An investigation into common paragraph cohesion errors in english language writings by 11th grade students at tùng thiện high school

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ************************* TẠ THỊ THANH LÊ AN INVESTIGATION INTO CO

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

*************************

TẠ THỊ THANH LÊ

AN INVESTIGATION INTO COMMON PARAGRAPH COHESION ERRORS

IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE WRITINGS

BY 11TH GRADE STUDENTS AT TÙNG THIỆN HIGH SCHOOL

(KHẢO SÁT CÁC LỖI LIÊN KẾT ĐOẠN VĂN THƯỜNG GẶP TRONG BÀI VIẾT

TIẾNG ANH CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 11, TRƯỜNG THPT TÙNG THIỆN)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

HANOI – 2015

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

*************************

TẠ THỊ THANH LÊ

AN INVESTIGATION INTO COMMON PARAGRAPH COHESION ERRORS

IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE WRITINGS

BY 11TH GRADE STUDENTS AT TÙNG THIỆN HIGH SCHOOL

(KHẢO SÁT CÁC LỖI LIÊN KẾT ĐOẠN VĂN THƯỜNG GẶP TRONG BÀI VIẾT

TIẾNG ANH CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 11, TRƯỜNG THPT TÙNG THIỆN)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

DECLARATION

I, Tạ Thị Thanh Lê, hereby certify that this thesis, which is entitled “An Investigation into Common Paragraph Cohesion Errors in English Language Writings

by 11 th Grade Students at Tùng Thiện High School”, is the sole author of this thesis

This thesis has not been submitted for a degree to any other university or institution It

is not containing materials written or has been published by other people and other people‟s ideas except the information from the references

Hanoi, 2015

Tạ Thị Thanh Lê

This thesis would not be achieved without the support, guidance, advice, help and encouragement I received from many individuals and organizations I would like

to express my deepest thankfulness to:

- my supervisor, Dr Ngô Tự Lập for his detailed advice, experienced guidance, invaluable comments and suggestions Without his support, this thesis would be impossible

- all of my lectures and the Post-Graduate staff at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University for their valuable lectures on aspects of my concern

- my students and English teachers at Tùng Thiện high school who have participated and give support in the study with their priceless time, attempt and keenness

- my parents and parents-in-law for their wholehearted support and motivation

- my small beloved family who has facilitated and encouraged to finish this study I could have never thanked you enough and never been able to reply everything that have done and given to me

This research investigates the common paragraph cohesion errors in 672 paragraphs taken from writings by 11th grade students at Tùng Thiện high school The analysis of this research is based on Halliday and Hasan‟s (1976) cohesion categorization This study employs both qualitative and quantitative methods to find out the types of paragraph cohesion errors with a clear linguistic description Besides, one aim of this research is to discover the sources of cohesive errors rooted in the combination of two models described by Richard (1974) and James (1998) together with the error analysis of Ellis (1997) Results of this study shows a total of 253 errors are identified in students‟ paragraph that includes errors in the use of reference, conjunction and lexical cohesion Errors in the use of substitution, ellipsis, temporal and collocation are not found The percentage of errors in the use of conjunction is 53.8 %, followed by reference category 37.9% and lexical ones 8.3% The dominant number of error belongs to conjunction; reference is the second dominant error and lexical cohesion is the last dominant error The main reasons for committing common cohesive errors rooted in three main sources: (1) intra-lingual errors (the interference between English items), (2) inter-lingual (the interference between Vietnamese and English) and (3) other extra-lingual factors like the performance pressure, false conceptualization, the limited foreign language environment, learners‟ attitudes, learners motivation and goal which come both from the teachers and the learners The study proposes practical implications for both teachers and students to eliminate these kinds of errors and improve the quality of students‟ writing

Table 6: Errors in the use of personal reference

Table 7: Errors in the use of adversative conjunction

Table 8: Errors in the use of causal conjunction

Table 9: Errors in the use of additive conjunction

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration by author……… i

Acknowledgements……… ii

Abstract……… iii

List of table ……… iv

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Scopes of the study 2

4 Significance of the study 2

6 Organization of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEWS 4

1.1 Theoretical background 4

1.1.1 Cohesion 4

1.1.1.1 Concept of cohesion 4

1.1.1.2 Cohesion vs Coherence 5

1.1.1.3 Cohesive devices 6

1.1.2 Paragraph and paragraph cohesion 10

1.1.2.1 Definition of paragraph 10

1.1.2.2 Paragraph cohesion 11

1.1.3 Error and error analysis 12

1.1.3.1 Errors 12

1.1.3.2 Errors vs mistakes 13

1.1.3.3 Sources of errors 14

1.1.3.4 Error analysis 16

1.2 Literature review 17

CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 21

2.1 Subject 21

2.2 Data collection instrument and data collection 21

2.3 Methods of data analysis 22

CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 24

3.1 Errors in the use of reference 25

3.1.1 Errors in the use of demonstrative reference 26

3.1.2 Errors in the use of comparative reference 29

3.1.3 Errors in the use of personal reference 30

3.2 Errors in the use of conjunction 32

3.2.1 Errors in the use of adversative conjunction 32

3.2.2 Errors in the use of causal conjunction 35

3.2.3 Errors in the use of additive conjunction 36

3.3 Errors in the use of lexical cohesion: Errors in the use of repetition 39

PART C: CONCLUSION 41

1 Research findings 41

1.1 What are the types of paragraph cohesion errors committed by the 11th grade students at Tùng Thiện high school? 41

1.2 Why do students commit those errors? 42

2 Implications 43

3 Limitations and suggestions for further research 45

REFERENCE: 46 APPENDIX:……….I

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Of all four English skills, writing is always of a great concern to learners In fact, it poses the most challenging task for English learners in Vietnam; although most

of them have learned English since primary school, many feel frustrated and consider writing as a big headache problem for them Especially, the quality of English written paragraph is limited due to the lack persuasiveness, satisfactory and logical connection

of ideas Several problems that students encounter when writing an English paragraph refers to usage of cohesive device Besides, a paragraph must flow through a sequence

of sentences In a good written text, each sentence needs to be connected with one another to illustrate the meaning intended by writer To make readers comprehend this connection, the skillful use of cohesion is demanded to help the students to articulate ideas systematically, logically as well as to avoid creating ambiguity and misinterpretations between what are currently said and what already said previously

Moreover, the written language must be more accurate, more explicit, more effective than spoken one Learners fear making errors in their writing, but avoiding errors, their focus on writing on is often concentrated on generating grammatically correct sentences rather than on logic and meaning In fact, basing on the errors that students make in their writing, the teachers and researchers can find out the solution to writing problems like the doctors find the symptoms to diagnose a disease In the

thesis, “An Investigation into Common Paragraph Cohesion Errors in English

Language Writings by 11 th Grade Students at Tùng Thiện High School” I want to

investigate into one of major problems faced by English learners as well as to develop

a better teaching writing composition; strategy for teaching

The present study investigates errors in the use of cohesive devices in the paragraph by 11th grade students at Tùng Thiện high school Several specific research questions addressed by this study are:

1 What are the types of paragraph cohesion errors committed by the 11th grade students at Tùng Thiện high school?

2 Why do students commit those errors?

Answering these two questions implies solutions to remedy paragraph cohesion

2 Aims of the study

Based on the problems of the study above, the aims of the study are to:

- identify the types of cohesive paragraph errors written by 11th grade students

at Tùng Thiện high school

- explain the causes of the written errors of English committed by the eleventh grade students in Tùng Thiện high school

- provide suggestions for teaching and learning paragraph writing to Tùng Thiện high school students to reduce and prevent the problems

- provide suggestions for further research

3 Scopes of the study

The study focuses on common paragraph cohesion errors that 11th grade students at Tùng Thiện high school have made in their writings Besides, basing on their analyses, the thesis will present some solutions to these problems

Population: 84 students at class 11A3, 11A6 at Tùng Thiện high school in the academic year of 2012/2013

4 Significance of the study

Given that there haven't been any research on the topic so far, the study expected to contribute to understanding paragraph cohesion errors and teaching writing at school both theoretically and practically

+ Theoretically: This research provides a linguistic description and explanation

of cohesive errors

+ Practically:

a For learners, this research shows their common errors, therefore they are interested to improve their perception on cohesive devices and be able to apply it appropriately in their writing

b For teachers, the findings of this research suggest some teaching approaches and methods that they should use to produce better English essays

c For other researchers, this research can be used as references in doing similar research in the same field in the future

5 Methods of the study

The procedures of the data analysis are as follows:

1 The students‟ papers were collected every week

2 Any errors in the use of cohesive devices were found and the types of cohesive devices error were identified, listed and classified by reading all the paragraphs

3 Basing on the models of Richards (1971) and James (1998), each kind of sources is categorized and calculated to give an overview about cohesive errors in paragraph of 11th students at Tùng Thiện high school

6 Organization of the study

This study includes the three main parts:

Part A: “Introduction” This part will present the rationale, the aims and

the methodology It will also be discussed to the presentation of the scope, the significance and the organization of the study

Part B: “Development” This part will consist of four chapters:

Chapter I: “Theoretical background and Literature review” Theoretical

matters related to the study are presented including the definition of error analysis, the distinction between errors and mistakes, also sources of errors Theory about cohesion and the types of cohesive devices and paragraph and paragraph cohesion are also discussed in this chapter It also reviews related past research

Chapter II: “Research Methodology” This chapter describes research

methodology It consists of research approach, type of research, subject of the study, source of the data, research instrument, data collection method and data analysis

Chapter III: “Data Analysis and Findings” In this chapter, the writer

analyzes the data and explains her analysis to get the findings then discusses it

Part C: “Conclusion”

This chapter supplies implication with the recommendations for correcting errors in the use of cohesive devices in writing paragraph, suggestions for teaching to prevent and eliminate these errors It also closes the study with the conclusion and provides suggestions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEWS

In this chapter, there are two main sections Firstly, the concepts of cohesion, errors paragraph cohesion are reviewed Secondly, the previous research studies carried out on cohesion errors in Vietnam and abroad are presented

In other words, cohesion is the linguistic relationship between clauses and how the surface linguistic elements of a text are linked to each other in order to create a unified whole text (Peterson & McCabe: 1991) Similarly, Eggins (1994) define the term “cohesion” refers to the way of the parts of a discourse are related together

Cohesion denotes certain features of a text like the semantic tie in a text, the consistency of participants, and the connection in terms of lexical selections

Besides, “Cohesion is the resources within language that provide continuity in a text, over and above that provided by clause structures and clause complexes” (Gerot and Wignell, 1994:170) Cohesion helps readers or listeners understand some missing pieces which are not present in the text but necessary to its interpretation Halliday and Hassan assert that: “Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some element in the discourse is dependent on that of another The one presupposes the other in the sense that it cannot be effectively decoded except by resources to it” They describe cohesion

as a semantic concept that refers to relation of meaning existing within a text, not as a structural unit Therefore, their use of the term “cohesion” refers specifically to non-structure text forming relations and it often occurs where the interpretation of some element in the discourse is dependent on that of another Their focus is on the cohesive ties between sentences because they are the only source of textual, while within the sentence there are structural relations as well

In fact, the presupposition is an important aspect in cohesion because it extracts the unrelated sentences by the connected one Thus relations in meaning of any sentence depending on the surrounding elements In other words “cohesion refers to the range of possibilities that exist for linking something with what has gone before Since this linking is achieved through relations in meaning” (Halliday and Hassan 1976:10) Coherence is the ways that a text makes sense to readers and writers through the relevance and accessibility of its configuration of concepts, ideas, and theories

In conclusion, cohesion is the glue that holds a piece of writing together In other words, if a paper is cohesive, it sticks together from sentence to sentence and from paragraph to paragraph

1.1.1.2 Cohesion vs Coherence

The terms “cohesion” and “coherence” are defined differently by different linguists For some, the two terms are interchangeable or imply each other; for others they are independent of one another; however, the work of Halliday and Hasan (1976)

stimulated the distinguishable relationship between them According to Irwin Weiser,

“Cohesion is now understood to be a textual quality, attained through the use of

grammatical and lexical elements that enable readers to perceive semantic relationships within and between sentences”; or cohesion can be described as “the way certain words or grammatical features of a sentence can connect that sentence to its predecessors and successors in a text” (Hoey1996: 3) Tárnyiková puts it simply that the cohesion presents “a surface structure linkage between elements of a text” (2009:30) A text has to be cohesive in continuation of statements or paragraphs

Coherence is “the relationships which link the sense of utterances in a

discourse or of sentences in a text” (Richard [74]) Coherence also refers to the relationships of ideas and the ability of those ideas to function together for the purpose

of conveying the meaning (Mclinn 1988:15) “Coherence is dependent not only on linguistic and contextual information in the texts but also on readers' abilities to draw upon other kinds of knowledge, such as cultural and inter-textual knowledge" (Irwin Weiser) Any piece of writing is considered coherent if it is understandable, follow a clear line in presenting facts, arguments and avoid statements which are incomprehensible for the reader

In summary, cohesion is it is the linguistic relationship between clauses and how the surface linguistic elements of a text are linked to each other in order to create

a unified whole text (Peterson & McCabe: 1991); whereas coherence is a relationship between concepts and meanings or the ways a text makes sense to readers Both cohesion and coherence establish a connection between an element in one sentence and an element in a preceding sentence

1.1.1.3 Cohesive devices

Cohesive devices are clues used by speakers and hearers to find the meanings which underlie surface utterances” (Schriffin as cited in Rini, 2009:9) In Halliday and Hasan point of view (1976), there are five major cohesive devices: reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical cohesion

a Reference: Halliday and Hasan (1976:308) define “reference” as “the

relationship between an element of the text or something else by reference to which it

is interpreted in the given instance” Thompson (1996:148) also provides a very

explicit definition He states “Reference is the set of grammatical resources which allow the speaker to indicate whether something is being repeated from somewhere else in the text

Basing on the definition, Halliday and Hasan devide reference into 3 types:

a1 Personal reference: Items of personal reference are expressed through

pronouns, whether personal (I, you, she, he, it, we, they) or possessive (mine, yours, hers), and possessive determiners (my, your, our)

Examples: (extracted from Halliday and Hasan, 1976, p 55):

- John has moved to a new house He had it built last year (He is personal

a2 Demonstrative reference:

Halliday and Hasan (1976) demonstrate that “demonstrative reference is essentially a form of verbal pointing The speaker identifies the referent by locating it

on a scale of proximity” Demonstrative reference is realized by determiners: the, this, there, that, those and demonstrative adverbs: here, there, then

Example: We are going to take the entrance exam to university This is the first

embarrassing experience in our life

a3 Comparative reference:

Comparative reference is realized through adjective and adverb and serves to compare items within a text in terms of identity, or similarity or comparative reference

is cohesion in the form of reference that shows comparison between one thing another (Halliday and Hasan, 1976)

Examples taken from (Halliday and Hasan, 1976, p.78):

- It is the same cat as the one we saw yesterday?

- It is a different cat from the one we saw yesterday

b Substitution:

Halliday and Hasan (1976) defined substitution as “substitution is a grammatical relation, a relation in the wording rather than meaning” (p 90) the substitution is the replacement of one item by another There are three types of substitution: nominal; verbal, and clausal

Example:

+ Nominal substitution: the substitute items are as one, ones and same

A: Can you give me a cup of coffee?

B: There is one on the table

+ Verbal substitution: it is expressed through do

Most students feel nervous about the coming exam and so do I

+ Clausal Substitution: it is realized by using substitute items as: so, not

A: Is he coming late as usual?

B: I think so

c Ellipsis:

Ellipsis involves the omission of an item that is replaced by nothing The grammatical structure itself refers to an item or items that can fill the slot in the question (Nunan, 1999) In addition, McCarthy (1991) also stand in the same flow together with the definition above by say that ellipsis is the omission of the elements normally required by the grammar which the speaker or writer assuming are obvious from the context

Ellipsis and substitution are treated by Halliday and Hasan (ibid) separately However, later on, they are combined into a single category by describing ellipsis as a form of substitution; that is to say, the original item is replaced by zero Concerning their use, Cutting (2002) states that “Both substitution and ellipsis can be only used when there is no ambiguity as to what is being substituted or ellipted” (p 12) So, ellipsis is the process whereby items of a sentence that are predictable from context can be omitted Halliday and Hasan (1976) classify ellipsis cohesion into three types of ellipsis such as: nominal, verbal, and clause ellipsis

Example:

be said to or what has been said before Halliday and Hasan (op.cit) classify conjunction into four categories which express a number of semantic relations, they are: additive, adversative, causal and temporal

+ Additive: and, or, furthermore, similarly, in addition

+ Adversative: but, however, on the other hand, never the less

+ Causal: so, consequently, for this reason, it follows from this

+ Temporal: then, after that, an hour later, finally, at last

e Lexical cohesion:

Lexical cohesion is a type of cohesion which is used to achieve cohesive relations between the parts of a text by using particular vocabulary items In lexical patterning, successive sentence can be expected to exhibit relationship through their vocabulary According to Halliday & Hasan (1976: 274-292), lexical cohesion is defined into five main kinds:

+ Repetition of word or phrase:

Example: There is a boy climbing the fence The boy doesn‟t care being fallen out

+ Synonym (words of almost the same meaning):

Example: There is a boy climbing the fence The lad doesn‟t care being fallen out

+ Antonym (the relation of semantic contrast):

Example: I don‟t like high buildings In contrast, he doesn‟t like low ones

+ Hyponymy (the semantic relation between a more general expression and

related specific relations, e.g cigarettes/cigars)

+ Collocation (words which tend to occur with one another in certain contents,

e.g education, classroom, class and so on.)

Besides, Al-Jarf (2001) maintains that this type of cohesion includes:

+ Lexical sets: oil, natural gas, falling water, energy, power resources, generate

+ Lexical reiteration: A canary is a bird All birds have feathers

+ Lexical collocation (co-occurrence of words which regularly occur together)

Example: The pencil costs fifty cents I had a dollar

1.1.2 Paragraph and paragraph cohesion

1.1.2.1 Definition of paragraph

An important key to write a good essay is effective paragraphing Basically, when you start a new idea, you should start with a new paragraph Writing a paragraph well lays the foundation for mastering writing skill

According to Baker (1962:16) paragraph is described as a collection of connected sentences which show building blocks of solid ideas that are organized smoothly around one single idea in the paragraph Besides, Elizabeth Cowan (1983) defined this term as “Paragraph is composed of sentence or chunk of sentence which the writer has grouped some definite reasons” Similarly, Alice Oshima and Ann Hogue (1999) in Writing Academic Writing, a paragraph is a group of related sentences that discuss one main idea A paragraph can be as short as one sentence or as

long as ten sentences The number of sentence is unimportant; however, the paragraph should be long enough to develop the main idea clearly Owl (2009:40) clarified a paragraph as a group of closely-related sentences which deal with and develop one idea According to him, it is like a family in which all members are related; likewise, all sentences in the paragraph are related The paragraph should make the reader feel that the main idea has been effectively developed A perfect paragraph is described as

a unified, coherent, developed, and complete one Solid and specific illustration plays

an important role in supporting and developing the central idea of the paragraph; besides, such an idea is discussed and supported with evidences Details and particulars can also support and develop the topic sentence since a paragraph with little and general information may not be adequately developed (Cargill &et al, 1955:821-2)

In addition, paragraphs consist of three parts: the topic sentence, body sentences, and the concluding or the bridge sentence to the next paragraph or section Paragraphs show where the subdivisions of a research paper begin and end and, thus, help the reader see the organization of the essay and grasp its main points

1.1.2.2 Paragraph cohesion

Paragraph is the basic unit of organization in writing where groups of related sentences merge to develop ideas to form the whole text A paragraph with clearly connected sentences is said to be cohesive This is because paragraph‟s structures and its roles cannot be ascertained without reference to cohesion Paragraph structure and cohesion are inseparable Cohesion in paragraph deals with the property of flow and connection of sentences‟ content in a logical and natural way that stem from the linguistic links among the surface elements According to Halliday and Hasand (1976), the writer is able to hold together meanings in the related sentences in a number of ways, and cohesion is created to establish the structure of meaning Cohesion should

be noted to involve with meaning between sentences to create the unity of the paragraph so that the reader can follow, recognize how one detail leads to the next It‟s cohesion that reduces the “danger of a piece of writing being a mere collection of unrelated sentences” (Toolan, 1996)

Cohesion is the relevance of each sentence in the paragraph by way of embodiment forms In this study, cohesion means showing the relationship in the form

of paragraph section, within a paragraph Cohesion has two main elements: grammatical cohesion and lexical one In grammatical cohesion contains reference, substitution, ellipsis and conjunctions while lexical cohesion is cohesion in accordance with the form of the word, in particular, it‟s repetition A good paragraph has to fulfill two elements cohesion and coherence A paragraph has good cohesion when each sentence is clearly linked to the next and the topic sentence as a main idea is formed a united whole with constructive and structural sentences Cohesion can be called a form/structure of integration while coherence is integration of the meaning In paragraph cohesion is a component with the creation of in-depth integration within the context of the text unit and individual sentences can have connections within them

In brief, to write a paragraph with adequate cohesion means how to create the glue that sticks a sentence to another in a paragraph by determining a theme or a topic

of the paragraph; having supporting sentences based on the topic sentences that enables readers to perceive semantic relationships within and between sentences through the use of grammatical and lexical elements

1.1.3 Error and error analysis

1.1.3.1 Errors

Errors are an integral part of teaching and learning language as Dulay (1982) puts it “Making errors is an inevitable part of learning People cannot learn language without first systematically committing errors” It provides a window into what is going on “inside the learner‟s mind”; enables teachers to find out the sources of errors and to take pedagogical precautions towards them to overcome some questions and propose solutions regarding different aspects By analyzing students‟ errors, we teachers can give comprehensive and considerate feedbacks to students, eventually help them achieve successful learning

Over the decades, many researchers have attempted to define what an error is Corder (1967) referred to an error as a breach of code, a deviation from what was regarded as the norm; one definition classifies error as a “form unwanted by the

teacher” (George 1972, as quoted by Allwright and Bailey 1991: 85) According to Brown (1980:165) “an error is a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker, reflecting the inter language competence of the learner” Lennon (1991) regarded an error as a linguistic form or combination of forms which, in the same context and under similar conditions of production, would not be produced by the speakers‟ native speaker counterparts James (1998) defined an error as an unsuccessful bit of language However, learners‟ errors can also “provide to researchers evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in the discovery of the language” (Corder 1967: 167) Moreover, Corder in Richard (1974:25) confirms “errors are significant in three different ways Firstly, errors can tell the teacher about the progress of the learner and how far the leaner can apply the teacher‟s method Secondly, they tell the researcher how actually language is learned; therefore researchers through errors discover strategies applied in acquiring a language The last, errors can serve as good feedback

to learners for self-adjustment, hence they will not make the same errors again”

1.1.3.2 Errors vs mistakes

Further, it is necessary to differentiate between error and mistake Corder (1967

1971 in James, 1998: 78) associates the error vs mistake distinction to the issue of

competence vs performance As a specific linguistic term (Corder, 1967), error denotes the deviations resulting from lack of knowledge, while mistakes are performance phenomena (the learner knows the system but fails to use) Error reflects the systematic competence of the learners (the learner‟s system is incorrect) Corder argues that, mistakes are of no significance to the process of language learning since they do not reflect a defect in our knowledge” and “they can occur in L1 as well as L2” (Corder 1967: 166-167 cited in James 1998: 78-79) On the other hand, errors “are

of significance; they do reflect knowledge; they are not self-correctable; and only learners of an L2 make them” (James 1998: 79) “an error arises only when there was

no intention to commit one” (James, 1998: 77) The basic distinction between a mistake and an error is also based on the concept of corrigibility If the learner is able to self-correct after using an incorrect expression or utterance, we are talking about a mistake

On the other hand, when the learner produces an unintentionally deviant utterance and

is not able to self-correct, he or she committed an error (James 1998: 78)

Example:

+ He go to school (Error The student has not learnt the 3rd person form)

+ He goes to scool (Mistake The student knows the correct spelling, but wrote

it wrongly)

In short, in the distinction between errors and mistakes it is vital not to forget about the criterion of correction, which makes a difference, too As Allwright & Bailey (1991) point out, “L2 learners can often correct their own mistakes, but the errors they make are part of their current system of inter-language rules and hence are not recognizable (to the learners themselves) as wrong” (p 92) If the learner is inclined or

able to self-correct, we assume that the deviant utterance is a mistake When, however,

the learner is not able or not inclined to perform self-correction, we shall assume that it

is an error

1.1.3.3 Sources of errors:

Tracing the sources of language learning errors, according to Richards (1971), there were three sources of errors:

1 Interference errors: errors resulting from the use of elements from one

language while speaking/writing

2 Intra-lingual errors: errors reflecting general characteristics of the rule

learning such as faulty generalization, incomplete application of rules and failure to learn conditions under which rules apply

3 Developmental errors: errors occurring when learners attempt to build up

hypothesis about the target language on the basis of limited experiences

According to Richards (1971), intra-lingual errors are also subdivided to the following categories:

1 Overgeneralization errors: the learner creates a deviant structure on the basis

of other structures in the target language (e.g "He can sings" where English allows

"He can sing" and "He sings")

2 Ignorance of rule restrictions: the learner applies rules to context where they

are not applicable (e.g He made me to go rest" through extension of the pattern "He asked/wanted me to go")

3 Incomplete application of rules: the learner fails to use a fully developed

structure (e.g "You like to sing?" in place of "Do you like to sing?")

4 False hypothesis: the learners do not fully understand a distinction in the

target language (e.g the use of "was" as a marker of past tense in "One day it was happened")

James (1998), in his study, showed the different types of learners' errors

relating to omission, overinclusion, misselection (use wrong words not wrong forms), misordering, blends (blending arises when two alternative grammatical forms are combined to produce an ungrammatical blend.)Based on this, he stated that there are four causes of errors:

1 Inter-lingual errors (Mother-tongue influence): these kinds of errors are

influenced by the native languages which interfere with target language learning,

2 Intra-lingual errors: these types of errors are caused by the target language

itself like: false analogy, misanalysis (learners form a wrong hypothesis), incomplete rule application (the learners do not use all the rules), exploiting redundancy (this error occurs by carrying considerable redundancy), overlooking co-occurrence restrictions (this error is caused by overlooking the exceptional rules), hypercorrection or monitor overuse (this results from the learners‟ over cautious and strict observance of the rules), Overgeneralization or system-simplification (this error is caused by the misuse

of words or grammatical rules)

3 Communication strategy-based errors

4 Induced Errors: these errors are the result of being misled by the way in

which the teachers give definitions, examples, explanations and arrange practice opportunities

The combination of two models of Richard and James will be applied to find out the causes of learners in English writing to give some remedies and solutions to the cohesive errors

1.1.3.4 Error analysis

A better understanding of the errors and the origin of such errors in the process

of EFL writing will help teachers know students‟ difficulties in learning that language; therefore; error analysis can be considered as a fundamental tool in language teaching

in order to reorganize teacher‟s point of view and readdress his/her methodology for fixing and fulfilling the students‟ gaps (Londono Vasquez, 2007) “Error analysis is the study of the learners‟ error which can be observed, analyzed, and classified to reveal something of the system operating within the learner” (Brown, 1980:166)

It is the study of error that made by students in the process of second language acquisition Error analysis "involves a set of procedures for identifying, describing and explaining errors in learner language" (Ellis, 1994: 701) Error Analysis studies can be divided into five processes: collection of a sample of learner language, identification, description, explanation, and evaluation of errors (Ellis, 1997) It provides a comparison of the language of the learner at some particular point in his course with the target language (Corder, 1973: 149) Besides, Corder, who is considered the father

of EA, insisted that EA is of two purposes: diagnostic (to in-point the problem) and prognostic (to make plans to solve a problem; therefore; learner‟s errors are seen as a useful device in three various aspects Firstly, basing on the students‟ grasp from the errors at a given point during the learning process, they can give the teacher a clue as

to how the learner‟s learning process is going The teacher can modify the learning material to meet the students‟ problems Secondly, they show the researcher what the language learning strategies of learners are Thirdly, they are regarded as a tool for the learner to use in learning the language It deals with how the learner tests his hypotheses about the nature of the language the learner is acquiring (Corder, 1982)

What Corder points out below summarizes the view of error correction in language teaching (1973): “Language learning is not parrot learning; we do not „learn‟

or „practice‟ examples They are the data from which we induce the system of the language Skill in correction of errors lies in the direction of exploiting the incorrect forms produced by the learner in a controlled fashion.”

1.2 Literature review

It‟s important to shed the light on some of the studies conducted on student‟s cohesion ties in written compositions and cohesion errors all around the world to take advantage of the procedure and ways of account

Crowhurst (1987) conducted a study to investigate which type of cohesion ties mostly used at each of three grades levels (grade 6, 10 and 12) in argumentative and narrative essays He listed five categories basing on Halliday and Hasan‟s (1976) categories: substitution, ellipse, reference, conjunction, and lexical cohesion After that, students are requested to write two essays, one narrative, on argumentative in forty five minutes The result of the study showed that there was no overall tendency for the frequency of cohesive ties to increase in comparison with grade level of students While two kinds in lexical cohesion: collocation, the use of synonyms increased with grade level, two other kinds: reference and conjunction decreased However, this study is limited because it only investigated the frequency using kinds

of cohesive ties in essays without making use of them to improve the quality of students‟ writing

In addition, Johnson (1992) conducted a study on three types of Halliday and Hasan‟s (1976) cohesion: reference, conjunction and lexical cohesion in good and weak essays written by both Malayan and native speakers in English under a specified time length and evaluated as “good” or “weak” by Malay teachers and American teachers The result suggested that good essays written by English had more syntactic ties (conjunction and reference) whereas good essays written in Malay had more semantic ties through reiteration of words Besides, in general, the findings showed that there were not more cohesive in good essays than the weak ones The research also stopped at investigating three kinds of types of Halliday and Hasan‟s cohesion categories The conclusion didn‟t show much contribution to solving how to apply more cohesive ties to have effective writing for students

Next, Palmer (1999) examined the relationship between cohesion and coherence by observing English essays by second year students who had passed their English I examination Palmer divided the students into two groups to write about a

similar topic they had read in one hour However, group A (42 students) were instructed about textual coherence including 1) overall length of the text; 2) the use of paragraphs to organize information; 3) lexical reiteration; 4) the use of pronouns; and did many exercises about this subject, group B (47 students) did not received any explanation about this concept The result shows that although the overall length of compositions between two groups is nearly the same, the group A tend to use pronouns to avoid the repetition of words to increase coherence of the text, group B resorted to the use of lexical reiteration The author came to conclusion that teaching the cohesive links could improve the students‟ writing performance

Meisuo (2000) conducted a study to investigate the relationship between the number of cohesive devices and the quality of writing of Chinese undergraduate EFL students in two PRC universities He focused on the improper use three main types of cohesive ties: reference, conjunction, and lexical cohesion in the students‟ essays basing on the Halliday and Hasan‟s (1976) categories by using both qualitative and quantitative analysis The research found that lexical devices were the most frequently used, followed by conjunctions and reference devices His finding showed that the inappropriate reference devices as well as the overuse and misuse of conjunctions, and restricted use of lexical cohesion has a negative effect on writing quality by making the ambiguous contextual meaning or misleading to the readers With regard to lexical cohesion, Meisuo (2000) suggests that EFL students need to be encouraged to learn new words in context, not in isolation, to avoid misusing or overusing some lexical items (Meisuo 2000:88-89)

Next, Ting ( 2003) used Halliday and Hasan‟s (1976) taxonomy of cohesive devices to investigate cohesive errors in Chinese tertiary EFL students‟s compostions

(80 essays) but mostly focused on conjunction types: additive (signaling the

presentation of addition information such as and, moreover, in addition to etc);

adversative ( moderating or qualifying the information in the following sentence of a

text with the information in the preceding: but, yet, on the other hand etc); causal

(interpreting the relationship between the cause and consequence: because of, for, so

etc); temporal (existing when the events in a text are related in terms of the timing of

their occurrence: first, then, next, in conclusion, finally etc) The result showed that mostly students are weak at using conjunctions They made more mistakes at adversative and additive than causal and temporal errors Besides, the learners used unnecessary additive conjunctions to link short and simple sentences In addition, they confused how to put the causal conjunction in appropriate order The number of errors

in using temporal conjunctions was the smallest

Another study on the use of cohesive devices in writing by freshmen majoring

in English at Thang Long university by Tran (2005) also analyzed the cohesive errors that students made, together with the explanation the source of each type of cohesive ones by quantitative methods The result showed that the grammatical cohesion is more problematic to students than the lexical ones; especially the use of demonstrative reference is the most common However, as showed in the presentation of data, no errors were found in the use of ellipsis and substitution In lexical ties, collocation made students confused while they did not have any trouble in reiteration The limitation of this study is that it merely investigates the errors in the use of cohesive devices in the writing by pre-intermediate students with the same levels without oversized class Students already were well equipped with cohesive devices by Halliday and Hasan‟s (1976) category Besides, other factors affecting students‟ writing are not fully investigated to have a full picture of this learning problem

In addition, a latest study was conducted by Yanti (2012) to analyze the errors

on the use of cohesive devices in 66 essays written by the seventh semester students of English department of STAIN Salatiga The analysis of this research is based upon Halliday and Hasan‟s (1976) cohesion framework and taxonomy The objectives of this research are to know whether there are any cohesive errors in 66 English essays written by the seventh semester students of English department of STAIN Salatiga in the academic year of 2011/2012, to find out the types of cohesive devices error committed in those essays, and to describe the dominant of errors in using cohesive devices in those essays by qualitative method The results revealed that the students made mistakes mostly at reference, then at conjunction and the last at lexical cohesion However, this research only focused on the students at university at the seventh

semester of English department, who had known clearly about the cohesion devices and the level are nearly the same because they had passed the entrance exams of English and were major in English and had technique to write essay, not paragraph

In conclusion, this chapter brings an overview about the theoretical concepts and reviews about other previous studies which are useful and relevant to the study Although there is a variety of definitions of cohesion and cohesion devices but the researcher follows the model of Halliday and Hasan because it‟s considered the most distinguishable and easily understandable for the learners at high school Besides, during the teaching and learning English, learners‟ errors are inevitable; this error analysis will help the teachers improve their effective teaching methods/techniques, devise appropriate materials, construct suitable tests for different levels and needs of the learners Furthermore, other previous studies not only provide the foundation but also point out the limitation that this study should avoid and investigate cohesion errors more effectively because the topic of cohesive errors in paragraph seems not to have received as much attention as it deserves despite the significant role of cohesive device in writing In Việt Nam, up to now, there has been no work on paragraph cohesion error in general and no consideration for cohesion errors of the high school students in particular The present study tries to deal with a cohesion analysis of paragraph in English writing skill by 11th Grade Students at Tùng Thiện High School

In doing so, this study attempts to identify the errors using the cohesion taxonomy presented by Halliday and Hasan (1976) The outcomes of this research will help EFL teachers and students in Vietnam know how to avoid cohesion errors and to improve the quality of their writing with the combination of cohesion and coherence This research will also be helpful to researchers who want to further study the field of cohesion error analysis

CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the methodology used in this study such as subject, data collection, data analysis and reasons for employing qualitative and quantitative for case study are explained The appropriate methodology will guarantee the reliability and the validity of the study

2.1 Subject

The subject of the research is 11th Grade Students at Tùng Thiện High School in the academic year of 2012-2013 with two classes of 84 students They have learned English for 6 years They have been taught the same textbook with the same length of learning time, they are nearly at the same level in English; most of them want to pass the entrance exam to university with group A1 or D including English as a major subject Also, each unit in the English 11 has a lesson for writing, but the students do not have the knowledge about cohesive devices, so in this situation, the teacher who is also the researcher is responsible for supplying them to have full understanding in the optional writing lessons at high school after each unit Little by little, the students gradually equip their writing skill with this knowledge aspect, and will apply how to use cohesive devices correctly

2.2 Data collection instrument and data collection

+ Data collection instrument: excerptions of paragraphs taken from students'

essays

+ Data collection:

Due to the purposes and requirements of this research, 10 units among 14 ones (2 units has been cut down in education program offload) from 11th English textbook are chosen In reality, after instructing and teaching cohesive devices, the teacher, the researcher as well, collects the writing papers, find out, and classify cohesive errors based on Halliday and Hasan‟s category (1976) 672 /840 writing papers including cohesive errors from students were chose during the school year 2012-2013

After each writing unit, teacher required students to hand in free compositions without marking so that students were not affected by the psychological factors

In this case study, documentation study is used as a technique to collect data This is a descriptive study which examines the scripts collected from the respondents and looks out for errors of cohesion in the students‟ paragraph

2.3 Methods of data analysis

This research is conducted by both quantitative and qualitative methods The data are analyzed quantitatively using descriptive statistics with frequency and percentages It represents a dominant quantitative approach with a less-dominant qualitative data collection procedure

The quantitative research method is appropriate for this study because

“Quantitative research is explaining phenomena by collecting numerical data that are analyzed using mathematically based methods in particular statistics” (Muijs, 2004: 1)

In this thesis, the use of the quantitative method aims to “quantify or find out the extent of the variation in a phenomenon, situation, problem or issue” (McBurney and White, 2007) and quantitative data refers to data which are altered into numbers by measurements (Punch, 1998: 59) To calculate the percentage of error types, the researcher uses the formula offered by Anas (1966:40) The description of the formula

is as follows:

P = Percents

F = Frequency of Errors (for each types of cohesion)

N = Total Number of the Whole Errors

The analysis process derived from Error Analysis studies can be divided into

five processes: collection of a sample of learner language, identification, description,

explanation, and evaluation of errors (Ellis, 1997) Moreover, as Ellis (1997) points

out “classifying errors in these ways can help us to diagnose learners‟ learning problems at any stage of their development and to plot how changes in error patterns occur over time.” This categorization can be exemplified as follows:

Omission: Example: A strange thing happen to me yesterday

Addition: Example: In the London, I stayed there during five years ago

Selection: Example: My friend is oldest than me

Ordering: Example: In morphology: „get upping’ for „getting up‟

In syntax: He is a dear to me friend

In lexicon: „key car’ for „car key‟

The errors after being collected will be categorized into four main sections like that categorization above to analyze the reason why learners commit errors; since then the researcher gives implications for teaching to remedy the errors

Qualitative approach will be ideal for answering the second research question in this study focusing on the reason why errors occur This is because the ultimate objective of the qualitative research is to understand In this research, the last question

of the study aims at investigating if there are any causes in the participants' cohesive errors which can be attributed to giving implications for better writing because understanding the errors and origins of errors will help highlight learners‟ difficulties

in cohesive writing In data classification, the sources of errors based on the combination from the model of Richards (1974) and James (1998) together with other listed sources mentioned above will be the basement to investigate the root of common cohesive errors that 11th students commit during writing process; mostly concentrating errors on intra-lingual, inter-lingual and the mixture of other sources into one point

In short, in order to achieve the aims of this study, both quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted for data analysis However, quantitative method is dominantly used

CHAPTER III: ANALYSIS OF DATA AND FINDINGS

After applying the methods and analyzing the students‟ paragraphs by instruments mentioned in the previous chapter; the researcher finds a number of errors

on the use of cohesion devices in the students‟ essays Basing on that, the researcher makes the following table to show the total of errors as well as the number of error in each type of cohesion devices The errors that students have made cover mainly in grammatical cohesive devices From the percentage of each cohesive tie, it is evident that the conjunction category had the highest percentage of ties (53.8%), followed by the reference category (37.9%) and lexical ones (8.3%) Other types of cohesion such

as substitution and ellipsis weren‟t used

Table 1: The number of errors in the use of cohesive devices

errors

Percentage (%)

The table indicates the number of inappropriate grammatical cohesive devices used by students, as well as their percentage Students‟ inappropriate uses of conjunction exceed the ones of references even though conjunctions have small

occurrences if compared to reference, the percentage of inappropriate conjunctions used is bigger Students tend to use a wrong conjunction to connect their writing

Basing on the sources of errors on the model of Richard (1974) and James (1998) together with the error analysis of Ellis (1997), these errors in this thesis are also analyzed to find out the sources of errors in each kind of cohesive paragraph error

to remedy the students‟ errors and improve the writing quality of the students as well

Table 2: Errors and their causes

Inter-lingual

lingual

Intra- lingual

3.1 Errors in the use of reference

It can be seen in the table, the errors in the use of reference takes up to 37.9% of all errors in the use of cohesive devices They occur in the form of demonstrative reference, personal reference and comparative reference The number of demonstrative

reference errors ranks first and accounts for 18.6 %, compared to 15.8% of personal reference errors and 3.5% of comparative errors

3.1.1 Errors in the use of demonstrative reference

The researcher finds that the use of “the” and “there” is commonly made by the students in their writing

a Errors in the use of demonstrative reference “the”

Table 3: Errors in the use of demonstrative reference “the”

Type of errors Number of errors Percentage

“the” for inappropriate places are classified as intra-lingual errors The errors as anaphoric references are made when the students don‟t add “the” which is a synonym

or near synonym of the items they have mentioned earlier in their text The example of omitting “the” as anaphoric reference is:

Example 1: “ My parents often prepare some red envelopes In Lunar New Year, we are received lucky money put inside (the) envelopes ”

Example 2: “ My most unforgettable experience happened four years ago, when I was taken to Ha Noi by my parents I had a wonderful time in (the) city that I have never forgotten ”

In the first example, “the” is also used to a noun that has been mentioned before

or that is known to both the speaker and the listener In the example mentioned above,

it is very clear that the “red envelopes” is mentioned before Therefore, the second time of the phrase “red envelopes” to be used must be after „the‟ The sentence in the

example 2 quoted here is not clear but in the context of the essay, the readers can understand that “Ha Noi” is mentioned before is the same with “the city” below Weaker students always make this mistake because it is not easy for them to manage

to remember whether the thing has been mentioned before

Besides, the errors with the use of omitting cataphoric and homophoric account for a small percentage Here are examples:

“…My dream is going abroad to an English speaking country such as (the) United Kingdom…” (homophoric is omitted)

“…She was (the) best among my friends in the class…” (cataphoric is omitted)

Moreover, students make errors of inappropriate use of “the” in their writing This section basically is about the use of Zero Article The students are always confused about when and whether to use articles or not and therefore they make this type of errors like the following examples:

“…I met her when I went home by the (X) bus at night…”

“…She needed to stay in the (X) hospital for a week…”

“…On that day, I got a bad mark in (the) Maths and failed (the) English semester exam at the (X) school …”

In English, there are many fixed time expressions which require the use of the definite article, such as in the morning, in the afternoon and in the evening However,

it is not the case for all the time expressions, such as last Sunday or next Monday Therefore it creates problems for L2 learners, especially the ones who do not work hard to remember the fixed expressions We do not use “the” before the nouns

“school”, “college”, “university”, “hospital”, “bed”, “church”, “prison” and so on when these places are used or visited for their primary purposes In the example above, the places “school” is referred here in the sense that its main purposes are used for students At last, we do not use any articles to refer to the expression describing a means of travel and the subjects Therefore, the transport means “bus” and the subjects

“maths” and “English” are mentioned, the articles should be omitted

In short, from the above errors, we can conclude that there are two main reasons for the errors made Firstly, as mentioned before, the learners are influenced by their

L1 Secondly, errors arise when a linguistic feature in the target language is unknown

in the source language Definite “the” is a typical case Comparing between English structure and Vietnamese one, we can see it clearly While in the English structure of noun phrases, the elements preceding Head are: Deictic (including articles), Numerative, Epithet, and Classifier, in Vietnamese structure, Deictic (including articles), Epithet, and Classifier are not included That is the reason why Vietnamese students often forget definite articles in their writing Furthermore, students still commit this kind of errors because of their strategies of language learning (Richards,

1974, p.37) when material and exercises is not clear enough for students to recognize and apply what they learn into their real practice in writing paragraph

b Errors in the use of demonstrative reference “there”

Table 4: Errors in the use of demonstrative reference “there”

Type of errors Number of errors Percentage

For example: “…In Thanh Ba post office, no one keep motors or bicycles, they have installed a camera in there In there, they have a group of staff who are well- trained and polite

“ The market was crowed and boisterous There had a lot of things sold ”

From these examples above, there are two typical errors in the use of “there” The first kind of error in the first four examples, “there” in this situation has the function as a place of adverb The meaning of “there” is anaphoric and locative; it refers to “Thanh Ba post office”; however; the students are interfered by their mother tongue, they translate word by word from Vietnamese into English by adding “in” in front of “there”, which make the sentences incorrect Secondly, “there” in two examples “there had a lot of things…” and “there has a safeguard…” is wrongly used because the students make mistake when using “there” as a pronoun as in “there is a man at the door” (Haliday and Hasan, 1976:74 “There” in the examples, in fact, is a demonstrative adverb It cannot be a subject in a sentence

3.1.2 Errors in the use of comparative reference

Table 5: Errors in the use of comparative reference

Type of errors Number of errors Percentage

“ I think the plan makes my students very happy The money will help us to build a more big library/ biger library ”

“ In the competition, there are a lot of participants to join in the game than we expected ”

In Vietnamese language, there is no difference between one syllable and more than one syllable of adjective like the structure of comparison in English The students commit these errors because of not noticing the exception of general rules and failing

to apply the acquired knowledge in real situation This deficiency is unawareness of pragmatic difference However, the percentage of errors in the use of comparative references is very limited It means that students are highly aware of these cases correctly as well as develop habit of using comparative references in their writing to apply what they have learned in a practical way This kind of error has inter-lingual source and the performance pressure If the students have time to work in pair to peer edit and give feedback for each other writing, the result may be better

3.1.3 Errors in the use of personal reference

Table 6: Errors in the use of personal reference

Type of errors Number of errors Percentage

“…My parents give me money to buy my idol posters and I stick it on the wall

of my room…”

The object pronoun “it” is error here because it is used to refer to singular, but the word “my idol posters” is plural This error makes no correlation between “it” and