This shows mistakes, also called slips, as involuntary outcomes independent of language understanding They are of no interest to the Error Analysis, as they tell nothing about the true state of the learner’s knowledge It’s only errors that deserve attention In addition, Brown (1994:205) stated that a mistake is a performance error that is either a random guess or a “slip”, in that it is a failure to utilize a known system correctly A way to distinguish errors from mistakes can be based on learners’ consciousness of doing something wrong In language learning second language learners have to experience three stages In the first

stage the learner does something wrong without knowing it, in the second stage he/she

does not know how to put it right though he/she may know he/she is doing it wrong,

whereas in the last stage he/she can correct his/her wrong version For him/her, errors

occur in the first two stages while mistakes belong to the last stage

Briefly, there are various ways of defining an error based on different

perspectives Each way has its own reasonable aspects and certain contributions to language teaching and learning In this thesis, Burt’s definition is preferred and taken

as the basis to define a written error because it proves to be the most comprehensive

and closely related to the students’ commonly made errors, which is relevant to the

purpose of the thesis

With respect to the attitudes towards the errors, a difference in them can be found In fact, there are two learning theories that hold different opinions on the subject of language errors in the course of learning One such theory is the behaviorist theory which denies that errors have any positive contribution to make to the learning

of a skill such as language, and they occur as a result of mother tongue interference, or

negative transfer from the learner’s first language pattern (Lado, 1957, as cited by

Isurin, 2005:1) Behaviorists suppose that errors are the evidence of wrong association

between stimulus and response, and are signs of failure, of ineffective teaching or lack

of control They also believe that it is very difficult to eradicate wrong forms Therefore, they maintain that errors must be eradicated by tightly controlling what the learner is allowed to produce According to them, an error will result in a bad habit if it

is tolerated instead of it being corrected Brooks (1960, cited by Jensen, 2002:53) writes: “Like sin, error is to be avoided” In order to predict potential errors, contrastive

analysis (CA) between the learner’s L1 and L2 has been used by the followers of this theory as the most powerful and reliable tool

The view contradictory to behaviorism is the mentalism Mentalists believe

‘that an error is the evidence of the process of hypothesis formation and hypothesis testing All learners must proceed forward through this process Nobody can claim to

be perfect in a language (Corder, 1981, cited by Luitel, 1999:38) Therefore, students are advised not to worry too much about errors, because errors are regarded as

inevitable in the learning The students learn by making errors and having them corrected On the other hand, teachers should be prepared to help them to sort things

out for themselves In other words, teachers should not be too hasty in rejecting a controlled amount of grammatical terminology and mother-tongue explanation process

given task, which demands strict error correction On the contrary, in the situation of using language freely, for example in free conversation, essay writing, etc freedom of

expression should be given

2.2 Classification of errors

When dealing with students’ writing errors, it will be better if they are put in different categories for various treatments Therefore, we should have an overview of different ways of classifying errors so far

The classification of errors greatly depends on the different purposes of studying errors and various criteria for categorizing errors Therefore, it is infeasible to

reach a common classification of errors Even for the same author, his way of classifying errors can change over time Some typical and common ways of classifying

errors of some well-known authors are mentioned below

Corder (1981, cited by Awasthi, 1995:43) refers to three types of errors, namely, transfer errors, analogical errors and teaching-induced errors He also makes a distinction between overt and covert errors “An overt error is easy to identify, because there is a clear deviation in form A covert error occurs in utterances that are

superficially well formed but which do not mean what the learner intended them to mean.”

According to Richards (1974, cited in Krushna, 2007:41) there are two kinds

of errors The first one which student learners of the L2 make in speaking English is

intralingual errors which reflect “the general characteristics of rule learning” such as

incomplete application of rules The second type is developmental errors, which refer

to errors caused by “learners attempting to build up hypotheses about English”

However, Richards’ way of classifying errors changed over time Richards et al

(1992:205), basing on the causes of errors, divided errors into two types: interlingual and intralingual errors Interlingual errors are interference that happens when “an item

or structure in the L2 manifests some degree of difference from, and some degree of similarity with the equivalent item or structure in the learner’s L1” (Jackson, 1987:101), that is to say, the errors which are caused by the learners’ native language

For example, Vietnamese students may say that “Yesterday, I see an old friend” In this sentence, they forget to put the verb “see” in the past tense It is easy to understand

%cause in Vietnamese, when talking about the past tense, they do not have to sonjugate Instead, they just use some adverbs of time such as “Yesterday, last year,

last month, two years ago, etc.”, which is enough to describe the past tense On the

contrary, intralingual errors are those due to the language being learned, independent of

the native language According to Richards (1974, cited by Farzaneh, 2007:2) they are

“items produced by the learner which reflect not the structure of the mother tongue, but generalizations based on partial exposure to the target language The learner, in this

case, tries to “derive the rules behind the data to which he/she has been exposed, and

may develop hypotheses that correspond neither to the mother tongue nor to the target

language” (Richards, 1974, cited by Farzaneh, 2007:6) Besides, intralingual errors are

further divided into some subtypes: errors of overgeneralization, errors of

simplification, developmental errors, communication-based errors, induced errors, errors of avoidance, and errors of overproduction (Jack C Richards, John Platt and

Heidi Platt, 1992:212)

Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982:50) have different ways of classifying the types of errors For them there are four main types of errors including omission, addition, misformation and misordering To be more specific, they point out the definition of each type of error as follows:

1 Omission: the absence of an item that must appear in a well-formed utterance (e.g in early stages of learning, the omission of function words

rather than content words)

2 Addition: the presence of an item that must not appear in well-formed utterances (e.g failure to delete certain items: He doesn’t knows me.)

3 Misformation: the use of wrong form of the morpheme or structure

(sometimes called misselection)

4 Misordering: the incorrect placement of a morpheme or group of

morphemes in an utterance (e.g The misplacement of adverbials,

interrogatives and adjectives) (cited in Ellis, 1995)

11

James (1998:175) distinguishes four categories of errors:

1 When the required target language item is unknown and the learner borrows

L1 substitute, as a result, they can make a mother tongue transfer error

2 Intralingual errors: Errors include false analogy (e.g boy and boys vs child

and childs), misanalysis, incomplete rule application (under generalization),

exploiting redundancy, overlooking co-occurrence restrictions, hypercorrection and overgeneralization

3 Communication-strategy errors: Errors include the use of holistic strategies (e.g Students do not find the required form, so they try to use another near- equivalent L2 item which they have learnt) and analytic strategies (expressing the concept indirectly, by allusion rather than by direct reference, also called

circumlocution)

4 Induced errors: Errors “result more from the classroom situation than from

either the student’s incomplete competence in English grammar (intralingual

errors) or L1 interference (interlingual errors) (Stenson, 1983:256):

a Material induced errors

b Teacher-talk induced errors

c Exercise-based induced errors

d Errors induced by pedagogical priorities

e Look-up errors

In conclusion, there are many different ways to classify the errors students of

L2 make They all help to distinguish to a certain extent between writing errors originating in a student’s L1 and the target language itself It is clear that from the

above ways of classification, James’ classification of errors is the most comprehensive

because it covers the causes of errors of other linguistic experts More important is the thing that it deals with interlingual errors and intralingual errors, which is the purpose

of study of this thesis Therefore, the author of the present study chooses James’

classification of errors and also bases on the traditional grammar Besides, because the

present study addresses mainly the negative transfer errors in writing, little attention is paid to the subdivisions of the intralingual errors, while more attention is given to the syntactical, lexical and morphological interlingual errors

To sum up, in this thesis the errors are explained in grammatical terms, and examined to find their sources The used scheme of error classification includes 10 gross error categories that the students frequently make in writing They are chosen to correspond closely to those found in syllabi and language textbooks (Le, 2006), and

include the core elements of speech: noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun,

conjunction and connector, preposition, determiner (articles, possessive adjective, demonstrative adjective, etc.), expression/idiom and word order Each category itself is subdivided into omission/missing, addition/superfluous and substitution/wrong (misformation, choice error, wrong spelling, non-conformity to grammatical rules) After setting the categories of errors, the error sources to be studied are considered in order to find out whether they are mainly interlingual or intralingual, based on the

literature (Cathy, 2002; Andersen, 1979; Le, 2006; etc.) This is a critical stage in error

analysis because it attempts to identify the cause of the errors

Below is the table summarizing the used set of error categories

Table 2 1: Summary table of the used set of error categories

omission of verb (missing predicate) addition of verb (superfluous predicate) verb wrong use of verb (verb misformation, wrong infinitive form

errors, -ed/-t forms, -ing forms, verb choice error, passive voice

error, verb tense error, aspect error, agreement error, .) adjective wrong use of adjective

wrong use of adverb adverb misformed adverb

omission of pronoun pronoun addition of pronoun

wrong use of pronoun, misformed pronoun

omission of connector

conjunction/ addition of connector "

connector wrong use of connector

omission of preposition

preposition superfluous preposition

wrong preposition omission of determiner

determiner superfluous determiner

wrong determiner; misformed determiner

¬ wrong expression (whole expression errors, ungrammatical expression/idiom expression, awkward/ambiguous expression)

word order wrong word order

spelling wrong spelling

In order to explain and identify the cause of the errors, after having an overview of errors and different ways of classifying errors, we come to studying various theories of the transfer of patterns from the native language, which is undoubtedly one of the major sources of errors in language learning (Lightbown & Spada, 1999:165)

2.3 Theories concerning language transfer

The issue of first language transfer in L2 acquisition has been a field of

2xtensive research in the past few decades (Odlin, 1989; Larsen-Freeman, 1991; Selinker, 1992; Ellis, 1994) Many researches have already been carried out to study

the role of first language and its effects on the process of learning a second language

‘Odlin (1993:27) defined language transfer as “the influence resulting from similarities

‘and differences between the target language and any other language that has been

»previously acquired” Spratt et al (2005:44) indicate that “transfer is an influence from the learner's first language on the second language” Wilkins (1972, cited by Mohideen -1996:1) observes: “When learning a foreign language an individual already knows his

mother tongue, and it is this which he attempts to transfer The transfer may prove to

be justified because the structure of the two languages is similar- in that case we get

“positive transfer” or “facilitation”- or it may prove unjustified because the structure of

the two languages are different- in that case we get “negative transfer’— or

“interference” Sharing the same opinion, Richards et al (1992:205) state that one of

the factors influencing the learning process is first language interference or negative

transfer, which may be defined as “the use of a negative language pattern or rule which

leads to an error or inappropriate form in the target language” Dulay, Burt and

Krashen (1982, cited by Bhela, 1999:22) define interference “as the automatic transfer,

due to habit, of the surface structure of the first language onto the surface of the target

language” In addition, Lott (1983:256) defines interference as “errors in the learner’s

use of the foreign language that can be traced back to the mother tongue” In line with this Ellis (1997:51) also refers to interference as “transfer”, which he defines as being

“the influence that the learner’s L1 exerts over the acquisition of an L2”

In spite of various ways of expression, the researchers all concur that language transfer refers to the influence that the learner’s first language exerts over the learning of an second language In this thesis, attention is mainly paid to the negative transfer of Vietnamese language in students’ writings, which is of great concern among

teachers and researchers working on L2 acquisition Positive transfer will not be discussed in detail since the topic of this study focuses mainly on error analysis

15

2.3.1 Behaviorist theory

i

| By the end of the 1960’s, a learning theory called behaviorist theory put

“forward the idea that old habits got in the way of learning new habits This -phenomenon is known as “interference” Interference has been one of the focal points

in behaviorist accounts of L2 acquisition Behaviorists state that the process underlying all learning is habit formation Thus, language development is described as the acquisition of habits The behaviorists regard language learning as the acquisition of skills (Littlewood, 1984:17) This complex skill, as explained in Hubbard et al (1983:168), is broken down into a series of habits, which are drilled until they become automatic and unthinking, and the habits are taught in a series of small steps, so as to avoid errors Because the language development is described as a process of receiving

a series of habits, it is assumed that learners begin to learn L2 by those habits of

learning their L1 Some old habits will be helpful to the new process of acquisition while some other habits hamper the habits needed for the process of forming speech when learning L2 Besides, Norrish (1983:29) once stated that if language is essentially

aset of habits, then when we try to learn new habits, the old ones will interfere with the new ones Therefore, mother tongue interference has been regarded as one of the major

causes of writing errors made by most of L2 learners Abbort and Wingard (1981:28) assumed: “wherever the structure of L1 and the target language differed, there would

be problems in learning and difficulties in performance, and that the greater the differences were, the greater the difficulties would be” Lee (1968, in Ellis 1985:23) even believed that the interference coming from the learner’s native language was the prime cause, or even the sole cause of difficulty and error in foreign language learning

In sum, within the behaviorist framework, which attributes the function of

language to instruction and experience, language transfer is seen as a direct result of the influence imposed by L1 structures on corresponding structures in L2 (Lado, 1957,

in Ellis 1994:306), and errors are regarded as evidence of language transfer

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2.3.2 Contrastive theory

Closely related to the behaviorist theory is the contrastive analysis hypothesis Contrastive analysis is an inductive investigative approach defined as a systematic comparison of specific linguistic characteristics of two or more languages in order to determine both the differences and similarities between them (Els et al., 1984:38) It is used as an essential tool to compare or contrast the mother tongue and the target language of a learner and to determine to what extent errors are due to mother tongue interference Although Contrastive Analysis itself is a hypothesis, it is based on a number of assumptions (Hamers, 1995:224) The main assumptions that have often been discussed are:

1 The main difficulties while learning a second language are primarily caused

by mother tongue interference

2 These difficulties are predicted by CA after accomplishing a comparison between a source language and target language

3 In order to overcome these difficulties, teaching learning materials are prepared Such materials help to reduce the effects of interference

The first assumption deals with the transfer of native habits into the target language The feature of this assumption is that the source language of the learner is considered to be the sole cause of errors that he is likely to commit The second assumption of CA consists in its predictive power in the areas of difficulties in which the target language learners are likely to make errors It is assumed that the areas in which the source language and target language of a learner differ, he is most likely to face difficulties Lado (1957, as cited by Isurin, 2005:1), an early proponent of the contrastive analysis hypothesis, tried to predict the likelihood of language transfer in L2 acquisition based on the similarities as well as differences between various aspects

of L1 and the target language Using methodological procedures for comparing a

17

TRUONG OAT HOC Md 7P.HCM

THU VIEN

‘learner's L2 with his L1, he assumed: “Individuals tend to transfer the forms and

‘meanings and the distribution of forms and meanings for their native language and

‘culture to the foreign language and culture.” To this end Ellis (1985:20) further

explained: Where the L1 and L2 share a meaning but express it in different ways, an error is likely to arise in the L2 because the learner will transfer the realization device

¡ from his/her L1 into the second Thus, differences between LI and L2 create learning

“difficulty which results in errors, while the similarities between L1 and L2 facilitate

‘rapid and easy learning The third assumption showing the need to teach a L2 in the

“most efficient way is related to the preparation of teaching learning materials based on

‘the difficulties predicted by the works of contrastive analysis This has been expressed

by Fries (1945, in Els et al., 1984:46) in the following statement: “The most effective materials are those that are based upon a scientific description of the language to be

‘learned, carefully compared with a parallel description of the native language of learner.” This spirit is further maintained by Lado (1957, cited in Ellis, 1985:23) who stresses the need for comparing the native language and target language for preparing

‘teaching materials and believes that “The teacher who has made a comparison of the foreign language with the native language of the students will know better what the real problems are and can provide for teaching them The origins of contrastive analysis, therefore, were pedagogic” Contrastive analysis hypothesis is also very important to learners because when the difficult issues in L2 are previously stated, errors, especially, the ones caused by the interference in L2 acquisition due to those habits of learning their L1, can be prevented or at least the learners manage to limit them and avoid the formation of inappropriate habits The contrastive analysis method can also be very useful to teachers of English as a second language as most of them will have a sufficient knowledge of the learner's mother tongue to identify the root cause of an error The teacher will be able to point out to the learner that while it is acceptable to say something in a specific way in the mother tongue, it is not equally

‘word, CA is a result of the need to teach a L2 in the most efficient way Its ultimate

‘aim is to compare morphological systems, syntactical and lexical meanings of two or

‘more languages For this reason, it is used in this study to analyze the students’ writing

‘errors and predict the interference between Vietnamese language and English language

However, this approach gives an incomplete presentation of L2 acquisition process It overemphasizes the interference of the outer environment of language study while the language learners themselves are totally neglected In addition, the fact shows that most of the learners’ errors are not predictable on the basis of contrastive

analysis Some types of errors which show a striking resemblance to errors made by

children while acquiring L1, could not be accounted for by contrastive analysis Tran (1991:78) pointed out three criticisms of Contrastive Analysis: Firstly, it only emphasized the differences between the native language and target language; it takes

no account of other factors affecting learner performance Secondly, it is unable to predict errors caused by interference from the target language materials learned

previously Thirdly, learning strategies, such as overgeneralization and hypercorrection, are overlooked by Contrastive Analysis; it can only predict errors

resulting from structural differences between the native language and target language

To sum up, contrastive analysis hypothesis has been used by some researchers

as a powerful device to examine errors caused by L1 interference It helps to look into the similarities and differences between languages, thus explains and predicts problems

in second language learning However, it has faced criticisms, mostly on its predictive power Anyway, it does not mean it is of no importance If carefully revised and extended, it can serve as a good tool for linguistic research Ellis (1997:52) suggests that contrastive analysis should be combined with another type of analysis, namely

error analysis, to determine what the underlying causes of a L2 learner’s errors are In

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‘the present study Contrastive Analysis is also regarded an important tool in understanding language transfer in second language learning.-A detailed comparison of the native language, i.e., Vietnamese and the target language, i.e., English is made in section 2.5 to draw conclusions about the process of language transfer specific to the English interlanguage of the Vietnamese students

2.3.3 Cognitive theory

In addition to the above approaches, a cognitive approach to language transfer has prevailed in the field of L2 acquisition over the last decades Cognitive theory is a learning theory of psychology that attempts to explain human behavior by

understanding the thought processes It sees L2 acquisition as a conscious and reasoned

thinking process, involving the deliberate use of learning strategies Modern cognitive psychologists believe that learning involves complex mental processes, including memory, attention, language, concept formation, and problem solving (Schmid, 1996:208) Unlike behaviorists, cognitive psychologists consider that it is essential to study an individual’s thoughts and expectations in order to understand the learning process With the emphasis on memory and complex thought processes, the cognitive approach appears well suited for investigating the most sophisticated types of human learning, such as reasoning, problem solving, and creativity With respect to errors the cognitivists take them in a different perspective from that of the behaviorists Whereas for the latter errors are a sign of failure, for the former errors are inevitable in the process of learning The cognitivists believe that if deviations are natural in acquiring the first language, they are also natural in language learning Crystal (1987:372) stated that “errors provide positive evidence about the nature of the learning process, as the learner gradually works out what the FL system is.”

However, there have been only a few empirical studies about this approach so far Although we know that the processes of automatizing and restructuring are central

to the approach, it is still not clear what kinds of structures will be automatized through

‘practice and what will be restructured (Croft, 2004:46) Also it cannot predict which L1

‘structures will be transferred, which will not, and cannot explain complicated linguistic issues concerning the process of L2 acquisition

In conclusion, the above-mentioned theories have different strengths and can complement each other While the behaviorist approach is more practical in the first stage of learning a second language, the contrastive theory helps explain and predict errors due to negative language transfer, and the cognitive approach appears well suited

for investigating errors in the more advanced stages With this understanding, the

negative influence of language transfer is considered in the following sections

2.4 The negative influence of language transfer on non-native speakers

Language Transfer has long been a controversial issue Some studies found that L1 transfer did occur in L2 learning, whereas others showed that L1 had no effects

on L2 learning at all However, many recent studies support the view that cross- linguistic influences can impact second-language acquisition A lot of empirical evidence indicates the L1 transfer from phonology, and morphology, lexical, semantic and syntactic and pragmatic, etc Benson (2002:68) stated that it is now generally accepted that language transfer, or cross-linguistic influence, does occur, but is a far more complex phenomenon than hitherto believed Mahmoud (2006:29) pointed out that the data on the interlanguage and language transfer show that it is highly probable

that L2 learners will always think most often in their L1, even at the advanced level

Lado (1957, in Gass and Selinker 1983:1) even considers native language as the primary source of errors Leveston (1983:154) contend that all second language

21

learners begin by assuming that for every word in their mother tongue there is a single

translation equivalent in foreign language The assumption of word-for-word translation equivalence or “thinking in the mother tongue” is the only way a learner can

begin to communicate in a second language Webster (1987:364) and his co-

researchers have reported that ““We have, however, worked on the assumption that first language interference is one major cause of student errors We find this to be self- evident as a general principle, though individual errors are often far more complex in origin.” Sharing the same opinion, Swan and Smith (1987:11), in their articles in a practical reference book with 19 language backgrounds entitled Learner English, also commented that “They are all clearly convinced that the interlanguages of the learners

they are discussing are specific and distinct so that it makes sense to talk about Thai

English, Japanese English, Greek English and so on; and they all obviously see mother- tongue influence as accounting for many of the characteristic problems they described.”

Leila Farkamekh (2006:65) maintained that a French student wishing to learn the English language is confronted with a lot of issues of language transfer, though

English and French languages have many similar points For example, while in French

the agreement of the possessive adjective is done with the noun that follows, in English

it agrees with the possessor and not the noun that follows This causes French learners

to make errors Also, French students would face the obstacles created by the

difference in the use of the articles for attributive phrases

Fillmore and Snow (2000:15) expressed the same belief when dealing with the negative language transfer of Chinese speakers They wrote in their paper entitled What Teachers Need to Know about Language: “The native Chinese speaker who treats plurals and past tenses as optional rather than obligatory in English is reflecting the tules of Chinese.” Chan (2004, cited in Chen 2006:2) examined English writing

ive error types investigated, most errors were closely related to the subjects’ mother

tongue The data from interviews with the students also confirm that EFL students first

‘called upon their mother tongue before producing their English writings

In a paper presented at the National Association for Bilingual Education, Dam (2001) stated that mother-tongue influence on non-native learners is undeniable He

‘explained how Spanish-speaking English language learners make errors in their -interlanguage by borrowing patterns from their mother tongue In this paper Dam cited

‘the examples illustrating these interference-induced errors from his own observations

as well as those shared by bilingual education teachers enrolled in his graduate-level course in second-language acquisition during the years at Texas Woman’s University

He pointed out that Spanish learners make errors in articles because in Spanish the definite article (el, la) is used with possessive pronouns, and the indefinite article (un, uno, una) is not used before nouns describing profession, occupation or social status Spanish learners have also considerable difficulty with English prepositions Another example of language transfer errors is the adverbs of frequency In Spanish, adverbs of frequency have various possible positions in the sentence, but not the typical central position as in English Similarly, Hakuta (1977:295) considered the example of a native speaker of Spanish who says “Js the house of my mother.” The Spanish equivalent would be “Es la casa de mi madre.” The English utterance contains two errors, whose sources can be clearly traced back to Spanish Spanish allows subject pronouns to be deleted When this rule is transferred to English, “This is” or “It is” simply becomes “Js.” Also, Spanish uses the possessed-possessor order; thus we have

“the house of my mother” (instead of “my mother’s house’; in Spanish “la casa de mi madre’’)

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Faghih (1997, cited by Karimnia, 2007:290) undertakes an overview of Iranian

leamers’ language transfer errors in his study with an interest in contrastive analysis

‘approach as a suitable testing ground for language transfer He revealed that the most

‘common source of error is the influence of the native language, and that in processing

English syntactic structures, native speakers adopt certain strategies similar to those of

‘first-language learners

In sum, according to many researchers, the influence of non-native languages

would occur to any learner wishing to learn a foreign language, though the degree of

influence depends on many factors, e.g language background, language area, learning

Lo

‘environment, learner level, etc

2.5 Negative language transfer by Vietnamese students

The present section focuses on the native language interference errors that are

common for EFL learners in Vietnam According to Dam (2001:1), many syntactical

structures of Vietnamese and English are strikingly different, causing Vietnamese learners to make some types of persistent errors in English; and in most cases, the negative transfer of Vietnamese sentence patterns in Vietnamese learners’ English writing reflects negative transfer of Vietnamese thought patterns In this section CA of different thought patterns in Vietnamese and English languages is applied to find out those of English language similar and different to Vietnamese sentence patterns

However, instead of overall comparison between Vietnamese and English, in this study

the researcher contrasted these two languages on the core elements of speech, including

verbs, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, articles, word order, etc Below are the examples of

typical Vietnamese interference errors taken from the work done on the subject of

language transfer by the authors and researchers who investigated the language transfer errors frequently made by their Vietnamese students of English in their learning

Native Vietnamese learners

‘2.5.1.1 Morphological] pluralization of nouns:

Morphological pluralization of nouns is a notorious problem for the

‘Vietnamese students In Vietnamese the plurality of a noun phrase is encoded in the

‘preceding numerals or determiners, that is to say, in Vietnamese, nouns in the plural form remain the same or simply added “những”, “nhiều”, “cdc”, etc before the noun,

‘whereas in English, nouns in the plural form may be added an “s” or have different

‘ending, So it is likely for Vietnamese students to make errors

Table 2.2: Examples of interference errors in morphological

pluralization of nouns (Le, 2006:60)

Họ là những sinh viên giỏi They are good student

(instead of They are good students.)

Họ mua nhiêu đô chơi cho trẻ con ở They bought a lot of toy for children in the

(instead of They bought a_lot of toys for

children in the kindergarten.)

Ching tôi đã viếng thăm nhiéu dia danh | We have visited many beautiful place in

dep ở đất nước bạn your country

(instead of We have visited many beautiful

places in your country.)

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2.5.1.2 Morphological change of adjectives and comparatives

Comparative and superlative forms of adjectives pose difficult problems for Vietnamese students It is because Vietnamese adjectives do not change in forming comparative or superlative and just added hon, bang, nhdt, whereas the English monosyllabic and some disyllabic adjectives are inflected for degree of comparison in much more complex ways, and other adjectives express the same distinction by compounding with more and most

Table 2.3: Examples of interference errors in morphological change

of adjectives (Le, 2006:65)

Con sông này rộng hơn con sông kia This river is large than that one

(instead of This river is larger than that one.) Chị ấy lái xe cần thận hơn chông phải | Does she drive carefully than her

Ngôi nhà này to băng ngôi nhà kia This house is big equal to that house

(instead of This house is as_big as that

house)

2.5.1.3 Morphological change of persons when functioning as personal pronouns

in objective case, possessive adjectives or possessive pronouns

Vietnamese students have considerable difficulties in mastering the use of English personal pronouns Pronouns, the inflected parts of speech in English, have

objective case forms, such as me, her, him, us, them in addition to the nominative (7,

she, he, we, they) and possessive forms (my, his, her, our, their)

Table 2.4: Examples of interference errors in morphological change

of personal pronouns (Tran, 1993:145)

Nó thông mình hơn tôi He is more intelligent than me

(instead of He is more intelligent than I )

Nó làm việc đó cho tôi He does that for I

(instead of He does that for me.)

Quyên từ điền tiếng Anh này là của tôi, This English dictionary is my

or This English dictionary is of I

(instead of This English dictionary is mine.)

Ong dy hién mình cho sự nghiệp cao cả

tủa dat nước

He devoted him to the noble cause of his

2.5.1.4 Morphological change of verbs in tenses, persons and numbers in

‘agreement with the subjects

Dam (2001:3) noted that tense system is a notorious problem for the Vietnamese students This can be explained by the fact that Vietnamese beginners almost have no idea about the system of English tenses of verbs Although tenses and aspects of verbs are the key point of grammar in English, Vietnamese language does

not share this feature Vietnamese is one of the many languages that do not use

inflectional means to mark tenses In Vietnamese the verbs are always in the infinitive form, whereas English verbs are the most heavily inflected, having both a strong conjugation with internal vowel change, for example, sing, sang, sung, and a weak conjugation with dental suffixes indicating past tense, as in play, played The third person singular has an -s ending, as in does The structure of verbs in Vietnamese language is not complex, compared with that of The English verbs In order to form the

past tense, it is very simple for Vietnamese people to use the particle “da@’ Similarly,

the particle “sé” is used to form the future tense, and the particle “dang” to form the continuous tense Therefore, the use of tenses and aspects in English is challenging for Vietnamese students

Table 2.5: Examples of interference errors in morphological change

of verbs (Dam, 2001:3)

Ông thây đang dạy cú pháp tiếng Việt The teacher teaches Vietnamese syntax

(instead of The teacher is teaching

Vietnamese syntax

Chúng tôi sông ở TP HCM từ năm 1975 We live in Ho Chi Minh city since 1975

(instead of We have lived in Ho Chi

‘Toi da gap một bạn cũ tuân rồi I meet an old friend last week

F (instead of He met an old friend last

week.)

WWhieu người chưa bao giờ nhìn thấy tuyét | Many people never see snow

(instead of Many people have_never seen

ipresent special difficulty for Vietnamese learners In the standard classification, English

Le (2006:70) paid attention to the use of English parts of speech which may

‘words are Classified into eight major classes These parts of speech are used according

to their function in the sentence On the contrary, different parts of speech in Vietnamese may have the same form For example, the word phdt trién may be translated into English words develop, development, developmental, developing, developed The grammatical function of a Vietnamese word is mainly shown in terms of

the context or word order Vietnamese students feel perplexed to identify an English

word belonging to which part of speech Therefore, it is likely for them to make errors when deciding which part of speech should be used in different cases

Table 2.6: Examples of interference errors in the misuse of parts of

speech (Le, 2006:70)

Chúng tôi hòan thành bài tập vê nhà

rất dễ dàng (instead of We have finished the homework We have finished the homework very easy

29

very easily.)

Hanh phic thi quan trong hon tién bac | Happy is more important than money

instead of Happiness is more important than

money.)

Hú thuộc là thói quen không tối Smoke is a bad habit

bi thich cua anh ta la héi hoa His hobby is paint

ETE (instead of His hobby is painting.)

Rự hấp dân của cuộc sông thành phô có |_ The aitractive oƒ city life can easily lead to ậ

bẻ dé dang dan dén su phạm pháp của | juvenile delinqgueney `

lanh thiếu niên (instead of The attraction of city life can

easily lead to juvenile delinquency.)

he differences between definite, indefinite and zero article are not very difficult to earn, However, it is not quite easy for Vietnamese learners of English to grasp the fotion of articles because Vietnamese language uses them in different ways than English does In Vietnamese, the noun is often used in combination with such particles

Is cdi, con, chiéc, cuc, etc to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun Vietnamese students feel perplexed when they decide which article should be used or

30

Am: Ệ

ino articles at all Therefore, they often make such errors as omission of article, addition

tof article or wrong use of article In addition, Vietnamese students are likely to make

errors when dealing with countable nouns and uncountable nouns because the concept rabout countable nouns and uncountable nouns does not exist in Vietnamese

Table 2.7: Examples of interference errors in the misuse of articles

(Dam, 2001:3)

“Mary là cô gái vui tính Mary is Q funny girl

(instead of Mary is a funny girl.)

Đó sẽ là giải pháp hoàn hảo cho vấn dé That would be @ perfect solution

to our problem

(instead of That would be the perfect

solution to our problem.)

cua ching ta

lôi thích âm nhạc, thơ ca và hội họa I love the music, the poetry and the art

(instead of I love O music, O poetry and O

art.)

Chúng tôi hy vọng rằng chúng tôi sẽ | We truly hope that we will hear a good news sớm được nghe tin tốt lành SOOH

(instead of We truly hope that we will hear

Q good news soon.)

Đường phô đây rác rưởi The streets are full of garbages

(instead of The streets are full of garbage.)

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