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

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 Tù

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

(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

(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

Supervisor: DR NGÔ TỰ LẬP

HANOI – 2015

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 otherpeople‟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, helpand 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, experiencedguidance, 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 Languagesand International Studies, Vietnam National University for their valuable lectures onaspects of my concern

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

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

motivation

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

This research investigates the common paragraph cohesion errors in 672paragraphs taken from writings by 11th grade students at Tùng Thiện high school Theanalysis of this research is based on Halliday and Hasan‟s (1976) cohesioncategorization This study employs both qualitative and quantitative methods to findout 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 thecombination of two models described by Richard (1974) and James (1998) togetherwith the error analysis of Ellis (1997) Results of this study shows a total of 253 errorsare identified in students‟ paragraph that includes errors in the use of reference,conjunction and lexical cohesion Errors in the use of substitution, ellipsis, temporaland collocation are not found The percentage of errors in the use of conjunction is53.8 %, followed by reference category 37.9% and lexical ones 8.3% The dominantnumber of error belongs to conjunction; reference is the second dominant error andlexical cohesion is the last dominant error The main reasons for committing commoncohesive errors rooted in three main sources: (1) intra-lingual errors (the interferencebetween English items), (2) inter-lingual (the interference between Vietnamese andEnglish) and (3) other extra-lingual factors like the performance pressure, falseconceptualization, the limited foreign language environment, learners‟ attitudes,learners motivation and goal which come both from the teachers and the learners Thestudy proposes practical implications for both teachers and students to eliminate thesekinds 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 Infact, 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 considerwriting as a big headache problem for them Especially, the quality of English writtenparagraph is limited due to the lack persuasiveness, satisfactory and logical connection

of ideas Several problems that students encounter when writing an English paragraphrefers 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 oneanother to illustrate the meaning intended by writer To make readers comprehend thisconnection, the skillful use of cohesion is demanded to help the students to articulateideas systematically, logically as well as to avoid creating ambiguity andmisinterpretations between what are currently said and what already said previously

Moreover, the written language must be more accurate, more explicit, moreeffective than spoken one Learners fear making errors in their writing, but avoidingerrors, their focus on writing on is often concentrated on generating grammaticallycorrect sentences rather than on logic and meaning In fact, basing on the errors thatstudents make in their writing, the teachers and researchers can find out the solution towriting 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 theparagraph by 11th grade students at Tùng Thiện high school Several specific researchquestions addressed by this study are:

1 What are the types of paragraph cohesion errors committed by the 11th gradestudents 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 eleventhgrade students in Tùng Thiện high school

- provide suggestions for teaching and learning paragraph writing to Tùng Thiệnhigh 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 gradestudents at Tùng Thiện high school have made in their writings Besides, basing ontheir analyses, the thesis will present some solutions to these problems

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

4 Significance of the study

Given that there haven't been any research on the topic so far, the studyexpected to contribute to understanding paragraph cohesion errors and teachingwriting 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 areinterested to improve their perception on cohesive devices and be able to apply itappropriately in their writing

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

c For other researchers, this research can be used as references in doing similarresearch 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 ofcohesive devices error were identified, listed and classified by reading all theparagraphs

3. Basing on the models of Richards (1971) and James (1998), each kind ofsources is categorized and calculated to give an overview about cohesive errors inparagraph 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 significanceand 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, thedistinction between errors and mistakes, also sources of errors Theory about cohesionand the types of cohesive devices and paragraph and paragraph cohesion are alsodiscussed 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 correctingerrors in the use of cohesive devices in writing paragraph, suggestions for teaching toprevent and eliminate these errors It also closes the study with the conclusion andprovides suggestions for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENTCHAPTER 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 studiescarried out on cohesion errors in Vietnam and abroad are presented

In other words, cohesion is the linguistic relationship between clauses and howthe surface linguistic elements of a text are linked to each other in order to create aunified whole text (Peterson & McCabe: 1991) Similarly, Eggins (1994) define theterm “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, theconsistency of participants, and the connection in terms of lexical selections.

Besides, “Cohesion is the resources within language that provide continuity in atext, over and above that provided by clause structures and clause complexes” (Gerotand Wignell, 1994:170) Cohesion helps readers or listeners understand some missingpieces which are not present in the text but necessary to its interpretation Halliday andHassan assert that: “Cohesion occurs where the interpretation of some element in thediscourse is dependent on that of another The one presupposes the other in the sensethat 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 astructural unit Therefore, their use of the term “cohesion” refers specifically to non-structure text forming relations and it often occurs where the interpretation of someelement in the discourse is dependent on that of another Their focus is on the cohesiveties between sentences because they are the only source of textual, while within thesentence there are structural relations as well

In fact, the presupposition is an important aspect in cohesion because it extractsthe unrelated sentences by the connected one Thus relations in meaning of anysentence depending on the surrounding elements In other words “cohesion refers tothe range of possibilities that exist for linking something with what has gone before.Since this linking is achieved through relations in meaning” (Halliday and Hassan1976:10) Coherence is the ways that a text makes sense to readers and writers throughthe relevance and accessibility of its configuration of concepts, ideas, and theories

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

1.1.1.2 Cohesion vs Coherence

The terms “cohesion” and “coherence” are defined differently by differentlinguists For some, the two terms are interchangeable or imply each other; for othersthey 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 semanticrelationships within and between sentences”; or cohesion can be described as “the waycertain words or grammatical features of a sentence can connect that sentence to itspredecessors and successors in a text” (Hoey1996: 3) Tárnyiková puts it simply thatthe 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 therelationships 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 onlinguistic and contextual information in the texts but also on readers' abilities to drawupon other kinds of knowledge, such as cultural and inter-textual knowledge" (IrwinWeiser) Any piece of writing is considered coherent if it is understandable, follow aclear line in presenting facts, arguments and avoid statements which areincomprehensible for the reader

In summary, cohesion is it is the linguistic relationship between clauses andhow 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 relationshipbetween concepts and meanings or the ways a text makes sense to readers Bothcohesion and coherence establish a connection between an element in one sentenceand an element in a preceding sentence

1.1.1.3 Cohesive devices

Cohesive devices are clues used by speakers and hearers to find the meaningswhich underlie surface utterances” (Schriffin as cited in Rini, 2009:9) In Halliday andHasan 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 whichallow the speaker to indicate whether something is being repeated from somewhereelse 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 isessentially 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 tocompare 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 agrammatical relation, a relation in the wording rather than meaning” (p 90) thesubstitution is the replacement of one item by another There are three types ofsubstitution: 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 Thegrammatical structure itself refers to an item or items that can fill the slot in thequestion (Nunan, 1999) In addition, McCarthy (1991) also stand in the same flowtogether with the definition above by say that ellipsis is the omission of the elementsnormally required by the grammar which the speaker or writer assuming are obviousfrom 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 aform of substitution; that is to say, the original item is replaced by zero Concerningtheir use, Cutting (2002) states that “Both substitution and ellipsis can be only usedwhen 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 contextcan be omitted Halliday and Hasan (1976) classify ellipsis cohesion into three types ofellipsis such as: nominal, verbal, and clause ellipsis

Example:

be said to or what has been said before Halliday and Hasan (op.cit) classifyconjunction into four categories which express a number of semantic relations, theyare: 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 cohesiverelations between the parts of a text by using particular vocabulary items In lexicalpatterning, successive sentence can be expected to exhibit relationship through theirvocabulary According to Halliday & Hasan (1976: 274-292), lexical cohesion isdefined 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 lowones

+ 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 paragraphwell lays the foundation for mastering writing skill

According to Baker (1962:16) paragraph is described as a collection ofconnected sentences which show building blocks of solid ideas that are organizedsmoothly around one single idea in the paragraph Besides, Elizabeth Cowan (1983)defined this term as “Paragraph is composed of sentence or chunk of sentence whichthe writer has grouped some definite reasons” Similarly, Alice Oshima and AnnHogue (1999) in Writing Academic Writing, a paragraph is a group of relatedsentences 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 paragraphshould be long enough to develop the main idea clearly Owl (2009:40) clarified aparagraph as a group of closely-related sentences which deal with and develop oneidea 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 feelthat the main idea has been effectively developed A perfect paragraph is described as aunified, coherent, developed, and complete one Solid and specific illustration plays animportant role in supporting and developing the central idea of the paragraph; besides,such an idea is discussed and supported with evidences Details and particulars canalso support and develop the topic sentence since a paragraph with little and generalinformation may not be adequately developed (Cargill &et al, 1955:821-2).

In addition, paragraphs consist of three parts: the topic sentence, bodysentences, 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 relatedsentences merge to develop ideas to form the whole text A paragraph with clearlyconnected sentences is said to be cohesive This is because paragraph‟s structures andits roles cannot be ascertained without reference to cohesion Paragraph structure andcohesion are inseparable Cohesion in paragraph deals with the property of flow andconnection of sentences‟ content in a logical and natural way that stem from thelinguistic 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 ofways, 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 theparagraph so that the reader can follow, recognize how one detail leads to the next It‟scohesion that reduces the “danger of a piece of writing being a mere collection ofunrelated sentences” (Toolan, 1996)

Cohesion is the relevance of each sentence in the paragraph by way ofembodiment 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 accordancewith the form of the word, in particular, it‟s repetition A good paragraph has to fulfilltwo elements cohesion and coherence A paragraph has good cohesion when eachsentence is clearly linked to the next and the topic sentence as a main idea is formed aunited whole with constructive and structural sentences Cohesion can be called aform/structure of integration while coherence is integration of the meaning Inparagraph cohesion is a component with the creation of in-depth integration within thecontext 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 theglue 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 thatenables readers to perceive semantic relationships within and between sentencesthrough 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 languagewithout first systematically committing errors” It provides a window into what isgoing on “inside the learner‟s mind”; enables teachers to find out the sources of errorsand to take pedagogical precautions towards them to overcome some questions andpropose solutions regarding different aspects By analyzing students‟ errors, weteachers can give comprehensive and considerate feedbacks to students, eventuallyhelp 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 wasregarded 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 toBrown (1980:165) “an error is a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of anative speaker, reflecting the inter language competence of the learner” Lennon(1991) regarded an error as a linguistic form or combination of forms which, in thesame context and under similar conditions of production, would not be produced bythe speakers‟ native speaker counterparts James (1998) defined an error as anunsuccessful bit of language However, learners‟ errors can also “provide toresearchers evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies orprocedures the learner is employing in the discovery of the language” (Corder 1967:167) Moreover, Corder in Richard (1974:25) confirms “errors are significant in threedifferent ways Firstly, errors can tell the teacher about the progress of the learner andhow far the leaner can apply the teacher‟s method Secondly, they tell the researcherhow actually language is learned; therefore researchers through errors discoverstrategies 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), errordenotes the deviations resulting from lack of knowledge, while mistakes areperformance phenomena (the learner knows the system but fails to use) Error reflectsthe systematic competence of the learners (the learner‟s system is incorrect) Corderargues that, mistakes are of no significance to the process of language learning sincethey do not reflect a defect in our knowledge” and “they can occur in L1 as well asL2” (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 onlylearners 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 mistakeand 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 forgetabout 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 theymake are part of their current system of inter-language rules and hence are notrecognizable (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 tolearn 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 "Heasked/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 washappened")

James (1998), in his study, showed the different types of learners' errorsrelating to omission, overinclusion, misselection (use wrong words not wrong forms),misordering, blends (blending arises when two alternative grammatical forms arecombined to produce an ungrammatical blend.)Based on this, he stated that there arefour 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), incompleterule application (the learners do not use all the rules), exploiting redundancy (this erroroccurs by carrying considerable redundancy), overlooking co-occurrence restrictions(this error is caused by overlooking the exceptional rules), hypercorrection or monitoroveruse (this results from the learners‟ over cautious and strict observance of therules), 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 practiceopportunities

The combination of two models of Richard and James will be applied to findout the causes of learners in English writing to give some remedies and solutions to thecohesive 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 forfixing and fulfilling the students‟ gaps (Londono Vasquez, 2007) “Error analysis is thestudy of the learners‟ error which can be observed, analyzed, and classified to revealsomething 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 languageacquisition Error analysis "involves a set of procedures for identifying, describing andexplaining errors in learner language" (Ellis, 1994: 701) Error Analysis studies can bedivided into five processes: collection of a sample of learner language, identification,description, explanation, and evaluation of errors (Ellis, 1997) It provides acomparison of the language of the learner at some particular point in his course withthe 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) andprognostic (to make plans to solve a problem; therefore; learner‟s errors are seen as auseful device in three various aspects Firstly, basing on the students‟ grasp from theerrors 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 learningmaterial to meet the students‟ problems Secondly, they show the researcher what thelanguage learning strategies of learners are Thirdly, they are regarded as a tool for thelearner to use in learning the language It deals with how the learner tests hishypotheses about the nature of the language the learner is acquiring (Corder, 1982)

What Corder points out below summarizes the view of error correction inlanguage 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 thelanguage Skill in correction of errors lies in the direction of exploiting the incorrectforms 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‟scohesion ties in written compositions and cohesion errors all around the world to takeadvantage of the procedure and ways of account

Crowhurst (1987) conducted a study to investigate which type of cohesion tiesmostly used at each of three grades levels (grade 6, 10 and 12) in argumentative andnarrative essays He listed five categories basing on Halliday and Hasan‟s (1976)categories: substitution, ellipse, reference, conjunction, and lexical cohesion Afterthat, students are requested to write two essays, one narrative, on argumentative inforty five minutes The result of the study showed that there was no overall tendencyfor the frequency of cohesive ties to increase in comparison with grade level ofstudents While two kinds in lexical cohesion: collocation, the use of synonymsincreased 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 ofstudents‟ writing

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

Next, Palmer (1999) examined the relationship between cohesion andcoherence by observing English essays by second year students who had passed theirEnglish 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) wereinstructed about textual coherence including 1) overall length of the text; 2) the use ofparagraphs to organize information; 3) lexical reiteration; 4) the use of pronouns; anddid many exercises about this subject, group B (47 students) did not received anyexplanation about this concept The result shows that although the overall length ofcompositions 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 tothe use of lexical reiteration The author came to conclusion that teaching the cohesivelinks could improve the students‟ writing performance

Meisuo (2000) conducted a study to investigate the relationship between thenumber of cohesive devices and the quality of writing of Chinese undergraduate EFLstudents in two PRC universities He focused on the improper use three main types ofcohesive ties: reference, conjunction, and lexical cohesion in the students‟ essaysbasing on the Halliday and Hasan‟s (1976) categories by using both qualitative andquantitative analysis The research found that lexical devices were the most frequentlyused, followed by conjunctions and reference devices His finding showed that theinappropriate reference devices as well as the overuse and misuse of conjunctions, andrestricted use of lexical cohesion has a negative effect on writing quality by making theambiguous contextual meaning or misleading to the readers With regard to lexicalcohesion, Meisuo (2000) suggests that EFL students need to be encouraged to learnnew words in context, not in isolation, to avoid misusing or overusing some lexicalitems (Meisuo 2000:88-89)

Next, Ting ( 2003) used Halliday and Hasan‟s (1976) taxonomy of cohesivedevices 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 thatmostly students are weak at using conjunctions They made more mistakes atadversative and additive than causal and temporal errors Besides, the learners usedunnecessary additive conjunctions to link short and simple sentences In addition, theyconfused 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 errorsthat students made, together with the explanation the source of each type of cohesiveones by quantitative methods The result showed that the grammatical cohesion ismore problematic to students than the lexical ones; especially the use of demonstrativereference is the most common However, as showed in the presentation of data, noerrors were found in the use of ellipsis and substitution In lexical ties, collocationmade students confused while they did not have any trouble in reiteration Thelimitation of this study is that it merely investigates the errors in the use of cohesivedevices in the writing by pre-intermediate students with the same levels withoutoversized class Students already were well equipped with cohesive devices byHalliday 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 ofEnglish department of STAIN Salatiga The analysis of this research is based uponHalliday and Hasan‟s (1976) cohesion framework and taxonomy The objectives ofthis research are to know whether there are any cohesive errors in 66 English essayswritten by the seventh semester students of English department of STAIN Salatiga inthe academic year of 2011/2012, to find out the types of cohesive devices errorcommitted in those essays, and to describe the dominant of errors in using cohesivedevices in those essays by qualitative method The results revealed that the studentsmade 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 devicesand the level are nearly the same because they had passed the entrance exams ofEnglish and were major in English and had technique to write essay, not paragraph.

In conclusion, this chapter brings an overview about the theoretical conceptsand 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 theresearcher follows the model of Halliday and Hasan because it‟s considered the mostdistinguishable and easily understandable for the learners at high school Besides,during the teaching and learning English, learners‟ errors are inevitable; this erroranalysis will help the teachers improve their effective teaching methods/techniques,devise appropriate materials, construct suitable tests for different levels and needs ofthe learners Furthermore, other previous studies not only provide the foundation butalso point out the limitation that this study should avoid and investigate cohesionerrors more effectively because the topic of cohesive errors in paragraph seems not tohave received as much attention as it deserves despite the significant role of cohesivedevice in writing In Việt Nam, up to now, there has been no work on paragraphcohesion error in general and no consideration for cohesion errors of the high schoolstudents in particular The present study tries to deal with a cohesion analysis ofparagraph 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 taxonomypresented by Halliday and Hasan (1976) The outcomes of this research will help EFLteachers and students in Vietnam know how to avoid cohesion errors and to improvethe quality of their writing with the combination of cohesion and coherence Thisresearch will also be helpful to researchers who want to further study the field ofcohesion error analysis

CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

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

2.1 Subject

The subject of the research is 11th Grade Students at Tùng Thiện High School inthe academic year of 2012-2013 with two classes of 84 students They have learnedEnglish for 6 years They have been taught the same textbook with the same length oflearning time, they are nearly at the same level in English; most of them want to passthe entrance exam to university with group A1 or D including English as a majorsubject Also, each unit in the English 11 has a lesson for writing, but the students donot have the knowledge about cohesive devices, so in this situation, the teacher who isalso the researcher is responsible for supplying them to have full understanding in theoptional writing lessons at high school after each unit Little by little, the studentsgradually equip their writing skill with this knowledge aspect, and will apply how touse 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 textbookare chosen In reality, after instructing and teaching cohesive devices, the teacher, theresearcher as well, collects the writing papers, find out, and classify cohesive errorsbased on Halliday and Hasan‟s category (1976) 672 /840 writing papers includingcohesive errors from students were chose during the school year 2012-2013

After each writing unit, teacher required students to hand in free compositionswithout 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 respondentsand 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 Thedata are analyzed quantitatively using descriptive statistics with frequency andpercentages It represents a dominant quantitative approach with a less-dominantqualitative data collection procedure

The quantitative research method is appropriate for this study because

“Quantitative research is explaining phenomena by collecting numerical data that areanalyzed 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 theextent of the variation in a phenomenon, situation, problem or issue” (McBurney andWhite, 2007) and quantitative data refers to data which are altered into numbers bymeasurements (Punch, 1998: 59) To calculate the percentage of error types, theresearcher 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‟ learningproblems at any stage of their development and to plot how changes in error patternsoccur 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 likethat categorization above to analyze the reason why learners commit errors; since thenthe researcher gives implications for teaching to remedy the errors

Qualitative approach will be ideal for answering the second research question inthis study focusing on the reason why errors occur This is because the ultimateobjective 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' cohesiveerrors which can be attributed to giving implications for better writing becauseunderstanding the errors and origins of errors will help highlight learners‟ difficulties

in cohesive writing In data classification, the sources of errors based on thecombination from the model of Richards (1974) and James (1998) together with otherlisted sources mentioned above will be the basement to investigate the root of commoncohesive errors that 11th students commit during writing process; mostly concentratingerrors 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 andqualitative methods are adopted for data analysis However, quantitative method isdominantly used

CHAPTER III: ANALYSIS OF DATA AND FINDINGS

After applying the methods and analyzing the students‟ paragraphs byinstruments 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 researchermakes the following table to show the total of errors as well as the number of error ineach type of cohesion devices The errors that students have made cover mainly ingrammatical cohesive devices From the percentage of each cohesive tie, it is evidentthat the conjunction category had the highest percentage of ties (53.8%), followed bythe 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.

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occurrences if compared to reference, the percentage of inappropriate conjunctionsused 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 arealso 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

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% ofall errors in the use of cohesive devices They occur in the form of demonstrativereference, 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 thestudents in their writing

a. Errors in the use of demonstrative reference “the”

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

Because the definite article doesn‟t contain any information in itself, and theinfluence of the mother tongue, this type of error is typical in the students‟ writing.Omitting “the” or having wrong application is the most problematic The researcherfinds errors of omitting “the” as anaphoric is the most popular The errors in the use of

“the” for inappropriate places are classified as intra-lingual errors The errors asanaphoric 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 ofomitting “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 secondtime 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 canunderstand 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 toremember whether the thing has been mentioned before.

Besides, the errors with the use of omitting cataphoric and homophoric accountfor 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 alwaysconfused about when and whether to use articles or not and therefore they make thistype 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 thedefinite 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 workhard to remember the fixed expressions We do not use “the” before the nouns

“school”, “college”, “university”, “hospital”, “bed”, “church”, “prison” and so onwhen 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 forstudents At last, we do not use any articles to refer to the expression describing ameans 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 reasonsfor 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 Englishstructure and Vietnamese one, we can see it clearly While in the English structure ofnoun phrases, the elements preceding Head are: Deictic (including articles),Numerative, Epithet, and Classifier, in Vietnamese structure, Deictic (includingarticles), Epithet, and Classifier are not included That is the reason why Vietnamesestudents often forget definite articles in their writing Furthermore, students stillcommit 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 recognizeand 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”.

Another demonstrative error found in the students‟ writing is error on the use ofdemonstrative reference “there” This error rooted from the first language interference

or inter-lingual errors Students previously developed habit in their mother tongue intoEnglish without being concerned about the English rule by adding unnecessary word

“in” in front of “there” as demonstrative adverbs or “there” which has the function as ademonstrative adverb like a subject Another reason for committing this kind of errorscomes from the limited foreign language environment If the students have the habit ofwriting or contacting with foreigners, this kind of errors may be eliminated

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 thefunction as a place of adverb The meaning of “there” is anaphoric and locative; itrefers to “Thanh Ba post office”; however; the students are interfered by their mothertongue, they translate word by word from Vietnamese into English by adding “in” infront of “there”, which make the sentences incorrect Secondly, “there” in twoexamples “there had a lot of things…” and “there has a safeguard…” is wrongly usedbecause the students make mistake when using “there” as a pronoun as in “there is aman at the door” (Haliday and Hasan, 1976:74 “There” in the examples, in fact, is ademonstrative 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.

Unlike other references, the inappropriate use of comparative referencefrom students‟ research background only accounts for a small percentage (1.9%) Itmeans that students are able to integrate the sentences using comparative references intheir paragraph fairly well Considering these errors related to comparative references,the researcher finds out that these errors take root from both inter-lingual and intra-lingual sources The main reason is due to the interference of the first language.Vietnamese and English differ in both lexical and grammatical structure in expressingcomparison In Vietnamese language, comparative structures are formulated by addingthe functional word “hơn” or “more” (which is translated into English) before theadjective Students are affected by this habit of adding “more” before one syllableadjective whenever they want to express comparison The following sentences takenfrom their paragraph have typical errors of this type

“ 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 morethan one syllable of adjective like the structure of comparison in English The studentscommit 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 ofpragmatic difference However, the percentage of errors in the use of comparativereferences is very limited It means that students are highly aware of these casescorrectly as well as develop habit of using comparative references in their writing toapply what they have learned in a practical way This kind of error has inter-lingualsource and the performance pressure If the students have time to work in pair to peeredit 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.

40 errors are identified in this category, representing about 15.8 percent of thetotal This kind of errors is caused by many reasons Firstly, students wrongly usesingular pronominal to refer to plural pronominal and vice verse Students use singularpronoun which has function as object to refer something in plural as follow:

“…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, butthe word “my idol posters” is plural This error makes no correlation between “it” and