Luận văn english passive voice an analysis of errors encountered by minh khai high school student = phân tích một số lỗi sai trong việc sử dụng thể bị động của học sinh trường THPT minh khai luận văn tốt nghiệp đại học

The errors need to be found and find the way to improve.This problem has given an impetus to this study that aims at examiningvarious use of English passive voice and the typical errors

Finally, the sincere thanks to my friends and my family who stand by tohelp and encourage me a lot in various kinds and unconditional support

VINH, 2010

LE CHI HAU

TABLE OF CONTENT

Page

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT i

TABLE OF CONTENT ii

LIST OF TABLE v

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale for the study 1

2 Aims of the study 1

3 Scope of the study 2

4 Method of the study 2

5 Design of the study 2

PART B: CONTENTS 3

CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 3

1.1 An Overview of passive voice 3

1.1.1 General description of Passive Voice 3

1.1.1.1 What is Passive Voice? 3

1.1.2.2 Function of the word “by” in passive sentences 4

1.2.3 When is passive voice used? 4

1.2 Passive voice construction 6

1.2.1 Canonical passive 6

1.2.2 Promotion of other objects 6

1.2.3 Stative Passive 7

1.2.4 Doubled Passive 8

1.2.5 Adjective Passive 8

1.2.6 Promotion of content clauses 9

1.2.7 Passives without active counterparts 9

1.2.8 Tenses and Modal verb Passive 9

1.3 Error in language and learning process 11

1.3.1 Definition of errors 11

1.3.2 The distinction between Errors and Mistakes 12

1.3.3 Error Analysis 12

1.3.4 Cause of Errors 13

1.3.4.1 Interlingual errors and mother tongue interference 13

1.3.4.2 Intralingual errors and developmental errors 14

1.3.5 The ways of Errors correction 16

CHAPTER II: THE STUDY 17

2.1 Research Question 17

2.2 Research settings 17

2.3 Description of subjects 17

2.4 Data collection 18

2.5 Procedure 18

2.6 Preliminary results and data collection 19

2.6.1 Results and errors in part 1 19

2.6.2 Results of errors in part 2 20

2.6.3 Results of part 3 20

2.6.4 Result of part 4 21

2.7 Errors and their causes 22

2.7.1 Errors and their caused in part 1 22

2.7.2 Errors and their caused in part 2 24

2.7.3 Errors and their caused in part 3 26

2.7.4 Errors and their caused in part 4 28

CHAPTER III: FINDINGS AND IMPLICATIONS 30

3.1 Research question revisited 30

3.1.1 Research question 1 30

3.1.1.1 Tenses 30

3.1.1.2 Modal Verb passive 30

3.1.1.3 Stative verb and Adjective passive 30

3.1.2 Research question 2 31

3.1.3 Research question 3 31

3.2.1 Suggestions for explaining the lesson 31

3.2.2 Suggestions for Practice 32

3.2.3 Suggestions for Learning English passive voice 35

3.3 Suggestions for further research 36

PART C: CONCLUSION 37

REFERENCES 38

APPENDIX SUGGESTED ANSWER

LIST OF TABLE

Table 2.1 Results of part 1 19

Table 2.2 Results of part 2 20

Table 2.3 Results of part 3 21

Table 2.4 Results of part 4 22

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND SYMBOLS

Etc Et ceteraE.g ExamplePII Past ParticipleL1 First LanguageL2 Second Language

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale for the study

Nowadays, English becomes an important part in daily life It is usedpopularly and widely over the world English is an effective mean ofcommunication and information exchange The globalization makes English

as the international language that everyone wishes to possess and Vietnameselearners are not out of the orbit

English has not been the L1 or L2 in Vietnam but the most updatedforeign language in comparison with the other one It is used as the majorsubject

However, each language has its own characteristics and rules Learnersencounter lot difficulties One of the difficulties is the use of passive voice inwriting Thus, it is not easy for students to use English passive voiceeffectively They usually confuse with the tenses, modal verbs, and stativeverbs in passive voice

In process of learning, the Vietnamese learners especially the highschool students caused many errors and faced up with the tasks of acquiring asecond language The errors need to be found and find the way to improve.This problem has given an impetus to this study that aims at examiningvarious use of English passive voice and the typical errors made byVietnamese learners as well

For these reasons above the author has made decision to choose:

“English passive voice: An analysis of errors encountered by Minh Khai

high school students” to be the theme of the thesis

2 Aims of the study

The study reported in this thesis aims at to:

 Identifying common errors in using English passive voice

 Finding out the main causes and sources of errors made by highschool students

 Making some suggestions for teaching and learning English passivevoice in writing

3 Scope of the study

The study does no hope to display all the aspects of English passivevoices The author focuses on finding and analysis all errors that areencountered by students in using English passive voice in wring and find outthe related reasons

4 Method of the study

The study based on some methods below:

 Collective Method

 Descriptive method

 Investigation method

 Analysis method

5 Design of the study

This study is divided into three main parts:

 Part A: INTRDUCTION

 Part B: CONTENTS

 Chapter 1: Theoretical Background

 Chapter 2: The study

 Chapter 3: Finding and implication

 Part C: CONCLUSION

PART B: CONTENTS CHAPTER I: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

In this chapter, the overview of passive voice will be presented to makethe theoretical background Then the definition of error, error analysis and theways of error correction will be dealt with as well

1.1 An Overview of passive voice

1.1.1 General description of Passive Voice

1.1.1.1 What is Passive Voice?

The passive voice is a grammatical construction (a "voice") in which thesubject of a sentence or clause denotes the recipient of the action (the patient)rather than the performer (the agent) In the English language, the English

passive voice is formed with an auxiliary verb (usually be or get) plus a

participle (usually the past participle) of a transitive verb

Passive voice is an active tense is formed by putting the verb “to be” intothe same tenses as the active verb and adding past participle of active verb.The Subjects of the active verb become the agents of the passive verb When

the agent of the passive verb is mentioned, it is preceded by word “by” and

placed at the end of the clause

Formation: A to be done (by B) that is illustrated as follow:

Active sentence: S1 + V + O

Passive voice: S2 + to be + V (PII) + by+ S1

E.g

They built this house 2 days ago

S V O

This house was built by them 2 days ago

However, in some cases the agent is not mentioned, the word “by” is notnecessary to use

E.g

People suspected he broke the window

He was suspected that he broke the window

1.1.2.2 Function of the word “by” in passive sentences

To make an active sentence into a passive sentence move the previous

object to the subject position and the previous (now called agent) to the end

of the verb phrase with “by”.

In some case, “by” is omitted However, it is kept when the “agent” that

causes the action in the active sentence is rather important

E.g Hung made this toy

 This toy was made by Hung

1.2.3 When is passive voice used?

It is believed that the Academic English passive voice are used morethan active voice but writers may choose passive for following reasons

 When we do not know, do not know exactly, have forgot or even we donot care who did the action or the agent is unimportant or unknown Letconsider these examples:

1 My bag has been stolen

2 The child was struck by the car

3 The store was robbed last night

4 Plows should not be kept in the garage

5 This house is being repainted

 When we are more interested in the action than the person who does it.That means it is not necessary to mention the doer of the action as it isobvious who he is (was /will) be.

E.g

1 The key was not left

2 The rubbish has not been collected

3 The sea is being cleaned

 When the Subject of the active sentence would be indefinite pronoun

“one”

E.g One sees that he is reliable

It is seen that he is reliable

 When the subject of the active verb would be “ people”

E.g

People believed that there is ghost in this house

This house is believed to have ghost

 When the subject of the active verb would be the indefinite pronoun

“one”

E.g A new road has been built by (our local council)

 The passive voice may be used to avoid an awkward or ungrammaticalsentence This is usually done by avoiding a change of sentence For

example, the sentence: “When he came, his car was dragged.” is better than the sentence: “When he came, a police’s car dragged his car.”

 The passive voice may be used to be indirect, that is, to avoid to blame E.g He has broken your window

Your window has been broken

 The passive voice may be used to avoid a “weak” somebody in theactive voice We can see in this example:

Everyone thinks she is crazy

 It is thought that she is crazy.

 The passive voice may be used to avoid problem with masculine/feminine pronoun

E.g Applicant must enclose his/her photo in the application bag Each applicant’ photo must be enclosed in each

application bag

1.2 Passive voice construction

1.2.1 Canonical passive

Passive constructions have a range of meanings and uses The canonical

use is to map a clause with a direct object to a corresponding clause where

the direct object has become the subject

E.g The goalkeeper caught the ball

Here caught is a transitive verb with the goalkeeper its subject and the ball

as its direct object If we recast the verb in the passive voice (was caught), then

the ball becomes the subject (it is "promoted" to the subject position) and

goalkeeper disappears: this sentence will be: The ball was caught The original

"demoted" subject can typically be re-inserted using the preposition by.

The ball was thrown by the goalkeeper.

1.2.2 Promotion of other objects

One non-canonical use of English's passive is to promote an object otherthan a direct object It is usually possible in English to promote indirectobjects as well For example:

He gave Daisy a rose on her birthday

Daisy was given a rose on her birthday

Or,

He gave Daisy a rose on her birthday

 A rose was given to Daisy by him

In the active form, gave is the verb; He is its subject, Daisy is indirect object, and a rose is direct object In the passive forms, the indirect object has

been promoted and the direct object has been left in place (In sentence: “Arose was given to Daisy", the direct object is promoted and the indirect objectleft in place In this respect, English resembles

It is also possible, in some cases, to promote the object of a preposition:

They talked about the problem

The problem was talked about

In the passive form here, the preposition is "stranded ", that is, an object does

not follow it

1.2.3 Stative Passive

The passives described above are all eventive (or dynamic) passives.

Stative (or static, or resultative) passives also exist in English, rather than

describing an action, they describe the result of an action English does notusually distinguish between the eventive passive and stative passive For

example, “The roof of the house was damaged” This sentence has two

different meanings, roughly the following:

1 (Someone or something) damaged the roof of the house

2 The roof of the house was not intact

The former meaning represents the canonical, eventive passive: the

latter, the stative passive (The terms eventive and stative/resultative refer to the tendencies of these forms to describe events and resultant states,

respectively The terms can be misleading, however, as the canonical passive

of a stative verb is not a stative passive, even though it describes a state.)

Some verbs do not form stative passives In some cases, this is becausedistinct adjectives exist for this purpose, such as with the verb open:

1 The door was opened

 [Someone] opened the door.Someone] opened the door

2 The door was open

The door was in the open state

1.2.4 Doubled Passive

It is possible for a verb in the passive voice—especially an

voice:

1 The project is expected to be completed in the next year

Commonly, either or both verbs may be moved into the active voice:

1 [Someone] opened the door.Someone] expects the project to be completed in the next year

2 [Someone] opened the door.Someone] is expected to complete the project in the next year

3 [Someone] opened the door.Someone] expects [Someone] opened the door.someone] to complete the project in the next year

In some cases, a similar construction may occur with a verb that is notobject rising in the active voice For example:

[Someone] opened the door.Someone] will attempt the project to be completed in the next year

[Someone] opened the door.Someone] will attempt the project to be completed in the next year

 The project will be attempted to be completed in the next year

Here, “excited” is an ordinary adjective, though it derives from the past

participle of excite, and that past participle may be used in canonical passives:

“She was excited with films.”

In some cases, the line between an adjectival passive and a stativepassive may be unclear

1.2.6 Promotion of content clauses

It is possible to promote a content clause that serves as a direct object.

In this case, however, the clause typically does not change its position in thesentence, and an expletive it takes the normal subject position For example:

1 They believed that he is crazy

It is believed that he is crazy

2 People said that she won lottery

It is said that she won the lottery

1.2.7 Passives without active counterparts

In a few cases, passive constructions retain all the sense of the passivevoice, but do not have immediate active counterparts For example:

1 He was thought to be crazy

2 They are suspected to have killed the child

1.2.8 Tenses and Modal verb Passive

a Tenses

Passive voice using for tenses is introduced in high school and isthe major subject for this thesis Each tense has it own passive voiceconstruction However, they have the general structure:

BE + V (PII)

In order to master the use of tenses in passive voice, the structure ofthe tenses illustrates as follow:

Tenses Structure Example

Present simple Am/are/is + PII She is picked up to school

everyday

Present

continuous

S+ am/arte/is +being + PII The car is being washed now

Present perfect S+ have/has+ been+ PII The book has just been

released

Simple past S +was/were+ PII They were arrested by the

police

Past continuous S+ Was/were+ being + PII The gardening was being

done by him when I came.Past perfect S+ Had been +PII Work had been finished

- General structure of Modal Verb passive in present:

Modal Verb + be + V (PII)

Must Must be + PII This mess must be tidied up

immediately

Can Can be + PII Pancake can be made on the stove.May May be +PII Bike may be ridden on this bike path.Have to Have/has to be+ PII Her work has to be done by

tomorrow

Should Should be+ PII Something should be done to save

the cat

Going to Be going to be +PII This dog is going to be killed for food

- General structure of Modal Verb passive in past:

Modal Verb + have been + V (PII)

Modal Verb Structure Example

Might Might have been + PII These bikes might have been

taken through the street

Could Could have been + PII He could have been killed by

the van

Was going to Be going to have been + PII This book was going to have

been published 3 year ago Had to Had to have been + PII Her work had to have been

finished but her boss gaveextra time

Should Should have been + PII The house should have been

built last year

Would Would have been + PII Corn would have been grown

Carl James in “Error in Language Teaching and Use” states “errors asbeing an instance of language that is unintentionally deviant and not self –corrigible by its author”

According to Edge (1989:10) errors is when “if a student can not correct a mistake in his or her own English, but the teacher thinks that theclass is familiar with the correction form, we shall call that sort of mistake

self-an error”

Cored (1971:152) defines errors are “the result of some failure ofperformance”

1.3.2 The distinction between Errors and Mistakes

A mistake is something the students say or write incorrectly but theyknow the rules of grammar, how to produce correctly Mistake is considered

as the accident Mistake, unless they are repeated so often there no need to becorrect The students’ self-correction is on and improves their mistakes Onthe other hand, errors that are the students make wrong utterances becausethey really do not know the rules of grammar

Errors and mistakes are also distinguished by Cored (1967: 167) thatmistakes are no significance to the process of language learning and do notreflect our knowledge On the other hand, errors are significance to thelanguage learning process

Furthermore, Noam Chomsky (1965) suggested that errors fall into twodifferent types: one originating from verbal performance factor and the otherfrom inadequate language competence

Therefore mistakes are not interested in the error analysis because they

do not reflect the true state of the learners’ knowledge, only errors can be theproject of the study of error analysis

1.3.3 Error Analysis

In language learning process, the learners cause many errors with thetask of acquiring a second language From the experience of learning, themother tongue or the first language learners tend to apply the rules of theirown language This will lead to errors and the causes of errors in process oflearning

According to James (1988: 1), “Errors analysis is a methodology fordealing with the data rather than a theory of acquisition.”

The procedures for Errors analysis are described basing on six stepsmethods set by Corder( 1974): A corpus of language is selected, identification

of errors, description of errors, explanation of errors, evaluation of errors,prevention of errors.

1.3.4 Cause of Errors

1.3.4.1 Interlingual errors and mother tongue interference

The learners already know their mother tongue before they learn aforeign language It is certainty that the learner’s experiences in mothertongue have influences on the L2 learning Learners attempt to transfer therules of their L1 into L2 since this simplifies the task of learning L2

There are two types of transfer occurrence: positive and negative.Positive transfer is the one that makes leaning easier and may occur when L1and L2 have something in common Whereas, negative transfer of interference

is that causes difficulties for learners to acquire the target language

Lado (1957: 2) states that L2 learners: “tend to transfer the form,meaning and the distribution of forms and meanings of their native languageand culture to the foreign and culture”

The following examples of interlingual errors made by Minh Khai highschool students when transfer from their mother tongue In the process ofdoing research, the author heard some students and classmates at universitycommitted some errors:

1 Con bò được mẹ tôi cho ăn mỗi ngày  The cow is *my mother *feed everyday

The students usually translate and apply the rule of Vietnamese that theword by word that is unacceptable in English

The same with the sentence above is this sentence:

2 Tôi bị bố phạt vì bị điểm kém

I was father punish for the bad mark

To sum up, Interlingual Errors are derived from transfer from L1 whenthere are differences between the L1 and L2.

1.3.4.2 Intralingual errors and developmental errors

1 Overgeneralization

According to Jacobovists, (1969: 55) overgeneralization is the use ofprevious strategies in new situations The learners have achieved new rulesand some strategies which they proved helpful in organizing the facts aboutsecond language, however, their application to widely regardless the factsome of these strategies will be misleading and inapplicable

For example:

1 They could goes without you

2 She can cooks very quickly

3 He is send to prison

In the view of Richards (1992: 174), Overgeneralization generallyinvolves the creation of one deviant structure in place in place of regularstructure

2 Ignorance of rule restriction

The learners’ failure to observe the restrictions of existing structure isclosely related to generalization of deviant structure Learners use theprevious acquired rules to apply for the new context that is not acceptable.This is ignorance of rules

For instance, we can understand more about ignorance of rule restrictionwith the following examples:

Incorrect: He are being caught by police

Correct: He is being caught by police

Incorrect: The children has been taken out by their parents

Correct: The children have been taken out by their parents

In the first sentence, the rule is when using passive voice of the present

continuous tense the singular third person goes with “is” not with “are” The

same with sentence two the rule is the plural third person goes with “have”not “has” in the present perfect tense

According to Richards, (1992: 176) failure to observe restrictions inEnglish passive voice may also derived from analogy the learnersrationalizing a deviant usage from his previous experiences of English

3 Incomplete application of rule

Incomplete application of rule concerns with the failure to learner morecomplex type of structure because of relative simple rules they can gaineffective communication In transformation of sentences, some simple wordscan be omitted It is to say that the second language learners are perhapsinterested in effective communication without demand of mastering the rules.For example, the table below shows it clearly:

Teacher’s Questions Students’ Answers

1 How old are you?

2 Where are you from?

18Vinh city

4 False concept hypothesized

According to Richards (1992): “false concepts hypothesized” is used

to indicate another class of developmental errors that derives from faultycomprehension of distinction in the target language These errors due to poorclassroom presentation based on contrastive analysis of English and anotherlanguage or on contrast within English itself The Vietnamese students alsoconfused in using English passive voice

1.3.5 The ways of Errors correction

Error correction was presented in language learning process andAlwright (1975) and Hendrickson (1977) have pointed five techniques forerror correction:

 The teacher gives sufficient clues to enable self-correction to be made

 The teacher deals with errors through marginal comments and footnotes

 The teacher corrects the script

 The teacher explains orally to individual students

 The teacher uses the errors as an illusion for class explanation

According to Edge (1989:20, Mistakes and correction): “We, teacherdecide to correct our students, we have to be sure that we are using correctionpositively to support leaning”

In fact, students should self - correct their errors and the teacher will

be the guider to help students to learn

CHAPTER II: THE STUDY

This chapter will deal with the demonstration research design of thestudy First, it begins with a description of the research places and subjectsNext, techniques in data collection will be detailed Finally, the results of thestudy will be shown in tables For each table there will be interpretation of theresults and explanation of the errors that the students made

The study was carried out in Minh Khai high school, Duc Tho district,

Ha Tinh province There are 45-minute periods of English a week and thisprocedure lasts 20weeks a term They take a total 60 periods of learningEnglish a year

2.3 Description of subjects

Minh Khai high school is located in Duc Tho district, Ha Tinhprovince where the researcher has spent a two –month period practicingteaching English All of the students learned English at least five years, evenseven years During the time, we were in the school observing some teaching