An analysis of errors made by vietnamese secondary school students in using english modal auxiliary verbs can, could, may, must and semi auxiliary verb have to

Can you explain?” Modality has caused a lot of difficulty for Vietnamese students inlearning and using English .It is any wonder that modal verb _the small part ofmodality _cause troub

auxiliary verb have to

(phÂn tích lỗi khi sử dụng các động từ khuyết thiếu:can, could, may, must và bán trợ động từ ở học sinh

THPT)

GRADUATION THESIS FIELD: LINGUISTICS

Vinh, 2006 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I could not have completed my graduation thesis without theenthusiastic help and encouragement of my teachers, my family as well as myfriends

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Ms

Vu Thi Viet Huong, MA who gave me useful ideas and advice and helped me

a lot in collecting materials and completing the study

I would also like to express my thanks to all teachers in the foreignlanguage department of Vinh University for their lectures on the area ofvaluable knowle

dge which enlightened the arguments in the study

I would like to express my special thanks to my friends who werealways beside me and help me overcome the difficulty during the time ofdoing the thesis

Finally, I wish to express my deep thanks to my parents and myyounger brother for their encouragement and support to my doing this thesis

Vinh, summer, 2006

Le Thi Quy Loc

SYMBOLS AND ABBREVIATIONS

L1: First language

L2: Second language

FL: Foreign language

TL: Thai Lao

E.g.: For example

WTO: World Trade Organization

LIST OF TABLES

Table 2.1: Result of section 1-test1

Table 2.2: Result of section 2- test 1

Table 2.3: Result of section 3- test 1

Table 2.4: Result of section 4-test 1

Table 2.5: Overall results

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements i

Symbols and abbreviations ii

List of table iii

Table of content iv

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale for the study1 1

1.2 Aims and of the study 2

1.3 Scope of the study 3

1.4 Methods of the study 3

1.5 Overview of the study 3

PART II: CONTENT 5

CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 5

1.1 The concept of modality 5

1.2 Modality in the light of semantics 6

1.2.1 Mood 6

1.2.2 Types of modality 7

1.3 General introduction about modal auxiliaries in English 9

1.3.1 The uses of Can and Could 10

1.3.2 The uses of May 12

1.3.3 The uses of Must 12

1.3.4 The uses of Have to and Must 13

1.4 Modal auxiliaries in Vietnamese 16

1.5 Errors in language learning process 17

1.5.1 The notion of error 17

1.5.2 Errors and mistakes 18

1.5.3 Error analysis 19

1.5.4 Causes of errors 20

1.5.4.1 Interlingual errors and mother tongue interference 20

1.5.4.2 Intralingual errors and development errors 21

(1) Over-generalization 22

(2) Ignorance of rule restrictions 23

(3) Incomplete application of rules 23

(4) False concept hypothesized 24

CHAPTER2: THE STUDY 25

2.1 Research questions 25

2.2 Research setting 25

2.3 Subjects 25

2.4 Data collection 26

2.5 Procedure 26

2.6 Results of the study, findings and discussions 27

2.6.1 Errors in section 1-test1 27

2.6.2 Errors in section 2-test1 30

2.6.3 Errors in section 3-test1 32

2.6.4 Errors in section 4-test 1 33

2.6.5 General tendencies 35

2.6.6 Errors in translation test 36

CHAPTER 3: IMPLICATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 38

3.1 Research questions revisited 38

3.2 Implications for teaching English modal verbs Can, Could, May, Have to and Must to Vietnamese secondary students 39

3.2.1 Suggestions for presentation 39

3.2.2 Suggestions for practice 42

3.2.3 Implications for production 45

PART III: CONCLUSION ……… 46

References

Appendix1

Appendix 2

Part I: Introduction

1.1Rational of the study

Nowadays, English has become one of the most important internationallanguages In Vietnam, there are more and more people speak English.However, it is not easy for every one to use it correctly in daily life

In communication, native speakers often do not only qualify theircommitment to assertion but also soften and hedge their judgments and ordersand strengthen the expressions of their feelings and opinions of their feelingsand opinions in order to reflect cooperation in conversations These aspects oflanguage belong to what is referred to as modality.Accodding to Halliday(1985: 86) , modality is an expression of the speaker’s opinion towards thecontent of what he is saying in terms of certainty, probability, possibility,ect.Modality also means an expression of the factual conditions on the process

in terms of obligation, permission, and willingness ect.For example, the

sentence “He may come” can be either a possibility ( it is possible that he may

comes) or a permission ( he is allowed to come).Modality is obviously acomplicated matter in the English language I myself have several times been

asked such a question by my students: “I wonder when exactly we use can and when may Can you explain?”

Modality has caused a lot of difficulty for Vietnamese students inlearning and using English It is any wonder that modal verb _the small part ofmodality _cause troubles for most of the learners of English Learner usually

wonders whether he/she should say “you must help him " or "you have to help him" "May I smoke in here "or "Can I smoke in here ".Modal verb presents

little difficulty for native speakers but they appear tobe troublesome andconfusing for the learners of English .Errors in the learning process areinevitable

Making error is a part of learning and finding error is a part of teaching, thishelps the process of learning quicker and effective, given the fact that description

and analysis of students' errors play an important role in the improvement of theteaching and learning Error analysis has been an interesting area, which hasattracted the attention of an increasing number of researchers.

For all of the above reasons, in my thesis, we would like to make anempirical study with a thorough analysis of the errors committed by

Vietnamese students of English in using English modal verbs can, could, may, have to and must

An analysis specializing in errors in using English modal verb willbring about a number of benefits First, it will tell a teacher of English howwell his or her students master the meaning and use of English modal verbs,where they need help and what sort of help that need Second, errors collectedwill serve, as good feedback for learners to make self-adjustment in thisparticular area In addition, the general benefit for second languageacquisition researchers is that errors can server as evidence to discover whatstrategies learners apply in learning and acquiring the language

1.2 AIMS OF THE STUDY

The study reported in this thesis aims to:

- Identify the errors in using modal verbs can, could, may, , must and semi-auxiliary verb have to “ ” by Vietnamese learners at TL secondary school

- Find the major causes and sources of their errors and

- Make some suggestions for teaching and learning: can, could, may, have to, and must.

1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

Within the limitation of a graduation thesis, I would like to deal with 4

modal verbs can, could, may, have to and must and semi- auxiliary verb “have

to” which usually happen in secondary school

The survey is carried out at Thai Lao secondary school, Hung Nguyendistrict, Nghe An province

1.4 METHOD OF THE STUDY

Data will be collected via performance of written tasks It includes 5tasks, including translations (from Vietnamese into English), gap- filling.Descriptive method will be used to identify types of errors The tasks will bedesigned in the written form involving different language contexts to provokereceptive and expressive errors in model verbs These tasks will be done by asample of approximately 100 students from 2 classes randomly chosen at ThaiLao secondary school, without using and reference books or dictionaries, andunder my supervision.

1.5 OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

This thesis consists of three parts:

Part I: Introduction

In this part, the rationale of the study is presented The aim; scope andmethod of the study are then identified An overview of the thesis is alsoprovided

Part II: Content

The content consists of three chapters:

- Chapter 1: Theoretical background

This chapter will provide in-depth review of the relevant literaturerelated to the issue under investigation Specially, a review of modal verbs inEnglish will provide the theoretical framework for the identification of theerrors that student made In addition, theories about the sources of errors willhelp explore what factor caused students’ commitment of errors in usingmodal verbs in English Error analysis as the main theoretical tool foranalyzing data will also review

- Chapter 2: The study

The methodology adopted to collect data for the research will bepresented in this chapter It includes the description of research site,participants, and data collection techniques and data analysis methods Then,the results and findings of the study will be presented and discussed

- Chapter 3: Implications and suggestions

This chapter will summarize major findings, suggest some solutions for

teaching and learning modal verbs can, could, may, have to and must and

suggest some types of exercises

Part III: Conclusion

The final part of the thesis will conclude what has been discussed inthe content of the thesis, point out the limitations of the study and give somesuggestions for further research

The Appendices containing the Tests given to the students for datacollection, a suggested sample translation for Test 2 are presented at the endfollowing the References section

Part II: Content Chapter I: theoretical background 1.1 THE CONCEPT OF MODALITY

Modality has become an interest issue Modality is the propositional part of the sentence, which concerns its factual status Modalityhelps speakers to qualify their statements with respect to possibly or necessity According to Halliday, modality is "an expression of the speaker’sopinion" towards the content of what he is saying in term of possibility,

non-probability, certainly etc (Halliday, 1985: 86).It also means an expression ofthe factual conditions the process in terms of obligation, permission,willingness etc.

Beside the definition of Halliday, there are many linguists who give outtheir definition of modality

Nguyen Hoa in "Understanding to Semantics"(2004): “modality is thesecond component of the meaning of the sentence, apart from therepresentational meaning."

Bybee (1985) defines modality in broad terms saying that modality iswhat the speaker is doing with the whole proposition

Pamer (1986) offers the definition of modality as semantic informationassociated with the speaker's attitude or opinion about what is said In thepoint of fact, modality concerns the factual status of the proposition

Jespensen' s view of modality is also very interesting Jespensen sees 2kinds of modality the first of which contains an element of will, and thesecond contains no element of will This distinction now corresponds to what

we call denotic and epistemic modality

Searle's speech act theory can provide a useful framework for thediscussion of modality.Assertives, for example, are described in terms of thespeaker belief or commitment to the truth of a proposition Directives andcommissives are connected to denotic modality since both are about fitting theworld to the word

The common thinking is to see the meaning of the sentence ascontaining two parts: the propositional content and the non-propositionalcontent, which expresses the speaker’s attitude and opinion toward the content

of the proposition This basically is the distinction between proposition andmodality Proposition is about what we say, and modality then is about what

we want to do with what we say_ thanking, marking a promise, marking acomplaint (Palmer_1986)

There are many different definitions about modality Carrying out thisstudy, I mainly based on the definition of Nguyen Hoa in "UnderstandingEnglish Semantics"(2004)

Modality is described as the expression of the speaker s attitude“ ’

or opinion towards the content of proposition"

1.2 MODALITY IN THE LIGHT OF SEMANTICS

1.2.1 Mood

According to John Lyons in "linguistic semantics"(1995) mood is bydefinition the category which results from grammaticalization of modality(epistemic, denotic, or of whatever kind)

Mood is one of a set of distinctive forms that are used to signmodality .the term "mood" is used by some authors in the same sensemodality is Others distinguish the two, by using mood to refer to thecontrastive grammatical expression of different modalities and reservingmodality to refer the meanings so expressed

The grammatical category of mood deals only with the syntacticstructure of structure and not necessarily with what the speaker is doing InEnglish, a process may be presented by the speaker as a fact, expressed by an

indicative sentence A request or command is expressed by an imperative sentence a non- fact or improbability is indicated by a subjunctive sentence

Epistemic comes from a Greek word meaning "understanding "or

"knowledge "(Lyons 1995: 254) refer to the types of modality that indicatesthe degree of commitment by the speaker to what he says

If I say, for example, “John may go home.” I am telling you that I am

uncertain about the truth of the proposition John is going home Other

examples of epistemic modality are must in “John must be home Look there

is his car.” and can t ’ in “John can’t be home yet His flight doesn’t arrive

until 9 o’clock”

Another example:

a She must be in love with him

b She may be in love with him

In example (a), we can see a very strong commitment by the speaker to thetruth of what he or she is saying The speaker is quite sure that it is the case that she

is in love with someone else on the other hand in (b), this is a week commitment

B/Denotic

Denotic modality is modality that expresses the speaker's degree ofrequirement of desire for or commitment to the realization of the propositionexpressed by the utterance

Denotic contains an element of will, as such, it is concerned with action ratherthan with belief, knowledge or truth, etc denotic can be characterized asnecessity-based or obligation-based

When saying, “John may go home now”, it gives John permission to leave, or when I advise, “Elena should go home She looks tired.” I am using

denotic modality

As far as the grammaticalization and lexicalization of modality in somenatural language is concerned, epistemic modality is possibility-based,whereas denotic modality is necessity-based

According to Quirk, modality markers can be realised by what we call

modal adverbs such as: probably, certainly, obviously, wisely, personally,

seriously, frankly, confidentially, etc

For example: Seriously, do you love her?

Personally, I don’t like chess.

Modality can be realised by a number of modal auxiliaries including

can, could, may, might, will, would, shall, should, must, ought, need,

For example: I can speak English.

You should do exercise every morning.

According to Palmer (1986), English modality may be realised by some

modal lexical verbs with a complement clause These verbs, mostly with the

fist person subject are used to indicate the attitudes and opinions of thespeaker:

For example: I think she is one of the smartest persons in the world.

I ask you to get the job done as soon as possible.

Certain modal adjectives in English can also be employed in the same way:

For example: It is likely that she will come.

I am sure that he will stay at home.

In some cases, the speaker may avoid repetition of using the same

modal adverb or modal adjective by using modal noun such as certainly,

probability, possibility, chance …

For example: There are chances that he will come to drink along here.

In my study, we only concentrate on modal auxiliaries, which usuallyhappen in the secondary school: can, could, may, have to and must

1.3 MODAL AUXILIARIES IN ENGLISH

What are "modal auxiliary verbs"?

Modal in English is expressed by either or both of the 2 forms: verbaland non-verbal The verbal form can be a modal auxiliaries or a lexical verbexpressing modality In this thesis we only discuss the Modal auxiliaries,

which include can, could, may have to and must.

Modal verbs are verbs, which 'help' other verbs to express a meaning: it

is important to realize that "modal verbs" have no meaning by themselves A

modal verb such as would has several varying functions; it can be used, for

example, to help verbs express ideas about the past, the present and the future

It is therefore wrong to simply believe that "would is the past of will": it is

many other things

A few basic grammatical rules applying to modal verbs

 Modal verbs are NEVER used with other auxiliary verbs such as do, does, did etc The negative is formed simply by adding "not" after the

verb; questions are formed by inversion of the verb and subject

 Modal verbs NEVER change form: you can never add an "-s" or "-ed"

 Modal verbs are NEVER followed by to, with the exception of ought to.

What sort of meanings do modals give to other verbs?

The meanings are usually connected with ideas of doubt, certainty, possibility, probability, obligation and permission (or lack of these) You will

see that they are not used to talk about things that definitely exist, or eventsthat definitely happened These meanings are sometimes divided into twogroups:

1.3.1 The uses of Can & Could

 Talking about ability

Can you speak mandarin? (present)

She could play the piano when she was five (past)

 Making requests

Can you give me a ring at about 10?

Could you speak up a bit please? (Slightly more formal, polite)

 Asking permission

Can I ask you a question?

Could I ask you a personal question?

 Requests, orders and suggestions

We can use can and could to ask or tell people to do things Could is

more polite, more formal, or less definite, and is used for makingsuggestions

Can you put the children to bed?

Could you lend me five pounds until tomorrow?

 Reported speech: Could is used as the past of can.

He asked me if I could pick him up after work.

 General possibility

You can drive when you are 17

Women couldn't vote until just after the First World War.

 Choice and opportunities

If you want some help with your writing, you can come to

classes, or you can get some help

We could go to Stratford tomorrow, but the forecast’s not

brilliant (less definite)

 Future probability

Could (NOT can) is sometimes used in the same way as might or may,

often indicating something less definite

When I leave university I might travel around a bit, I might

do an MA or I suppose I could even get a job.

 Present possibility

I think you could be right you know (NOT can)

That can't be the right answer, it just doesn't make sense.

1.3.2 The uses of May

 Talking about the present or future with uncertain

I may go shopping tonight, I haven't decided yet

They can also sometimes be used for talking about permission, but

usually only in formal situations Instead of saying May I open a window? We would say is it all right/OK if I open a window? or Can I open a window? For

example We might, however, see:

Students may not borrow equipment without written

permission

 Talking about things that can happen in certain situation

Each nurse may be responsible for up to twenty patients.

 With a similar meaning to although

The experiment may have been a success, but there is still a

lot of work to be done (= Although it was a success, there is

still )

 May in wishes and hopes

May is used in formal expressions of wishes and hopes.

Let us pray that peace may soon return to our to our troubled

land

1.3.3 The uses of Must

 Necessity and obligation Must is often to indicate ‘personal’

obligation; what you think you yourself or other people/things must do

If the obligation comes from outside (e.g a rule or law), then have to is

often (but not always) preferred

I really must get some exercise You mustn t’ look – promise?

If you own a car, you have to pay an annual road tax

 Strong advice and invitations

I think you really must make more of an effort.

You must go and see the film - it's brilliant.

 Saying you think something is certain

This must be the place - there's a white car parked outside.

1.3.4 The uses of Must and have to

 Concluding that something is certain

Both have to and must can be used to express the conclusion that

something is certain Must is unusual in British English

This must be the worst job in the world

(Or this has to be the worst job in the world)

Negative conclusion are not usually expressed with must not

That can’t be his mother – she is not old enough

(Not in British English that mustn t ’ be his mother.)

Does not have to is used to say that something is not necessarily true

A dog’s been killing our chickens It does not have to be a dog- it

could be a fox

 Necessity and obligation

Must and have to can both be used in British English to talk about necessity In American English, have to is more common, especially in speech

Plants must/ have to get enough light and water if they are to grow

properly

Both verbs can be used in British English to talk about obligation (In

American English, have to is the normal form) British English often makes a distinction as follow Must is personal We use must when we give out personal fellings.Have to is impersonal We use have to for facts, law,

regulations not for our personal feelings

You really must go to church next Sunday- you haven’t been for ages Catholics have to go to church on Sunday (their religion tells them to)

Mustn t ’ and don t have to’ are completely different Do not have to means lack of necessity Mustn t’ means prohibition

Tomorrow is a holiday We don t have to’ go to class ( It is notnecessary for us to go to class tomorrow because it is a holiday)

You must not look in the closet You birthday present is hidden there.

(Do not look in the closet I forbid it Looking in the closet is prohibited.)

Summary the meaning of CAN, COULD, MAY, HAVE TO and MUST

can

(1)ability/possibility I can sing

He could readwhen he was 4years old(2)informal permission You can use my car

tomorrow(3)informal polite

pen?

(3)suggestion(affirmative only)

-I need help in mathsYou could talk to youteacher

You couldhave talked toyou teacher(4)less than 50%

certainty

-where’s John?

He could be at home

He could havebeen at home(5)impossibility That couldn’t be true! That couldn’t

(negative only) have been

true!

may

(1) polite request(onlywith I and we)

May I borrow yourpen?

(2)formal permission You may leave the

He may havebeen at thelibrary

must

(1)strong necessity I must go to class

today

(I had to go toclass

yesterday(2) prohibition(negative) You must not open

that door(3) 95% certainty

Mary isn’t in class

sick(present only)

Mary musthave been sickyesterday.Have to (1) necessity I have to go to class

today

I had to go toclass

yesterday

necessity(negative)

I don’t have to go toclass today

I didn’t have

to go to classyesterday

(Betty Schrampfer Azar 2001: 199 - 200)

1.4 Modal auxiliaries in Vietnamese

Modal auxiliaries are complicated problems in both English andVietnamese However, unlike English Modal auxiliaries, it is difficult todefine Modal auxiliaries in Vietnamese

The position of Vietnamese Modal auxiliaries is different from Englishones

- Vietnamese Modal auxiliaries do not occur in imperative sentence

For example: H·y ph¶i cÇm quyÓn s¸ch lªn ; §õng cã thÓ can thiÖp vµo

- Modal auxiliaries can be distinguished from other Modal auxiliaries asfollows Modal auxiliaries can hardly occur in ellipsis: T«i kh«ng ph¶i (Imustn't) whereas other verbs can :T«i kh«ng thÝch (I don’t like )

Meaning of Vietnamese modal auxiliaries are very complicated andabundant .One Vietnamese modal auxiliaries can have many meanings inEnglish For example Modal verb "phải '' in Vietnam may be close in meaning

to must, should, ought to , in English and modal" có thể " close to can, may,could, might

According to Diep Quang Ban (2005: 39) modal auxiliaries expressnecessity, possibility, willingness, inclination, and also "endurance"

Nguyen Van Hao (1988: 205) states that modal auxiliaries inVietnamese are used to indicate volition, necessity, possibility, to carry out acertain activity or to receive a certain action Basically, he divides them intotwo types:

First ,those expressing volition such as có thể (can ) ,không thể (cannot), dám (dare ), toan (intend ), định (intend), phải (must), cần (need), nên(should), muốn (want) etc Second, those receiving actions such as bị (usually

be +past participle with adversative meaning ), đợc (usually be +past participlewith beneficial meaning ), chịu đựng (bear, stand ),etc

In conclusion, like modal auxiliaries in English, their equivalents inVietnamese are used to express 2 types of modality First they express thespeaker's opinion on the content of his statement This may be a certainty onpossibility Second, modal auxiliaries express a variety of factual conditions ofthe proposition These may be in terms of permission, obligation and the like

1.5 Errors analysis

1.5.1 The notion of error

According to Jame.M.Hendrickson, in methodology in TESOL (1987)

“error is a word derived from Latin- meaning “to wander, roam, or stray”,depend on its use for a particular purpose or object" For the purpose of adiscussion on error correction in foreign language teaching, this writerdefines" an error as an utterance, form, or structure that a particular languageteacher seems unacceptable because of in inappropriate use or its absence inreal life discourse"

In the “Dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistic (1992)”,Jack C.Michards, John Platt and Heidi Pllat define:

“In the speech or writing of a second foreign language learner, error isthe use of linguistic item (E.g.: a word, a grammatical item, a speech act, ect.)

in a way which a fluent or native speaker of language regards as showingfaulty or incomplete learning"

We know that native speakers may use a variety of dialects in theircountry The sentence: “who is your name" is regarded as an error against theBritish English but as a good form in Mario English Therefore decidingwhether a linguistic form is an error depends on what norm or standard should

be taken into account

However, we see that, there are many ill-formed sentences, which areconsidered erroneous in a formal language situation but are still understandable to hearers in a situation where communication is advocated

In Vietnam, where English is taught and learnt as a foreign language,the selected here must be the prescriptive English standard usage Anydeviated forms or structures that cannot meet the demand of English model ofusage are considered erroneous, ungrammatical or unacceptable Thisviewpoint will also lay a foundation for this thesis

1.5.2 Errors and mistakes

Ellis (1985: 68) claims that the distinction between errors and mistakes

is unobservable in practice Distinction was drawn between two terms “error"and” mistake" although it was impossible to indicate and sharp differentiation

Chomsky (1965) initiated his distinction by suggesting that errors fallinto 2 different types: one originating from verbal performance factor and theother from inadequate language competence Later in 1967, the error, mistakedistinction was introduced into modern debate by Coder .He made use ofChomsky's distinction by associating the term "mistakes" with failures inperformance and "errors" with failures in competence He attributed mistakes

to psychological factors such as fatigue, lack of attention or lapses of memoryand errors to the learner's internalizing the language during the secondlanguage learning process Mistakes can be self-corrected, but errors cannot

be self-corrected until further input has been provided and converted intointake by the learner

Ellis (1997) shared the same view: Error reflects gaps in a learner'sknowledge, they occur because the learner does not know what is correct.Mistakes reflect occasional lapses in performance, they occur because, in aparticular instance, the learner is unable to perform what he or she knows

In conclusion, we would sum up definition about errors and mistakes

as follow

Errors are wrong forms that pupils cannot correct even if theirwrongness is tobe pointed out Errors are caused by lack of sufficientknowledge, so to help students to be able to correct their errors, more time ofadding knowledge is required

Mistakes are wrong forms that pupil can correct when their wrongness

is tobe pointed out Mistakes are caused by lack of attention, fatigue,carelessness, or some more other aspects of performance, so we can helpstudent to correct their Mistakes by reminding

Errors are mistakes caused by the incomplete understanding oflanguage competence Meanwhile mistakes are caused by the inappropriateuse of language in the term of social acceptability or language performance

1.5.3 Error analysis

Error analysis is the study and analysis of the errors made by second orforeign language learners One of the functions of errors analysis is to identifythe causes of the learners’ errors, which is very useful for the teaching andlearning of language in general and English in particular

In “Errors in language learning and use", Carl James defined: “Erroranalysis is the process of determining the incidence, nature, cause, andconsequences of unsuccessful language"

There are 5 steps of error analysis:

1.5.4 Causes of errors in second language learning

When studying a foreign language, making error is unavoidable Some

of these errors can be caused by the interference of their mother tongue, and

as such are termed interlinguas errors by Richards (1971a) Others arecommitted by second language learners regardless of their mother tongue andare called intralingual errors and developmental errors (Richards 1971b).

Corder (1967) states that learners’ errors are invaluable to the languagelearning process and by classifying the errors and seeking their causes.Researchers can learn a great deal about the second language acquisitionprocess with benefits in language teaching and learning

1.5.4.1 Interlingual errors and mother tongue interference

The phenomenon of native language influences on the learning of asecond language is called “intralingual” by Weinreich at first, and then

“intralingual” by Selinker “Language transfer” (Selinker, 1969) makesintralingual errors, which are caused by interference from mother tongue Thetransfer is as Lado given “individuals tend to transfer the form, meanings, andthe distribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture tothe foreign language and culture (Lado 1957: 2) and interference is a negativetransfer

According to the behaviorist learning theory, language acquisition is a

product of habit formation A habit is constructed by the association of aparticular response with a particular stimulus In the second languageacquisition process, learners have to overcome the habits of their nativelanguage in order to acquire the new habits of the target language However,these old habits get in the way of learning new habits: in other word, theprevious learning of the native language presents or inhibits the learning ofnew habits

According to William.T.Little Wood, in foreign and second languagelearning (1984): “errors due to transferring rule from the mother tongue” It isconsidered as a concept of interlingual errors

Cultural differences are also a factor related to the negative transfer insecond language learning Lado (1957: 1) claims that “errors are originated inthe learner' disposition to transfer the forms and the meanings, the distribution

of forms and meanings of their native language and to the foreign languageand culture”

To sum up, Interlingual errors or errors caused by the first language

interference are generated from negative transfer from first language whenthere are differences between the L1 to L2

Here are some examples of interlingual errors that second languagelearners make due to transfer from mother tongue.

- Cô ấy là một cô gái đẹp

She is a girl beautiful

- Hôm nay chúng tôi không phải đến trờng

Today we mustn't go to school

Through examples above, we can see that because of negative influence

of mother tongue in learning foreign language, learner use wrong structures.These errors are easily to be found in preintermediate and intermediate level.When translating from Vietnamese into English learners are usually effected

by mother tongue These examples can be corrected as follows

- She is a beautiful girl

- Today we don't go to school

1.5.4.2 Intralingual errors

According to William Little Wood (1984) in “Foreign and second

language learning book”, he writes:

“Learners also make errors which show that they are processing thesecond language in its own terms Errors of this type (often called

“Intralingual”) are often similar to those produced by the child in the mothertongue and suggest that the second language learners is employing similarstrategies, notably generalization and simplification”

That learners tend to guess or predict rules of new form based on whatthey have learned, this led to make errors with cases of exception isconsidered as an access to produce intralingual errors Therefore, this type oferrors is caused by lack of sufficient knowledge for the whole aspect

In Richards’ research paper (1971), he suggested that intralingualerrors are those which reflect the general characteristics of the rule learningand developmental errors It is show that the learners attempt to build uphypothesis about the target language from his limited experience of it is theclassroom or textbook He presents the causes of the above errors in terms of:

(1) over-generalization

(2) ignorance of rule restriction,

(3) incomplete application of rule,

(4) false concept hypothesized:

(1) Over- generalization

Over- generalization is defined by Jacobovits (1969: 55) as the use ofpreviously available strategies in new situations Some of these strategies forsome reasons will be misleading and inapplicable This occurs when thelearners applied the same structure for new items based on what they havelearned

For example: In the present simple tense to make a lexical verb form ofthe third person singular ,we add "s" after verb .The learner extends thisapplication even to the case when a modal verb is used "She can plays piano"

Similarly, until he learns that “takes” and “sing” out of general rule forforming the past tense, he is likely to produce wrong forms such as “taked”,

“singed”

Over _generation is associated with redundancy reduction, alsoreferred to as simplification These simplifications of second languagelearners probably correspond to some simplifications made by childrenlearning the same language as their mother tongue A typical error of this type

is the omission of the third person singular ending "s" or the past mark _ed.For example: "Yesterday I go to school and I buy 2 books in the book shop

(2) Ignorance of rule restrictions

As a matter of fact, ignorance of rule restrictions is a type of over -generalization due to the learners’ failure to observe the restrictions ofexisting structures The learner makes use of a previously acquired ruleapplying it to a new context where it does not apply

Look at the following example:

Pupils experience that:’’ he said to me “and they apply that rule for theverb “ask”:” he asked to me”

(3) Incomplete application of rules