An investigation into some common errors in using auxiliary verbs made by first - year students at the Faculty of Information Technology - Thai Nguyen University

Therefore, she would like to conduct a study on some common errors in using auxiliary verbs made by first-year students at Faculty of Information Technology - Thai Nguyen University.. Ho

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG HOA

AN INVESTIGATION INTO SOME COMMON ERRORS IN USING AUXILIARY VERBS MADE BY FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS AT THE

FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY –

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY

Điều tra những lỗi thông thường trong sử dụng trợ động từ của sinh viên năm thứ nhất Khoa Công nghệ thông tin – Đại học Thái Nguyên

M.A MINOR THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60 14 10

HA NOI - 2010

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG HOA

AN INVESTIGATION INTO SOME COMMON ERRORS IN USING AUXILIARY VERBS MADE BY FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS AT THE

FACULTY OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY –

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY

Điều tra những lỗi thông thường trong sử dụng trợ động từ của sinh viên năm thứ nhất Khoa Công nghệ thông tin – Đại học Thái Nguyên

M.A MINOR THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 60 14 10

SUPERVISOR: NGUYỄN MINH CƯỜNG, M A

HA NOI - 2010

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGES

ACKNOWLEDGMENT ……… …… i

ABSTRACT ……… ……….……ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS ……… … iii

LIST OF TABLES ……….……v

LIST OF FIGURES ……… vi

PART 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale of the study 1

1.2 Aims of the study 2

1.3 Significance of the study 2

1.4 Scope of the study 3

1.5 Method of the study 3

1.6 Design of the study 4

PART 2 DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Auxiliary verbs in English 5

2.2.1 Types of auxiliary verbs 5

2.2.1 Functions of auxiliary verbs 7

2.2 Sources of errors in using auxiliary verbs 8

2.2.1 Performance errors……… 8

2.2.2 Imperfect learning……… 9

2.2.3 Overgeneralization……… 10

2.2.4 L1 transfer……… 10

2.3 English learners’ common auxiliary errors 11

2.3.1 Omission of auxiliary 12

2.3.2 Mis-ordering auxiliary 13

2.3.3 Confusion of auxiliary 13

2.3.4 Wrong subject-verb agreement 13

2.3.5 Addition of auxiliary 13

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CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research setting 15

3.2 Participants 15

3.3 Questionnaire design 16

3.4 Exercises 16

3.5 The interview 17

3.6 Data collection 17

CHAPTER 3 PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF THE DATA 4.1 Presentation of the data 18

4.1.1 The questionnaire for students 18

4.1.2 The questionnaire for teachers 23

4.1.3 The interview with teachers 24

4.1.4 The exercises for students 25

4.2 Discussion of the findings 31

4.2.1 Confusion of auxiliary 32

4.2.1Omission of auxiliary 33

4.2.2 Wrong subject-verb agreement 33

4.2.3 Mis-ordering auxiliary 34

4.2.5 Addition of auxiliary 34

4.3 Implications for teaching auxiliary verbs……….35

4.3.1 What teachers should take into consideration? 36

4.3.2 Suggested techniques for corrective feedback 37

4.3.3 Suggested solutions for practice 38

5.4 Suggestions for further research 39

PART 3 CONCLUSION ……… ……….… …… 40

REFERENCES 41 APPENDICES

v

LIST OF TABLES

vi

LIST OF FIGURES

3 Students’ attitudes toward the role of auxiliary 20

4 Frequency of auxiliary errors in different types of sentences 21

6 Students’ sources of errors in using English auxiliary 22

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PART 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study

English has been considered an international language and used in many fields for years It

is, nowadays, widely recognized as the key language tool in the integrating process into the world As English is used widely in many countries over the world, it has become the most popular means of communication

Thai Nguyen University, being a mountainous university, receives students mainly from the mountainous and rural areas where English is not improved considerably Entering university, these students have to study English as a compulsory subject right from the first semester and they are evaluated with both communication skill and grammar knowledge

At the same time, they do not have a good basis of English from high school; therefore, they meet difficulty in learning the language and often make mistakes

In the FIT, English is a compulsory subject and is paid much attention to as it is essential

in information and communication technology As computer language is mainly English, students in FIT need English for their studies Although the course book chosen to teach English to students in the FIT focuses on communicating skills, it is undeniable that grammar makes communication smoother and more proper Further more, to better one‟s English, grammar is essentially important In fact, many students spend a lot of time studying grammar; however, the verb is the area which they have much difficulty understanding and mastering

It is widely agreed that to students grammatical use is of substantial significance in order to perfect their language skills and it requires effective teaching and learning methods Though teaching grammar nowadays does not play a requisite role as it was in the past because of communicating purpose, it is still important, especially at the elementary level

of learning the language where English is a compulsory subject

Accordingly, there have been many studies in the area of students‟ grammatical errors Lan (2005), Houng (2005), Ngat (2003), and Hai (2003) conducted researches on grammatical errors and among the errors they found were those in using auxiliaries

As can be seen, the role of grammar in English is realized While grammar is important, the auxiliary is part of it When learners learn the language, errors are unavoidable The studies on grammatical errors show a certain number of errors in auxiliary verbs However,

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not many have chosen the auxiliary as the main focus in their research In addition, from the writer‟s own experience in English teaching, she has observed a lot of difficulties in students‟ using English auxiliary verbs Therefore, she would like to conduct a study on some common errors in using auxiliary verbs made by first-year students at Faculty of Information Technology - Thai Nguyen University

Hopefully, the research „An investigation into some common errors in using auxiliary verbs made by first-year students at Faculty of Information Technology - Thai Nguyen University‟ will be a contribution to better teaching and learning English in the FIT

1.2 Aims of the study

The aims of the study are:

- To investigate the types of errors in using auxiliary verbs made by first-year students in The FIT-Thai Nguyen University

- To find out how students learn and use auxiliary verbs

- To find out the sources of the errors

- To give suggestions and solutions for reducing the errors and teaching and learning English more effectively

To achieve the aims of the study, the following questions are proposed:

1 What types of errors in using auxiliary verbs do the students often make?

2 What are the sources of the errors in using auxiliary verbs?

3 What should be done to help them reduce the errors in using auxiliary verbs?

The research „An investigation into some common errors in using auxiliary verbs made by first-year students at Faculty of Information Technology - Thai Nguyen University‟ was conducted to find the answers to the questions above

1.3 Significance of the study

During learners‟ process of learning English, errors are various and unavoidable This study‟s purpose is to investigate the types of errors in using auxiliary verbs of first-year students in the FIT and the sources of the errors

Corder (1967) observes that errors tell teachers of language where and when learners need help, what sort of help learners need and what they should do to better acquire the language

Hopefully, the findings of the research on common errors in using auxiliary verbs by year students in The FIT will give teachers better awareness of students‟ problems, what

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they should do to help students reduce the errors and what change should they need in their teaching methods to cover students‟ weak area

1.4 Scope of the study

As elementary level is the basis and the starting point from which students understand and improve the language, I would like to study what difficulties students often meet with in this level However, difficulties and errors are various; the study only focuses on the common errors in using auxiliary verbs made by first-years students in the FIT The subjects of the research are the first-year IT students and the research is conducted at the end of the first semester of the academic year 2009-2010 When the errors and sources of errors are identified, solutions then can be given in hoping to improve the matter

1.5 Method of the study

Although communicative skills receive much attention in teaching and learning English nowadays, a large number of studies reveal that grammar helps to form proper English utterances, which leads to agreeable communication Therefore, there have been researchers who share the same interest in the usefulness and necessity of grammar and studied learners‟ grammatical errors Bùi Thị Đào (2008) observes that 80% learners commit such errors as misuse of structures, misordering and misuse of auxiliary verbs Sayuri Kusutani‟s (2006), Chandra Bose (2005), Lim (2006), Cowan (2008), Astasari (2009), and María Mayo & María Lecumberri (2003) Therefore, this study would like to have a focus on common errors in using English auxiliary made by first-year students The study uses the survey method as it is useful when a researcher wants to collect data on phenomena that cannot be directly observed and it is used to assess attitudes and characteristics of a wide range of subjects by sampling a population

The subjects of the study were 6 teachers of English and 100 first-year students in the FIT

to investigate the common errors in using English auxiliary verbs The study used questionnaires, exercises and interviews to collect data

The questionnaires were delivered to 100 students and 6 teachers of English in the FIT to investigate their attitudes towards auxiliary teaching and learning, and their experience and difficulties in learning and teaching auxiliaries

Exercises were also designed and delivered to students to study the errors they would make There are 2 different exercises on the exercise sheet

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The interviews were conducted with teachers for their ideas about role of auxiliary verbs, how they teach auxiliary verbs, what errors their students often make in using auxiliaries and what they do to help their students

The data collected were then analyzed and discussed

1.6 Design of the study

The study consists of 3 part:

Part 1: Introduction The chapter gives an overview of the study It states what will be studied, why and how the study should be done

Part 3: Conclusion

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PART 2 DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Auxiliary verbs in English

2.1.1 Types of auxiliary verbs

The verb is an important part in a language and there are different ways to define it and different ways to classify it

In terms of function of items in the verb phrase, Quirk (1972) divides verbs into lexical verbs and auxiliary verbs Auxiliary verbs can be subdivided into primary and modal auxiliaries

Lexical: walk, write, play, have……

Auxiliary Primary: do, have, be

Modal: can, may, shall, will, could, might, should, would, must,

ought to, used to, dare, need Thompson & Martinet (1986) divides verbs into auxiliary verbs and ordinary verbs The Auxiliary verbs can be subdivided into principal auxiliaries, modal auxiliaries and semi-modal auxiliaries

Auxiliary verbs Principal auxiliaries: do, have, be

Modal Auxiliaries: can, may, shall, will, could, might, should,

would, must, ought to Semi-modal auxiliaries: used to, dare, need

Ordinary verbs: work, talk, play, go………

A Chandra Bose (2005) divides verbs into two types: main verbs and auxiliary verbs

Main Transitive

Intransitive

Auxiliary Primary: be, do, have

Modal: will, ca, may, must, ought to, used, need, would

Cowan (2008) divides verbs into two types: main verbs and auxiliary verbs

Main

Auxiliary Auxiliary: be, do, have

Modal auxiliary: will, can, may, must, should…

From the ways of verb classification presented above, it can be concluded that

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- Linguistic researchers divide English verbs into two types

- One of the two types is auxiliary verbs

- The other type may be called main or lexical verbs, which contain the same verbs

Ordinary verbs (as called by Thompson & Martinet, 1986) are one subdivision of this type

According to Cowan (2008), English auxiliary verbs are divided as follows:

Auxiliary verbs:

Be expresses action in progress The action is indicated by the use of be and the main verb

in ing-form

E.g The old lady is writing a play

The old lady was writing a play

He is working in London at the moment

Have expresses an action accomplished in the past but retaining current relevance The

action is indicated by the use of auxiliary have and a past participle

E.g She has been to Australia

I have been working since 2 p.m

From the beginning of the semester John has read three novels

Do

This subclass of auxiliary verbs contains only the verb do It is used with a main verb to

form negative sentences, questions, imperatives sentences or to give contradiction

E.g Do you like cheese?

I do not like cheese

Do not eat the cheese!

A: I‟m sure that he doesn‟t like her

B: Yes, he does like her

The auxiliary do is never used with any form of the verb be except in imperatives:

E.g Don‟t be lazy!

Don‟t be ridiculous!

Modal auxiliary verbs: (also known as modal auxiliaries or just modals) express

permission, ability, obligation, possibility, necessity, or prediction They include

can/could, may/might, shall/should, will/would, must, ought to Modals may appear before

other auxiliary verbs and main verbs in bare-infinitive form

E.g You can have a sweet if you like

You should have done it earlier

A model can’t eat fattening food

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You ought to finish your homework

The auxiliary do is never used with any form of the verb be except in imperatives:

E.g Don‟t be lazy!

Don‟t be ridiculous!

Cowan (2008) defines auxiliary verbs as

…… always precede main verbs within a VP Traditionally, auxiliaries have been called

helping verbs because they always appear together with a main verb and seem to refine

its meaning Along with inflections on the main verb, they indicate whether the action of

the verb is in progress, repetitive or complete This is called aspect Tense, which is the

time that the action occurs (i.e., present, past or future) is indicated by the inflections on

the verbs, and on auxiliary verbs, or by modal auxiliary verbs like will

(Cowan, 2008, p 21)

2.1.2 Functions of auxiliary verbs

As Cowan (2008) defines, auxiliary verbs help main verbs because they always appear together with a main verb and seem to refine its meaning They are used with other verbs

to form voice, tense, and mood In English, auxiliary verbs mainly have grammatical functions:

Tense: Auxiliaries precede a main verb to show tense

E.g The doctor is going home

The doctor has gone home

Aspect: Along with inflections on the main verb, they indicate whether the action of the

verb is in progress, repetitive or complete

E.g He’s been going to that health club

I have talked to him about it

They are singing a duet

Voice: Only the auxiliary be performs this function It is used with a past participle to form

the passive voice

E.g A new road is going to be built

My bag is made of leather

Negation: Auxiliaries take not (or n't) to form the negative, e.g cannot (can‟t), will not

(won‟t), should not (shouldn‟t), etc

E.g It won’t rain tomorrow

You shouldn’t eat too much chocolate

In certain tenses, in questions, when a contracted auxiliary verb can be used, the position of

the negative particle n't moves from the main verb to the auxiliary:

E.g He doesn‟t come from Italy

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Doesn‟t he come from Italy?

Interrogation

Auxiliaries invert to form questions:

E.g He will come Will he come?

The auxiliary do appears before the subject in sentences in simple present and past tenses to help the main verb to form questions This is called do insertion or do support E.g He works in a factory Does he work in a factory?

They went fishing yesterday afternoon Did they go fishing yesterday afternoon?

Ellipsis

Verb phrase ellipsis deletes a verb phrase identical to a previous one with an auxiliary or modal remaining

E.g I will go, but she will not

John never sings in the kitchen, but Mary does

John never sings in the kitchen, but Mary does in the shower

Tag questions

Auxiliaries can be repeated at the end of a sentence, with negation added or removed, to form a tag question In the event that the sentence did not use an auxiliary verb, the

auxiliary do is used instead:

E.g You will come, won't you?

You ate, didn't you?

You didn't eat, did you?

You know how to dance, don't you?

2.2 Sources of errors in using auxiliary verbs

Sources of errors refer to the factors that cause errors in learners‟ second language Many researches have been done on sources of grammatical errors and different types of sources have been found and dealt with According to A Chandra Bose (2205), the sources of errors are over-generalization, over-extension of target language rules, inter language differences, mother tongue interferences, filter language interference, simplification of errors, induced Errors, deficit learning Ellis (1985) refers to sources of errors as overgeneralization, simplification, fossilization and influence of mother tongue

Since auxiliary errors belong to grammatical errors, the sources of grammatical errors can

be applied to auxiliary errors Different researchers have different ways to classify sources

performance errors These errors are made during the performance of speaking

E.g If I were you, I won’t go out with him

In the example, instead of using wouldn’t in the second clause to accord with were in an unreal conditional sentence, the producer of the sentence used won’t This may be caused

by a slip of the tongue between two types of conditionals that the producer had learnt

In performance errors, carelessness is one of the major causes When a speaker creates an utterance in such psychological conditions as tense or excitement, slip of the tongue may happen leading to errors in the utterance These errors can be corrected when the speaker

pay attention to what s/he says Cowan (2008) states that performance errors are probably

the smallest number of errors made by English language learners

2.2.2 Imperfect learning

Very often, when an English learner has not mastered a rule or the restrictions that apply to the rule, s/he can produce a grammatically incorrect sentence

E.g Do he go to school every day?

As we might expect, a large number of recorded errors by learners with elementary and intermediate proficiency are a reflection of imperfect learning When the learners are learning a language, they develop through different stages The imperfect learning errors as

in the example sentence is a common error and represents one stage of development in the gradual process that English language learners make as they attempt to produce grammatically correct yes/no questions There are four stages in the sequences:

Stage 1: fragment or single word with rising intonation

E.g Speak English?

Charles in house?

Stage 2: subject-verb order with rising intonation

E.g He speak English?

Charles is in the house?

Stage 3: insertion of do at the beginning of the sentence

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E.g Do he speak English?

Does Charles is in the house?

Stage 4: base form in the main verb, inversion of subject and verb

E.g Does he speak English?

Is Charles in the house?

The producer of this sentence has not mastered the rule for forming English yes/no

questions The learner did remember to put an auxiliary verb do at the beginning of the question to support the main verb However, he used the auxiliary verb do instead of the auxiliary verb do for a third person singular subject, which made the sentence grammatically in correct Grammatically correct, the sentence must be „Does he go to

school every day?‟ He has only advanced to the third stage in the developmental

sequences

Currently, there seems to be a general acceptance of developmental sequences in L2 leaning, although some researchers, for example, Wong (2003) believes that instructions may speed up the process of moving to the next stage The existence of developmental sequences does suggests that teachers should be patient when students seem to be stuck at

a specific stage and helping them to move on to the next stage

2.2.3 Overgeneralization

Over generalization covers the instance when the learner creates a deviant structure which

is on the basis of his experience of other structure of the target language Coder (1967:84) says that these over generalization errors are produced on the basis of analogy and they are inevitable process in the learning

Cowan (2008) states that the error is very common for learners of different L1s One may easily make an incorrect utterance due to ignorance of the exception regarding the rule s/he

is applying to the sentence This can happen because of lack of knowledge or experience of the target language Thus, a learner of elementary proficiency can readily applies the rules

of regular verbs in the past tense form to irregular verbs

E.g He played football and hurted his leg

The speaker is in ignorance of the fact that the past form of hurt is also hurt, that is why he added –ed to make it past form

In short, overgeneralization occurs when learners try to apply the regular patterns and rules

of the target language that they have learnt to unknown sources of language in an attempt

is more obvious and increases continuously, as a monolingual person gets older and the structures of his first language get stronger and impose themselves more and more on any other language the adult wishes to learn In contrast, as regards children, interference features will not become permanent unless the child does not have sufficient exposure to L2 If there is sufficient exposure, then instead of reaching a point where they can no longer be corrected (as often happens with phonetics features), interference features can be easily eliminated

2.3 English learners’ common auxiliary errors

Although communicative skills receive much attention in teaching and learning English nowadays, a large number of studies reveal that grammar helps to form proper English utterances, which leads to agreeable communication Therefore, there have been researchers who share the same interest in the usefulness and necessity of grammar and studied learners‟ grammatical errors Bùi Thị Đào (2008) observes that 80% learners commit such errors as misuse of structures, misordering and misuse of auxiliary verbs

Sayuri Kusutani‟s (2006) study on Japanese learners‟ confusion of copula be found the

following types of auxiliary errors:

Auxiliary verb problem:

E.g I was open the window

We are invite letters to each other

In the examples above, students put be before a main verb

E.g Daddy cooking in the kitchen

In this example, the verb missing required is auxiliary be

Besides the errors in auxiliary, Kusutani also found other errors concerning copula be

Copula dropping:

E.g I from Tokyo

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Subject-verb agreement:

E.g Is you from Tokyo?

A Chandra Bose (2005) studied on modal auxiliaries and found errors in word order

Addition of be:

E.g You are shall have a holiday tomorrow?

You am will have a holiday tomorrow?

Verb forms:

E.g We might to obey the traffic rules

Voice and tense:

E.g We could have done it earlier

Lim (2006) analyzed errors committed by second language learners in the acquisition of English tenses, particularly the present continuous, to investigate learners' difficulties in acquiring target language rules One auxiliary error he found out was omission of auxiliary

E.g He will going

Cowan (2008) studied L2 learners‟ errors and he found the following errors in auxiliary: confusion, omission and subject-verb agreement

Astasari (2009) conducted a study on grammatical errors in students‟ narrative writing and found types of errors concerning auxiliary: omission of auxiliary, misinformation of modal auxiliary, addition of auxiliary, and misordering of modal auxiliary

María Mayo & María Lecumberri (2003) observed that learners often committed omission

of auxiliary and subject-verb agreement errors

Those studies, though done directly on auxiliary errors or on grammatical errors in general, all found out learners‟ errors in using English auxiliary The errors were called by different names but bore similar characteristics From the types of auxiliary errors each study pointed out, the most common auxiliary errors are as follows

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There is an omission of the auxiliary did before the subject of the first sentence This

commonly happens in WH-questions In the second sentence, the speaker used a passive

sentence without the insertion of auxiliary was

In his research on present continuous tense, Lim (2006) found that the omission of auxiliary was obvious among the subjects Over half of his subjects committed this type

of error The cause of it, he observed, can be traced back to the interference of mother tongue

2.3.2 Mis-ordering auxiliary

Misordering is the error in which learners tend to put the auxiliaries after the subjects in

WH questions

E.g A learner may asks, „What sports he can play?‟ instead of „What sports can he play?‟

In their research, María Mayo & María Lecumberri (2003) found that children aged

17-18 often made mis-ordering errors

2.3.3 Confusion of auxiliary

E.g He was a natural tennis player so he must not train much

This error occurs as a result of confusion of 'must' and 'have to' The cause of this may be traced to the learner‟s imperfect learning When s/he learns the use of modal auxiliaries,

the negation of must must be taken into account since it bears a difference meaning from

must itself However, the learner might ignore this and applies the rule of negation to must

2.3.4 Wrong subject-verb agreement

Wrong subject-verb agreement is an example of performance errors in Cowan‟s (2008) study The causes of this are the learner‟s carelessness or ignorance of the rules Learners may make this type of error due to being in an abnormal psychological condition Very often, the learners are in ignorance of the number of subject or careless in forming the auxiliary

E.g Mary and Peter doesn’t like football

I has studied English for 8 years

2.3.5 Addition of auxiliary

This is the case that a addition of auxiliary is added to the sentences

E.g I was open the window

Studies on the subject show that it is often the addition of be to the sentence

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In short, errors are important sources of information to decide the learner's strategy in learning and are found in the learner's out - put To teachers, learners‟ errors show the areas where they are weak and need to be help They also tell the teachers what language items have been learnt and internalized by learners and what is left to be learnt To help learners overcome difficulties, teachers have to better prepare their lessons and improve their teaching methods and skills A look at the various kind of errors L2 learner made will guide the teacher not only to identify the problematic area of L2 learners, but also to spot out areas for which remedial programs and materials are needed So the error analysis not only finds out and classifies the errors in L2 learners out put It also tries to interpret the learning strategy of the learners Error analysis also helps in the selection of strategies teachers may take to correct errors

To learners, errors show them what areas they are good and what areas they need to put in more effort to learn In addition, from errors they make, they can be better aware of the rules and avoid making the errors again

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CHAPTER 2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research setting

The Faculty of Information and Communication Technology, belonging to Thai Nguyen University, was established in 2001 The main duty and purpose of the faculty is training informatics for students living in the Northern provinces In the FIT, English is a compulsory subject and is paid much attention to as it is essential in information and communication technology As computer language is mainly English, students in FIT need English for their studies Although the course book chosen to teach English to students in the FIT focuses on communicating skills, it is undeniable that grammar makes communication smoother and more proper Further more, to better one‟s English, grammar

is essentially important Understanding the importance of English, teachers of English in FIT have tried hard in order to improve and enhance the quality of teaching and learning English However, this is not an easy task The fact is that most of the students in FIT are from mountainous regions They are not carefully taught English in high school or are not taught at all Further more, at school they only concentrate on the subjects they need for the university entrance exams and as a result, English is nearly ignored, and many students enter The FIT with poor command of English In addition, most of the English teachers trained in Thai Nguyen College of Education and have an average of 5 years working in the career Therefore, it is not avoidable to lack teaching experiences Teaching in these large classes with students of unequal levels is too difficult There are students who have studied English for 7 years, and also students who have only studied English for 3 years Further more, there remain students who have not studied English at all in the high school They studied French or Russian instead Another factor leading to the difficulties is that, within 45 teaching periods in class, the main practicing focus is communication whereas students and teachers do not have enough time to focus all grammatical structures and problems

3.2 Participants

The respondents of this study were 100 freshmen English non-major students and 6 teachers of English at the FIT - Thai Nguyen University during the first semester of the school year 2009-2010

The students were 74 males and 26 females They came from different provinces and districts in North of Vietnam They were all information technology major English is a

The first questionnaire consists of twelve questions for students to get information about their English background, attitudes to English, methods and difficulties in their study Eleven questions in the questionnaire are multiple-choice, in which students choose one out of four options given There is one open question which requires students to recall what they have learned in order to answer it

The second questionnaire consists of eight questions which were given to teachers for their information about their attitudes towards the auxiliary, their auxiliary teaching techniques and their opinions about errors made by students and how to help them The questions are all multiple-choice

The questionnaires are given to both teachers and students for the purpose of comparing their views on auxiliary and auxiliary errors, from which a better treatment of auxiliary is hoped to be drawn out

how serious this problem is

Exercise 1 asks students to supply the correct forms of the verbs in brackets There are 10 items in this exercise with three types of sentences: positives, negatives and interrogatives All that students have to do in this exercise is to apply the rules for each type of verbs they have learnt to put them in the correct form The aim of this exercise is to find out what types of verbs cause the most difficulty for students and what errors they make when the verbs are clearly given to them

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Exercise 2 asks students to build sentences using the given words The sentences students have to make are positives, negatives and interrogatives The purpose of the exercise is to examine in what kinds of sentences students often commit auxiliary errors This exercise is

a bit more difficult for students in that they have to determine the tenses, verb group and other elements of the sentences

When the exercises are collected and the results are analyzed, the writer will make an interview with students asking why they make the errors, if they have any idea about the errors they make, and how will they wish to be helped to correct

3.5 Interview

The interview with teachers contains 12 questions The questions aims at finding how they teach English in class, and what they focus their students on in class The interview asks teachers to give their opinion about if their students‟ knowledge of auxiliary does any good

in learning English The teachers are asked what auxiliary errors they notice form their students and how they address them Finally, teachers are asked if they have any difficulty

in helping students reduce the errors The results of the interview may give an insight into the sources of students‟ errors and what change is needed to solve the problem

3.6 Data collection

The data for the study were collected through questionnaires, exercises and interview The questionnaire and exercise sheets were given to 100 first-year IT students All the questionnaire and exercise sheets were numbered to make the respondents‟ answer anonymous The respondents were asked to complete the questionnaire and then the exercises The results were collected for analysis

Another questionnaire was given to 6 teachers of English in the FIT – Thai Nguyen University After collecting the results from the questionnaire, the oral interview was made with the six teachers and answers were taken note

All the data collected were analyzed and presented in the next chapter

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CHAPTER 3 PRESENTATION, ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION OF THE DATA

4.1 Presentation of the data

4.1.1 The questionnaire for students

The table below shows the collective results from the questionnaire for students There are descriptive results for 11 questions except question 7 as it is an open one

Table 1: Summary of students’ answers

The result of the first question shows that, out of 100 students, 58 have learnt English since primary school up to now, which means they have been learning English for over 7 years;

32 have learnt English since secondary school up to now, which means they have been learning English for over 3 years; and the rest of 10 only started learning English when entering university The results show that more than half of the students in the study had a lot of experience with English and 90% had learnt far beyond the knowledge of English required of them in the first semester of their first academic year It was expected that these 90% of students would found English easy for them However, English was a difficult subject for a large number of students Not only those who did not study English at school but even the ones who did from primary school had problems with English

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Figure 1: students’ purposes in learning English

for future jobs

43%

to communicate 17%

to read and understand IT documents 20%

to pass the exams

to read and understand IT documents

to communicate for future jobs

Answers from the second question (figure 1) show that nearly half of the students (43%) only learnt English to pass the exams These students were not interested in English as they found English difficult and passing the exams was enough for them This accounted for the indifferent attitude towards learning English of a quite large number of students On the contrary, more than a half learnt English with positive purposes 20% wanted to learn English so that they could read IT documents and another 20% needed English for their future jobs These students were aware of the importance of English in IT field The rest of 17% were even interested in communication in English and learnt English so that they could talk with English speakers

In answering question 3, 50% said that they focused on learning grammar; 40% focused on speaking and 10% focused on reading Unsurprisingly, no one focused on listening since listening was a very difficult task for elementary students The results show that although speaking skill was paid much attention to in English classes, grammar was what students found most necessary

Figure 2: Frequency of errors

hardly ever 5%

often 28%

alw ays 47%

sometimes

often sometimes hardly ever

With regarding to the frequency of making errors, nearly half (47%) always made errors It

is not surprising since students found English difficult and they might make errors of any types 28% answered that they often made errors in English These two categories

Figure 3: Students’ attitudes towards role of auxiliary

making grammatically correct sentences 62%

using AVs correctly 25%

understanding English grammar 3%

communicating 10%

using AVs correctly making grammatically correct sentences communicating understanding English grammar

Respondents‟ answers to question 6 show that most of students (62%) agreed that the knowledge of English auxiliary helped them make grammatically correct sentences while 25% thought the knowledge of auxiliary only helped them use auxiliary correctly While most students paid attention to English grammar during their learning process, only 3% thought auxiliary brought better insight to English grammar and 10% said that using auxiliary correctly might help better communicate (Figure 3)

Question 7 is an open one which requires students to recall their knowledge of auxiliary in order to answer it 55% of the students who were asked answered that they had learnt the

auxiliary do, (did for past tense), and 20% wrote can and do up to the time of the survey 5% mistook be as an auxiliary and 20% left this question without an answer It can be

inferred that these students had a vague idea about what auxiliary in English was

Question 8 asked if students knew the functions of the auxiliaries they had learnt up to the time of the survey 48 who said that they paid attention to auxiliary usage answered that they knew how to use auxiliary verbs and the 52 who did not pay attention to auxiliary gave a negative answer

The answer to question 9 shows that most students (86%) knew that, with what they learnt

in the first semester, negation and interrogations were the areas that often needed auxiliary while only 14% answered that they often used auxiliary in statements As can be seen from table 1, there is no answer for imperative sentences This can be explained that up to the

interrogatives 48%

negatives 38%

positives negatives interrogatives

Figure 4 represents respondents‟ answers to question 10 The results show that students met most difficulty in negative and interrogative sentences while they did not have serious problems with positives Interrogation was the area that caused the most difficulty for students

Figure 5: Students’ methods of learning English auxiliary

Imitating English sentences 8%

Doing grammar exercises 32%

Learning English tenses 48%

Learning English sentence structures

sentences Doing grammar exercises Learning English tenses Learning English sentence structures

It can be seen from figure 5 that 48 students learnt auxiliary from tenses It was normally that each tense corresponded to a certain sentence structure Students were then taught where to insert auxiliaries 32 students thought that they knew how to use English auxiliary from doing grammar exercises 8 students answered that they learnt auxiliary from imitating English sentences That means these students acquired auxiliary from exposure to

it rather than being taught And the rest of 12 said that from learning English sentence structures they knew how auxiliary was used

Finally, in seeking the sources of difficulties for students to use auxiliary, the result shows that 45% of the respondents committed errors due to their carelessness These students might unconsciously make errors and they could self-correct under guidance Quite a large

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number of students (39%) made errors because they could not distinguish different parts of speech and they were likely to take one for another part of speech, which led to errors in using verbs in general and auxiliary in particular 12% did not know how to use auxiliary and 4% thought their errors were due to influence of mother tongue (Figure 6)

Figure 6: Students’ sources of errors in using auxiliary

not know ing how to use auxiliary verbs 12%

being influenced

by mother tongue 4%

confusing w ith other verbs 39%

Being careless in making sentences 45%

Being careless in making sentences confusing with other verbs

not knowing how to use auxiliary verbs being influenced by mother tongue

In conclusion, the questionnaire shows that English is a difficult subject for students in the FIT Although many students pay attention to learning English for their own purposes, many other have to learn it involuntarily The questionnaire also shows that although they think grammar important for them to learn English, auxiliary is not what they really should pay much attention to As a result, a large number of students do not know how and when auxiliary is used

4.1.2 The questionnaire for teachers

The table below shows the collective results from the questionnaire for teachers

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A questionnaire of 8 questions was delivered to 6 teachers of English in the Faculty of Information technology (all of them are female) Only 1 out of the 6 teachers has been teaching English for over 10 years 2 have been teaching English for less than 10 years and the other three have been teaching English for less than 5 years (three years and a half) This means half of the teachers do not have much experience in teaching English Although communication skill was paid much attention to while teaching English, these teachers found that most of the students paid attention to grammar In fact, a large number

of students now put much effort in learning to communicate; however, grammar was still the area they cared about the most

4 out of 6 teachers said that they did pay attention to teaching English auxiliary verbs to students because auxiliary helps students make grammatically correct sentences However, half of the teachers answered that they had no ideas if their students knew what the functions of auxiliary were 1 even answered that students did not know the functions of auxiliary All the teachers confirmed that making errors in using auxiliary was an obvious problem They all realized that their students often made errors in positive, negative and especially interrogative sentences 4 out of 6 teachers answered that their students had most difficulty in interrogation All the teachers being asked agreed that students learnt auxiliary from tenses, excepting the modal, which needed its own explanation They reported that students were often careless in using other auxiliaries or totally forgot about them but most

of the time they confused with other verbs

4.1.3 Interview with teachers

12 questions in the interview were done in person with 6 teachers of English in the FIT The results of the first three questions are not presented as they only request personal information

In answering to question 4, all the 6 teachers expressed their great love for their jobs Students were the inspiration for al their effort to improve their skills and qualifications in teaching They confirmed that English was important to students to enrich their knowledge and for students‟ future jobs Realizing the importance of English, they all chose communicative language teaching approach which took students as the centre of the teaching and learning process Students then could have much chance to speak, and they could be more active as they were free to express their ideas However, they stated that this approach drew most of students‟ attention to speaking activities, and in class students spent most of the time practicing speaking Half of the teachers said that they spent time in class

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train students speaking skill The other half said that they did pay attention to present grammar but speaking took more time The results from question 6 show that speaking received more attention than grammar and students did not have much time in class correcting their grammatical errors with the help of their teachers

Answers to questions 7 & 8 show that all teachers agreed that students should know the functions of auxiliary verbs because they helped students make correct sentences, which might lead to better speaking However, in answering to question 9, they all said that errors were ignored when students were speaking; they were only paid attention to in students‟ writings That students only received correction in writing while speaking took most of the time in class meant that students received little correction from teachers

All the 6 teachers sometimes noticed errors in using auxiliary verbs made by their students Most of the errors they noticed were caused by misunderstandings of the use of errors Students confused different types of verbs, gave wrong word-order, forgot to insert the auxiliary or even used an auxiliary which should not be in the sentence The method for helping students was correcting and explaining if students misunderstood But they did not have enough time to do this because the time in class was devoted to help students practice speaking, and the amount of time in class was only enough for the speaking practice; as a result, they lacked time for grammar correction and explanation

In summary, although grammar is important and teachers are aware of this, it does not receive enough attention in class and once an error is made without correction, it will continue to develop into students‟ habit of making grammatically incorrect sentences

4.1.4 The exercises for students

Three exercises were given to students in order to gain information about different areas of errors they would make in using English auxiliary

Exercise 1

This exercise requires students to supply the correct forms of the verbs in brackets There

are 9 sentences in this exercise Three types of verbs occur in this exercise are copular be, modal can, and ordinary verbs Up to the time of the study, students had only learnt the present simple and past simple tenses, which implies that the verb be was then used as a linking, but not an auxiliary one Although be in the study is not an auxiliary verb, it is used to investigate how students confuse it with the auxiliary do and vice versa

Table 3 represents the ratio of respondents‟ correct and incorrect answers to exercise 1