Linguistic errors in writing a paragraph of 10th form students at nguyen trai high school in hai phong and some solutions

LIST OF TABLESTable 1: Students‟ perception of making linguistic errors Table 2: Students‟ feeling when making errors in writing a paragraph Table 3: Teacher‟s errors correction in stude

VIETNAMNATIONALUNIVERSITY,HANOI UNIVERSITYOFLANGUAGESANDINTERNATIONALSTUDIES

FACULTYOFPOST-GRADUATE-STUDIESUDIES

PHẠMTHỊBÍCHNGỌC

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SOMESOLUTIONS

(NHỮNG LỖI VỀ NGÔN NGỮ KHI VIẾT ĐOẠN VĂN CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN TRÃI – HẢI PHÒNG VÀ MỘT SỐ BIỆN

PHÁP KHẮC PHỤC)

(NHỮNG LỖI VỀ NGÔN NGỮ KHI VIẾT ĐOẠN VĂN CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP

10 TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN TRÃI – HẢI PHÒNG VÀ MỘT SỐ BIỆN

PHÁP

M.A KHẮCMINORPHỤC)THESIS

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10

HANOI - 2012 HANOI - 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-

GRADUATE STUDIES

PHẠM THỊ BÍCH NGỌC

FORM STUDENTS AT NGUYEN TRAI HIGH SCHOOL IN HAI

PHONG AND SOME SOLUTIONS

(NHỮNG LỖI VỀ NGÔN NGỮ KHI VIẾT ĐOẠN VĂN CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN TRÃI – HẢI PHÒNG VÀ MỘT SỐ

BIỆN PHÁP KHẮC PHỤC)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.14.10.

Supervisor: Cao Thúy Hồng, M.A.

HANOI - 2012

PART II: DEVELOPMENT

Chapter I: Literature review

I.1 Teaching writing

I.2 Teaching paragraph writing

I.3 Writing errors

Chapter II: Methodology

II.1 The situation of teaching and learning English at N.T.H.S 12

Chapter III: Data analysis and discussions

III.1 Students‟ perception of their linguistics errors in writing a paragraph 15

III 2 Students‟ feeling when making errors in writing 15III.3 The causes of students‟ linguistic errors in writing a paragraph 16

Chapter IV: Suggestions

IV.1 Fostering students‟ knowledge of grammar, vocabulary and linking words 27

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

N.T.H.S: Nguyen Trai high school

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Students‟ perception of making linguistic errors

Table 2: Students‟ feeling when making errors in writing a paragraph

Table 3: Teacher‟s errors correction in students‟ paragraph

Table 4: Students‟ revision on their errors

Table 5: Kinds of linguistic errors

Table 6: Grammar difficulties in writing a paragraph

Table 7: Vocabulary difficulties in writing a paragraph

Table 8: Linking words difficulties in writing a paragraph

LIST OF CHARTS

Pie chart 1: Causes of students‟ linguistic errors in writing a paragraph

Chart 1 : Students‟ frequency of using linking words in a paragraph

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

Teaching and learning a foreign language aims at providing the learners withmeans of communication To acquire the communicative competence, fourlanguage skills (reading, speaking, listening and writing) are taught regularly atschools and universities, among which writing skill is very important because ithelps learners to learn other skills better

“First, writing reinforces the grammatical structures, idioms, and vocabulary that we have been teaching our students Second, when they write, they have a chance to be adventurous with the language, to go beyond what they have just learned to say, to take risks Third, when students write, they necessarily become very involved with the new language; the effort to express ideas and constant use of eye, hand and brain is the unique way of expressing their idea They discover a real need for finding the right word and the right sentence The close relationship between writing and thinking makes writing a valuable part of any language courses” (Raimes, 1938: 3).

Due to the importance of writing skill, it is part of the English syllabus at highschool However, from the writer‟s teaching-experience at Nguyen Trai highschool, not enough attention has been paid to the teaching and learning of writingskill at high school Writing is both dismal and neglected: many students never get awriting assignment, and many writing exercises in the textbook are abandoned.Besides that, teachers are also afraid of teaching writing skill They think thatteaching writing is really a challenge

The ignorance of writing skill at high school has resulted in students‟ poorwriting skill: they have a lot of mistakes and many of them are unable to write anunderstandable paragraph One of the most serious problems that the writer hasidentified from her experience teaching paragraph writing to students is linguisticdifficulties For example students often use wrong verb tenses in a paragraph, theyconfuse the meaning of the words or they can‟t create the coherence in theparagraph by linking words Therefore, the researcher would like to do this research

to find out common linguistic difficulties in writing a paragraph of 10th formstudents and suggest some solutions to help students to avoid the linguistic errorsand improve their paragraph writing.

2 Objectives of the study

As just mentioned, students at Nguyen Trai high school face many linguisticdifficulties in writing a paragraph Therefore, the ultimate goal of the research is tofind out the real situation of students‟ linguistic difficulties in writing

4 Scope of the study

The study is about paragraph writing of 10th form students at Nguyen Traihigh school However, due to the limited scope and time, it is confined to findingout the students‟ linguistic errors in paragraph writing Specifically, only mistakes

in grammar, vocabulary and linking words will be taken into consideration

5 Method of the study

In this study, the writer adopted the quantitative research approach.Specifically, survey questionnaires and model analysis were two methods employed

to collect data for the research study

Questionnaires were conducted among 60 students to find out students‟perceptions of their linguistic difficulties in writing a paragraph

Sixty paragraphs on three different topics from 60 students were collected.Mistakes were identified and classified into different categories Statistical countingwas carried out to bring about the real picture of students‟ linguistic difficulties

6 Organization of the study

In order to achieve the above mentioned aims, this paper is divided into threeparts:

The first part is the Introduction, which points out the rationale, aims, andscope of the study Research questions are also specifically defined to serve asguidelines for the whole paper

The second part is the Development In this part, three chapters arepresented In chapter one, literature related to teaching writing, paragraph writingand writing errors is reviewed In chapter two, the method of the study is presented

It includes careful descriptions of the subjects, sampling method, instrument andmethod of data collection and analysis The last chapter presents data analysis anddiscussion In this part, questionnaires and writing samples collected from 10th formstudents at Nguyen Trai high school are analyzed to find out students‟ typical errors

in order to recommend effective strategies for teaching paragraph writing

The last part of the study is the Conclusion, which points out what has beenaddressed as well as what has not been completed and offers recommendations forfurther study

PART II: DEVELOPMENTCHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW I.1.Teaching Writing

I.1.1 Reasons for teaching writing

In Byrne‟s (1988) point of view, teaching writing is beneficial because itbrings many pedagogical benefits First, writing enables different learning stylesand needs of learners Some learners, especially those who do not learn easilythrough oral practice alone, feel more secure if they are allowed to read and write inthe language Besides that, written work provides learners with some tangibleevidence that they are making progress in language Moreover, learning writingmeans that the learners are exposed to the foreign language through more than onemedium and it is more effective than relying on a single medium alone In addition,writing provides variety in classroom activities, serving as a break from oral work

At the same time, it increases the amount of language contact through work that can

be set out of class Last but not least, writing is often needed for formal andinformal testing

Harmer (1998) also highlighted some reasons for teaching writing:

Firstly, it is reinforcement Most students gain great benefits from seeing thewritten language especially the visual demonstration of language construction isvaluable for both their understanding and committing the new language to theirmemory It is, therefore, very useful for them to write sentences using new languageafter they have just studied it

Language development is also a reason for teaching writing It seems that theactual process of writing helps students to learn language better The highest level

of writing skill involves critical thinking To deal with their mental activities,students have to construct proper written texts using all their learning experience.The third and also the most important reason for teaching writing is that it is a basicproductive language skill Obviously, students need to know how to write a letter,how to write a report, etc Therefore, they need to know some writing conventionssuch as punctuation, paragraph construction, forms of paragraph

I.1.2 Principles of teaching writing

There are several principles of writing But according to Huong, T.T, MinhN.T.T.etal (2007: 58), teachers should consider some following principles whenteaching writing

First of all, teachers should provide many opportunities for students to write.Students‟ writing skills just improve when they practice writing a lot Therefore,just asking students to practice in writing lesson is not enough Teacher can createwriting tasks from listening, reading and speaking lessons with different styles ofwriting such as letter writing, e-mail writing, etc

Then, teachers should make their feedback to students helpful andmeaningful by giving detailed comments at the end of students‟ writings Teachers‟comments should help students to be independent writers It means that teachers‟comments should help students to correct the errors themselves instead of teachercorrecting students‟ errors

Moreover, to evaluate students‟ writings clearly and exactly, teachers shouldhave specific criteria for marking such as spelling, accuracy of vocabulary, use ofcohesive devices, etc

Besides, as often as possible teachers should create the right conditions forstudents‟ generation of ideas, Moreover, teachers should always considerthemselves a resource for information and language when necessary

Lastly, teachers should provide students with communicative writingactivities With this kind of activities, students must identify the genre, the audienceand the purpose of the writing This is useful for students because these writingactivities in the class tend to resemble communicative writing tasks in the real life

I.2 Teaching paragraph writing

I.2.1 Definitions of Paragraph

There are various definitions of a paragraph

In the Oxford advanced learner‟s dictionary, a paragraph is defined as “asection of a piece of writing, usually consisting of several sentences dealing with asingle subject The first sentence of a paragraph starts on a new line.” In this

definition, a paragraph is defined as a part of the writing work, having a singlesubject and including several sentences.

Besides, Feist (1996: 6) reckons that a paragraph consists of a group ofsentences with a single idea and the purpose of writing these groups of sentences in

a paragraph is to make the organization of the ideas clear to the readers

Oshima and Hogue (1999: 3), however, think that a paragraph is anorganization of related sentences These sentences must have the same topic Thelength of the paragraph depends on the writer‟s purpose

In this study, the author would like to refer to a paragraph as the definition ofOshima and Hogue (1999) This definition points out clearly that the sentences inthe paragraph must be related and tell the readers about the same topic

Qualities of a good paragraph

A good paragraph has three main structural parts: a topic sentence, supportingsentences, and a concluding sentence The topic sentence states the main idea of theparagraph, in the other words, a topic sentence must state the controlling idea of theparagraph (Feist, 1996: 17) Supporting sentences include the ideas related to thetopic (Feist, 1996: 23) They develop various aspects of the topic such as causes,effects, reasons, example, etc The supporting sentences are connected together bycohesive devices The concluding sentence signals the end of the paragraph, and itsummarizes or restates the main point the writer made

In addition to three structural parts of a paragraph, a good paragraph also needs tohave unity and coherence Unity means that the writer discusses only one main idea

in a paragraph Coherence means that the paragraph is easy to read and understand

A coherent paragraph contains sentences that are logical and flow smoothly.Therefore, in order to have coherence in writing, the movement from one sentence

to the next must be logical and smooth; and there must be no sudden jumps

I.2.2 Classifications of paragraph

According to Feist (1996), there are four main kinds of paragraph:

informative, descriptive, narrative and persuasive

An informative paragraph is a paragraph that informs information.

A narrative paragraph is a paragraph that tells about something that

happened

“Persuasive writing convinces the reader to take action or to support an

idea” (Feist, 1996: 54) In this kind of paragraph, the main idea is your opinion onthe topic It is usually stated in a topic sentence The others support the opinion withreasons and evidence The tone of persuasive paragraph should be strong, but polite

in order to encourage the reader to act

A descriptive paragraph tells what something or someone is like It helps

readers see, feel, taste, smell and hear the things being described The topic sentencegives the overall impression Supporting sentences include specific details about theperson or thing being described

In English 10 textbook, most of the writing tasks require students to write adescriptive paragraph, so the author also chose the topics about descriptiveparagraph for students to write to collect the data

I.3 Writing errors

I.3.1 Definition of errors

We all know that writing is not easy It is complex in that it tests a person‟sability to use a language and the ability to express ideas This difficulty of writingleads students to be more susceptible to producing errors

There have been a number of definitions of errors proposed by experts Somescholars are in favor of defining errors basing on their degree of

frequency Cunning Worth (1987: 29) sees errors as "systematic deviation from thenorms of the language being learned" This can be interpreted as the repeatedviolation against the rules and the standards of the language being learned, excludedfrom the language that has not been learned Nevertheless, the definition itself isproblematic, for the concept “learned" is just relative Students may not learn thelanguage in class but they may have learned it somewhere outside the class It isalso probable that students learned the language but they may have forgotten it.Thus, it would be difficult for language teachers to decide whether students have orhave not learned the language

On the other hand, other scholars identify the term "errors" with regard tostudents' inability to correct these errors by themselves.

Edge (1997:18) defines "errors" in a simple way as followed “ If a studentcannot self-correct a mistake in his or her own English, but the teacher thinks thatthe class is familiar with the correct form, we shall call that sort of mistake anerror." Edge's definition has one trait in common with that of Cunning (1987); that

is, certain parts of the language being learned are problematic to students Thus,they make errors unconsciously, which accounts for their incapacity to self-correct

In the meantime, some experts combine both of the two dimensions abovewhen mentioning the notion of "errors"

Corder (1967: 22) regards” errors" as the "systematic and regular deviantform of language produced by second language learners at competence level due tolinguistic reason.” Accordingly, second language learners repeatedly producedeviant forms of language because of their deficient competence of selective items

of the target language but not because of their carelessness or lack of attention, etc

In the light of the aforementioned definitions, the researcher would like toemploy the third view by Corder (1967) as it proves to be the most comprehensive.According to Corder (1967), an error is characterized with two features namelysystematic deviancy and learner's deficiency to self-correct These two features can

be considered criteria to determine whether students have made an error or not

I.3.2 The role of " errors" in English Language Teaching

Corder (1967) argues that errors are the most important source ofinformation revealing that learners are organizing knowledge available to them toproduce the language at a particular point of time

Edge (1997) is also in line with this school of thought He regards errors asnecessary learning steps which are evident for the fact that students are learning thelanguage successfully

By the same token, Bartram & Walton (2001:11) see errors as "aninescapable natural part of language learning" and that they are "part of the learning

process: not the wrong turning on the road of mature language use but actually part

of the road itself." These two scholars consider the process of learning a secondlanguage similar to that of a baby learning his mother tongue

In particular, errors benefit both the learner and the teacher As for theformer, errors could assume the role of stimuli to facilitate learning and assiststudents in achieving writing fluency (Lyons & Heasley, 1992).With respect to thelater, errors serve as an invaluable implication of what strategies used by learnersand an indication of what they have learnt or have not (Crystal, 1987)

In short, there has been positive spectrum in the view concerning theimportance of errors in the field of English language teaching and learning It can beconcluded that errors are by no means to be avoided at any expense

I.3.3 Classification of written errors

Gavigan and Citarella (2005) point out 20 common errors in writing Theyare errors in subject-verb agreement, verb tense, pronoun- antecedent agreement,agreement of nouns, pronoun case, idioms, parallel structure, adjective/ adverb,comparisons, ambiguity/ indefinite referent, redundancy, wordiness, doublenegative, misplaced modifier, dangling modifier, words commonly confused, who/which / that, pronoun shift, sentence structure, active/passive voice

Ferris (2005) divides writing errors into four types The first ismorphological errors which includes the errors related to verbs (tense, form,subject- verb agreement) and errors related to nouns (articles/ determiners, nounendings) The second one is lexical errors which are the errors of word choice, wordform, informal usage, idiom error, and pronoun error The third type is syntacticerrors consisting errors in sentence structure, run-ons, fragments The last type ismechanical errors which are the errors of punctuation, spelling, and capitalization

Ferris „s (2005) classification is comprehensive and easy to follow But due

to the scope of the study and the real situation of N.T.H.S, the researcher onlychooses to focus on some most commonly made mistakes among high schoolstudents in Vietnam such as verb tense, subject-verb agreement, word choice, wordform, articles, spelling

I.3.4 Error correction

Although errors committing is inevitable in the process of learning as itproves learners are exploring the language, there remains a controversial issuerelated to the question whether or not errors should be corrected and how to correcterrors as well Basically, there are quite a few contrasting views The first school ofthought holds that there is no need to correct learner's errors Teacher's job is only topoint out to learners that an error has been committed The other view suggests thaterrors must be corrected every time they are detected; otherwise, a bad habit of thewrong use of the target language will be formed To some extent, these schools ofthought reach an extreme that would not benefit students to the best Thus, theresearcher would like to employ the Communicative Language Teaching approach

to error correction That is, error correction should be provided when neededbecause the very goal of this approach is to develop students‟ communicative

competence and errors are seen as a sign of their real learning but not a sign ofincomplete learning

Lee (1990) mentions three kinds of errors that require more concern fromteacher namely errors that interfere with intelligibility or communication, errorswhich stigmatized or irritate common errors and high frequency errors

I.3.5 Teacher’s role in error correction

Traditionally, the role of teacher in error correcting has always beendominant Teacher is the only source to both point out the errors and show how tocorrect them Edge (1997) coins the term "over-correct teacher" to imply this.Teachers always strive to be correct in terms of linguistic form when they are inclass and this poses profound effects on students Thus, learners will see that whattheir teachers prioritize is freedom from any kinds of mistakes or errors "Even ifthe teacher tells the students that they should try to express themselves freely, it will

be difficult for the students to behave in this way when they see that it is not theteacher's way." (Edge,1997) Besides, teacher assumes the role as the only linguisticmodel in their setting for students to look at Learners always have a strong desire to

be themselves and to be able to express themselves in English Teacher, to someextent, has become the model of the same background culture to

enjoy the language, to express himself/ herself in the target language Thus, fromstudents' perspectives, teachers earns their status "based on the fact that they aresuccessful examples of what their students aim to be; people from a sharedbackground who have achieved an ability to communicate in English" (Edge, 1997).Therefore, teachers should provide correction that helps learner to expressthemselves more accurately and "make correction a part of the teaching and learningprocess, not something to fight against" or "a kind of criticism or punishment"(Edge, 1997) This is the very status that teachers should assume in error correction.

I.4 Previous studies

Tran and Bui (2010) conducted a study of different kinds of grammaticalerrors made by the first-year students of Faculty of English Language TeacherEducation at Universities of Languages and International Studies They found outthe top five common errors: comma usage, verb tenses, conjunctions, run-onsentences and articles: a/ an/ the

Another study is the one of Bui (2010) about common errors committed byfirst year students at the faculty of English Language Teacher Education, HanoiUniversity of Languages and International studies This study pointed out thattypical mistakes in students‟ compositions included errors in idea organization,lexical items, inappropriate language style, grammar, wrong format, mechanicsexpressions and word choice

Le (1999) investigated written errors and mistakes made by the 12th formstudents and concluded that students often had common written errors and mistakes

in spelling, appropriateness, grammar ( tense uses, V-ing forms used like nouns,conditional sentences, and relative clauses), expression and composition format

It is visible that most of the previous studies focused on university students,only the study of Le (1999) was carried out in high school but it was about generalwritten mistakes and errors considering both linguistic mistakes and mistakes informat and organization Therefore, the authors got the desire to investigate the realsituation in teaching paragraph writing for high school students and look at somelinguistics errors in particular

CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the author describes the situation of teaching and learningEnglish at N.T.H.S, the subjects of the study, data collection instruments,research method and the research procedure

II.1 The situation of teaching and learning English at N.T.H.C

N.T.H.S is located in An Duong district, which is in the rural areas of Haiphong

It is a poor district because agriculture plays the main role in its economy Thisheavily affects people‟s thinking here According to them, being able to speak theirmother tongue (that is Vietnamese) correctly is enough, so it is not necessary forthem and their children to learn to speak English Although learning a foreignlanguage (for example, English) at lower secondary schools and high schools hasbeen considered an official subject among Maths, Literature, Chemistry, Physics,and others, it is not appreciated at lower secondary schools Therefore, teachers andstudents‟ attitudes towards teaching and learning English are negative Theyconsider English a minor subject at schools As a result, students do not payattention to learning English They learn it very badly

When these students enter N.T.H.S, they have to take part in exams in threesubjects: Maths, Literature, and English at the beginning of the school year Theyoften gain high scores in Maths and Literature but most of them get low scores inEnglish All students at lower secondary schools have learned English for four yearsbut most of them have not paid any attention to learning it Thus, it is very difficultfor teachers at N.T.H.S to teach them English because the new English textbooks athigh schools now are written based on the English textbooks at lower secondaryschools Teachers have no time to re-teach all the English knowledge students havelearned at lower secondary schools They have to follow the syllabus Day by day,both teachers and students feel tired and bored when having to teach and learnEnglish During the teaching period at N.T.H.S, the researcher sees that, among fourlanguage skills, writing is the most difficult for students She often hears studentsrumbling, teachers avoiding such meticulous task of teaching and learning writing.Linguistic difficulties in writing a paragraph is one of the big problems in writingskill

II.2 Subjects

The subjects of the study consist of 60 students of 10th form at N.T.H.S Because

of time limitation, it is impossible to carry out the study with all students who are ingrade 10th at N.T.H.S individually Therefore, the data collection in the study isderived from a subset of the population by means of cluster sample

60 students from classes 10C1, 10C4, 10C9, and 10C10 were randomly selectedfrom 450 the tenth form students at N.T.H.S Obviously, it was difficult to select arandom sample of individuals because the tenth form students have already beenassigned to different classes from 10C1 to 10C10 and classified into two groupsaccording to their choice of favorite subjects (students from 10C5 to 10C10 areinterested in natural science subjects whereas 10C1 to 10C4 are basic classes).Therefore, the researcher decided to randomly choose four classes from two groups

to study The result, thus, could be more reliable

The 10th form students at N.T.H.S are learning basic English with the new textbook TIENG ANH 10 by Hoàng Văn Vân – Hoàng Thị Xuân Hoa - Đỗ Tuấn Minh-Nguyễn Thu Phương - Nguyễn Quốc Tuấn This text book is theme- based, whichincludes 16 units and 6 Test Yourself sections Each unit has its own topics and isdivided into 5 sections: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language Focus

In the first term of the school-year, in comparison with other subjects, students‟English results were not good: only 4% students got excellent mark (9-10), 12% gotgood mark (7-8) , 57% got average mark (5-6) and 27% students got bad marks(<5)

II.3 Research method

II.3.1 Method of data collection: In order to conduct the study, the researcher

employed quantitative method including questionnaires and students‟ writinganalysis

a Questionnaires:

The questionnaire is designed to find out students‟ perception of theirlinguistic errors in writing a paragraph, the causes of the errors, thecorrection of the errors, the students‟ revision on the errors

The questionnaire helps the researcher gather information quickly and

objectively and gather information from a large portion of a group

b Students’ writing analysis:

The analysis of students‟ writing aims at finding the real situation of thelinguistic errors in students‟ writing This analysis helps the researcherclassify the major linguistic errors in students‟ writing, compare them withthe result from the questionnaire to come to an agreement of the linguisticerrors students often make.

II.3.2 Method of data analysis

Data from questionnaires was calculated and summarized to identify thegeneral trends of students‟ linguistic errors when writing a paragraph

Students‟ writing samples were carefully studied Errors were classified intodifferent categories to help researcher find out the most common linguistics errorsmade by 10th form students

Whenever relevant, data from two sources were compared and contrasted tohave the most comprehensive picture of the situation

II.4 Research procedure

The procedure of data collection was as follow:

(1) Choosing 60 students who are in grade 10 of N.T.H.S randomly to conduct the survey of the study

(2) Giving topics to students to write English paragraphs The subjects were

required to write about one of the following topics:

a Write about your daily life

b Write about your class’s excursion

c Write about the film that you like best.

There are several reasons to choose the topics Firstly, these topics arefamiliar with students They are taken from students‟ textbook Moreover, there aresome guidance as well as some exercises in the textbook for students before writing.Secondly, students have chance to choose the topic that they are interested in, sothey can write the paragraph with their own ideas basing on the topic they like(3) Collecting students‟ writing Students‟ errors in the writings are counted and categorized

(4) Synthesizing the analysis and drawing conclusions

(5) Suggesting some implications for teaching and learning paragraph writing to

10th form students

CHAPTER III: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS

This section discusses students‟ perception of their linguistic errors, the

causes of the errors, the correction of the errors, the students‟ revision on the errors

and a classification of difficulties based on the students‟ writing and the

questionnaire

III.1 Students’ perception of their linguistics errors in writing a paragraph.

It is the fact that students at N.T.H.S are very weak at paragraph writing and

making errors in writing is inevitable The first question in the questionnaire is to

find out whether students are aware of the errors that they produce in writing

Students‟ answers for the first question were:

Table 1: Students’ perception of making linguistic errors

It can be seen from Table 1 that students themselves recognized their

weaknesses in writing a paragraph and they were aware of the linguistic errors they

often make when writing

III 2 Students’ feeling when making errors in writing

As mentioned above, all students often make linguistic errors in the process of

writing However, when asked “How do you feel when you make errors in writing”,

different students have different answers:

I am disappointed with my English 48%

I consider it the chance to know what I have lacked and to get 46%experience

Table 2: Students’ feeling when making errors in writing a paragraph

As can be seen, after making errors when writing a paragraph, the proportion

of students who were disappointed with their English (48%) seemed to be equal to

those who consider making errors the chance to know what they have lacked and toget experience (46%) In other words, 10th form students at N.T.H.S had a positiveattitude towards learning English There were only 4 out of 60 students,approximately 6%, who had negative attitude toward learning English, they had nofeeling when making errors.

III.3 The causes of students’ linguistic errors in writing a paragraph

As mentioned above, students often make errors in writing a paragraph.Therefore, the author would like to find out the causes of students‟ linguistic errors.Some causes such as carelessness, teaching methods, lack of necessary knowledge,difficult topics are given and the analysis of those causes may help teacher find out

a good way to help students overcome difficulties in writing

Pie chart 1: Causes of students' linguistic errors in writing a paragraph

59 %

Carelessness Teaching method

Lack of necessary knowledge

Difficult topics

It can be seen from Pie chart 1 the percentage of the carelessness cause wasthe least (only 4%), then came to teaching methods cause accounting for 9% Thepercentage of students who thought that difficult topics cause the errors was slightlyhigher but only makes up 28% A large number of students thought that the lack ofnecessary knowledge was the main cause of the linguistic errors in their writing

III.4 Teacher’s errors correction in students’ paragraphs

After students write a paragraph, their errors need to be corrected Teacher‟s

error correction is also an important element to help students improve their

paragraph writing The teacher has to know how to correct students‟ writing to help

them avoid errors in their next writings Table 3 illustrates the typical ways that

teachers usually correct students‟ errors in writing

Correct some remarkable errors only 71%Give a comment at the end of the paragraph only 33%

Table 3: Teacher’s errors correction in students’ paragraphs

According to Table 3, most teachers (71%) chose the common errors to

correct Besides, it was unexpected that there were many teachers (33%) who only

gave comment at the end of the paragraph A small portion (2%) represented those

who corrected all errors

III.5 Students’ revision on their errors

The author collected the information by asking students: “What do you often do

when having back your paper” and students‟ answers were:

I look carefully at my errors and self-correct them 2%

I compare my work with the others and correct the errors together 5%

I have a look at the remarks given by the teacher 61%

Table 4: Students’ revision on their errors

As can be recognized from the table, the portion of students who looked

carefully the errors and self-corrected them (2%) and those who compared the work

with the others and corrected the errors together (5%) were too small, in comparison

with those students who had a look at the remarks given by the teacher - with

highest portion (61%) Furthermore, 23% of students said that they only glanced

over indicated errors, and smaller portion of them (9%) only paid attention to themark.

III.6 Kinds of linguistic difficulties

There are a lot of linguistic errors that are found and counted in 60 paragraphwritings However, within the scope of this study, only errors in grammar,vocabulary and linking words are studied Table 5 shows the results of the errorcategorization according to students‟ paragraph analysis as well as questionnaires:

Linguistic difficulties Grammar Vocabulary Linking words

Students‟ paragraphs 50% 41% 9%

Table 5: Kinds of linguistic errors

According to the data in Table 5, there is an agreement between linguisticerrors found in students‟ writing and their awareness of those errors

As can be seen from the table, the most common errors belong to grammar,which appeared on all the analyzed papers (50%) In the answers for thequestionnaire, the number of students who often had grammatical errors is also thehighest, accounting for 56% The next common errors are vocabulary ones whichappeared in 41% of students‟ writing and in the result of questionnaire, 34% of allstudents recognized that they often make vocabulary errors Errors in the linkingwords seem to be fewer than the others with only 9% in the writing; and 10% of allstudents revealed in the questionnaire that errors in linking words was the mostcommon kind of linguistic errors they often made

III 7 Grammar difficulties

From the author‟s experience in teaching paragraph writing, of all thegrammatical errors in the writing, the most common errors that students made werethose related to the use of verb tenses, subject-verb agreement, article usage andpreposition usage So, only these kinds of errors were studied and discussedcarefully The results from questionnaire and students‟ papers are as follows:

Students’ paragraphs Questionnaire Verb tense Numbers of errors 35

Table 6: Grammar difficulties in writing a paragraph

Table 6 presents the information about the grammatical aspect students foundthe most difficult Although students knew that the most common errors they oftenmade was grammar errors, there was a conflict between the errors students made

in their paragraphs and their perception of those errors It might be because

students couldn‟t distinguish clearly their grammatical errors

In students‟ writing, the total number of errors related to the choice of Englishtense amounts to 35 (37%) A large number of the students made errors in this area.Errors of article usage follows with 34% Subject-verb agreement is also difficult forthe students in paragraph writing, and accounts for 26% The least frequently founderrors was preposition usage with 8%

However, in the result of the questionnaires, a large number of students (43%)said that they often made errors in using article Preposition usage and verb tensesalso caused many difficulties for students Both account for about 24% Subject-verb agreement did not seem to be difficult for students with 9%

A closer look at students‟ writing reveals that:

Verb tenses

The students' knowledge and use of English tense is very limited It revealed thatthe students failed to choose the correct tense when writing The 10th form studentshave learnt nearly all the tenses However, wrong application of verb tenses was still

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tenses application.

The following sentences are some examples of the misuse of English tense:

1 “That day is Sunday, and our class have an excursion to Cat Ba island”.

(Appendix 1) In this piece of writing, the student wrote about the excursion of her /his class in the past, so the sentence should be put in the past tense: “That day wasThursday, and our class had an excursion to Cat Ba island”

2 “ She met Park Hi Yong when she waiting for the bus” (Appendix 1) This

sentence showed that the student acknowledged the “ing form” in continuous tensesbut she/ he was not sure of the complete past continuous tense forms and application

in English sentence

Article usage

Article usage is also a big problem for the students Article is used to modifythe nouns Many students are still weak in using articles Some of the errors are:

1 “ The (1) Ha Long Bay is the (2) wonderful place for visitors” (Appendix 1).

In this sentence, the student used the wrong article “the” First, Ha Long Bay is a propernoun, so there needn‟t be “the” here The second “the” in the sentence should be “a”because the sentence has a general meaning, and it is about the truth at present

2 “Some prominent places are: Temple of Literature…” (Appendix 1) The

student wrote Temple of Literature without using “the” That is wrong because inVietnam, there is only one Temple of Literature, so “the” has to be used

Subject- verb agreement

The key to subject-verb both;

singular subjects take singular

1 “There were a lake and many beautiful trees in the park” (Appendix 1) The

student was not clear about the structure “There+ to be”, so he used “ are” instead of

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2 “Everyone were ready” (Appendix 1) The indefinite pronouns such as anyone, everyone, someone, no one, nobody are always singular and, therefore, require

singular verbs The sentence must be corrected as: “ everyone was ready”

3 “Listening to music and playing football is my hobbies” (Appendix 1) When

gerunds are used as the subject of a sentence, they take the singular verb form of theverb, but when they are linked by “and”, they take the plural form

Preposition usage

Errors in usage of preposition also appear in students‟ paragraphs The total errors in students‟ paragraph are 7, corresponding to 8% Here are some examples:

1 “The main character is killed by an axe” (Appendix 1) We can see that

“with” must be used because “axe” is a tool It cannot be “by”.

2 “I consider about the time when doing anything” (Appendix 1) The

prepositions needn‟t be used in those sentences

III.8 Vocabulary difficulties

As mentioned above, students not only made many errors in grammar but alsohad difficulty in using vocabulary accurately The most common errors related tovocabulary that the students made were word choice, word form, word order andspelling

Students’ paragraphs Questionnaire Spelling Numbers of errors 31

Table 7: Vocabulary difficulties in writing a paragraph

The table shows differences between the vocabulary errors that students made