Luận văn ellipsis in english an analysis of errors made by secondary school students = phân tích lỗi thường gặp của học sinh THPT trong việc sử dụng phép tỉnh lược trong tiếng anh

Special attention has alsobeen paid to research in different areas of the teaching and learning English.Given the fact that descriptions and analyses of students' errors play a crucialro

foreign language department

- -ellipsis in english: an analysis of errors made by secondary school students

(ph©n tÝch lçi thêng gÆp cña häc sinh thpt trong viÖc

sö dông phÐp tØnh lîc trong tiÕng anh)

graduation thesis

field: linguistics

Supervisor: Vò ThÞ ViÖt H¬ng, M.A.

Student : Vâ ThÞ Thuú Linh, 43A2

Vinh, 2006

First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor,

Vò ThÞ ViÖt H¬ng, M.A, who has helped me to shape the idea of the study and

given me valuable guidance, corrections and encouragement for accomplishment

of the thesis

I would also like to express my sincere thanks to all of my teachers at theForeign language department of Vinh University for their lectures on the areawhich enables me to gain a lot of theoretical as well as practical knowledge.Finally, I am particularly grateful to my parents and my friends for theirencouragements and spiritual support to my process of writing of the thesis

Vinh, summer, 2006

Vâ ThÞ Thuú Linh

list of abbreviations

Ell : Ellipsis

Etc : Et cetara

* : Unacceptable expressions

list of tables

Table 2.1 Results of exercise 1

Table 2.2 Result of erxercise 2

Table 2.3 Result of exercise 3

Table 2.4 Results of exercise 4

Table 2.5 Number of errors and their causes in exercise 1Table 2.6 Number of errors and their causes in exercise 1Table 2.7 Number of errors and their causes in exercise 1Table 2.8 Number of errors and their causes in exercise 1Table 2.9 The overall results

Part II Content

1.1.2.1 The structure of the english nominal group 5

1.1.3.1 The structure of the english verbal group 7

1.1.4.2 Modal ellipsis and propositional ellipsis 11

2.4.4 Errors and theirs causes in exercise 4 35

3.2 Implications for teaching and learning English ellipsis 40

3.2.1 Implications for teaching English ellipsis 40

3.2.2 Implications for learning English ellipsis 45

References

Appendix

part I: introduction

1.1 Rationale of the study

In recent years, together with the increasing need for English learners,great efforts have been made in order to improve the quality of English teachingand learning Searching for an implementation of new and more effectiveteaching methods is one part of these great efforts Special attention has alsobeen paid to research in different areas of the teaching and learning English.Given the fact that descriptions and analyses of students' errors play a crucialrole in the improvement of the teaching and learning, error analysis has been aninteresting area which has attracted the attention of an increasing number ofresearchers

Since the Vietnamese and English languages have very district grammarsystems, Vietnamese learners of English tend to encounter a lot of difficulties intheir acquisition of the target language Among these difficulties is the use ofellipsis in English As a cohesive device, ellipsis plays an important role in themaking of discourse Perhaps, for this reason, concerning English discourse,ellipsis seems to have been given a great deal of attention This is revealed in theworks of Halliday and Hasan (1976), Brown and Yule (1983), Halliday andHasan (1985), Cook (1989), Mc Carthy (1993) and so on In Vietnam, there havebeen a number of studies and B.A graduation theses by ELT methodologists andstudents focusing on cohesive devices and error analysis, such as Huynh HuuHien (1997), Nguyen Thi Thuy Hong (2002)

However, to my best knowledge, very little research has been done on erroranalysis in the area of ellipsis Therefore, based on the outcomes of the previouscontrastive analysis studies concerning cohesive devices, an analysis of errors inusing ellipsis is intended to be an effort contributing to filling the gap

The second reason for conducting the present research originated from thefact that many secondary-school students make mistakes in different aspects ofellipsis in English It is obvious that failure to use ellipsis usually results instudents producing long, clumsy or unnatural sentences in English For example,Vietnamese learners of English may produce utterances as:

A: Have you done what I told you?

B: Yes, I have done what you told me.

Instead, the native speakers use a short and natural answer: Yes, I have.

Meanwhile, there seems to be a neglect of ellipsis in teaching materials,especially at low levels Therefore, another aim of this research is to identify the

possible causes of errors and to suggest some ways of overcoming them so as tohelp students produce better discourse in English.

1.2 Aims of the study

The study reported in this thesis aims to:

_ Identify common errors in using English ellipsis as a cohesive device inwriting made by secondary school students

_ Find out the major causes and sources of these errors based on theanalysis of the frequent errors made by these students

_ Make some suggestions for teaching and learning English ellipsis

1.3 Research questions of the study

The study in this thesis is carried out in order to answer the followingresearch questions:

1 What errors do secondary school students commit in using ellipsis inEnglish?

2 What might be the causes and sources of the errors in using ellipsis inEnglish?

3 What suggestions can be made in the learning and teaching processes inorder to help students acquire the use of ellipsis in English?

1.4 The subjects of the study

The subjects for the study include 100 students from two twelfth classes(12C and 12D) at Sam Son secondary school They learn English as a compulsorysubject at school Most of them have learnt English for 6 years and theirknowledge of English is a full grammatical aspect All of the students haveenough condition to take part in the test

1.5 procedure of the study

For the characteristics of this particular study, the procedure for erroranalysis can be described in detail as follows:

Firstly, all the 100 student participants were asked to do the test under thesame conditions The time allowance for doing the test was 90 minutes Studentswere not allowed to use any reference books or dictionaries, and they did the testunder the researcher's supervision The data collected were then analyzed usingdescriptive method Descriptive statistics were used to obtain information on howthe subjects performed the task, and how often ellipsis errors occurred Theexploration was based on the theoretical discussion of learner's errors presented

in chapter I

1.6 Scope of the study

_ Analyze errors through the tests

_ Classify errors into typical types

_ Find out related reasons

1.7 Method of the study

We would apply the quantitative methodology in this research using a test

to collect students' errors which are to be analyzed It is expected that 4 exerciseswill be used The test will be designed in the written form involving differentlanguage contexts to provoke receptive and expressive errors in ellipsis The testwill be done by a sample of approximately 100 students from two twelfth classesrandomly chosen in Sam Son high school, without using any reference books ordictionaries and under my supervision

1.8 Design of the study

The thesis consists of three parts

*Part I: Introduction This part deals with the rational, aims, scope and

method of the study The design of the study is also provided

* Part II: Content

This part consists of three chapters:

Chapter I: Theoretical background

This chapter is presented with two sections The first section focuses onthe theoretical preliminaries on necessary notions of cohesion and ellipsis as well

as their relationships with one another The second section is an overview oftheories related to the sources of errors which help us explore what factors causedstudents' commitment of errors and the notion of error analysis which is usefulfor analyzing the data

Chapter II: The study

This chapter consists of two sections The first section describes suchelements related to the methodology of this particular study as researchquestions, setting, subjects, data collection and procedures of error analysis Thesecond section presents some preliminary results of the study, the analysis oferrors committed and some major findings derived from the analysis

Chapter III: Conclusion and Implications

This chapter is the application of the study with some implications forteaching and learning English ellipsis Some suggestions for further research arealso presented in this chapter

*Part III: Conclusion

This part will summarize what has been presented in the thesis.

The References and Appendix are provided at the end of the thesis.

Part II: content chapter I: theoretical background

1.1 ellipsis as A cohesive device

1.1.1 The concept of ellipsis

The notion of ellipsis has traditionally been studied as aformal featurewithin the sentence But then, because the linguists' attention has been held todiscourse, and the notion of textuality has been seriously considered, ellipsis hasgradually been looked into across sentences as a cohesive device Ellipsis isactually defined in very much the same way by different authors

Below are some definitions of ellipsis

Quirk et al (1972) states that ellipsis is purely a surface phenomenon In

a strict sense of ellipsis, words are ellipted only if they are uniquely recoverableand what is uniquely recoverable depends on the contexts

Halliday and Hasan (1976: 142) define ellipsis as "something leftunsaid" There is no implication here what is unsaid is not understood; on thecontrary, "unsaid" implies "but understood nevertheless"

McCarthy (1991: 43) defines ellipsis as the omission of elementsnormally required by the grammar which the speaker or writer assumes areobvious from the context and therefore need not to be raised

These definitions, though not exactly the same in details, have much incommon That is, ellipsis is recognized as a grammatical device anddistinguished by the structure having some "missing" elements

1.1.2 Nominal ellipsis

1.1.2.1 The structure of the English nominal group

Different authors studying English syntax have the same ideas in term ofnominal group

Quirk et al (1972) views the nominal group as consisting of threedifferent components: the head, the premodification and the postmodification inthe following order:

Premodifier The Head Postmodifier According to Leech and Svartvik (1975), the structure of "noun phrase"

is that of a Head Noun with Determiner and Premodifier preceding it andPostmodifier following it This structure is shown as:

Determiner Premodifier Head Noun Postmodifier

Halliday and Hasan' s view of the structure of the nominal group isnearly the same:

Premodifier The Head Postmodifier

All of these structures are labeled with class items which are often used

in structural analysis

1.1.2.2 Ellipsis within the nominal group

Nominal ellipsis occurs when there is an omission of the Head Noun Let us consider this example:

Slice the onion finely, brown in the butter and then place in a small dish.

In this example, there is an ellipsis of the onion The full sentence may

be written as: "Slice the onion finely, brown in the butter the onion in the butter

and then place the onion in a small dish " However, it is unusual to write in this

way The omission of the head noun "onion" makes the sentence shorter, but

still clear without changing the meaning of the sentence

In order to make it more concrete, ellipsis within the nominal group will

be considered under the Halliday and Hasan' s point of view

As mentioned above, the Head in the structure of nominal group is

preceded by Premodifier and followed by Postmodifier Thus, in "those two

fast electric trains with pantographs", the Head is "train "; the Premodifier is

formed by "those two electric" and the Postmodifier by "with pantograph".

The Modifier, in general, can consist of the elements Deitic,Numerative, Epithet, Classifier and Qualifier In the above example, these

elements are represented by "those", "two", "fast ", electric " and "with

pantographs" respectively The Deitic is normally a determiner, the Numerative

a numeral, the Epithet an adjective, the Classifier a noun, and the Qualifier arelative clause or prepositional phrase The function of the Head is normallyserved by the common noun, proper noun or pronoun expressing the Thing Incertain circumstances the common noun may be omitted and the function of theHead taken on by one of those elements of the Modifier In other words, it iswhat is called nominal ellipsis

An elliptical nominal group is a nominal group whose function of theHead is served by a word that normally functions within the Modifier Thatmeans nominal ellipsis involves highlighting a word functioning as Deitic,Numerative, Epithet or Classifier from the function of Modifier to the Head For example:

She wore the red dress, but the red didn't suit her.

(Quirk, 1976: 265)

In the second clause, "the red" is an epithet, functioning as a head

although it is modifier to the Head " dress " in the first clause

It is clear that an elliptical nominal group requires that there should beavailable from some source of the information necessary for filling it out Thissource of the information is often a preceding nominal group We can concludethat a nominal group that is elliptical presupposes a previous one that is not, and

it is therefore cohesive

1.1.3 Verbal ellipsis

1.1.3.1 The structure of the English verbal group

Like the nominal group, the verbal group plays an important part inEnglish sentences In the traditional, structural and transformational grammars,the term "verb phrase" is used for "verbal group" Borsley (1991), Thomas(1969) and Cook (1988) consider that a "verb phrase" consists of modal verbs, amain verb and other elements of the predication From the functional andsystemic point of view, the verbal group is defined as consisting of either of alexical verb (main verb) or one or more operators together with a lexical verb

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), in the verbal group, there isonly one lexical element (the verb itself) The rest of the Verbal group expressessystemic selections The main systems include finiteness, polarity, voice andtenses These selections are obligatory for all verbal groups

For example: John should clean the shed.

Here, "clean" is the only lexical element, or the verb itself in the verbal

group

An elliptical verbal group presupposes one or more words from aprevious verbal group

1.2.3.2 Ellipsis within the verbal group

Verbal ellipsis means ellipsis within the verbal group

For example:

a Have you spoken to him? _ Yes, I have.

b What have you been doing? _ Studying.

The two verbal groups in the answers "have" in "yes, I have" in (a) and

''studying'' in (b), are both instances of verbal ellipsis "Have" in (a) stands for

"have spoken to him", and there is no possibility of "filling out" with any other

items In (b), "studying" can be interpreted as "I have been studying" or "we

have been studying" It cannot be replaced by "I will be studying" or "we will be

studying" Therefore, in general, an elliptical verbal group presupposes one or

more words from a previous verbal group

As mentioned above, the verbal group, in Halliday and Hasan's point ofview, has only one lexical element and the rest is operators and expressessystemic selections which are obligatory for all verbal groups Theprincipal systems are:

(1) Finiteness: finite or non- finite

If finite: indicative or imperative

If indicative: modal or non- modal

(2) Polarity: positive or negative, and marked or unmarked

(3) Voice: active or passive

(4) Tense: past or present or future

(Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 167)

In elliptical form, they have to be recovered by presupposition.However, a verbal group whose structure fully represents all its systemicfeatures is not elliptical For example, in (b) above, the words that make up a

non- elliptical verbal group are "have been studying"; express all the features

that have been selected

It seems not to be easy to recognize whether a verbal group is ellipted

or not although we know the theoretical definition Any verbal group consists

of auxiliary as operator and therefore there are two types of verbal ellipsis:lexical ellipsis in which the lexical verb is missing from the verbal group andoperator ellipsis which involves the omission of operators

1.1.3.3 Lexical ellipsis

Verbal ellipsis can simply be recognized by an investigation into theform of the verbal group Hence, any verbal group consisting of modaloperator only can be described as elliptical For example:

Well, Gwen, there are some things a girl can't say.

No, but a woman can.

In this example, the elliptical modal verb "can" is used without the accompany of the lexical verb and could be filled out by "say".

Lexical ellipsis is divided into two main types: partial lexical ellipsisand total lexical ellipsis

_ Partial lexical ellipsis is the ellipsis of only lexical verb among

verbal group 's elements

For example:

George will take the course and Bob might too.

(Quirk and Greenbaum, 1976: 262)

Here, the lexical verb "take" is omitted.

_Total lexical ellipsis means that all items in the verbal group areomitted except the first operator It always involves in the omission of the lastword, which is the lexical verb and it may leave only the first word

For example:

They could have been delayed by the snow.

Yes, they could have been.

could have.

could.

(Advanced grammar in use: 160)

In conclusion, lexical ellipsis is the omission of the lexical verb in theverbal group However, there are some cases that cause ambiguity such as " be,have, and do " because they are both lexical verbs and operators Although it israther complicated, we can recognize whether they are elliptical or not byconsidering the presupposed clause

1.1.3.4 Operator ellipsis

Operator ellipsis means only the omission of operators, the rest of theverbal group remains In operator ellipsis, the subject also is always omittedfrom the clause; it must therefore be presupposed For example:

"Dad and mum have gone", he said.

"Gone?" she cried, pulling him into the scullery "What do you mean?"

Here, "gone" does make a sentence in the presence of a single lexical

verb From the previous sentence, it is to make out that the full sentence must

be "Have they gone?" Thus, the modal verb "have" and the subject "they"

have been omitted

Within the sentence, operator ellipsis usually occurs in those withcoordination to refer to the two halves of the sentence However, this type ofoperator ellipsis does not contribute to cohesion

Operator ellipsis, when it occurs across sentences, is found mainly invery closely bounded sequences such as question and answer in which thepredication either supplies the answer or repudiates the verb in the question, asin:

Has she been crying? _ No, laughing.

In summary, lexical ellipsis and operator ellipsis are two components of

verbal ellipsis When there is the omission of lexical verb in the verbal group,

it is called lexical ellipsis, and when the operator of the verbal group isomitted, it is operator ellipsis.

1.1.4 Clausal ellipsis

1.1.4.1 The structure of the English clause

According to Halliday and Hasan (1976), the clause in English has atwo _ part structure consisting of modal element plus propositional element,for example:

The Prime minister is going to have speech tomorrow.

(Modal element) (Propositional element)

The modal element consists of the subject and the finite element in theverbal group The propositional element consists of the remainder of the verbalgroup plus any complements or adjuncts that may be present

From the definition of the clause, it is easily recognized that the clausalellipsis includes modal ellipsis and propositional ellipsis

1.1.4.2 Modal ellipsis and propositional ellipsis

As we have mentioned, in verbal ellipsis there are two types: lexicaland operator ellipsis The clause structurally consists of two parts: modal andpropositional corresponding to operator and the lexical verb in the verbalgroup Usually, modal ellipsis is closely associated with operator ellipsis andpropositional ellipsis with lexical ellipsis

For example:

a Are they crying? _ No, laughing.

(Modal ellipsis; operator ellipsis)

The missing elements in this example are "they are" (the modal element which entails the operator "are").

b You look good , Pop _ Do I really ?

( Propositional ellipsis; lexical ellipsis )

Here, the missing elements are "look good" (the propositional element which entails the lexical verb "look").

However, sometimes, modal ellipsis does not involve operator ellipsis.Let us consider the following example:

"Who 's Cavilleri?" asked one of the footballers.

"Jenny Cavilleri Studies music Plays the piano with the music group".

(Segal, 1993: 23)

Here, only the subject "she" is omitted before the verbs "studies" and

"plays".

Likewise, propositional ellipsis may not be accompanied by lexicalellipsis It is when the speaker uses " do " as the substitute rather than as theelliptical form of the verbal group However, there is not always a cleardistinction between ellipsis and substitution Referring to the full form is oneway that can help to distinguish them

For example:

a Does Mary sing? _ Yes, she does (Yes, she does sing).

b Does Mary sing? _ No, but Susan does (No, but Susan sings).

In (a), "does" is the elliptical form because it stands for "does sing" In (b), "does" is a substitute for "sing".

Ellipsis in the clause is related to mood Specially, it is related toquestion and answer process which is usually cohesive by itself In this part,

we will consider ellipsis in this type of conversation under two aspects: directresponses which includes yes _ no questions and wh _ questions, and indirectresponses

Obviously, "yes" in the above example is alternative to the whole clause

"I'm hungry" However, sometimes yes _ no ellipsis is an alternative to just one

part of the clause as in:

A: Have you spoken to him?

B: Yes, I have.

Here, the answer means, "Yes, I have spoken to him".

Sometimes, the direct response is not only clausal ellipsis but alsoellipsis within the group This takes place under the condition of expansion Let

us consider these examples:

a "Is it going to have onions in it?" asked the child.

"Very few", he said.

b "And how are you? Is everything all right with you?"

"No, not very It used to be much better".

This type of ellipsis usually occurs in nominal and adjectival groups with

"head noun or "head adjective" missing

b Wh _ questions

The direct response to a wh _ question must give the specificinformation required by the question In a wh _ question and answer sequence,the entire clause of the respond usually omitted except for the wh _ element.This is common in statement _ question combination For example:

A: Peter has bought a new car.

B: When?

Besides, wh _ ellipsis is sometimes alternative to a part of the clause,not the whole clause, as in:

A: He will pass the exam.

B: How do you know he will?

In this example, the propositional element "pass the exam" is omitted.

1.1.4.4 Indirect responses

An indirect response gives an answer to a question in an "indirect"way; it may be a commentary, a disclaimer, or a supplementary Acommentary is used to show the speaker 's attitude to the answer, a disclaimer

disputes the relevance of the question and a supplementary providesinformation other than required by implication.

For example:

a Why are the lights turned off?

I ' m not supposed to say (Commentary; refusal)

b "What time is it?"

"What does it matter?" (Disclaimer; interrogative)

c "It is so kind of you Can you come now?"

"With pleasure" (Supplementary; coordinative)

To sum up, elliptical clause requires the listeners to supply the missingwords and since they are to be supplied from what has just mentioned before,that creates the cohesion between the preceding and the following The elliptedclause may be in the forms of statements, commands or questions .Itspresupposition may cover the whole clause, the modal element, thepropositional element or a particular element in the clues (complement, adjunct,etc.)

1.2 Summary

In one word, ellipsis is the omission of some elements, which are notnecessary to be raised, but are still understood by the hearer in particularcontexts It is considered as a grammatical device that creates cohesion betweensentences or different parts in a sentence There are three types of ellipsis:nominal ellipsis in which the head noun is omitted, verbal ellipsis with theomission of the lexical verb and operator, and clausal ellipsis which is mainlyrelated to question and answer sequence Any type of ellipsis is a kind ofcohesion within and beyond sentences And where there is ellipsis, there is apresupposition in the structure If we find what that seems to be an ellipticalconstruction, we are usually forced to look back to what was said previously inorder to interpret the sentence That is to say, ellipsis which functions as acohesive device normally shows an anaphoric relation

1.3 Errors in language learning process

1.3.1 The notion of errors

Error is a common phenomenon in language learning process and it isdefined by many different authors

Jack C Richards, John Platt and Heidi Platt in " Dictionary oflanguage teaching and Applied linguistic " (1992) define: "In the speech orwriting of a second or foreign language learners, error is the use of linguisticitem (e.g a word, a grammatical item, a speech act, etc.) in a way which a

fluent or native speaker of language regards as showing faulty or incompletelearning".

According to Corder, errors are "the result of some failure orperformance" (1971: 152)

James M Hendrickson in "Methodology in TESOL" (1987) defines

an error as an utterance, form or structure that a particular language teacherseems unacceptable because of its inappropriate use or its absence in real lifediscourse

In "Errors in language learning and use", Carl James gives thedefinition of error "as being instance of language that is unintentionallydeviant and is not- corrigible by its author"

1.3.2 Errors and mistakes

Errors are paid much attention in language learning process, however,

it is necessary to distinguish two terms "error" and "mistake" In fact, thedistinction was drawn between these two terms although it was impossible topoint out any clear differentiation

Noam Chomsky, the distinguished American linguist, points out thaterrors fall into two different types: one originating from verbal performancefactor and the other from inadequate language competence

Making use of Chomsky 's distinction, Hubbard, John and ThorntonWheeler (1987) reaches the conclusion that all incorrect forms produced by thestudent are called "errors" In their point of view, errors are caused by lack ofknowledge about the target language, or by incorrect hypotheses about it; andmistakes are caused by temporary lapses of memory, confusion, slips of tongueand so on

The error _ mistake distinction was introduced into modern debate byCorder (1967, 1971) although there was a shift in his ideas In his first paper,Corder insists that mistakes are of no significance to the process of languagelearning since they do not reflect a defect in our knowledge but are traceable toperformance failure The learner is normally aware of their mistakes and cancorrect them with more or less complete assurance Both native speakers andlearners can make mistakes On the contrary, errors are of significance to theprocess of language learning The learner cannot correct errors themselvesbecause they do not reflect the knowledge And only the learners of secondlanguage learning make errors However, Corder (1971) states that errors are "the result of some failure of performance " (1971: 152)

According to Carl James in " Errors in language learning and use ", theintentionality plays an important part in distinguishing errors and mistakes Ifthe learner is indeclined and able to correct a fault in his or her output with theassumption that the form he or she selected was not the one intended, the fault

is a mistake If, on the contrary, the learner is unable to give the correction, it

is assumed that the form the learner used was the one intended, that is an error

In one word, the distinction between the two terms "error" and

"mistake" is not very clear, however, we could sum up the definitions of errorsand mistakes as follow:

Errors are wrong forms that the learner cannot correct even if theirwrongness is to be pointed out Mistakes are wrong forms that the learner cancorrect when their wrongness is to be pointed out

Errors are caused by incomplete knowledge,thus, in order to helplearners to be able to correct their errors, it is required to spend more timeadding knowledge On the other hand, lack of attention, carelessness or someother aspects of performance cause mistakes, hence so as to help learners to beable to correct their mistakes, it is necessary to remind them of their mistakes Let us consider these examples:

a I must to go (In a situation that the learner has learnt to say something like "I have to go").

b Monica: Trains are safer planes.

Teacher: Safer planes? (With surprised questioning intonation)

Monica: Oh Trains are safer than planes.

Teacher: Good, Monica Now, "comfortable" Simon?

Simon: Trains more comfortable than planes are.

Teacher: Hmm Can you help Simon, Bruno?

Bruno: Err Trains are more comfortable than planes.

Teacher: Thank you Simon?

Simon: Trains are more comfortable than planes.

Teacher: That ' s right, Simon Great.

In the first example, it is obvious that the error is caused by the

learner's incomplete knowledge; he does not realize that the use of "to" is not permitted with "must".

In the second example, the learners can correct their faults when theyare pointed out by the teacher and their friends This is a feature of mistake

To sum up, errors are caused by the incomplete understanding oflanguage competence, and mistakes are caused by the inappropriate use oflanguage in performance.

1.3.3 Error analysis

According to Carl James in "Errors in language learning and use", error

analysis is defined as "the process of determining the incidence, nature, causeand consequences of unsuccessful language"

Error analysis is the study and analysis of errors made by secondlanguage learners Error analysis examines errors in the system in order todetermine the underlying rule governed by behaviors of learners

The field of error analysis shows that although errors are caused bydifferent reasons, they reflect the learner' s creative capability of usinglanguage Therefore, finding and analyzing errors made by learners are verynecessary to improve the learning and teaching quality

The procedure for error analysis following the steps set by Corder(1974) is shown as:

1.3.4 Causes of errors in second language learning

Second language learners commit a number of errors at various stages oftheir learning It is a part of the natural process they are going through andoccurs for a number of reasons In the first place, learners' own language mayget in the way, that is the interference of their mother tongue Other errors arecommitted by second language learners regardless of their mother tongue andare called intralingual errors and developmental errors (Richards, 1971)

Jeremy Harmer states that all learners commit errors as a natural anduseful way of learning Corder (1967) indicates that learners' errors areinvaluable to the language learning process Thus, by classifying the errors andfinding their causes, researchers can learn a great deal about the secondlanguage acquisition process, hence can get benefits in language teaching andlearning

In this study, we only mention some common causes of errors made bysecond language learners

1.3.4.1 Interlingual errors

According to behavourist learning theory, language acquisition is aproduct of habits In the second language acquisition process, learners's oldhabits from their native language get in the way of learning new habits andcause errors in second language learning, as Corder puts it:

"One explanation [of second language errors] is that the learner iscarrying over the habits of his mother tongue into second language Clearlythis explanation is related to a view of language as some sort of habit _structure"

(Corder, 1971: 158)

The language transfer is a common phenomenon in language learning.Second language learners "tend to transfer the forms, meanings and thedistribution of forms and meanings of their native language and culture to theforeign and culture" (Lado, 1957: 2) The interference from the mother tongue is

a negative transfer

In addition, cultural differences are also a factor belonging to thenegative transfer in second language learning As Lado (1957) claims "errorsare originated in the learner ' s disposition to transfer the forms and themeanings, the distribution of forms and meanings of their native language andculture to the foreign language and culture"

Let us consider some examples of interlingual errors made byVietnamese learners due to the transfer from their mother tongue

a MÆc dï cËu Êy mÖt nhng cËu Êy vÉn ®i häc.

_ Although he was tired, but he went to school

b Bëi v× t«i dËy muén nªn t«i kh«ng ¨n s¸ng.

_ Because I got up late, so I did not have breakfast.

From the examples above, it is clear that mother tongue interferencehas the negative influence in learning foreign language; the learners use toomany conjunctions in forming complex sentences at the same time The errorsshown in these examples can be easily made in Pre- intermediate andIntermediate levels

In Vietnamese, there is no distinction between plural and singularnoun in the way of writing or speaking As a result, the learner often writes:

I have a sister and two brother.

But, in English, we must add "s" after "brother" to show that it is in

plural form The sentence is rewritten as:

I have a sister and two brothers.

In summary, the errors caused by the interference from mother tongue

is very popular in second language learning Therefore, in pedagogical process,

it is necessary to present this influence so that we can find suitable teachingmethods to limit the interlingual errors

1.3.4.2 Intralingual errors

Apart from the cause of the first language transfer, the learners alsocommit errors because of the ignorance of the target language This type oferror is called "intralingual error"

In Richards' research paper (1971b), he suggests that intralingual errorsare those which reflect the general characteristics of rule learning anddevelopmental errors It is the learner 's attempt to build up hypothesis aboutthe target language from his limited experience of it that causes errors Hepresents the causes of the intralingual errors in terms of: over-generalization,ignorance of rule restrictions, and incomplete application of rules, falseconcept hypothesized

a Over _ generalization

The learner has acquired a particular piece of linguistic knowledge andsome strategies which he or she had found helpful in organizing the facts aboutthe target language, but applies them too widely This is a phenomenonfrequently encountered And it is called " over-generalization"

Jacobvits (1969) defines over-generalization as the use of previouslyavailable strategies in new situations Some of these strategies for somereasons will be misleading and inapplicable

For example:

A learner of English would write the sentence "Who did write this

book?" without any emphatic purpose This means that the learner has an

overgeneralization of the rule for inserting "do" into interrogative.

Or, the learner of English may make a generalization for all nouns in

forming plurals He knows that "cat" has its plural form as "cats", so when putting "goose" in plural, he adds "s" as "gooses" In other words, the learner

assumes that all nouns can be made plural by adding "s"

Over-generalization of a structure also results from over learning of astructure caused by a certain type of teaching and presentation techniques.The following example given by Richard to illustrate this point:

Teacher: He walks quickly.

Instruction: Change into continuous form.

Student: He is walk quickly.