Common errors and causes in sentence writing of firstyear English majors

LAC HONG UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE RESEARCH REPORT COMMON ERRORS AND CAUSES IN SENTENCE WRITING OF FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT LHU Student: NGUYEN THI MY PHUOC Class: 1

LAC HONG UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

RESEARCH REPORT

COMMON ERRORS AND CAUSES IN SENTENCE WRITING

OF FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT LHU

Student: NGUYEN THI MY PHUOC

Class: 15AV112

BIEN HOA, DECEMBER 2019

LAC HONG UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE

RESEARCH REPORT

Common errors and causes in sentence writing of first-year

english majors at LHU

Student: NGUYEN THI MY PHUOC Advisor: PHAM THI NGHIA, MA

BIEN HOA, DECEMBER 2019

COMMON ERRORS AND CAUSES IN SENTENCE WRITING OF FIRST-YEAR

ENGLISH MAJORS AT LHU

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 1

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 2

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS 3

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 4

1 Statement of the problem 5

2 Purposes of the study 6

3 Significance of the study 7

4 The scope of the study 7

5 Research Questions 8

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 9

1 The overview of writing 9

2 Errors 10

2.1 Error definition 10

2.2 Error significations 10

2.3 Error analysis 11

3 Classification of writing sentence errors 12

3.1 Sentential level errors 13

3.2 Word level errors 18

4 Causes of errors in sentence writing skill 24

4.1 The influence of the mother tongue 25

4.2 Characteristics of teaching and learning writing 26

4.3 Incomplete application of rules 28

CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY 30

1 Objectives 30

2 Methodology 30

2.1 Research approach 30

2.2 Research design 30

3 Population and sampling 30

4 Data collection instruments 31

5 Procedure and time frame 32

6 Data analysis method 32

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION ON THE FINDINGS 34

1 Errors Frequently Found in English Sentences Written by first-year majors at LHU 34

1 1 Punctuation marks 35

1.2 Spelling 37

1.3 Articles 37

1.4 Word choice 38

1.5 Prepositions 39

1.6 Nouns 39

2 Causes of the Errors 40

2.1 Sources of data 40

2.2 Results gained from the data 48

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 50

1 Conclusion 50

2 Recommendation: 50

REFERENCES 53

APPENDIX 1 588

APPENDIX 2 599

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

In order to complete the research on the topic "Common errors and causes in

sentence writing of first-year English majors at Lac Hong University", excepting my

effort, I have received a lot of help and encouragement from so many people who I would like to express my thanks and respect to

First of all, my greatest respect is for the Board of Directors of Lac Hong University Thanks to their creating an encouraging education environment, students are enabled to boost knowledge and improve skills

Secondly, I would like to express my sincere thanks and deep gratitude to Ms Pham Thi Nghia, who has been devoted to giving me useful guidance and support, and constantly encouraged me throughout the research process Furthermore, I wish to heartily thank to all teachers in Faculty of English language of Lac Hong University for helping me to cultivate my valuable knowledge and sharpen necessary skills so that I can complete this research successfully I would also like to thank Mr Tran Vo Thanh Tung, Ms Trinh Dieu Hien, Mr Nguyen Duc Duy Tan as well as students from 4 classes of 18AV for enthusiastically facilitating me in conducting the survey

Last but not least, I would like to thank my family and friends for always encouraging, sharing, helping me enthusiastically and contributing ideas to finish my essay Although I have tried my best to complete my thesis but there may still be many shortcomings, I am looking forward to receiving valuable contribution and suggestions from teachers so that I can gain experience for future research

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LHU: Lac Hong University

EA: Error Analysis

L1: First language

L2: Second language

ESL: English as a Second Language

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

List of tables Pages

Table 1 Types, frequency, percentage, and rank of the sentential level

errors found in the English sentences

34

Table 2 Types, frequency, percentage, and rank of the word level errors

found in the English sentences

35

Table 3: The students’ methods of studying sentence writing skill 44 Table 4: The students’ means of studying sentence writing skill 44

List of charts Pages

Chart 1: The students’ awareness about the importance of writing 42 Chart 2: The interest of students in writing English sentences 43

Chart 3: The students' frequency of borrowing reference documents from

library at LHU

45

Chart 4: The frequency of students' asking for correcting their writings 46 Chart 5: The students' procedure of writing sentences 47 Chart 6: Difficulties in writing English sentences 48

CHAPTER 1:

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays, English is a language commonly used in international transactions Vietnam is not out of this trend According to Quality Training Solution website, Vietnam education system has made English a compulsory subject in school seats since the elementary years Moreover, many companies and organizations in Vietnam, especially multinational companies, organizations require employees to have English proficiency (the higher the better) Therefore, many students have found the necessity

of learning English to meet the needs of modern society Also, Quality Training Solution website mentioned that English is the international language and is considered

as the easiest language to learn among the foreign languages that Vietnamese people can access

In the four basic skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing, writing is considered to be the most difficult skill to master (Hengwichitkul, 2009), Watcharapunyawong & Usaha (2013), Rattanadilok Na Phuket & Othman (2015) To obtain the style of writing in a proper and coherent manner, students need to master grammar points and accumulate vocabulary Depending on purposes of study and work, the writing style will be different, which makes many students encounter many difficulties in writing, especially for first-year students due to their limited vocabulary and knowledge of English

Within the scope of this study, the researcher will point out and analyze the causes of errors that first-year students often make when they write English sentences Next, the author would like to offer a few suggestions to help students avoid making mistakes when learning writing sentences skill

1 Statement of the problem

In the world, there have been many studies related to the subject “Common errors

and causes in sentence writing of first-year English majors” In fact, A Hinnon (2015)

claimed that there are “more than 50 articles on first-year student writing errors published in academic journals since 1780” Studies conducted in China, Thailand, India, and Korea indicated that the students have many difficulties in their first writing

of English sentences Findings showed that the main cause of writing error is the interference of the mother tongue (Jenwitheesuk, 2009) and that the two problems that concerned first-year students the most were grammar and vocabulary (Mojica, 2010)

In a recent study of Sattayatham and Ratanapinyowong (2008), for first-year students,

“writing is more complex in that it tests students” ability to use a language and the ability to express ideas”

In Vietnam, although writing English courses are on curricular of most universities, the research topics or official scientific reports on this issue are still less well-documented This is considered as a challenge for university students in Vietnam

in general and in Lac Hong University in particular who have been trying to develop their writing skills With the different language, unique culture and socio-political

characteristics, great-reference-value researches related to the theme “Common errors

and causes in sentence writing of first-year English majors” published worldwide

cannot be fully applied to the educational context in Vietnam Therefore, the actual study about it is extremely essential in this context

In the curriculum of Faculty of English language at Lac Hong University, there were many basic skills taught, of which writing is one of the most important skills For first-year students, there are two courses of writing, writing 1 and writing 2, which mostly focus on writing sentences The two courses are arranged to provide a steady foundation for students to write academic papers, scientific thesis, because a good graduation thesis is always made up of good sentences In fact, when students want to write an essay in English well, they have to know how to write good paragraphs To

write a good paragraph, they have to know how to write good sentences that are grammatically correct and full of semantics So, the core of good English writing starts with writing a good sentence To write a grammatically correct sentence, they have to firstly grasp the basic principles of English grammar such as phrases, clauses and sentences Next, they have to choose the type of sentence: single sentence, compound sentence or complex sentence to convey intending information In other words, the sentence must be grammatically and logically correct in meaning

However, first-year writing courses are often a challenge to students Also, this will be even more difficult when the students lack both language knowledge and language competence As the result, "students who feel incompetent at writing avoid writing They do not practice They do not get better" (Stephen Tchudi, 1997, p.35) This leads to low scores in the exams; hence, the situation of re-learning, retesting is fairly high Besides, Lac Hong University more and more attracts many new students come to attend For the Faculty of English language in particular, the number of freshman is around double in two recent years

For these above difficult states, the author chose the topic" Common errors and

causes in sentence writing of first-year English majors at Lac Hong University " to do

research, from which the author would like to find out suggestions to improve students” sentence writing skill

2 Purposes of the study

The study aims to analyze the common errors in sentence writing skill of freshmen in Faculty of English Language at Lac Hong University Besides, the objective of this study is to identify the causes of these errors From that, the researcher can find effective solutions to help students synthesize and apply theory to solve problems arising when they learn writing sentences A deeper purpose is to limit the re-examination status of students so that they are motivated to study and stick to the four years of study at the school

3 Significance of the study

Indeed, first-year students often face many difficulties in writing a sentence Students often get confused when thinking of which grammatical structure to use as well as what phrases are appropriate for the writing, thus making mistakes is unavoidable

In terms of learning, by pointing out the common errors in writing sentences of first-year students and analyzing the causes, the author hopes English learners in general as well as first-year students at Lac Hong University in particular will overcome the errors to build sentences that are easily understandable and clear

In term of teaching, this study can help teachers and administrators of the Faculty

of English Language have a more comprehensive view of the writing situation of freshman students, which is very helpful to them in improving their teaching methods and lesson design more effective

Another significant thing is that the Lac Hong University in general and the school's English Faculty in particular are increasing the number of students attending Especially in the past two years (2018 - 2019), the number of first-year students of the faculty doubled compared to the previous years This changes the distribution of teaching subjects Besides, teachers in the Faculty always want to cultivate experience

by undertaking different subjects Among of them are writing 1 and writing 2 Therefore, the author hopes this study will be somewhat helpful for teachers who first taught writing and are interested in teaching writing

4 The scope of the study

Because of the limited time, the research can only focus on the sentence writing skill of first-year students - Faculty of English Language - Campus 2 - Lac Hong University Therefore, the results may be partly subjective

CHAPTER 2:

LITERATURE REVIEW

1 The overview of writing

As mentioned above, writing is a complex task; it is the “most difficult of the language abilities and skills to acquire (Allen & Corder, 1974, p 177) Therefore, many linguists were interested in this topic to do research From their studies, there are dozens of definition of writing mentioned Nevertheless, it is not easy to choose which one is the best accurate

According to Swarts, Heidi, Linda S Flower, and John R Hayes (1984, p.61),

“writing is simply the act of expressing what you think or saying what you mean” However, writing is not a simply process like you’re your thinking by written it down Writing involves more than just producing words sentences Lannon (1989, p 9) defined writing as “a process of transforming the materials discovered by research inspiration, accident, trial and error, or whatever into a message with a definite meaning In the similar vein, Weigle (2007) recognized the complex of writing process The author stated that writing is a process of creating ideas, opinions, relationships among linguistic formats, and structures The author further indicated that when writing, writers must combine and apply a lot of knowledge and skills categories He added that this process will often be interrupted and affected when the writers seek for appropriate structures and vocabulary Apparently, writing requires more time and effort of learners (Liu and Braine, 2005)

Writing is one of the most important skills in acquiring a second language in general and English in particular (Reid, 1995 and Ferris, 2005) Writing skills include the development of ideas, expressions of language, and experiences on different writing topics Each learner has ideas, language proficiency and understanding of different topics For most of learners, writing is regarded as productive skills that are

“difficult to acquire” (Tribble, 1996, p 3) "Effective writing requires a number of

things: a high degree of development in the organization of ideas and information; a high degree of accuracy so there is no ambiguity of meaning; the use of complex grammatical devices for focus and emphasis; and careful choice of vocabulary, grammatical patterns, and sentence structures to create a style which is appropriate to the subject matter and the eventual readers” To be able to create a piece of writing that intended audiences can understand and acquire, writers should know how to write a connected series of words and sentences which are logically and grammatically linked

2 Errors

2.1 Error definition

Errors are always the main concern in teaching foreign languages Corder (1971,

p.152) stated that errors are “the result of some failure of performance” In the similar vein, Norrish (1983, p.7) defined “an error” as a systematic divergence that happens when a learner has not learnt something and consistently “get it wrong” In a study of Richards (1989), “errors” are identified as the faulty use of linguistic items that express incomplete learning For further definition, James (1998, p.1) identified a language error as “an unsuccessful bit of language” In the 20’s, the study into error by Brown (2007) demonstrated that errors are the “noticeable derivation from grammar of a native speaker, reflect the competence of the learner” and reveal “a portion of learners’ competence in the target language” (p.285) There are a number of error definition; however, the definitions mentioned in studies of Richards (1989) and Brown (2007) are considered the most appropriate base

2.2 Error significations

Many linguists proposed that errors are not always bad at all, but significant in some extents According to Corder (1967), student-made errors are useful for both teachers and students For teachers, errors are evidence of the student’s learning language progress Teachers can refer to it to help students with their writing skills For students, errors can be served as resources for their language learning In addition,

“errors enrich our knowledge on the nature, the process and the steps of second language acquisition and consequently on the planning of courses incorporating the psychology of second language learning” (HM Al-Saadi, 2000, p.16) The author added that from errors, there is an entailment that “a careful analysis of errors is an indicator for both teachers and learners of what has been learned and what still needs to

be worked on and what not yet being acquired” (p 16)

2.3 Error analysis

There have been many linguists and educators who have participated in this field

to find out the effective methods For many years, Error Analysis has attracted attention a number of scholars in the field of second language acquisition Crystal (1987) considered The EA as a technique to identify, classify and systematically interpret the unacceptable errors made by learners This method emphasizes “the significance of errors in learners’ interlanguage system” (Brown, 1994, p 204) I Abushihab, AH El-Omari, (2011) defined EA as “a branch of applied linguistics” which has two functions: theoretical and practical (p 545) The EA method examines the types of errors and their causes depending on the level of language proficiency, from small errors like missing words and word repetition to big errors in language knowledge or language skills

The EA method is used by many authors in the research It helps researchers better understand the learning and constructing language process James (1998), Nonkokhetkong (2013), Hinnon (2014) assessed that the analysis of errors found in student” pieces of writing can be very beneficial Not only can it help reveal the strategies used by learners to learn a language, it also assists teachers as well as other concerning people to know what difficulties learners encounter in order to improve their teaching (Dulay, Burt and Krashen, 1982) In fact, the EA helps teachers analyze errors made by EFL and ESL learners when they learn a language and helps learners pass the assessment from many different aspects In a study of James (1998), he proposed that EA is the analysis of learners' errors by comparing what the learners

have learned with what they lack It also deals with giving the explanation of the errors

in order to accurately reduce them The most significant contribution of Error Analysis lies in its success in elevating the status of errors from undesirability to that of a guide (Ellis, 1995)

The different procedures for EA are stated as follows:

- Corder (1981, p.36) suggested three steps of the EA

Step 1 Identifying errors

Step 2 Descripting errors

Step 3 Explaining errors

- Choon (1993) recommended three key steps of the EA

Step 1 Identifying errors

Step 2 Classifying errors

Step 3 Determining how much errors deviate from the target language norm

- Ellis (1994) suggested an alternative as the following:

Step 1 Defining the samples

Step 2 Identifying errors in the samples

Step 3 Classifying the errors

Step 4 Explaining the errors

Step 5 Evaluating the errors

3 Classification of writing sentence errors

In discussing the classification of writing sentence errors, Halliday and Hasan (1976, p.48) divided writing errors into five types: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion Based on the features of writing errors, James (1998) proposes five categories of errors which include grammatical errors (adjectives, adverbs, articles, nouns, possession, pronouns, prepositions and verbs), substance errors (capitalization, punctuation and spelling), lexical errors (word formation and word selection), syntactic errors (coordination/ subordination, sentence structure and ordering), and semantic errors (ambiguous communication and miscommunication)

For more specific types of writing, Bitchener, Young & Cameron (2005), and Darus & Subramaniam (2006) identified that there are 12 types of errors that students often make in writing English sentences They are: singular and plural nouns, tenses, verbs, subject-verb agreement, word order, articles, word types, verb forms, capitalization, missing words, preposition and punctuation

In another studies by Hengwichitkul (2006) and Runkati (2013), writing sentence errors are classified into two main types At the sentential level, the errors include subject-verb agreement, tenses, word orders, relative clauses, passive sentences, parallel structures, punctuation, fragments and run-ons At word level, the errors include nouns, articles, prepositions, word choices and spellings

To sum up, in recent studies, the analysis of errors found at the sentential level and the word level was adopted

3.1 Sentential level errors

3.1.1 Fragment

This is a very common mistake, which is writing incomplete sentences According to the definition of a sentence in academic English, there must be a subject and a verb

Sentence fragment confuses readers because it does not fully express an idea

Example: Running for the bus that was turning the corner This is not a sentence, "that

was turning the corner" is just a modifying attribute for the noun "the bus", and just

clarifying the meaning for "the bus "

3.1.2 Subject-verb agreement

This is an error when the verb is not divided according to the subject In English,

it is a mandatory rule that the verb must agree with the subject A singular subject takes

a singular verb whereas a plural subject takes a plural verb (R Wee, J Sim and K Jusoff,

2010) For example: The number of students registered in the class are 20

The correct answer is: The number of students registered in the class is 20

The following structures are prone to this error

- The number/ a number of

- Neither/ either

- A majority of

- All, every, none…

The rule is as follows:

Some of the following structures come with the plural verb

- A number of + plural noun (“a number of” in this case means: many)

Ex: Recently, a number of students are dropped out

- The adj indicates a group of people (the rich, the poor, the blind, the elderly) Ex: The rich are usually greedy for honors

- A majority of + plural noun

Ex: A majority of students are not good at writing

- Collective nouns when referring to the members of that collection

Ex: The staff are in disagreement about the findings

- None of + plural noun

Ex: None of the students have finished the exam yet

- No + Noun (plural)

Ex: No children in my group cause troubles

Some of the following structures come with singular verbs

- The number of + Noun + Verb (singular)

Ex: The number of students dropping out is on the decrease

- No + Noun (uncountable) + Verb (singular)

Ex: No work was done

- None of the + Noun (uncountable) + Verb (singular)

Ex: None of the above coffee is sold

- Either / Neither + V (singular)

Ex: Neither of them is the thief

- Each / Every + Noun (singular) + V (singular)

Ex: Every student has to finish the test on time

- Each / Every / One + of + Noun (plural) + V (singular)

Ex: Each of the students has to submit the task by next Monday

- Everyone / everybody / everything + V (singular)

Ex: Everyone is tired

3.1.3 Word order

Word order refers to the way words are arranged in a sentence The English word order is strict and inflexible This means that the order of words in an English sentence rarely changes: the subject almost always appears before the predicate

The error of word order can be simply understood as placing the word or term in the wrong position and accidentally losing the original meaning of the sentences (L White, 1985)

For example: From the graphs, it can be concluded that are young people much more

mobile than previous generations

“That are young people much more mobile than previous generations” in this sentence

is not a relative clause but a That-clause so that the clause “young people are much

more mobile” is correct

3.1.4 Run-on sentence

This error is caused when writers combine 2 or more independent clauses together without using punctuation or conjunction (for, and, or, then, rather than,

as as, both and, ) logically

Ex: “He does not like going out he stays in.”

3.1.5 Tense misuse

In English, each tense has its own formula and usage, but because they are not sure of basic grammar knowledge, learners often make mistakes when writing grammatical sentences

For example, when describing an action that happened before another action in the past, they often use the past simple tense while the past perfect tense should be used

Example: Before he went out, he locked the door must be rewritten “Before he

went out, he had locked the door”

3.1.6 Parallel structures

When information in a sentence is given in the form of a list, all parts of the list must follow a parallel structure For example, among the conjunctions: For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So, it is compulsory to use the same set of grammatical components: a series of nouns, a set of adjectives, a series of verb, a series of V-ing or a series of clauses

Ex: I like to sing and dancing

This sentence is incorrect because the word forms “to sing” and “dancing” are not

in the same kind It should have been “I like singing and dancing”

3.1.6 Punctuation

Punctuation marks are not a new topic in English, but not many people are

interested in them because everyone thinks that their usage is the same as in

Vietnamese But the truth is that they vary greatly both in their usage and in their

meaning

There are six main types of punctuation marks in English

- The Period

The period (.) is used to end a complete sentence with enough subjects and predicates

Example: I will do it now

- The comma

There are five ways to use commas (,):

+ Used to list

For example: I have two houses, two cars and three motorbikes

+ Used to separate dependent clauses and long prepositional phrases

For example: According to Corder (1967), student-made errors are useful for both

teachers and students

+ Use to separate two independent clauses connected by conjunctions such

as "but", "and", “so”, etc

Example: “He went to the movies, and his wife went to the mall.”

+ Used in direct speech

For example: He said, "If you try your best, you will become successful."

+ Used to separate nouns, noun phrases or non-defining relative clause

For example: Bill Gates, the richest man in the world, comes from Seattle

- The question mark

The question mark (?) is used at the end of the question

For example: How long have been there?

- The Exclamation mark

Exclamation mark (!) is put at the end of sentences to express surprise, or to emphasize something

Example: I can’t believe I am the winner!

- The colon

The colon (:) is used for two purposes:

+ To explain or provide information

For example: There’s one thing I want for my birthday: a car

+ Used in direct speech

For example: He announced to me: "I am going to quit this job!"

- The semi colon (;)

There are two ways to use this punctuation:

+ Used to separate two independent clauses - either of two clauses or both clauses are short and have similar content

For example: I love listening music; I do it anytime when I am free

+ Used to separate two or more groups of words containing commas

For example: You can order a sandwich with bacon, egg, and cheese; ham, egg,

tomato, and cheese; or tomato, lettuce, and avocado

3.2 Word level errors

3.2.1 Word choices

- Error of using synonyms

In English, synonyms are words with similar meanings and people often use them

to avoid word repetition

+ Matching error

This is a common mistake students make For first-year students, it is not easy to

distinguish the difference between pairs of synonym such as big / large, firm / hard, and ask / question when they appear in combinations like: big mistake / large mistake;

firm government / hard government; ask somebody / question somebody, etc

Students often mistake the word “large” and “big” For example, students often write “He has a large mouth” when describing a man with a wide mouth

In this case the word “large” must be replaced with the word “big” because the phrase

“a large mouth” means he is a talkative person

Also, students often make mistake the words “older” and “elder” as in the example

below:

Example: My older sister is a singer “Older” and “elder” are both comparative forms

of old adjectives, but when it comes to the elder brother or sister in the family, writers

should use the word “elder”

In addition, students often use the wrong words in pairs of words with similar

meanings such as strong / healthy, question / ask, other / another, like / as, best / most

- Syntax errors

This is an error related to grammar rules used with words, usually caused by using the wrong grammatical structure

For example, many students choose the word “purport” in the following sentence:

Many people purports that alcohol is very harmful

In fact, the verb “purport” means to claim or pretend to be something and the structure that goes with this verb is the structure “purport to be / have something” The verb “purport” used in the above sentence is inaccurate The suitable verb to use here is “to claim” which means assertiveness, affirmation or statement of something The usual sentence pattern is the structure “claim something / that”

Ex: The governor claims (that) the immigration is in increase

Ex: He was badly damaged in the accident

The word “damage” often collocates with words for things and means to harm or

spoil something/somebody

Ex: All damaged items will be recouped

Therefore, we do not use “damage” in the sentence above, but the correct word here is the word “injured” This word often collocates with words to do with people

and means physically hurt or having an injury

- Error of using the wrong word form

This is probably the most common type of error when students use words to write sentences, especially words that have little difference in their writing style

For example:

1 I have difficult in unlocking the door - -> difficulty

2 You have to be strength to overcome bad things - -> strong

3.2.2 Error of articles

Many other languages do not require articles like English, so it is not surprising that errors of forgetting or misuse of articles are among the most common grammatical errors The rules about articles in English are actually quite complicated although there are just three articles: a, an, the

"A / an" are indefinite articles They are used in the following cases:

- Indicating things mentioned for the first time: He has two children: a son and

- Being used in exclamation: what “a” + noun

• What a memorable trip!

• What a handsome boy!

- Meaning "one": There is only a girl in my class

"The" is a definite article, implying that the thing in question has been mentioned before to the listener The article "the" is used for both countable nouns (singular and

plural) and uncountable nouns

Use the definite article "the" in the following cases:

- Demonstrating things and events told twice

- Representing the unique things: the sun, the earth, the moon, the sea, etc

- Standing before the adjective: the poor, the young, the old, the rich, etc

- Standing before words indicating proper names: the Nile, the Bach Dang hotel, the Mekong river, the Himalaya, etc

- Showing nationalities: the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the American, etc

- Standing before the name of the organization and states: the United Nations,

the United States the Asian

3.2.3 Preposition errors

For English language learners, making mistakes when using prepositions are also extremely popular This is not surprising, because in English prepositions are quite complex while the rules are relative The same preposition creates different meanings when being combined with different types of words Learners have to learn by heart

when seeing them, which is not an easy way

“I put your coat in the chair”

This sentence must be written as “I put your coat on the chair.”

In fact, some words indicating places like table, desk, chair, floor, wall, etc do not go with the preposition "in"

- Forms of prepositions in English

+ Simple prepositions: in, at, on, for, from, to, under, over, with, etc

+ Double prepositions: prepositions are created by combining two single prepositions: Into, onto, upon, without, within, underneath, throughout, from among, etc

• There is a cat running into the room

• He fell onto the road

• The report has to be completed within three days

+ Compound prepositions: prepositions are made with the prefix “a” or

“be”: About, among, across, amidst, above, against, Before, behind, beside, beyond, beneath, between, below, etc

+ Participle prepositions: According to, during, owing to, pending,

notwithstanding, past, concerning, regarding, touching, etc

+ Phrases used as prepositions: The prepositions include a phrase:

• Because of

• By means of

• In spite of

• In opposing to

For example, in the sentence “Her business has really taken off.”, the phrasal

verb “take off” in this sentence means becoming successful very fast Meanwhile, in the other one “After arriving home, I take off my coat”, the phrasal verb “take off” means doffing something

3.2.4 Errors of using nouns

There are two kinds of nouns: countable nouns and uncountable nouns

Countable nouns: nouns that we can count directly on that person or thing Most

concrete nouns fall into the countable category

For example: boy, apple, book, tree, etc

Students usually forget to add “s” or “es” after nouns when showing plural nouns

or articles before nouns when showing singular nouns

Ex: I have a lot of book (-> books)

I read book last night (-> a book)

Uncountable nouns: are substances, concepts that cannot be counted directly They are indirectly counts by using appropriate measurement such as a grain of rice, a

glass of water, a piece of news, etc

Most abstract nouns belong to this type

For example: meat, ink, chalk, water, etc

3.2.5 Errors of spelling

This is the most common type of error due to the carelessness of the students For the students, there are some words in English that are difficult to remember such as necessary, release, believe, specially, successful, conscience, conscious, conscientious,

etc

If a word has a single and double consonant nearby, it can cause learner to spell it

incorrectly

Some of the words that learners need to pay attention to are as follows:

- A single consonant followed by a pair of double consonants:

- A consonant can change when a noun changes into an adjective:

4 Causes of errors in sentence writing skill

There are many causes for these errors when learning the sentence writing skill of first-year majors The following are some of the reasons why students often make these types of errors while writing

According to Richards (1974), there were two causes of writing errors: the interference of learners’ mother tongue and the characteristics of the learning In the same direction, Norrish (1983, p 21-42) described the causes of language learners” errors as arising from carelessness, interference from the learners first language, translation from the first language, contrastive analysis, general order of difficulty, overgeneralization, incomplete application of rules, material-induced errors and a part

of language creativity In a recent study, Brown (2007) cited four causes of errors: interlingual transfer, intralingual transfer, learning context and communication strategies The author explained that interlingual transfer refers to the negative influence of the learner’s mother tongue In the other words, interlingual transfer error occurs when the learners make error by transfer their native language system into the target language system, but they are not aware of the differences between the two languages For intralingual transfer, it refers to the negative items within the target

language Intralingual errors 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” This means that the learners try to “derive the rules behind the data to which he/she has been exposed, and may develop hypotheses that correspond either to the mother tongue nor to the target language” (Richards, 1974, p.6)

In summary, errors can be arising from many different factors The causes of errors are influences of mother tongue, learning characteristics and incomplete application of rules The explanation of above causes will be clarified in more details

as follows:

4.1 The influence of the mother tongue

Language transfer is an important feature in the reception of a second language, and it contributes to a thorough explanation of any phenomena that occur in the reception of a second language According to SM Gass (1988), the knowledge about their native language and culture that learners have previously learned has a direct impact on the process of acquiring and applying pragmatic knowledge in other language studying According to this finding, negative transfer is understood as the improper application of structures and rules in the mother tongue in the L2 learning process This movement has a profound reason for the differences between the two languages

Yin and Ung (2001) identified that about fifty percent (50%) of the errors committed by first-year students spring from their first language In a study among Japanese ESL students, Kubota (1998) found that L2 students used similar patterns from L1 in their writings He emphasized that the students transfer rhetorical and organization patterns from the first language Similarly, in a study of Spanish students learning English, Barto, Nicol, J Witzel, and N Witzel (2009) discovered transferability of first language grammar and structure exists in the process of studying English

Students, especially first-year students, tend to think and translate word for word from their native language Moreover, they often make mistakes in word usage and word order due to the differences between the two languages Therefore, their writings are usually translated from their native languages into English, which makes their writing not academic and attached to the thinking of indigenous people

In Vietnam, it is easy to see that first-year students often express ideas in English writing in a Vietnamese way of thinking because of limited vocabulary, basic knowledge about phrase structure and clause structure and sentence structure In other words, they cannot distinguish the difference between these points of grammar For

example, Vietnam students often produce such sentence as “I very like reading books” instead of “I really like reading books” It is obvious that they will translate each word,

but use improper combination of English word types and word order in their writing This makes the sentence incoherent and sometimes makes the reader misunderstand the idea of the writer

4.2 Characteristics of teaching and learning writing

4.2.1 Limited teaching and learning time

Teachers and students have a lot of difficulties in teaching and studying writing in limited time Mahaletchumy, N (1994) argued that one of the difficulties is time-consuming for learning and teaching writing Sentence writing requires students write more than drafts before completing sentences Therefore, with limited teaching time, many teachers cannot complete their teaching in one or two hours of writing lessons per week Moreover, teachers may need to spend a lot of time reading and editing students’ drafts, which creates quite a large amount of work for them The failure of the teachers to promptly respond to the drafts for students to edit or rewrite makes the students’ drafts in vain Besides, when writing sentences, first-year students usually make quite a lot of errors in grammar, words, and structures These errors can become systematic errors if students are not promptly corrected (S Bourke and A Holbrook, 1992)

To sum up, because the amount of time for English writing skills can be said to

be very limited, the students have not been trained writing skills on a regular basis Therefore, they are not quick to create ideas and have no habit of thinking in English before writing Therefore, they make quite a lot of errors in their writing

4.2.2 Characteristics of first-year English majors in learning writing

sentences

Writing is a skill that requires learners to have not only certain knowledge about language (vocabulary, grammar) and different fields but also a lot of skills such as analysis, synthesis, thinking, reasoning, etc Besides, a positive, serious, and hard-working attitude is also essential for learning writing skills Because learning process

of writing English is considered as a process, not a product (D Murray, 1972 and RV White, 1988)

The specific characteristic of this subject is to create a product that is a sentence,

a paragraph or an essay So learners have to do many steps, some of them consist of many smaller steps There are steps that need to be repeated Repetition can ensure that

to some extent, students’ writing is good For the writing sentence process, it can be summarized into several steps: brainstorming, writing sentences, proofreading and editing, and rewriting the sentences These steps need to be repeated over and over so that the sentences are as complete as possible

In fact, although most English language freshmen consider English writing a difficult skill to conquer, they do not really attempt to overcome difficulties of the subject, which leads to generally low academic results compared to other skills, and little visible improvement by students in writing

Students are the subject of the learning process, but the majority of students do not show the self-motivation in their learning (Z Dörnyei, 1994) The demonstration is that they do not really set a goal for learning in general and a specific subject for writing In addition, many students are still very lazy to study, afraid to do homework even when

teachers assign tasks There are many cases that students do their work in a sketchy manner or copy it from Internet sources

According to VM Rosenberg (1989), writing is like swimming, so learners have

to practice it over and over again However, the fact is that first-year students do not practice writing skills on a regular basis Therefore, they are not quick to find ideas for writing and do not have the habit of thinking in English before writing

In short, students themselves are less likely to learn voluntarily, especially in learning their sentence writing skill

4.3 Incomplete application of rules

Limited knowledge of English grammar and vocabulary leads the writers to make writing sentence errors (Silva, 1993; Olsen, 1999; Weigle, 2002)

For vocabulary application, most of first-year students do not know the exact meaning

of a word In fact, English vocabulary system is extremely diversified (Chen, Ming, and Yi-Lun Li, 2010) Learning and knowing the meaning of words is not easy; moreover, in English, there are synonyms sometimes used for different contexts and interchangeable to avoid repetition (Ben-Ari Meta, 1998) However, some words that are in the same context interchangeably will change the sentence content The students

Chih-usually use the words “so” and “very” wrongly, although these words are the simplest

in English Two sentences “Thank you so much” and “Thank you very much” have the same meaning; nevertheless, in other contexts, the words “so” and “very” cannot be changed mutually For instance, in the sentence “I am very tired to continue doing this

work”, it is inaccurate to replace the word “very” by the word “so” In this case, with

the word “so”, the sentence will become “I am so tired that I cannot continue doing

this work” Indeed, students who learn to write English often make mistakes in finding

the right words for each context in their writing In addition, students who lack vocabulary will not know what kind of words they need to use to express their ideas while writing So, they often have to replace words and sentence structures they don't

know with what they have learned This has led to the way of “writing periphrastically”, which makes sentences confusing or meaningless

For grammar application, efficient grammar instruction helps students writing English more effectively (Valette, 1991) However, a huge number of first-year students are not good at English grammar It is the lack of mastery of basic grammar, which has made it difficult for students to use tenses, word structure, clause structure, and sentence structure when they write an English sentence, a paragraph or an essay correctly

Therefore, the most feasible way for students to use them correctly is to memorize If not, they will create sentences that are grammatically incorrect and incomplete