An analysis of english reported speech errors made by high school students in nam dan district = phân tích lỗi lời nói gián tiếp trong tiếng anh của học sinh THPT ở huyện nam đàn luận văn thạc sĩ giáo dục học

The errors reveal the patterns of learners’developing interlanguage systems- showing where they have over generalized a secondlanguage rules or where they have inappropriately transferre

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

huyện Nam Đàn ) MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION

Vinh, 2011

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

huyện Nam Đàn )

FIELD: THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH

LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 60.14.10MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION

SUPERVISOR: ASSOC PROF DR NGO DINH PHUONG

Vinh, 2011

Acknowledgement ……… I Abstract ……… II List of Tables and Figures ………III List of Abbreviation ……… V

TABLE OF CONTENTS .……… ………1

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .………3

1.1 Rationale of The Study … ……… 3

1.2 Aims of The Study ………5

1.3 Significance of The Study ……… 5

1.4 Research Questions of The Study … ……… 5

1.5 Methods of The Study ………… ……… 5

1.6 Scope of The Study ……… 6

1.7 Design of The Study ……….……….……… 6

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ……….……… 8

2.1 Overview ……….……… 8

2.2 Theoritical Background ……… 8

2.2.1 Reported Speech In English ……….8

2.2.1.1 Direct Speech ……….………8

2.2.1.2 Reported Speech ……….……….……… 8

2.2.2 Errors In Language Learning Process .……….……… 16

2.2.2.1 The Notion of Errors ……….……… 16

2.2.2.2 Errors, Mistakes and Lapses ……… 18

2.2.2.3 Errors Classifications ……… 19

2.2.3 Error Analysis ………25

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY … ………28

3.1 Overview ……….……… ……….28

3.2 Research Design ……… ………… .28

3.3 Subject of The Study …….……… ………… 28

3.4 Data Collection Instruments … ……… …… 29

3.4.1 Descriptions of Tasks……… …….29

3.4.2 Descriptions of Questionnaires ……… …30

3.4.2.1 The Following Data Analysis Criteria for The Ss’ Questionnaire … 30

3.4.2.2 The Following Data Analysis Criteria for The Ts’ Questionnaire … 31

3.5 Data Collection Procedure….……… ………31

3.6 Data Analysis ……… ……… 31

3.7 Research Procedures… ….……… ……….32

3.8 Reliability and Validity…….…… ……… ……….32

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS…… ……… 33

4.1 Findings and Data Analysis ……… … ……… 33

4.1.1 Overview ……….…… ………33

4.1.2 Primary Results and Data Analysis .……… ……… 33

4.1.2.1 Primary Results of Students' Test …… ………33

4.1.2.2 Results and Data Analysis from Students' Questionnaires…… … 36

4.1.2.3 Results and Data Analysis from Teachers' Questionnaires … … 50

4.1.3 Summary of Findings ……….……… … …… 64

4.2 Discussions ……… …… 66

Errors and Their Causes … ……… ……… ……… 67

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION……… 72

5.1 Summary of The Study ……… ……….…72

5.2 Conclusion ………… ……… ……….…72

5.3 Implications for Teaching and Learning Reported Speech in English …75

5.3.1 General Implications ……….… …… 75

5.3.2 Suggested Techniques Helping Students Overcome Their Difficulties 76 5.4 Limitations and Recommendations for Further Study ……… 81

REFERENCES ….……… .

……… 82

APPENDICES (1, 2, 3, 4, 5 AND 6)

……….VI

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of The Study

Nowadays, English has become an international communication language toaccess to many fields of human life such as science, technology, trade, communicationand research as well In recent years, there is a considerable increase in Vietnameselearners’ need of learning English because they are aware of the importance of English

to globalization in the WTO integration period To the persons who possess,understand and make full use of English, it is considered as a multifunctional key toachieve success in life Like many other languages, English language’s complexityreally makes many Vietnamese students confused Numerous errors are made duringthe process of learning the English language because of the differences between twocultures in terms of ways of thinking, literature and learning styles

Principally, English teaching and learning process cannot be free from mistakes

or errors, misinterpretation, misapplication about something that has been learnt(Brown, P.J 1987: p.9) As Spada, N and Lightbown (2002, p.167) stated that: “Errorsare natural part of language learning The errors reveal the patterns of learners’developing interlanguage systems- showing where they have over generalized a secondlanguage rules or where they have inappropriately transferred the first language ruleinto the second language.”

For second language learners in general and for second language students athigh schools in particular, or even the persons who acquired a high level of Englishproficiency also make mistakes in their production of the second language The errorscan be seen in different parts For instance, in syntax, Vietnamese students made wronguse of prepositions, articles as in the following sentences “He is working in the farm”

or “I like the my hat” Another example is about wrong use of word order in thesentence “She very likes a red dress” and so on.

Errors and error analysis have drawn attention of methodologists and linguistsfor a long time However, in Vietnam, there are few researches done on the area oferrors and error analysis There are some studies of error analysis conducted at VinhUniversity such as “Identifying Common Errors in Written English of Students ofEnglish at the Intermediate Level” by Pham Thi Thanh Nhan, “An Analysis of Errorsmade by High-school Students in the Use of Subject- verb Agreement” by Cao Viet

Ha, “Ellipsis in English: An Analysis of Errors made by Secondary School Students”

by Vo Thi Thuy Linh, “An Analysis of Errors committed by High-school Students inUsing English Reflexive Verbs and Reflexive Pronouns” by Mai Ly Huynh, “AnInvestigation into Errors in Using the Present Perfect tense by Secondary schoolStudents” by Pham Thi Huyen, etc

In all those studies, however, little attention has been made to reported speechand difficulties and challenges students face In learning English grammar, especiallylearning reported speech, Vietnamese students cannot avoid making mistakes anderrors Despite the fact that they have been taught and understood the rules of grammarclearly, they often make errors and some types of errors even become habitual Theseerrors can be seen in both learning process at school and the results at the end of everysemester Hence, it is very important to carry out an error analysis of reported speechmade by high school students to identify their errors and causes and to find out thesolutions to help improving the effects of teaching and learning English

For the reasons mentioned above, the author would like to conduct a studydealing with an analysis of errors committed by high school students in terms of usingreported speech, entitled “An Error Analysis of Reported Speech made by High-schoolStudents”

Hopefully, the study will benefit both teachers and students who want to master and possess the English language.

1.2 Aims of The Study

The study is carried out to achieve the following objectives:

 To identify students’ errors in using reported speech in English

 To find out the causes leading to errors made by students in using RP

 To point out solutions to help students to avoid the errors, to suggestimplications for students and teachers during teaching and learning process

1.3 Significance of The Study

The other side of errors can be taken to make teaching and learning better thanbefore It can be said that every student makes progress through the mistakes or errorsthey make In English teaching and learning process, it is necessary to analyze theerrors in order to gain and reconstruct new language systems The analysis will giveteachers description of language acquisition Error analysis has also provided insightsabout the second language acquisition process, which results in major changes inteaching practices As a result, error analysis on students’ work will be useful andcontribute to the process of language teaching and learning This leads to a greaterunderstanding of the difficulties that students face and to the development of pedagogicstrategies Therefore, this study is very significant for Vietnamese learners of English

in general and high-school students in particular during the process of learning English

1.4 Research Questions of The Study

The study is to answer the following questions:

1 What types of errors may high school students make in using reported speech?

2 What might be the causes leading to the errors?

3 What recommendations could be made so as to avoid the errors in using reportedspeech?

1.5 Methods of The Study

To carry out the study, the methods and methodology employed in this study arequantitative and qualitative

A group of 400 students from grade 11 and 12 at three high schools at Nam Dandistrict are involved in the survey and all teachers of English consisting of 24 at thesehigh schools

In order to gain the most successful results, data will be collected through: firstly,the errors collected in written tasks done by the students within 50 minutes areanalyzed; classified and counted to see how often they occur and look for their causes.From those, suggesting some solutions All data are analyzed and conducted undertheoretical knowledge of errors and error analysis from the data analysis of the study;

secondly, the survey questionnaires: one for students and one for teachers

1.6 Scope of The Study

English grammar is a complex issue for both learners and researchers Due tothe time limit and research condition, this study does not cover all problems ordifficulties students meet in learning English grammar The study will focus onanalyzing errors in reported speech made by Vietnamese high-school students Besides,the research has just paid much attention to written language, which is collected fromwritten tasks performed by students at Nam Dan II High School

1.7 Design of The Study

The research consists of five following chapters:

Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter deals with background of the study, problems statement, aims,benefit, research questions, methods, scope and the design of the study

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter will provide an in-depth review of the relevance literature related tothe issue under investigation Particularly, a review of the uses of reported speech inEnglish will bring the theoretical framework for the identification of the errors thatstudents made Besides that, basing on the ideas expressed in different works bydifferent theorists Theories about the sources of errors will help explore what factors

caused students’ commitment of errors in using the reported speech Error analysis asthe main theoretical tool for analyzing data will also be reviewed.

Chapter 3: RESEARCH DESIGN and METHODOLOGY

This chapter will present methodology adopted to collect data for the research,which consists of subject of the study, data collection instruments, data collectionprocedure, data analysis, research procedures and reliability and validity involved inthe study

Chapter 4: FINDINGS and DISCUSSIONS

This chapter will describe how errors are elicited from the tasks, deal withprimary results through students’ tasks, two questionnaires of students and teachers.From that, the results are presented to classify errors and give their correspondingcauses

Chapter 5: CONCLUSION

This chapter will summarize what have been done in the research, suggest someimplications or recommendations for teaching and learning reported speech forteachers and students at high schools in Nam Dan avoiding the unnecessary mistakesand use reported speech more effectively And provide some suggestions for furtherresearch and give limitations of the study

Followed by several appendices and references which may be the concern of thereaders

Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Overview:

This chapter has presented some theoretical background knowledge related to thetopic of the study It consists of previous study and has discussed some definition andfunction concerning to reported speech (type of reported speech, errors, kinds of errorsand the theory of errors classifications)

2.2 Theoretical Background:

2.2.1 Reported Speech in English:

Reported speech, traditionally called indirect speech, but also referred to bylinguists and grammarians as hypotactic locutions, refers to the use of a noun clause toreport a person’s words, thoughts, beliefs, etc To better understand reported speech, it

is helpful to first look at direct speech, which can also be used to report a person’swords, thoughts, and beliefs

2.2.1.1 Direct Speech

Direct speech is used mainly in writing to report a person’s words exactly It isfound in conversations in books, in plays, and in quotations, and is often used insituations where accuracy is important, such as in areas relating to law and publicmedia The following examples highlight the form of direct speech

E.g She said, "I am teaching English to you now."

Or "I am teaching English to you now," she said

The distinguishing features are the use of quotation marks to tell the reader that thewords are the original words spoken by the speaker, and the reference to the speaker,which can be made before or after the quote, with the comma placed accordingly

2.2.1.2 Reported Speech

In contrast to direct speech, reported speech is used mainly in conversation and isconcerned more with communicating the exact meaning than the exact words As such,

the reported message may vary depending on the point of view of the speaker and thevocabulary selected:

E.g He said/told us he would have finished that paper the next day

Shifting from Direct to Reported Speech:

When shifting from direct to reported speech, grammatical changes may need to bemade to the original text in order to account for the fact that “words spoken or thought

in one place by one person [are or] may be reported in another place at a different time,and perhaps by a different person.”

In other words, indirect speech is reported speech to narrate direct speech in adifferent form, including a change of tense, adverbs of place, time (as appropriate),change pronouns, possessives, demonstratives (the rule) and even change the structure

of the sentences comparing with direct speech to suit the situation However, themeaning of sentences directly remain The changes include:

a Tense change:

When reporting speech the tense usually changes This is because when we usereported speech, we are usually talking about a time in the past (because obviously theperson who spoke originally spoke in the past) The verbs therefore usually have to be

in the past too

As a rule when you report something someone has said you go back a tense: (the tense on the left changes to the tense on the right):

Direct speech  Indirect speech Present simple  Past simple

Present continuous  Past continuous

Present perfect simple  Past perfect simple

Present perfect continuous  Past perfect continuous Past simple  Past perfect

Past continuous  Past perfect continuous Past perfect  Past perfect

Past perfect continuous  Past perfect continuous

Eg:

- She said, "I am at home."  She said she was at home.

- She said, "I'm listening to music."  She said she was listening to music.

- She said, "I have never been to Dalat”  She said she had never been to Dalat.

- She said, "I went to the cinema last night."

 She said she had gone to the cinema the night before.

- She said, "I was driving to her home."

 She said she had been driving to her home.

Modal verb forms also sometimes change:

Direct speech  Indirect speech

will  would can  could

must  had to shall  should may  might

Eg: - She said, "I will learn English online tomorrow."

 She said she would learn English online the next day.

Note - There is no change to; could, would, should, might and ought to

Eg: - "I might buy this house", he said

 He said he might buy that house

You can use the present tense in reported speech if you want to say that something

is still true i.e my name has always been and will always be Mary:

Eg: - "My name is Mary", she said

 She said her name was Mary

Or she said her name is Mary

You can also use the present tense if you are talking about a future event

Eg: "Next week's lesson is on reported speech ", she said

 She said next week's lesson is on reported speech.

The tense does not need to be changed when the present, future, and present

perfect reporting verbs are used (because there is normally no important change in time

Eg: "Today's lesson is on presentations."

 She said yesterday's lesson was on presentations

Expressions of time if reported on a different day

1 This ( evening) That (evening)

2 These (days) Those (days)

7 ( a week) ago ( a week) before

10 yesterday the day before / the previous day

11 last night the night before / the previous night

12 the day before yesterday two days before

13 tomorrow the next day/ following day / the day after

14 next (week) the following (week)/ the (week) after/ the (week) later

15 the day after tomorrow two days after

Note: (*) It does not say COME THERE (go there) or GO HERE (go here) that saidCOME HERE and GO THERE

In addition if you report something that someone said in a different place to whereyou heard it you must change the place (here) to the place (there)

For example: "How long have you worked here?"

 She asked me how long I'd worked there

c Pronouns and possessives change:

The changes required in pronouns, possessive adjectives and demonstratives are asfollows:

Direct speech To Indirect speechSubjective

Pronoun IYou

We

He, she

I, theyTheyObjective

Pronoun

MeYouUs

Him, her

Me, themThemPossessive

adjective

MyYour Our

His, her

My, theirTheirPossessive

Pronoun

MineYours Ours

His, hersMine, theirstheirs

Reflexive

Pronoun

MyselfYourself

Ourselves

Himself, herselfMyself, themselvesthemselves

Apart from the general rule about the changes in pronouns and possessives above, learners need to pay more attention to the other changes related to the relative position

of the person who reports utterances or sayings as follows:

Eg: "Tom, you should listen to me." Jane said

+ Jane self-reports her words:

 I told Tom that he should listen to me

+ Other person reports Jane’s saying:

 Jane told Tom that he should listen to her

+ Others report to Tom:

 Jane told you that he should listen to her

+ Tom reports Jane’s words:

 Jane told me that I should listen to her

d Reporting Verbs:

Said, told and asked are the most common verbs used in indirect speech

- We use asked to report

questions:-For example: I asked Hoa how long she had been living there

- We use told with an object

For example: Anna told me she was not hungry then

! Note - Here me is the object

- We usually use said without an object

For example: Mr John said he was going to teach online

- If said is used with an object we must include to

For example: Mr John said to me that he had finished his project

! Note - We usually use told

For example: Mr John told me that he had finished his project

- There are many other verbs we can use apart from said, told and asked

=> These include:

accused, admitted, advised, alleged, agreed, apologized, begged, boasted, complained, denied, explained, implied, invited, offered, ordered, promised, replied, suggested and thought

Using them properly can make what you say much more interesting and informativeFor example: He asked me to come to the party:

He invited me to the party

He begged me to come to the party

He ordered me to come to the party

He advised me to come to the party

He suggested I should come to the party

e Questions in reported speech:

When reporting questions, the changes already mentioned in regard to statements apply In addition to these, there are also several other areas to consider Firstly, the

word order changes to that of a statement, namely subject-verb, and so accordingly reported questions are usually not punctuated with a question mark Secondly, the auxiliary verb do is dropped Finally, yes/no questions start with if or whether; wh-word questions such as why, when, and where, however, do not:

Note: If the verb introduced in the past and the quotation in question in the present or the past simple form of the verb often changes as follows:

e1 Questions with Wh-question:

Direct speech: Sa + Va + ((prep) + Oa + “WH- + Vspecial + Sb+ V0 / V-ing / V3/ed….?” → Indirect speech: Sa + Va’ + (Oa ) + WH- + Sb+ Vspecial (back tense if Va’ in past) + V0 / V-ing

/ V3/ed……

Note: If the verb introduced in the past and the question in the bracket in the present or the past simple form of the verb often changes as follows:

With the present/ past form in brackets:

Direct speech: Sa + Va + ((prep) + Oa + “WH- + do/ does/did + Sb+ V0 …… ?”

→ Indirect speech: Sa + Va’ + (Oa ) + WH- + Sb+ V 2/ed + / Had + V 3/ed …… ?

E.g

1 He said “Why do you tell me about that, Lan?”

→ He asked Lan why she told him about that

2 “When will you go?” she said to us

→ She asked us when we would go

3 “What did you do at school yesterday, Nam?” said his mother

→ Nam’s mother asked him what he had done at school the day before

e2 YES / NO questions:

Direct speech: Sa + Va + ((prep) + Oa + (that)) “Vspecial + Sb+ V0 / V-ing / V3/ed….?”

→ Indirect speech: Sa + Va’ + (Oa ) + If / (Whether) + Sb+ Vspecial (back a tense if Va’ in past) +

V0 / V-ing / V3/ed…… + (Or Not)

Note: If the verb introduced in the past and the question in quotation in the present

or the past simple form of the verb often changes as follows:

With the simple present/ past in bracket:

Direct speech: Sa + Va + ((prep) + Oa + (that)) “do/does/did + Sb+ V0 …… ?”

→ Indirect speech: Sa + Va’ + (Oa ) + If / (Whether) + Sb+ V2/ed /Had + V3/ed …… +

(Or Not)

E.g

1 They said, “Are you tired, Tom?”

→ They asked Tom if he was tired

→ They asked Tom whether he was tired (or not)

2 “Did you want to need help from me, Linda?”, said John

→ John asked Linda if she had wanted to need help from him

3 Jim said to me, “Do you see this thief today?”

→ Jim asked me if I saw that thief that day

→ Jim asked me whether I saw that thief that day (or not)

f Special situations of reported speech:

f1 Shall/ would in an offer or an invitation

Eg: - "Shall I bring you some coffee?" he asked

 He offered to bring me some coffee

- "Shall we meet at the museum?" he asked

 He suggested meeting at the museum

f2 Will/would in a request:

E.g: - Will you help me, please?

 He asked me to help him

f3 Commands in reported speech

E.g: - Do not talk in the class!

 He told me/the students not to talk in the class

f4 Exclamations in reported speech

E.g: - What a lovely hat!

Based on emotions, we can use different ways of reporting the sentence as follows:

She exclaimed that the hat was lovely

She exclaimed that the hat was a lovely once

She exclaimed with admiration at the sight of the hat

f5 Complex forms in reported speech

Reported speech consists of many complex forms such as statements, commands, questions, exclamations

E.g: - She said, "can you play the chess?” and I said “no”

 She asked me if could play the chess and I said that I could not

g Use of 'That' in reported speech:

In reported speech, the word that is commonly used

For example: He told me that he has just won in that game

However, that is optional

For example: He

told me he has just won in that game

! Note - That is never used in questions, instead we often use if

For example: He asked me if I would phone him later

2.2.2 Errors in Language Learning Process:

2.2.2.1 The Notion of Errors:

In English learning process, students sometimes make errors and it is errors that canplay an important role because committing and analyzing errors will help learners realize and try to avoid them better Up to now, there are a variety of definitions of errors made by many grammarians and linguists

According to Corder, S.P (1974), an error is referred to as a linguistic form that is either superficially deviant or inappropriate in terms of the target language

In “Errors in Language Teaching and Use” (1980), Carl James defined errors as

“being an instance of language that is intentionally deviant and not self-corrigible by itsauthors.”

Leon, P (1991, p.182) has defined error as “a linguistic form…which, in the same context…would in all likelihood not be produced by the learners’ native speaker

counterparts”

Hendrickson in methodology in TESOL (1987) stated an error is “an utterance form

or structure that is a particular language teacher seems unacceptable because of its inappropriate use or its absence in real life discourse”

According to “Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied

Linguistics” by Richard et al, (1974), error is considered as “the uses of a linguistic item (e.g a word, a grammatical item, a speech act, etc.) in a way in which a fluent or native speaker of language regards as showing faulty or incomplete learning”

Corder, (1974, p.122) uses the term “erroneous” to mean either superficially deviant

or inappropriate in terms of the target language grammar Dulay et al (1982, p.138) sees error as “the flawed side of leaner speech and writing They are those parts of conversation or composition that deviate from some selected norm” The extract from Halliday et al (1964, p.119) is taken as starting point for my study:

An error in English can be described with complete accuracy by reference solely to the description of English, without taking any account of the students’ native language or even knowing what it is Each error is stated as a specific deviation from a described English feature

A lot of definitions of errors have been given due to various standards From those, the writer may suggest another definition “errors are what the second language learnersproduce, which are unacceptable, unnatural and faulty to native speaker in the

particular context”

2.2.2.2 Errors, Mistakes and Lapses:

It can be said that errors, mistakes and lapses are near synonyms However, they have distinctive features different from each other

The distinction between errors, mistakes is not really easy for readers to identify and realize Some linguists have tried to point out the distinction between them

According to Carl James, (1980) “A mistake may be defined as slip of tongue or of handwriting, and an error is committed because of the writer/speaker’s semantic and structure intentions If the learner is inclined and able to correct a fault in his or her output, it is assumed that the form he or she selected was unintended fault or a mistake.

On the other hand, the learner cannot correct, it is assumed that the form the learners use was the intended one, which is an error”

Corder, S.P (1967) argued that mistakes are of no significance to the learning language process; thus they do not reflect a defect in our knowledge but are traceable

to performance failure The learner is normally immediately conscious of the mistakes and can self-correct them to some extent Both native speakers and learners may make mistakes In contrast, errors that only learners of a second language commit are

significant to the process of language learning They do not reflect knowledge and cannot self-correct

James adds that language learners cannot correct their errors until they have

additional knowledge on the topic These errors occur during the course that learners attend because they haven’t acquired enough knowledge Once they acquire additional knowledge, they will be able to correct their errors and the more errors the learners correct the more conscious of language they will be

Corder, S.P (1981) differentiates errors from mistakes in the way that errors are systematic in nature being “errors of competence” which occur in the continuum of the learning process They are result of the learners’ transitional competence On the contrary, mistakes are “errors of performance” which are not systemic

Richard et al, in “Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics” (1992) also showed that a learner makes a mistake when writing or speaking because

of lack of attention, fatigue, carelessness or some other aspects of performance

Meanwhile, an error is the use of linguistic item in a way that a fluent or native speaker

of the use of the language regards it as showing faulty or incomplete learning

Ellis, R (1985) noted that “errors reflect gaps between learners’ 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”.

Norrish, J (1983) said that there is another wrong use which is neither a mistake nor an error and can happen to everyone, which is treated as a lapse A lapse is

involved in the lack of concentrations, shortness of memory, fatigue, etc

In short, it can be said that errors are linked to failure in competence, mistakes are associated with failure in performance and lapses are related to performance with occasional effects

2.2.2.3 Error Classifications

There are also different ways of classifying errors based on each researcher’s standard and norm.

1 Duley, Burt and Krashen (1982) proposed the surface structure taxonomy based on

“the way surface structures are altered” (1982, p.150) Errors can occur because of change in surface structure in specific and systematic ways There are four ways in which learners “modify” target forms: omission, addition, misformation and

misordering errors

 Omission: Learners in the early stages of learning tend to omit function words rather than content words More advanced learners tend to be conscious of their

ignorance of content words and rather than omit one, they need compensatory

strategies to express their idea (Kasper and Lellerman, 1997)

 Addition: This type of errors is “the result of all-too-faithful use of certain rules”(1982, p.156) Duley, Burt and Krashen suggest subtypes First, regularization involvesoverlooking exceptions and spreading rules to domains where they do not apply, for instance producing the incorrect “buyed” for “bought” Second is double marking as

“failure to delete certain items which are required in some linguistic constructions but not in others” An illustration for this is “He doesn’t knows me”

 Misformation: Duley, Burt and Krashen define misformation as the use of the wrong form of a structure or morpheme

For example: I* meet her yesterday

He hurt* himself

 Misordering: The learners can select the right forms to use in the right context, but they arrange them in the wrong order, for instance, adverbials, interrogatives and adjectives, yielding errors

For instance: *Tell me when did you buy it

*The houses blue Misordering is often the result of learners’ relying on carrying out “word for word translations of native language surface structure” (1982, p.162) when producing written

or spoken utterances in the target language

2 James, C (1998) classified errors into five patterns as follows:

 Omission

 Over inclusion: E.g having

 Misselection (use wrong words not wrong forms) E.g: miself (myself)

 Misordering

 Blends: Blending arises when two alternative grammatical forms are combined

to produce an ungrammatical blend.)

3 Richard, J.C (1974) classified errors into two categories according to their

causes as follows:

 Interlingual Errors: These errors are caused by mother tongue interference  Intralingual & Developmental Errors: These kinds of error occur during the learning process of the second language at a stage when they haven’t really acquired the knowledge Moreover, the errors are also caused by the difficulty or the problem oflanguage itself For as Dulay and Burt (1974) say almost 90% of errors are intralingual errors

4 James, C (1998) states that there are four causes of errors:

 Interlingual errors (Mother-tongue influence) These kinds of errors are

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

R (1957, p.2) defined that “individual tends to transfer the form, meanings and

distribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture to the foreign and culture” Learners translate word by word idiomatic expressions, vocabulary and even the grammatical rules of the learners’ first language into the second language In contrastive analysis, it is believed that the type of errors made by the learners of the target language can be predicted and their causes can be determined In order to

prevent and eliminate these errors, Richards, J.C (1974) has given the following figures: Between 3-25 percent of all errors are errors of mother tongue influence and

75 percent of errors are ‘non-contrastive’ errors

 Intralingual errors: These errors are caused by the target language (TL) itself The learners tend to build up hypothesis about the second language from their limited experience of it The learners who ignore a TL form on any level and any class can do either of two things: either they can set the needed item in learning, engaging their learning strategies, or they can try to fill the gap by resorting to communication

strategies Learning strategies are used for code breaking while communication

strategies are encoding and decoding strategies Both types of strategies can be the source of error

Errors caused by learning strategies include:

 False analogy: Learners assume that the new item B behaves like A: they know that “boy” (A) has its plural “boys” and assume that “child” (B) behaves likewise, so pluralizes to “*Childs.”

 Misanalysis: Learners form a wrong hypothesis An example of this strategy occurs in: they are carnivorous plants and *its (their) name comes from The false concept in operation here is that its is the s pluralized form of it A false concept is the result of the learners misanalyzing the TL

 Incomplete rule application: This is the converse of overgeneralization or one might call it under generalization as the learners do not use all the rules They change

or decrease the complicated rules to simpler rules as they aim at simplification rather than attempt to get the whole complex structure Incomplete application of rules is the result of the fact that the learners may primarily attend to effective communication without the need for mastering the rules An example is seen in the deviant order of subject and verb ‘be’ in: Nobody knew where* was Tommy (Tommy was) The learners have applied only two components of the interrogative formation rule: they have selected and fronted a wh-element (rule components 1 and 2), but have omitted toinvert the subject and verb

 Exploiting redundancy: This error occurs by carrying considerable redundancy This is shown throughout the system in the form of unnecessary morphology and double signaling

 Overlooking co-occurrence restrictions: This error is caused by overlooking the exceptional rules It happens when the learners fails to observe the restrictions An example of this is I would enjoy *to study (studying) about America caused by

ignorance of the fact that the verb enjoy should be followed by a gerund complement

 Hypercorrection (monitor overuse): This results from the learners’ over

cautious and strict observance of the rules One might say that the learners’ deliberate suppression of a potential L1 transfer, for fear of being wrong, is another form of hypercorrection: an example of this is the seventeen year*s old boy school

 Overgeneralization or system-simplification: Jacobovist, L.A (1969, p.55) defined overgeneralization as the use of previously available strategies in new

situations Some of these strategies for some reasons will be misleading and

inapplicable This error is caused by the misuse of words or grammatical rules The error occurs when students use the same structure for new items based on what they have learnt An example is the generalization of the relative pronoun that as in:

Anna, *that had a great sense of unconventional morality…

The learners use that to the exclusion of who which can not be used here

Communication strategy-based errors

 Holistic strategies or approximation: The term ‘holistic’ refers to the learners’ assumption that if you can say X in the L2, then you must be able to say Y Lacking therequired form, it must be all right to use another near-equivalent L2 item which they have learnt It takes on a number of forms, the first of which is to use a synonym The second is to use an antonym or opposite: not happy for sad The third is to coin a word Until you be unconscious to lose your *sensities (senses)

 Analytic strategies or circumlocution: Analytic strategies express the concept indirectly, by allusion rather than by direct reference This kind of error comes from the students’ experience James, C (1994) finds that the learners in the classroom used the L1 transfer strategy much more than the acquirers (Acquirers are people who are self-directed learning, such as a taxi driver, a foreigner’s house keeper.)

 Induced Errors: These errors are the result of being misled by the way in which the teachers give definitions, examples, explanations and arrange practice

opportunities In other words, the errors are caused mostly by the teaching and learningprocess as follows:

 Materials-induced errors: Teaching materials with errors will make the learners confused, and they will make similar errors again and again

 Teacher-talk induced errors: This kind of error might be caused by both native

or non-native teachers, if they do not provide models of the standard TL in class

 Exercise-based induced errors: The learners make errors while doing exercises

on sentence combining, for example, the teacher feeds to the learners the raw

ingredients: simple sentences that the learners must combine Conditionals linked by if

or unless are examples:

I can’t afford a new nice house combined with I shall win the lottery

should yield

I can’t afford a new nice house unless I win the lottery

but will also yield at times from at least one learner forms like

*Unless I can afford a new nice house I shall win the lottery

The likelihood is especially great when the students have been told

that unless is equivalent to if…not, which will suggest to them the possibility of

replacing the negative element in can’t with unless

 Errors induced by pedagogical priorities: Learners’ achievement tends to match other teacher expectations of what they will achieve Some teachers choose to prioritizeone of the following: accuracy, fluency or the idiomatic in teaching communication, thus if fluency is considered as superior, accuracy would have lower priority or vice versa

 Look-up errors: There have been many learners’ dictionaries and grammar books in recent years, and these publications usually come with useful guidelines on how to look up aspects of the L2 about which one is in doubt But, strangely, learners

do not like to read such user-instruction, and as a result they frequently misuse these reference aids In addition, the learners sometimes use the new words from the

dictionary inaccurately or get incorrect references from the grammar books

There are many studies on error analysis because error analysis helps to improve theteaching and learning process If learners’ errors and the causes of those errors are identified, errors can be corrected, though not all Moreover, error analysis helps direct the focus of the teaching and learning process For example, Angwatanakul, S (1980) finds that the most frequent errors of Thai learners are verb forms, articles and

prepositions Pastor, A.C (1986) finds that most common interlingual errors are using the present simple tense in the place of the past simple tense, using the wrong verb

form after modal, no inversion of auxiliary verb in questions, and using the wrong subject verb agreement Michaeldes, N.N (1990) analyzes and puts errors into eight domains according to importance and frequency, such as wrong order of words, wrong tense, wrong use of articles and prepositions Cumming, A., & Mellow, D (1996)study errors at the grammatical morpheme level and find that they can indicate second language learning ability Polio, C.G (1997) studies second language writing, and errorfree writing, the use of the holistic scale, T-units and numbers of errors as criteria and finds that counting error numbers may be better for homogeneous population

Newmark, L & Reibel, D.A (1968) proposed another approach to ignorance

hypothesis which emphasizes avoidance strategy Duskova, L (1969) also supports thissame idea that learners who avoid using certain structures and have no errors in those errors may not know how to use those structures Rujikiatkumjorn, S and Chiewkul, S.(1989) analyzed errors of students at Khon Kaen University to find frequent errors made by students from each faculty and discovered that there is a dependency between errors and each faculty

2.2.3 Error Analysis:

Error analysis has served as foundation for language learning and teaching

approaches Error analysis has been taken into considerations by linguists and

methodologists By the late 1960s, it had become a favorable paradigm for studying second language acquisition, an acceptable alternative to behaviorism

According to Chomsky, N (1957), language acquisition was not a product of habitformation, but rather one of rule formation learners are exposed to the rules of the target language from hypothesis about them, and apply them to produce a target

language utterance In this process, learners would commit errors and they would modify their hypotheses so that their utterances would increasingly conform to the target language Definitions of error analysis have been presented by a lot of linguists and grammarians

Corder (1974) has defined error analysis as “by describing and classifying his errors in language terms we build up a picture of language, which are causing him learning problems” He also states five steps of error analysis including identification

of errors; classification of errors; explanation of errors; valuation of errors and

Kitao (2002) argues that error analysis in language use can predict the learners’type of errors which will be useful for developing teaching materials and selectingteaching methods Moreover, the result of such analysis can be used as an indicator ofthe learners’ achievement It can also be used for researching language acquisition andlearners’ strategy in language learning

Whichever choice is made here, the researchers find it difficult to conduct theirerror analysis for the reasons stated below:

- The confusion of error description with error explanation

- The lack of precision and specificity in the definition of error categories

- Simplistic categorization of the learners’ errors

(Dulay et al 1982:141)

Thus, error analysis are concerned with the linguistic side of the languages, buterror analysis, by including in itself the psychological aspect of the learning process –the causes of learner error, seems to appeal to practical teachers and research

In sum up, this chapter has presented some theoretical background knowledge related to the topic of the study It has discussed some concepts and ideas concerning

to reported speech (errors, kinds of errors and classifications and then analysis) The following chapter will refer to research design and methodology.

Chapter 3: RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY

3.1 Overview

After finding out the definitions of direct speech and indirect speech in English In

general, the indirect statement is the statement shows the true meaning of the sentence(Direct Speech) again of someone who hears; direct action of someone that we see,feel; the notion of errors; distinguishing errors; and then errors classifications andpredicting causes, too This chapter will deal with methodology and research design forthe survey carried out

3.2 Research Design

The research is carried out at three high schools (Nam Dan I, Nam Dan II and KimLien in Nam Dan district, Nghe An province where English is taught as a compulsorysubject

Two groups: 24 teachers of English; 400 students are collected to survey at thesehigh schools

3.3 Subject of The Study

Students’ personal information

Participants involved in the survey are a group of 400 high school students belong

to grades 11, 12 and different levels from the three high schools in Nam Dan district.The students aged from 16(49.5%) to 17(50.5%) both males and females are beingtaught with general English textbook 11 and textbook 12 (New edition) They arerandomly chosen from the nine classes to take part in the survey without any entrancerequirements Most of them have been learning English for six (47.5%) or seven years(52.5%) They live both in the town (30%) and in the countryside (70%)

Teachers’ personal information

(%)

The experienced years of

3 to 6 years accounting 20.83%; 25% out of them has been teaching from 7 to 9 yearsand the least number year of teaching is few years (8.33%)

3.4 Data Collection Instruments

There is one test consisting of five tasks for the students and two kinds of questionnaires, one for the students and one for the teachers The results will give the views to reported speech.

Descriptions of Tasks and questionnaires

3.4.1 Descriptions of Tasks

Task 1 is a multiple choice one with five questions, in each of which there are fouralternative answers This task is aimed at checking if the students can understand andrecognize the different uses of reported speech in various contexts The students areexpected to choose only one answer to fill in the gap

Task 2 consists of jumbled words and phrases so that the students reorder the givenwords and phrases to make a meaningful sentence without any additions

Task 3 is done to check if the students can make up sentences basing on theconcreted contexts with universal knowledge of grammar and translation Hence, inorder to make the test easier and simpler, the reporting verbs are given first in advance.The first sentence has been done as an example for the students to follow

Task 4 is a translation test with five Vietnamese sentences On the basis ofsimilarities and differences between Vietnamese and English, the task is designed to

check how students comprehend and use reported speech in English This type of test iseasy to check errors and their causes if there is the influence of mother tongue on thesecond language learners, because while doing this task, the students have to comparethe two languages and find out differences and similarities.

Task 5 is a kind of grammatically judgment questionnaires which is designed toevaluate the students’ awareness of using reported speech in particular languagecontexts Students are required to find out mistakes and provide correction

The tasks are in appendix 1 and 2

3.4.2 Descriptions of Questionnaires

After collecting all the questionnaires responses from both teachers and students, the researcher has divided them into the items:

3.4.2.1 The Data Analysis Criteria for The Ss’ Questionnaire

Points of investigation Responses to students’

questionnaire

1 General information about students’ learning RP Questions: 1, 2, 3, 4

2 Ss’ difficulties when doing kinds of tasks about RP Questions: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

3 Ss’ attitudes towards statements relating to RP Questions: 10, 11

4 Ss’ attitudes towards teacher’ s feedback Questions: 12, 13, 14, 15

5 Ss’ wishes to learn and do exercises well about RP Question: 16

Table 3.1: Points of investigation of students’ questionnaire

3.4.2.2 The Data Analysis Criteria for The Ts’ Questionnaire

Points of investigation Responses to teachers’

questionnaire

1 Ts’ attitudes towards reported speech teaching Questions: 1, 2

2 Ts’ information about kinds of tasks’ RP that their

3 Ts’ students’ opinions towards statements relating

to RP

Questions: 10, 11

4 Teachers’ opinions towards the ways of feedback Questions: 12, 13, 14

5 Suggestions to better teaching reported speech Question: 15, 16

Table 3.2: Points of investigation of teachers’ questionnaire

3.5 Data Collection Procedure:

After being selected, the subject group is politely requested to do the given testconsisting of 5 tasks with time allowance of 50 minutes without consulting any Englishdictionaries and grammar books under the teacher’s supervision After the performedtasks are handed in, they are carefully read and all the types are identified, calculatedand classified on the basis of error classifications presented in chapter II All the errorsfound are then analyzed in details to find out their causes Finally, major findingsrelated to the aims of the research are presented

Added to that, the researcher used two questionnaires are delivered to the subjects:one for students and one for teachers

3.6 Data Analysis:

This part, data collected from the survey test and questionnaires ( can choose morethan one answer)conducted from 400 students and 24 teachers of English at three highschools in Nam Dan district will be analyzed in detail and the results will becategorized to synthesize At that time, the analysis of the data is presented in thefollowing parts: first, listing errors and their causes; second, giving out the majorfinding; next suggesting implications for teaching and learning reported speech inEnglish; finally, helping students use them effectively to improve better to it

3.7 Research Procedures:

Including the following steps:

3.7.1 Collecting data through tasks and questionnaires

3.7.2 Clarifying the data into intended groups

3.7.3 Doing statistical calculation

3.7.4 Describing the collected data presented in tables and figures

3.8 Reliability and Validity:

Reliability: The survey through students’ tasks and questionnaires for students andteachers are the same results about the difficulties that students and teachers face and

from those students make errors of reported speech and teachers will suggest somesuitable recommendations helping students are interested in learning reported speech Validity: when using the survey method, the researcher used it to measure the dataaccurately and measured the figures that the researcher has an intention to measure

In conclusion, this chapter has presented the related contents to research design and methodology

The next one will give findings through the results and data analysis of the study

From the fact, discussing errors and their causes.

Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

4.1 Findings and Data Analysis

4.1.1 Overview

In the previous chapters, the researcher has mentioned data collection instruments, procedure, analysis and necessary analysis of errors It is obvious that students at high schools encounter a lot of difficulties in using reported speech, thus leading to wide range of error commitments In this chapter, findings through the results and data analysis of the study have been made and from the fact, discussing errors and their causes

4.1.2 Primary Results and Data Analysis

4.1.2.1 Primary Results of Students’ Tests

All students’ performances in doing a test consisting of 5 tasks are evaluated interms of errors in using reported speech basing on the theoretical background presented

in the previous sections Students’ work is marked and counted in each task thenanalyzed to find out errors for later classifications

a Multiple-choice Questions

In Task 1, five questions are given and students can get one point for one correctanswer Wrong choice or no choice is not marked On the parameter of 5 points,student’s task is considered “pass” if it has 3 points and upwards 149 out of 400students pass with the score ranging from 3 to 4 points, making up 37.25% 15 studentsget full 5 points and 15 students are zero

The point of non-pass ranges from 1 to 2 points, taking account of 62.75% It isobvious that students at three high schools at Nam Dan district fail to use reportedspeech in different contexts The result is presented in the following table:

120/400(30%)

92/400(23%)

42/400(10.5%)

15/400(3.75%)

3 points and upwards of correct sentences On the parameter of five points, 369 out of

400 students (92.25%) pass the test with the score ranging from three to five points Although this kind is not difficult, there are some students fail: 6 students get zero (1.5%) and 10 students (2.5%) are one point Most of the students achieve the full point

of five The table below described the result:

15/400(3.75%)

48/400(12%)

116/400(29%)

205/400(51.25%)

Table 3.4: Students’ performance in doing task 2: Rearrangement Task

c Paraphrasing Task

Task 3 is much more challenging for the students in comparison with task 1 andtask 2 The students are asked to rewrite the sentences with given words and phrases incertain contexts This task includes 5 English sentences; in which if the studentsproduce one meaningful sentence, they will have one point They can pass the test ifthey get 3 marks and upwards No point is given to any wrong sentences or no answer

As can be seen from the table below, nearly a half of students (44.25%) are scored “pass” 10 students reach the maximum score of five points 55.75% of the students are considered “non-pass” with the score ranging from zero to two points It is clear that students have a lot of difficulties in transforming the sentences into reported speech and get trouble in collocation patterns The result is illustrated in the table below:

113/400(28.25%)

132/400(33%)

35/400(8.75%)

10/400(2.5%)

This task consists of 5 questions for translation; each correct answer is scored onepoint The difficulty of the task is shown by the modest number of passed students Onthe parameter of 5 points, only 93 out of 400 students pass with the score of 3 pointsand upwards, occupying 23.25% 24 students could reach the full score of 5 points Themajority of the students fail in their translation 307 out of 400 students (76.75%) areevaluated “non-pass” with their score varied from zero to 2 points Details aredemonstrated in Table 6

Table 3.6: Students’ performance in doing task 4: Translation Task

e Error Judgment and Correction Task.

This task is a kind of production exercise Students are required to recognize errors

in using reported speech in particular contexts and then suggest appropriatesubstitutions The task includes 5 sentences; each correct judgment is scored 1 point

No point is marked for any wrong judgments and incorrect substitutions This task israther challenging 54.5% of the students with the score of 3 points and upwards pass.Fifteen of them get full score of 5 points (taken up to 3.75%) No students get zero andnon-pass students from 1 to 2 points reach 182 (45.5%) Table 5 displays the details.

105/400(26.25%)

98/400(24.5%)

15/400(3.75%)

Figure 4.1: Students’ opinions on reported speech tasks

The first and second questions were to gather the students’ general informationabout their feelings learning reported speech

The figure shows that in question 1, more than half of the students (209/400) finddifficult when doing reported speech (52.25%) 164 students in 400 ones do not feeldifficult very much( 41%), whereas 6% said that it is too difficult Only 0.75 of thetotal feel it easy From this result, we can see the students still feel difficult in doingreported speech tasks

Question 2: How do you know about reported speech?

By giving question 2, the researcher would like to know the students’understanding about reported speech From the statistical results in figure 2, it easilyrealized that only 0.5% of students know much, 23% of them are rather, still, 23.25%

of them answered they only know about it rather little and most of them do not knowmuch This means that students have not understood clearly and feel difficult whenusing reported speech, so they will be in trouble in using it into doing exercises, makelots of mistakes

Much Rather little Not much Rather

Figurre 4 2: Students’ levels of understanding about reported speech

Question 3: Which kinds of following tasks do you often do about RP?

When being asked about kinds of following tasks students often do about reportedspeech, most of the total also chose kinds of tasks: Rewriting the sentences with thegiven words with 25% and correction with 22.75% and multiple choices (22.75%).Some chose less that rearrangement (14%), gap filling (4%) The task was chosen theless is translation (3.75%) These tasks are given in different forms to help students usereported speech proficiently And some chose these ones and some chose others

Question 4: For you, which of tasks are the most difficult?

Besides, the results gained from question 4 about kinds of the most difficult tasks that students often do, in chart 4, we can see 35.50 % of students feel the most difficult task is ‘translation’ next to the task ‘rewriting the sentences with the given words’ ranked the second difficulty with 28.50% It is not harder than the two tasks:

‘Correction (11.75%), multiple choices (10%)’ Whereas 3.50% of them said that ‘gap filling’- fill the missing words into gaps; matching the sentences (5.50%) and 5.25% said about ‘rearrangement’- sentences are given to check how students use different structures with reported speech and their possible positions are the most difficult- only little percentages

Figure 4.4: Students’ feelings about tasks of reported speech

To sum up, because students have not understood clearly, known much aboutreported speech yet, they do not also practice doing lots of different kinds of tasks sothey feel many troubles in using it Through the problems, hopefully, teachers shouldthink and use the suitable techniques to help their students over them

b Students’ difficulties when doing kinds of tasks about reported speech

Questions: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.