An investigation into the errors in the english passive voice of students at the national academy of politics and public administration hcm city m a 60 14 10

4.1.2 What are the common errors in the English passive voice made by students at the NAPA?...54 4.1.3 To what extent do the students have problems with the meaning and use of the Englis

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY- HO CHI MNH CITY

UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES

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AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ERRORS IN THE ENGLISH PASSIVE VOICE OF STUDENTS AT THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF POLITICS AND PUBLIC

ADMINISTRATION- HCM CITY

STUDENT: BÙI THỊ LỘC SUPERVISOR: Dr NGUYỄN THU HƯƠNG

HO CHI MINH CITY, 2011

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I hereby certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ERRORS IN THE ENGLISH PASSIVE VOICE OF STUDENTS AT THE NATIONAL ACADEMY

OF POLITICS AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION – HCM CITY

in terms of the Statement of Requirements for Theses in Master’s programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee

HCM city, November, 2011

BÙI THỊ LỘC

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, Bùi Thị Lộc, being the candidate for the degree of Master of TESOL, accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited

in the Library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for care, loan, or reproduction of the theses

Ho Chi Minh City, November, 2011

BÙI THỊ LỘC

CUP : Cambridge University Press

OUP : Oxford University Press

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certificate of originality i

Retention and use of the thesis ii

Acknowledgement iii

Abstract iv

List of abbreviations vi

Table of contents vii

List of figures viii

List of tables ix

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 The rationale of the study 1

1.2 Aim of the study 3

1.3 Significance of the study 3

1.4 General background to the study 3

1.5 Overview of the thesis 5

Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Differences between the active voice and the passive voice 7

2.1.1 Structural differences 7

2.1.2 Semantic and lexical differences 8

2.2 The features of the English passive voice 10

2.3 The contrast between the Vietnamese passive voice and the English passive voice 20

2.3.1 The passive voice in Vietnamese 20

2.3.2 The contrast between the Vietnamese passive and the

English passive voice 24

2.4 Problems in the acquisition of the passive voice 26

2.4.1 Mistakes and errors 26

2.4.2 Types of errors 28

2.4.3 Sources of errors 29

2.4.3.1 Interlingual transfer 30

2.4.3.2 Intralingual transfer 31

2.4.3.3 Context of learning 34

2.4.3.4 Communication strategies 35

2.4.3.5 Learning strategies 36

2.4.4 Error treatment 38

2.4.5 Related research on errors in the English passive voice Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY 3.1 Research questions 41

3.2 Research design 42

3.2.1 Subjects of the study 42

3.2.2 Instrument 44

3.2.3 Data collection procedures 49

3.3 Summary 50

Chapter 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 52

4.1 Results from the test 52

4.1.1 Do students make errors in the English passive voice? 52

4.1.2 What are the common errors in the English

passive voice made by students at the NAPA? 54

4.1.3 To what extent do the students have problems with the meaning and use of the English passive voice? 54

4.1.4 To what extent do the students have problems with the form of the English passive voice? 57

4.15 To what extent does mother tongue affect the language transfer in the English passive voice… 61

4.2 Is there a relationship between grammatical proficiency And the errors in the passive voice? 62

4.2.1 Is there a relationship between the scores of two tests?……….62

4.2.2 Is there a relationship between the grammatical proficiency with the errors in the meaning and use of the passive voice……….63

4.3 Results from the interviews 65

4.3.1 What are the teachers’ and students’ views on the types of difficulties?……… 65

4.3.2 What are the causes of the common errors? 68

4.3.3 What are the teachers’ views on the causes of the

common errors? 69

Chapter 5 CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 72

5.1 Conclusions 72

5.2 Implications 73

5.3 Limitation of the study and recommendation for further research 77

REFERENCE 78

APPENDIX 1 Statistics of the test 83

APPENDIX 2 Diagnostic test 85

APPENDIX 3 Pilot test 88

APPENDIX 4 A copy of the grammatical proficiency test 91

LIST OF FIGURES

Chapter 4

Figure 4.1 Pie chart of correct answers and errors in the English

passive voice 52 Figure 4.2 Pie chart of correct answers in the meaning and use

of the English passive voice 55 Figure 4.3 The scatterplot of the diagnostic test and the grammatical

proficiency test 63

LIST OF TABLES

Chapter 3

Table 3.1 Summary of the student subjects’ characteristics……….43

Table 3.2 Operational constructs of the test………46

Chapter 4 Table 4.1 Results from one sample t-test 53

Table 4.2 Descriptive statistics of the test 53

Table 4.3 Table of errors in the form, the meaning and use of the English passive voice 54

Table 4.4 Error types in the meaning and use of the English passive voice 55

Table 4.5 Table of sample errors in the meaning and use of the English passive voice 56

Table 4.6 Table of sample errors in Verbs 57

Table 4.7 Table of errors in the form of the English passive 57

Table 4.8 Table of sample errors in Have-passive 58

Table 4.9 Table of sample errors in complex passive 59

Table 4.10 Table of errors in progressive aspect 60

Table 4.11 Descriptive statistics of interlingual errors 61

Table 4.12 Correlation of two sets of test scores 62

Table 4.13 The crosstabutation between the scores of the meaning and use and the scores of the proficiency test 64

Table 4.14 The summary of teachers’ and students’ responses to the students’ problems in the English passive voice 67

ABSTRACT

Vietnamese and English share the passive voice, but the Vietnamese language does not follow such rules as found in English in forming the passive voice namely those related to word order or changes of verb form from the active to the passive voice Although the students at NAPA are supposed to study all aspects of the English passive voice when they are in high school, they have been reported to have difficulties in using the passive voice With the objective to discover the problems that EFL students at NAPA might encounter in mastering the passive voice, this study purports

to investigate the errors that students make when using the passive voice

106 students at NAPA participated in the investigation They took a 52-item test assessing every aspect of the English passive voice Besides, interviews were also conducted as a meta-cognitive test to get an insight into the causes

of the errors

The results of the study show that, although more than half of the students

in the study could perform the test, the problem that stood out is related to the meaning and use of the passive voice The findings suggest that teachers’ attitude (either negative or positive) towards some aspects of the English passive voice may influence students’ intake of it

I wish to express my sincere thanks to Mr Truong Hon Huy, M.A., lecturer

at Ho Chi Minh City University of Social Sciences and Humanities, who corrected and instructed me with the proposal of the thesis

I am also grateful to all the teachers and students at the National Academy of Public Administration, who enthusiastically helped me with the delivery and collection the diagnostic test and participated in the interviews

Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their love, encouragement, understanding and spiritual support

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

This thesis investigates errors in the English passive voice of students at The National Academy of Politics and Public Administration- HCM city Then based on findings and analyzing, the study will come up with some solutions

to help learners overcome their difficulties and to improve the efficiency of the teaching and learning the English passive voice This introduction presents the rationale, the aims of the study, general background to the study and the overview of the thesis

1.1 The rationale of the study

Learning language cannot be separated from the errors Errors in language learning are sometimes natural and tend to occur frequently Therefore, the teachers should try their best to avoid the errors made by the students without discouraging them In addition, knowledge of the sources of the errors will help the teacher to learn the errors in order to construct the students with appropriate language form In other words, errors help the teachers know the lack of mastery and make the appropriate remedial teaching to the students As stated by Selinker (1992: 119), “the self-correction of errors is indeed necessary and the teacher can serve an important function here”

Grammar has always played a crucial role in language teaching and learning Language teachers and specialists are of the view that grammar can help

first, second and foreign language learners develop linguistic competence Grammar affects students’ performance in all four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing Littlewood (1994) mentioned that communication through correct grammar could help learners make a wider and more creative range of meaning choices Thus he added that “through the grammatical system of language, then communication can become increasingly independent of its setting.”

The passive sentences, an important part of every English language teaching grammar syllabus, present difficulty to many Vietnamese learners, especially students at the NAPA-HCM city Although they have learned the passive voice since they were at secondary school, they still have difficulty using them As Celce-Murcia claims “the English passive is a problem for non- English speakers, mainly with regard to usage Even though ESL/EFL students can easily learn to form the passive, they have problems learning when to use it.” And she explains some reasons for this “For most English learners, however, the passive will occur more frequently in English than in the learners’ native language and there will be a wider variety of passive sentence types in English than in their own language.”

Although there are several studies on the errors in the English passive voice, the findings are about errors in constructions and in the translation from the Vietnamese into English or vice versa In fact, during the teaching process and observation the researcher realized that the students misused the voice or avoided using the passive voice in situations that it should be used Besides, they had problem with other types of passive such as complex passive, get-passive and causative passive Therefore, in order to have a thorough and

particular insight into the problems that students face and how far towards the goal is the knowledge acquired, the researcher decided that there should

be an in-depth analysis of errors in the English passive voice

1.2 Aim of the study

The objectives of this thesis are: (1) to investigate the common errors in the English passive voice of the students at the NAPA – HCM city; (2) to find out the causes for such errors; and (3) to give implications to help the teachers improve the teaching of the passive voice

For the purposes of this research, a survey was conducted and the results were drawn from: (1) a test for probing the common errors made by the subject students and (2) interviews (with 4 teachers and 9 students) to discover the causes of such errors

1.3 Significance of the study

The results of the study could show the students their lack of mastery of the English passive voice and from their awareness they can self correct Also, the study can help the teachers realize the weakness of the students and how much towards the goal is the knowledge acquired, from which they can produce the remedial to the errors and improve the teaching process

1.4 General background to the study

This section describes briefly the National Academy of Politics and Public Administration – Ho Chi Minh city, English courses and the coursebooks

used at the Academy This aims to provide the background information essential for an understanding of the issues discussed in this study

The National Academy of Politics and Public Administration was founded

in 1959 and since then it has trained millions of public administrators, cardres, civil servants It is under the control of the Ministry of Politics The National Academy consists of three institutes and The National Academy of Public Administration- HCM city is the second campus It is located at 10 February 3rd street, district 10, HCM city

The students at NAPA have to fulfill four English courses: three general English courses and one specific English course Each course lasts 70 periods At the end of each course, the students are obliged to take 3 tests on four skills: an oral test, a listening test, and a reading and writing test The aim of the curriculum is to provide students with linguistic knowledge as well as to improve their skills so that they can use English in communication

in their future jobs

The coursebooks used for the main courses are as the followings:

 Lifelines Pre-intermediate ( by Tom Hutchinson ,Oxford University Press 1997)

 Lifelines Intermediate (by Tom Hutchinson, Oxford University Press 1997)

 English for Public Administration (by Nguyen Khac Hung, Nguyen Quoc Hung, Nicolas Geoffrey Stedman,2001) for internal use only

Lifelines Pre-intermediate is divided into 14 main units and each unit has an Extension section It is used for the first course and second course The Student’s Book also contains a detailed Grammar Reference section, tapescripts, a wordlist, and IPA chart and irregular verb table The teacher’s

book contains an overview of each unit, clear teaching notes with extra ideas, an answer key, tapescripts, supplementary activities and progress tests The workbook has with key and without key versions It contains further practice of the language and vocabulary, an independent writing syllabus and Grammar Check revision sections

Lifelines Intermediate is designed like Lifelines Pre-intermediate It is used for the third course And English for Public Administration is used for the last course The purpose of this book is to teach Vietnamese students at the NAPA, Vietnamese civil servants and those who might be interested in the subject to understand and use the language of public administration in English It was written with upper-intermediate and advanced learners in mind, who ideally already have a solid grounding in general grammar, vocabulary and language skill The book’s structure emphasizes the importance of reading, vocabulary and study skills central to current and future needs of students using English for public administration with seven units and can be used in conjunction with general English course books

In this study, the forth course students were chosen because they have learned about the passive voice in two previous courses and in the current course It was hoped that their linguistic competence was good enough to complete the grammar proficiency test

1.5 Overview of the thesis

Chapter three describes the methodology employed in the study: the survey research This chapter includes the research questions, the research design, the description of the subjects, instruments, and data collection procedures Chapter four presents the results, analyzes and discusses the findings of the test and the interviews

Chapter five draws conclusion from the findings and provides some suggestions for improvement of the teaching and learning of the English passive voice

This chapter presents the general background of the thesis, the following chapter reviews some related literature

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter presents an overview of the theoretical background of the research and related studies on the errors in the English passive voice It is divided into three main sections Section 2.1 describes the features of the English passive voice as well as the difference between the active voice and passive voice Section 2.2 discusses the difference between the Vietnamese passive voice and the English passive voice Section 2.3 presents a summary

of the studies which establishes a basic for the study

2.1 Differences between the active voice and the passive voice

2.1.1 Structural differences

The term “voice” refers to a feature of verb forms which indicates whether

the subject is the ‘doer’ or the ‘recipient’ of the action There are two forms:

active and passive, as illustrated in the following pair of sentences:

Active (i) The cat chased the mouse

Passive (ii) The mouse was chased by the cat

In (i) the grammatical subject the cat is also the ‘doer’, or agent, while the

mouse is both the grammatical object, and the recipient, or goal In (ii),

however, they have swapped over their grammatical roles whilst maintaining their functional ones The cat is still the agent despite being the object, and similarly, the mouse remains the goal despite being the subject Most

transitive verbs allow this role reversal, although there are some exceptions (e.g have and resemble)

Azar (1989), Finch (2000), Celce-Murcia (1983) and Jacobs (1993) point

out that the passive differs structurally from the active firstly in requiring a

verb phrase composed of a form of the auxiliary be, followed by EN( or

past participle) The second structural change is the inversion of the

position of the agent and theme In the active clauses, agent comes before

the verb since it is the subject and theme is the object whereas in the passive sentence, the theme is the subject and it stands before the verb The conversion from one to another entails no change in the logical meaning of the sentence, as in the examples above, the chaser and chase remain the same However, functional linguists argue that there is a change in thematic meaning In other words, the reversal of agent and theme changes the focus

of the sentence This means that agent receives the main focus and the theme receives the second focus in the active voice, but in the passive voice, the

theme receives the first focus and the agent receives the second The third

major difference is the insertion of the preposition ‘by’ before the demoted

agent if it is to be expressed in the passive version although this is not

frequent Indeed, one advantage of the passive is its ability to allow agent

deletion

2.1.2 Semantic and lexical differences

Passive and active sentences may sometimes differ in meaning- especially

when they contain numerals or quantifiers- e.g., as Chomsky(1965) and

Lakoff (1968)[cited in Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman ,1983:217]have

pointed out, the active and passive sentences in the following two pairs are

not completely synonymous

Everyone in the room speaks two languages (i.e., any two languages

per person )

Two languages are spoken by everyone in the room (i.e., two specific

languages that everybody speaks)

Chomsky(1965)

Few people read many books ( i.e., There are few people in this world

who read lots of books )

Many books are read by few people ( i.e., There are many books that

are read by very few people.)

Lakoff (1998)

Besides, there are active voice sentences with surface structure objects that

do not have a passive equivalent since the verbs are not truly transitive

Ex: Mike has a car

*A car is had by Mike

Roger weighs 200 pounds

*200 pounds is weighed by Roger

Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman(1983)

That dress fits her perfectly

*She is fitted by that dress perfectly

Fielding resembled his mother

*His mother was resembled by Fielding

*Someone bore Mehdi in Tehran

It is rumored that he will get the job

*Someone rumors that he will get the job

Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1983)

This means that in the lexicon all English verbs must be marked as to whether they are compatible with the active voice, the passive voice, or with both

As we know, it is not often the case that the so-called passive and active forms of a sentence are mere variants that focus on the agent in the active and the theme in the passive With certain verbs and in certain situations either the active or the passive voice must be used exclusively It is because

of this that we have analyzed the active and the passive voice as different basic structures rather than deriving the passive from the active voice

The distinction between the active voice and passive voice gives us a general view of voice The following section shall provide us a better understanding about the complexity in the structure as well as the complication in the meaning and use of the passive voice in the context

2.2 The features of the English passive voice

● Passive constructions

Many linguists like Azar (2003), Bland (2003), Carter and McCarthy

(2006), Celce-Murcia (1983), Parrott (2000), Sandra (2005) and etc divide

passive into two types: standard passives with Be and Get and passives with Get and Have

pseudo-Generally, we have four distinct passive structures as follows:

1 Simple passives with BE… EN*

Mary was hit by John

Grapes are grown in that valley

2 Simple passives with GET…EN

Barry got invited to the party

John got hurt in the accident

3 Complex passives with BE…EN

It is rumored that he will get the job

That he will get the job has been decided

John is thought to be intelligent, etc

4 Pseudo passives with GET / HAVE …NP…EN

Hal has his car stolen last week

Alice had her purse snatched while shopping downtown

While Get-passive and Pseudo passives have the same characteristic as Be passive in that the grammatical subject is typically the recipient of the action, they differ from Be- passive in the functions they perform and the contexts in which they are used The meaning and use of each type of passive form are presented in details as follows

_

The past participle and the passive participle are the same verb form, i.e., EN; however, the past participle derives from a HAVE auxiliary while the passive participle derives from a BE auxiliary Both auxiliary elements may occur in the same sentence, e.g., Computers have been manufactured in Japan for many years.

●Meaning and use of the passive voice with Be

The use of passive versus active voice is context-sensitive grammar choice For this reason, the meaning of a passive sentence should be explained and understood not only at the sentence-level but also at discourse- level It is in situations that the meaning of the passive voice is revealed In other words the use of passive voice conveys the function and the meaning of the passive voice in the context

of results or processes involving things rather than people

 Agentless passives are used when the agent is unimportant, unknown, or obvious

 The agentless passive is used to avoid very general subjects such

as people, someone, we, one, and impersonal you and they The passive often sounds more indirect or impersonal

 Sometimes the agentless passive is used to avoid taking responsibility for an action or to avoid blaming another person

e.g., A boss speaking to his employees: A serious error was made

in the payroll (The boss deliberately doesn’t say who made the

error.)

 Passive are often used without agents if the agent is unimportant, unknown, or obvious However, the agent is necessary when it is

surprising or unexpected e.g., The mail has been delivered by an

experimental robot (The agent is surprising.) We were given six pages of homework by a substitute teacher.(The agent is

unexpected.)

 An agent is used to provide additional or new information e.g.,

You will be notified about the exam date by e-mail

 An agent is used to complete the meaning of the sentence or to add important information-especially a proper noun, such as the name of an author, artist, composer, inventor, or designer e.g.,

Washington, D.C was designed by Pierre L’Enfant

 Academic discourse, such as textbooks and other factual materials, tends to focus on objects, processes, and results Such materials try to present an objective and impersonal perspective

to convey a sense of authority To express this tone, writers often use passive expressions with it-subjects (e.g., It is expected that)

as well as other passive constructions e.g., It is generally agreed

that people can learn something much more rapidly the second time

 In public discourse, such as newspaper headlines, public announcements, and signs, the passive is used to convey an objective or impersonal tone The passive often sounds more

formal, factual, or authoritative E.g., Over 100 People Injured by

Aftershocks.(Newspaper Headlines) or Passengers are requested

to remain seated.( Announcement on an Airplane)

Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1983:228) also provide us some guidelines concerning when to use the passive:

 When the agent is redundant, i.e., easy to supply, and

therefore not expressed e.g.: Oranges are grown in

California

 When the writer wants to emphasize the receiver or result of

the action e.g.: Six people were killed by the tornado

 When the writer wants to make a statement sound objective

without revealing the source of information e.g.: It is

assumed/believed that he will announce his candidacy soon

 When the writer wants to be tactful or evasive by not mentioning the agent or when he or she cannot or will not

identify the agent e.g.: Based on the total figure, it appears

that an error was made in the budget

 When the writer wishes to retain the same grammatical subject in successive clauses, even though the function of the

noun phrase changes from agent to theme e.g.: George

Foreman beat Joe Frazier, but he was beaten by Muhammad Ali

 When the passive is more appropriate than the active (usually

in complex sentences).e.g.: The results of this second

language learning experiment tend to confirm the hypothesis that students learn in distinctively different ways as was suggested by Bogen, Paivio, Cohen and Witkin.(In this

context the passive is more appropriate than the active, since the hypothesis, which is the theme and also the NP of primary importance, can be fully stated before the writer mentions the source authors (i.e., agents), who are of secondary importance here

 When the theme is given information and the agent is new

information e.g.: What a lovely scarf !

Thank you It was given to me by Pam

As far as we see in the guidelines in using the passive voice, agentless passive is mentioned Indeed, passive sentences are usually used without the agent at all The passive sentences that do not mention the agent are called agentless passives The use of the agentive passive and the agentless passive

is clarified in the notion of agentless passive

●Agentless passive

The majority of passive sentences that occur in speech and in writing (i.e., around 85 percent) do not have an explicit agent For example:

Rice is grown in many Asian countries

The papers have been destroyed

Such sentences occur when the agent is understood, e.g., “farmer” in the first sentence above, or perhaps unknown, as in the second one

In a usage study of the English passive Shintani (1979;cited in Murcia and Larsen-Freeman,1983;217) suggests that we teach our ESL/EFL students when and why to retain the agent in those approximately 15 percent

Celce-of passive sentences that have explicit agents-rather than trying to give them rules for omitting the agent in those 85 percent of passives that are agentless She examined a large number of agents that were overtly expressed in passive sentences occurring in written and spoken discourse, and she concluded that almost all these agents could be explained by one of the following generalizations:

1 The agent is a proper name designating an artist, inventor,

discoverer, innovator, etc., who is too important to omit in the

context

The Mona Lisa was painted by da Vinci

2 The agent is an indefinite noun phrase, i.e., new information, and

is retained to provide the listener or reader with the new

information

While Jill was walking down the street, her purse was

snatched by a young man

3 The agent is an inanimate noun phrase which is retained because it

is unexpected; i.e., we expect agents to be animate, and almost all

omitted agents get reconstructed as animate nouns

All the lights and appliances in the Albertson household are

switched on and off daily by an electrical device

Among the agentless passive sentences are stative passive, which is

ambiguous and might cause confusion to the EFL learners

● Stative passive

As Azar (1981) defines, when the passive form is used to describe an

existing situation or state, it is called the stative passive For example:

The door is blocked

The window is broken

Ann is married to Alex

I am lost

In the stative passive :

 no action is taking place; the action happened earlier

 There is no by-phrase

 The past participle functions as an adjective

 Prepositions other than by can follow stative passive verbs

 These sentences have no equivalent active sentences

Also, Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman (1983) state that a significant number of passive sentences in English are stative passive; i.e., they function more like predicate adjectives than like passive verbs This distinction will become clearer if we consider the following pair of sentences:

The wells are located near the edge of the reserve

The wells were located by two engineers

Even though the verb locate appears in both sentences, two different

meanings are being expressed The first sentence is a stative passive without

an agent and without an active voice counterpart; it gives the reader or listener the location of the wells Note also that the present tense is used This is typical though not universal for stative passives The second sentence, however, does have an agent (i.e., the engineers), and it tells us that the engineers discovered the locations of the wells; also, an active voice counterpart is possible

Some linguists maintain that stative passives are really adjectives, not true passives Whatever analysis is used, we should be aware of the fact that some sentences that look like normal passives are in fact stative passives that have no agent and no active voice counterpart(Jacobs; 1993)

●Meaning and use of passives with GET

Bland (2003) states that GET commonly replaces BE in informal conversation GET passives are often more dynamic and emotional than BE passives Sentences with GET passives are usually about people rather than objects and especially about situations that people cannot control

And as Celce-Murcia (1983) points out the BE passive is formal or neutral whereas the GET passive is colloquial and perhaps also suggests the emotional involvement of the speaker The GET passive is more limited than the BE passive in that it can only be used with verbs denoting actions and processes, not states This, of course, characterizes the fundamental difference between the two, i.e GET emphasizes process while BE reports a state

Similarly, Carter et al (2000) suggest that GET passives are very common in spoken English, and are likely to be used without an agent and are most often used when the speaker considers a situation adverse or problematic

Parrott (2000) provides some reasons for using the Get passive:

 The action is unexpected, involuntary or possibly

unwelcome (ex: when he picked up the phone we got cut

off.)

 an achievement based on something that has been built up

beforehand (ex: She got elected.)

 an achievement in the face of difficulty.(ex: I finally got

admitted to hospital.)

It is a matter of fact that the Get-passive is fairly frequent in colloquial

English, not only in simple passives but also in pseudo-passive like Have,

For this reason, it should be introduced to the learners carefully

●Meaning and use of pseudo-passives with HAVE or GET

Pseudo –passives are formed with have / get + an object + past participle of

the verb

Pseudo –passives are common in informal English They also have subjects

which have things done for them, to them or which happen to them Pseudo

passives with have are normally used when somebody does something for

you or when you arrange a service, usually by an expert or professional

(Carter, 2000:101)

According to Carter and McCarthy (2006), the have pseudo-passive most

typically enables a person affected by an action or event to be made the

grammatical subject, thereby making that person the starting point for the

message:

They had their keys stolen

He had his window smashed

The meaning may be causative or non- causative:

I don’t mind paying to go to the dentist or to have my eyes checked

(causative: I make it happen )

My friend round the corner recently had his video stolen

(non-causative: it was not his intention or aim)

To sum up, with all these complications, there is no surprise that the passive voice presents difficulty for non-native speakers According to Error Analysis (EA), one of the sources of errors is the interference of mother tongue Therefore, a look into the difference between the English passive and Vietnamese passive should be taken into consideration

2.3 The contrast between the Vietnamese passive voice and the English passive voice

Some researchers such as Trần Trọng Kim (1936), Emeneau (1951), Cadiere (1958), etc claim that Vietnamese is an isolating language, its verbs do not have passive voice, therefore it does not have passive sentences as do inflecting languages( such as Russian, French, etc.) To transform an active sentence to the passive sentence, the verb in inflecting languages has to change its form from active voice to passive voice The verbs in Vietnamese

do not change their forms so they do not satisfy these strict morphological criteria of passive voice as a grammatical category Thompson (1965) also considers that the construction with được/ bị are just the translation

equivalents of passive constructions in Indo-European languages Besides the absence of passive voice as a morphological category, other researchers base on the fact that Vietnamese is a topic-prominent rather than subject-prominent language to deny the existence of passive sentences in Vietnamese According to Li, Ch N and Thompson, S.A (1976), Nguyễn Thị Ánh (2000), Cao Xuân Hạo (2001), passive constructions are very common in subject-prominent languages but usually absent or rarely present

in topic-prominent languages

Contrary to the first view, some other researchers like Nguyễn Phú Phong (1976), Hoàng Trọng Phiến (1980), Lê Xuân Thại (1989), Diệp Quang Ban and Nguyễn Thị Thuận (2000) claim that Vietnamese has passive sentences

as syntactic constructions These authors argue that the passive voice in Vietnamese is not marked in the form of verbs but in the form of a syntactic construction with established grammatical and semantic characteristics According to these authors, the syntactic structures of a Vietnamese passive sentence are as follows:

- The subject of the passive is the object of the alternative active It denotes the action’s patient, not the action’s agent

- The predicate of the passive includes an auxiliary bị / được/ do and a transitive verb( sometimes bị/ được can be absent from passive sentences)

- The agentive subject are optional to be present in the passive

As presented above, there are different views on passive sentences in Vietnamese From these arguments, however, we can come to conclusion

that passive voice does exist in Vietnamese with specific grammatical and semantic characteristics (cited in Nguyễn Hồng Cồn, 2008)

● Meaning and Use of the Vietnamese passive voice

In ‘Ngữ văn 7’ published by Ministry of Education and Training (2004), the passive voice is introduced to the Vietnamese students with some following meanings:

 In the passive sentences, subjects are people or things that receive the action or are affected by the action (Câu bị động là câu có chủ ngữ chỉ người, vật được hoạt động của người, vật khác hướng vào )

 In some contexts, the active- passive transform or vice versa aims to make the text coherent (Việc chuyển đổi câu chủ động thành câu bị động (và ngược lại) ở mỗi đoạn văn đểu nhằm liên kết các câu trong đoạn văn thành một mạch văn thống nhất.) In the two following examples, passive voice is used because the

theme in the first text , Tinh thần yêu nước and the second text ,

Thế Lữ remain the subjects in the preceeding sentences to make

the test easy to be understood and smooth

Ex: -Tinh thần yêu nước cũng như các thứ của quý Có khi được trưng bày trong tủ kính, trong bình pha lê, rõ ràng dễ thấy nhưng cũng có khi cất giấu kín đáo trong rương, trong hòm

( Hồ Chí Minh)

 Người đầu tiên chịu ảnh hưởng thơ Pháp rất đậm là Thế Lữ

Những bài thơ có tiếng của Thế Lữ ra đời từ đầu năm 1933 đến

1934 Giữa lúc người thanh niên Việt Nam bấy giờ ngập trong quá khứ đến tận cổ thì Thế Lữ đưa về cho họ cái hương vị phương xa Tác giả “Mấy vần thơ” liền được tôn làm đương thời

đệ nhất thi sĩ ( Hoài Thanh)

These two meanings of the passive voice are the same as ones in the English passive However, the English passive voice has more usages than the Vietnamese passive

●Structures of the Vietnamese passive sentences

Nó bị bố nó đánh ( He was hit by his father)

Hoa được cô giáo khen ( Hoa is complimented by the teacher)

3 NP2 – được /bị - V- bởi - NP1

Truyện Kiều được sáng tác bởi đại thi hào Nguyễn Du

(Kieu story was written by Nguyen Du)

The passive voice in Vietnamese is often expressed and recognized by the two words “được’ and “bị” However, there are some cases that these words

do not perform passive meanings This can be seen in the two following examples: “ Nó được gặp thủ tướng” ( He has met the Prime Minister) or

“ Nó bị té” ( She fell) These sentences demonstrate active voice, not the passive one

Passive voice with the word “được” is used when people want to mention positive meanings: “ Hoa được mẹ đưa đi xem xiếc”(Hoa was taken to the circus by her mother) On the other hand, passive voice with the word “ bị”

is used when people want to express negative aspects: “ Nó bị đánh” (He was hit) Nevertheless, not all passive meanings are marked with the two words above There are some kinds of special passive voice with the absence

of the two words For example, “ Mặt tô đậm quá” (Your face was thickly made up); “ Anh sinh ở đâu?” (where were you born?) and “ Cầu đã xây xong” (The bridge has been built)

2.3.2 The contrast between the English passive voice and the Vietnamese passive voice

Or Get + past participle

Have/ Get+ NP + past participle

The forms of “tobe” “get” and

“have” and the verbs change based

on the subjects and tenses

We can distinguish the active

sentences from the passive sentences

through the structures of the

sentences

Được/ bị + Verb Được/ bị + NP + Verb Được / bị + Verb+ do/ bởi + NP

unchanged

The distinction is confusing because

“được” “bị” sometimes do not mark the passiveness Otherwise, some sentences do not carry “bi” “được”

“do”( bởi) but they are passive sentences as in “ Cầu đã xây xong”

or “ bức tranh tô đậm quá”

Moreover, Vietnamese people do not often use the passive voice, but usually change it into the active voice For instance, “Mary’s mother took her to the zoo” instead of “Mary was taken to the zoo by her mother” while

the focus is Mary Furthermore, Vietnamese people do not use double passive or passive causatives as English people do

There is no denying the fact that the diversity of the forms as well as functions of the passive voice in both languages causes problems to the EFL learners in general and students at NAPA- HCM city in particular During the acquisition the passive voice, the students at NAPA- HCM city make errors in the use of the passive voice As Corder (1967) stated:

A learner’s errors, then, provide evidence of the system of the language that he

is using (i.e has learned) at a particular point in the course (and it must be repeated that he is using some system, although, it is not yet the right system) They are significant in three ways First to the teacher, in what they tell him, if he undertakes

a systematic analysis, how far towards the goal the learner has progressed and, consequently, what remains for him to learn Second, they provide to the researcher evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in his discovery of the language Thirdly, (and in a sense this is their most important aspect) they are indispensable to the learner himself, because

we can regard the making of errors as a device the learner uses in order to learn It

is a way the learner has of testing his hypotheses about the nature of the language

he is learning The making of errors then is a strategy employed by both children acquiring their mother tongue and by those learning a second language

It is proved that the learners make errors in acquiring a new language and learner’s errors are not the evidence of non-learning or of the failure to overcome proactive inhibition but they are indispensable to the learner In accordance with this approach, the author decided to carry out this thesis to probe into the errors made by the students at NAPA in the English passive

voice The next section will present some problems in the acquisition the English passive voice

2.4 Problems in the acquisition of the passive voice

The first step in analyzing learner errors is to identify them It is clear that identifying the exact errors that learners make is often difficult for the reason that how we can be sure that when a learner produces a deviant form it is not just an accidental slip of the tongue Besides, native speakers often make slips when they are tired or under some kind of pressure to communicate

Therefore, it is crucial to make a distinction between the mistakes and errors

2.4.1 Mistakes and Errors

H.D Brown (2000) states that ‘A mistake refers to a performance error that

is either a random guess or a slip , in that it is a failure to utilize a known

system correctly’ whereas an error is ‘a noticeable deviation from the adult grammar of a native speaker, reflecting the competence of the learner.’ And

according to James (1998)’An error cannot be self-corrected while mistakes can be self-corrected if the deviation is pointed out to the speaker’ Similarly, Corder (1967;cited in Richards et al,1974:25) points out that ‘the

errors of performance will characteristically be unsystematic and errors of competence, systematic’ Corder claims that ‘It will be useful therefore

hereafter to refer to errors of performance as mistakes, reserving the term of

error to refer to the systematic errors of learner from which we are able to

reconstruct his knowledge of language to date, i.e transitional competence’

Ellis also gives us clues to distinguish errors from mistakes He suggests that ‘Errors reflect gaps in a learner’s knowledge; they occur because the learner does not know what is correct Mistakes reflect occasional lapses in performance; they occur because, in a particular instance, the learner is unable to perform what he or she knows.’

Mistakes are of no significance to the process of language learning However, the problem of determining what is a learner’s mistake and what a learner’s error is one of some difficulty and involves a much more sophisticated study and analysis of errors than is usually accorded them

In other words, according to Corder (1971), Ellis (1997), Selinker and Gass

(1993), mistakes are generally one-time-only events The speaker who

makes a mistake is able to recognize it as a mistake and correct it if

necessary An error, on the other hand, is systematic That is, it is likely to

occur repeatedly and is not recognized by the learner as an error For

example, if the speaker says “He was died in an accident” repeatedly it means that he makes an error Corder (1971; cited in Brown, 2000:220)also provided a model for identifying erroneous or idiosyncratic utterances in a second language According to Corder’s model, any sentence uttered by the learner and subsequently transcribed can be analyzed for idiosyncrasies A

major distinction is made at the outset between overt and covert errors

Overtly erroneous utterances are unquestionably ungrammatical at the sentence level Covertly erroneous utterances are grammatically well-formed

at the sentence level but are not interpretable within the context of communication For example, “People make it from rice” is grammatically correct at the sentence level, but as a response to “What is this kind of wine made from ?” is obviously an error