VOT 75013
COMMON ERRORS PRODUCED BY UTM STUDENTS
IN REPORT WRITING
(KESALAHAN BAHASA YANG TERDAPAT DALAM
PENULISAN LAPURAN BAHASA INGGERIS DI
KALANGAN PELAJAR UTM)
SAHIRAH MARZUKI
ZAIDAH ZAINAL
PUSAT PENGURUSAN PENYELIDIKAN
UNIVERSITI TEKNOLOGI MALAYSIA
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We would like to thank our sponsor, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, particularly
the Research Management Centre (RMC) for the financial support. We are indeed very
grateful for the award of Vote No. 75013, without which we would not be able to carry
out the research. Thank you.
Common Errors Produced by UTM students in Report Writing
ABSTRACT
Students entering tertiary level of education are expected to have the linguistic
competence in English to be able to perform in their academic activities. One of the tasks
they need to perform is report writing. With the linguistic competence expected, students
are required to produce good reports. Our observation, however, shows that students have
the tendency to produce errors at both micro and macro levels. The purpose of this study,
therefore, is to investigate errors produced by students when writing reports. For this
purpose, 59 examination scripts produced by students from the Faculty of Science, UTM
were analysed. Common errors were coded to determine the frequency of occurrence of
these errors. The findings show that students tend to produce grammatical errors such as
subject-verb-agreement, active/passive construction, singular-plural and the use of past
participles, to name a few. Grammatically, all the errors were found to be structural ones
and these had resulted in the construction of flawed sentences. On the basis of these
findings, we recommend that grammar should be explicitly taught to future students to
give them the opportunity to improve their grammar in writing.
Kesalahan Bahasa yang terdapat dalam Penulisan Lapuran Bahasa Inggeris di
Kalangan Pelajar UTM
ABSTRAK
Pelajar yang memasukki pusat penagajian tinggi seperti UTM adalah dijangkakan
sudah mempunyai kemahiran Babasa Inggeris untuk memblehkan mereka menyediakan
tugasan kursus Bahasa dan menjalankan aktivti akademik yang lain dalam Bahasa
Inggeris. Satu dari tugasan yang pelajar perlu sediakan ialah penulisan lapuran. Dengan
kemahiran bahasa yang dijangkan ada pada setiap pelajar, mereka diperlukan untk
menulis lapuran
yang baik.
Walaubagaimanapun, pengamatan kami menunjukkan
bahawa sebahagian besar pelajar mempunyai kecenderongan untuk membuat kesalahan
tahap mikro dan makro. Tujuan kajian ini ialah untuk mengkaji kesalahan yang dilakukan
oleh pelajar ketika menulis lapuran. Untuk tujuan kajian ini, sebanyak 59 skrip
peperiksaan pelajar Fakulti Sains, UTM telah dianalisis. Kesalahan-kesalahan telah
dikodkan untuk menentukan kekerapan berlakunya kesalahan tersebut. Dapatan kajian
menununjukkan bahawa pelajar ini telah mengahasilkan kesalahan bahasa seperti
grammatical errors seperti
subject-verb-agreement, active/passive construction,
singular-plural and the use of past participles dan lain-lain kesalahan bahasa yang
terdapat di Bab Enam. Kebanyakan kesalahan yang didapati adalah kesalahan yang
merujuk kepada penggunaan nahu bahasa Inggeris.
Kesalahan ini seterusnya
menyebabkan atau menghasilkan pembinaan ayat yang penuh dengan kesalahan bahasa.
Berdasarkan kepada analisis dan kejumpaan kajian ini, kami mencadangkan supaya nahu
bahasa Inggeris diajar secara eksplisit kepada pelajar yang akan datang. Dengan cara ini
pelajar dapat memahami ilmu nahu dan cara penggunaannya secara yang betul supaya
mereka dapat memperbaiki bahasa Inggeris mereka terutamanya untuk penulisan.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
DESCRIPTION
PAGE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
i
ABSTRACT
ii
ABSTRAK
iii
CONTENTS
iv
LIST OF APPENDDICES
vii
INTRODUCTION
1
1.0 Introduction
1
1.1 The context of the study
4
1.2 Statement of the problem
5
1.3 Objective of the present study
7
1.4 Research Questions
8
1.5 The importance of this research
8
1.6 Scope of the study
9
1.7 Definition of terms
10
LITERATURE REVIEW
11
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
METHODOLOGY
22
3.0 Introduction
22
3.1 Subject of the study
22
3.2 Data for the Study
23
3.3 Methodology
23
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
25
4.0 Introduction
25
4.1 Findings of Research Question 1 and 2
26
4.2 Grammatical Errors
26
4.3 Other Categories of Errors Produced
29
4.4 Discussion for Findings
29
4.4.1 Singular and Plural (subject-verb agreement) 30
4.4.2 Verb Related Errors (Verb Tenses)
32
4.4.3 “ING Verb”
34
4.4.4 Infinitive “to”
36
4.4.5 Modal Auxiliaries
37
4.4.6 Perfect Tenses
39
4.5 Articles ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’
40
4.6 Singular-Plural
42
4.7 Adjectives
43
4.8 Passive Errors
45
4.9 Other Errors on the use of Parts of Speech
48
4.9.1 Errors in Preposition
48
4.9.2 Errors in using Determiners
49
4.9.3 Errors in using Adverbs
50
4.9.4 Errors in Pronoun Construction
51
4.10 Errors Produced in Sentences
52
4.10.1 Relative Pronouns/Relative Clause
53
4.10.2 Errors in Phrasal Construction
53
4.11 The Development of Flawed Paragraphs
55
4.12 Errors in Choice of Words (Vocabulary)
57
4.13 Description of Errors Produced
60
4.14 Acceptable Language Pattern
63
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION AND
RECOMMENDATION
66
5.0 Introduction
66
5.1 Conclusion
66
5.2 Recommendation
68
5.2.1 Recommendation to Enhance Language
69
Learning and English Language Acquisition
5.2.2 Recommendation for Future Studies
70
REFERENCES
72
APPENDICES
74
LIST OF APPENDICES
APPENDIX
TITLE
PAGE
Appendix A
Examples Of Sentences With Errors
As They Were Produced By Students
74
Appendix B
Errors Produced When Using Verbs
78
Appendix C
Errors in Prepositions
80
Appendix D
Errors in Infinitive “To”
81
Appendix E
Errors in Subject-Verb Agreement
82
Appendix F
Errors in Passive Construction
83
Appendix G
Errors in Modals
84
Appendix H
Errors in Past Participals (Past Perfect)
85
Appendix I
Errors in Determiners
86
Appendix J
Errors in Adjectives
87
Appendix K
Errors in Relative Pronouns
88
Appendix L
Errors in Adverbs
89
Appendix M
Errors in Pronouns
90
Appendix N
Errors in Singular-Plural
91
Appendix O
Errors in Phrases
92
Appendix P
Errors on “ING”-Verb
93
Appendix R
Errors in Articles, A/An/The
94
Appendix S
Examples of Paragraphs (Bad)
95
Appendix T
Examples of “Acceptable” Sentences
/Paragraph Development
99
Appendix U
Examples of Wrong Word Choice/Word
Formation/Wrong Phrasal Choice
100
Appendix V
Spelling Errors
103
Appendix W
Marking Scheme UHB 2332
104
Appendix X(i)
Samples of Bad Scripts
105
Appendix X(ii)
Samples of Good Scripts
156
Appendix Y
Seminar Paper Presented
159
Appendix Z
CD of 59 examination scripts analysed
176
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.0 Introduction
In learning and acquiring a second language, a learner is bound to make errors. As
many researchers claim, making errors is inevitable in second language acquisition (see
Dulay, Burt and Krashen, 1982, Zainal, 1990 and Brown, 2000). Since making errors is
considered part and parcel of language learning, we need to investigate into the nature of
errors commonly produced by students.
What are errors? According to Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982), errors represent
the language deviations produced by a learner when completing a task. The deviations are
clearly defined by comparing the errors with the norms of a language production. Dulay
Burt and Krashen (1982:138) note that ‘errors are the flawed side of learner speech or
writing.’ They are those sections of speech and writing which deviate from the acceptable
norm of language production. Despite this, people cannot avoid making language errors
as the production of systematic errors helps people to learn using the language.
Investigating learner errors helps researchers and language practitioners
understand the reason as to why errors occur and also the nature of the errors. Dulay, Burt
and Krashen (1982) emphasize some major purposes of examining learners’ errors. First,
it provides information regarding the process of the language learning, that is, learners
will be able to acquire a language after stumbling in the use of the language repeatedly.
Second, it provides insights into the difficulties faced by the learners and which part of
the language that learners have difficulties in producing. Third, it provides information
regarding the types of errors which hamper learners’ ability to communicate effectively.
These purposes show that examining learner errors is crucial to understanding the
complex process of language learning.
Error analysis has resulted in changes to language teaching practices. One of the
contributions of error analysis is to reexamine the claim that error production is due to the
influence of the learners’ first language (L1). It was widely believed that the learners’
mother tongue has a significant effect on the production of L2. This belief was later
questioned when researchers began to find evidence suggesting the influence of learners’
development in their L2 system. Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982:138) note that:
Error analysis has yielded insights into the L2 acquisition process that
have stimulated major changes in teaching practices. Perhaps its most
controversial contribution has been the discovery that the majority of the
grammatical errors second language learners make do not reflect the
learner’s mother tongue but are very much like those young children make
as they learn a first language. Researchers have found that like L1
learners’ errors, most of the errors L2 learners make indicate they are
gradually building an L2 rule system.
There is also the tendency to differentiate between performance errors and
competence errors (Chomsky, 1965). Performance errors are those caused by fatigue and
inattention while competence errors are those caused by insufficient knowledge of the
language rule systems. This differentiation has shed light into the types of errors
produced by learners. Some researchers called performance errors as ‘mistakes’ while
competence errors as ‘errors’. Although this differentiation between performance errors
and competence errors is important, tearing apart these two types of errors is often
difficult. Brown (2000) suggests that a clear distinction between errors and mistakes
needs to be made. To Brown, errors are deviations that cannot be self-corrected while
mistakes can. This means errors reflect the competence level of a learner, i.e. what the
learner actually knows about the language system, while mistakes reflect the performance
level of a learner, i.e. what slips the learners produced even though they may know the
language system.
Although our study undertakes to examine the errors that reflect a learner’s
competence level, we are aware of the difficulties in distinguishing between performance
and competence errors. For the purpose of our study, we do not restrict the notion of
errors to either performance or competence errors. We employ the term ‘error’ to refer to
any deviation from the accepted norm of the target language found in the learners report
writing.
1.1 The context of the study
The study was conducted with Malaysian students studying in the Universiti
Teknologi Malaysia (UTM, Johor Bahru). It must be noted here that although courses are
taught in Malay, the national language, the learners are expected to read reference
materials in English. This situation may pose some problems to the students and error
production is part of the learning process which cannot be avoided. Although English is
considered a second language for these learners, their proficiency level may not reflect
them as bilinguals. In particular, their error production may indicate the problems of
English language acquisition by these learners.
In light of this issue, the current research is interested in examining the frequency
and types of errors produced by these learners. It is hoped that this investigation will shed
some light in understanding the nature of UTM students in learning English, and in
identifying the problematic areas of the language that the students faced and the areas that
language teachers can focus on in the classroom teaching.
Although the context of the study concentrates on UTM students and may not be
generalized to other situation or context, it is hoped that this study will be able to
highlight the issue further and to find solutions to the problems.
1.2 Statement of the problem
Teachers understand the fact that learning a language is a continuous and complex
process. A language is taught in a classroom context using the stipulated syllabus set by
the ministry or institutions. However, since a common syllabus is used by all types of
schools and institutions, the language problems of some groups of learners, especially the
weak groups, may be overlooked. Students will go on attending the language classes but
fail to acquire the same level of language proficiency as their peers. Therefore, it is felt
that the need to highlight the parts of language which cause problems to the students is
called for. Researchers need to examine the problems at micro level through analyzing
the data produced by students in their writing task.
Through error analysis, researchers will be able to understand the nature of the
learners’ first language ability and the effect it has on their second language production.
The question remains whether a learner’s first language influences his second language
performance as promoted by the contrastive analysis theory. This question needs to be
explored further.
It cannot be denied that language learning is a complex process, one which needs
exorbitant effort from the learners and teachers alike. Teaching a learner about the
language rules is not enough, learners must be allowed to practice the language through
the different communicative tasks given in the class and to see the kind of errors they
produced in order to improve their language ability. Because in most cases, students learn
more effectively from what they do or see, rather than from what rules governing the
language, it is worthwhile for teachers to understand the errors produced by students in
classroom to show how these errors can be corrected.
Since communicative syllabus is used in schools, a number of new approaches are
used in language teaching which tend to overlook some of the problems faced by the
students. First, the syllabus relegated the importance of grammar lesson in language
classroom. Second, language learning calls for practice rather than memorizing the rules.
Third, errors produced through communication should not be emphasized to encourage
more production rather than correct production. Fourth, language is acquired through
communicating the meaning of the message rather than through memorizing rules.
Although it cannot be denied that communicating the meaning of message is important, it
must be noted that accuracy of language production is equally crucial. Therefore, students
should also be made aware of the rule systems of the target language in order to be a
proficient user of the language.
1.3 Objective of the present study
The objectives of this study are summarized as follows:
1.
to investigate the frequency of errors produced by students when writing
reports
2.
to examine which parts of the target language students have tendencies to
produce errors
3.
to identify the error types which hinder learners from performing the
writing task effectively
4.
to identify the reasons as to why these errors occur
Since we are interested in examining the errors produced by learners, the present
study focuses on a report writing task given to the students. The task was part of the
students’ assignment in the English Langauge class (UHB 2332).
1.4 Research Questions
This study seeks to examine the following research questions:
i.
What frequency of errors are produced by students in their report writing
task?
ii.
Which parts of the language students have the tendency to produce more
or less errors?
iii.
Why do these errors occur?
To answer these research questions, we will analyse the data from the students
report writing assignment.
1.5 The importance of this research
This study aims at finding out the frequency and types of errors produced by
students in performing their report writing tasks. This is important in providing insights
into the nature of a learner language acquisition devices and effective techniques to teach
students the target language. A number of studies on error analysis have been conducted
but leaving the questions unanswered. For instance, past studies seemed to suggest that
second language speakers produce errors from all parts of the language. This does not
help teachers and language practitioners to focus on the problematic areas in their
teaching. Therefore, the importance of this study is to reorganize the findings regarding
the error production of the learners and to systematically recommend the emphasis
language teachers should put in the language lessons.
1.6 Scope of the study
Conducted with UTM students as the subjects, this study may give suggestions on
language teaching approaches within UTM context. Although the findings can be
generalized to students from other institutions, other researchers must be aware of the
characteristics of other learners which may not match with UTM students’ characteristics.
In addition, this study focuses on the production of errors by the students in their report
writing. The study did not include errors violating the principles of report writing in
terms of format and organization. For the purpose of maintaining the focus of the
investigation, we only concentrated on the language errors produced by these learners.
Errors identified in the analysis represents problem in performing a writing task rather
than tasks of other skills like reading, speaking or listening. Therefore, the findings of
this study may not reflect errors in speech production of the students.
1.7 Definition of terms
Error analysis is the term used to describe the errors produced by learners or
speakers of a second language. The analysis is carried out to identify the common
difficulties in learning a language, the strategies used by the learners and the reasons the
errors occur. Some researchers believe that errors produced by learners reflect the
universal learning strategies.
Contrastive analysis is the term used to describe the interference of a learner L1
in the L2 acquisition. The analysis involves the examination of the features of the
linguistic systems of two languages, the learner’s mother tongue and the target language.
Contrastive analysis was considered successful in describing the interference in the
learners phonological system. It was, however, unable to describe conclusively the
interference in other language areas such as lexis, grammar and sentence structure.
-
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
In this chapter, we focus on the literature relevant to the issue of our investigation.
The purpose of this chapter is to examine past research conducted in this area. Some
theories are included to explain the errors produced by learners.
Many theories and hypotheses have been developed in an attempt to explain the
phenomenon of error production in second language. Among the many, there seem to be
two hypotheses popularly used in investigating and analysing errors produced by
learners. The first approach relates to the notion of contrastive analysis hypothesis
(CAH), an approach which compares the students’ L1 structure to their L2 structure
produced in their report writing. The approach is said to provide the platform for
researchers to systematically investigate errors, and in turn provides the basis for ‘an
empirical method of prediction.’ (Brown, 2000: 209). Brown (2000 :208) notes that:
… the CAH claimed that the principal barrier to second language
acquisition is the interference of the first language system, and that a
scientific, structural analysis of the two languages in question would yield
a taxonomy of linguistic contrast between them which in turn would
enable the linguist to predict the difficulties a learner would encounter.
This seems to suggest that CAH aims at identifying and predicting the problems
faced by learners during the language learning process. As learners have already
established or developed their own L1 system, the tendency for them to extend this L1
system to their developing L2 system is high. The term ‘interference’ seems to be the
main factor in causing the production of errors by a learner. Zainal (1990: 47) in her
study with Malaysian learners, for instance, claims that ‘the transfer errors depicted via
the students’ writing samples, have shown that the problems of learning English is due to
the frequent interference of L1 structure. What can be concluded here is that the students
are relying very heavily on the L1 structure while learning L2. This has resulted in the
regular substitutions and literal translation of Bahasa Malaysia words to English’.
In her study, Zainal (1990) suggests two main categories of errors produced by
Malaysian learners in their essays. The first category of errors relates to morphological
errors which include the omission of grammatical morphemes, such as ‘s’, ‘es’ in subjectverb-agreement and apostrophe ‘s’ in the possessive structure. The second category of
errors relates to syntactical errors, such as past tense agreement and auxiliaries. All these
forms do not exist in Bahasa Malaysia (Malay Language), resulting in the tendency for
the students to omit these forms in their essays.
Despite its widely used theory regarding errors, CAH has, however, received
criticisms. Whitman and Jackson (1972) in Brown (2000), for instance, point to the
inadequacies of CAH. They conclude that CAH fails to theoretically explain the
behaviour of a language learner. Furthermore, they also note that this hypothesis fails to
predict the interference problems (Littlewood, 1984) faced by a learner.
From CAH, the movement swings to another type of hypothesis, error analysis
hypothesis (EAH). Unlike CAH, EAH suggests that learner errors are not solely caused
by the learner’s L1, but rather by his developing L2 knowledge which is not yet stable.
Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982: 138) sum up:
Error analysis has yielded insights into the L2 acquisition process that
have stimulated major changes in teaching practices. Perhaps its most
controversial contribution has been the discovery that the majority of the
grammatical errors second language learners make do not reflect the
learner’s mother tongue but are very much like those young children make
as they learn a first language. Researchers have found that like L1
learners’ errors, most of the errors L2 learners make indicate they are
gradually building an L2 rule system.
Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982:138) suggest six kinds of errors produced by learners.
i.
omitting grammatical morphemes
ii.
double marking
iii.
regularising
iv.
using archiforms
v.
using two or more forms in random alteration
vi.
misordering
These six categories suggest the tendency for learners to produce errors relating to
their development in the L2 system. As their L2 system is not yet stabilised, they tend to
produce systematic errors based on their understanding of the new language system.
Dulay and Burt (1974) in Littlewood (1984) conducted a study with 145 Spanish
children age between five and eight. Errors found in their recorded English speech were
categorized into two kinds: interference errors and developmental errors. Their findings
show that only 3 percent of the errors are classified as interference errors, 85 percent as
developmental errors and 12 percent neither category. These researchers conclude that:
i)
It is inadequate to explain second language learning as it is for first
language learning through the process of habit-formation.
ii)
Like first language learners, children learning a second language develop
through a process of ‘creative construction’.
Littlewood (1984) also notes that intralingual errors are a result of
overgeneralisation. Generalisation is a learning strategy used by learners to make sense of
the items learnt through their own genaralisation of rules. These rules help predict how a
language item is applied in its own category. However, when there are exceptions to the
general rule, errors will occur when learners overgeneralise the rules. The general rule on
singularity and plurality of the word ‘mouse’, for instance, may easily cause the
occurrence of an error if learners were to identify ‘mouses’ instead of ‘mice’ as its plural
form. These exceptions are plentiful in any language and can become the point of error
production for learners.
Production of errors may have serious communication implications in some
professional areas. Noss (1979), for instance, conducted a study on errors produced in
legal communication. He notes three different kinds of errors produced (p.3).
i)
Mistakes. These are errors of form or lexical selection made through
carelessness, bad habits or perhaps simply a desire to communicate rapidly
rather than precisely. The speaker knows the general rule or the correct lexical
item, but fails to apply it in the instances.
ii)
Mismatches. These are errors made by selecting a wrong or unnecessarily
ambiguous, syntactic patterns or lexical items through real ignorance of the
correct items.
iii)
Gaps. These errors of omission occurred due to failure of producing the
lexical item in a place where it is needed.
According to Noss, these three types of errors have implications to the legal
consumers. Errors which are neither confusing nor misleading are called ‘harmless
errors’. Errors which leave the consumer in serious doubt as to the meaning intended are
called ‘confusing errors’. Errors which convey a completely wrong meaning to the
consumer are called misleading errors. Noss seems to caution legal practitioners and
users to avoid these types of errors in order not to indict a defendant unnecessarily.
A study conducted by Tahririan (1986) on error awareness of advanced EFL
students suggests a number of discoveries. First, subjects show stability in the error
performance, indicating that there is systematicity in the interlanguage of these students.
Second, there seems to exist a certain plateau of performance after the students progress
in their learning towards native-like language. Third, it was discovered that vocabulary
use was the most frequent difficulty for these students, in comparison to nominalization,
passivization and negation. Fourth, the researcher speculated that errors may be due to
lack of cognitive input and feedback received by the learners, causing them to fossilize
these errors in performing their tasks. Fifth, although students had the knowledge of the
rules, they continued making errors. Krashen’s Monitor Theory (1981) in this case could
not help explain this occurrence. Sixth, this researcher believes that ‘errors of any nature
and source will quantitatively decrease with the increase of the learners’ mastery of the
target language’ (p. 10).
Unlike Tahririan’s (1986) arguments about surface error production, others argue
that error production relates to cognitive factor. Odlin (1989), for instance, suggests that
language transfer has significant effect on error production in writing. According to this
researcher ‘transfer is defined as the influence resulting from similarities and differences
between the target language and any other language that has been previously acquired’
(Odlin, 1989). This means there seem to be some relationship between language transfer
and error production. While Odlin notes two types of transfers: negative transfer and
positive transfer (facilitation), Ellis (1994) points to the transfer errors involving
purposeful avoidance of target language forms, and their over-use.
From behaviourist perspectives errors are the result of negative transfer of L1
forms while from a cognitive perspective error relates to the language development of the
learner who actively draws upon their interlanguage ability to further enhance their L2
ability (Selinker, 1972). Ellis notes that ‘ the L1 can have a direct effect on interlanguage
development by influencing the hypotheses that learners construct’ (Ellis, 1994, p.342).
According to McLaughlin (1987), transfer errors can occur because:
Learners lack the necessary information in the second language or the
attentional capacity to activate the appropriate second-language routine.
But such an account says little about why certain linguistic forms transfer
and others do not (p. 50)
It is difficult to determine empirically whether an error is due to problems of
language transfer or instances of communication development. This, therefore, suggests
that there are a number of factors causing the production of errors, and one of them being
the problem of language transfer. A learner’s L1 plays a complex, if not significant role,
in L2 acquisition. However, one problem with studies on contrastive analysis is their
tendency to collapse the characteristics of language and culture, causing them to
overgeneralise their findings. For instance, rhetorical errors in writing by L2 learners are
said to be very much related to the writing conventions of a certain culture. This may
cause the problem of tearing apart the influence of language and culture on learner’s
errors. Many perceive that such studies have led to over-generalisation of the writing
conventions of some ethnic groups, and cultural stereotypes about students from certain
linguistic backgrounds. Therefore, erroneous conclusions and predictions are made by
researchers regardless of the fact that the learners are continually changing with new
experiences.
As learners’ errors are considered an indispensable part of the language learning
process, what are the roles of teachers to help reduce the errors produced by learners?
Makino (1993) conducted a study to investigate the effect of teacher cues or hints in
helping students to correct their own errors. In addition, this study also investigates the
kinds of cues considered to be more effective in self-correction. Sixty-two Japanese
students were sampled to correct their own errors by employing the cues given by their
teachers. The results show that learners were able to do effective self-correction when
they were provided with a more detailed cues to the errors, ‘that is, learners demonstrated
that they could activate their linguistic competence to some extent in order to correct their
own errors in written English composition.’ (p.337). The pedagogic implication of this
study is that teachers are encouraged to provide cues to errors produced by learners. This
is a far more effective learning process than providing students with the correct answers
immediately after a language exercise. Providing learners with cues to their errors helps
them correct their own errors, and in turn activates their linguistic competence.
Al-Zoubi and Hassnawi (2001) on the other hand, develop a model which
explains the transfer phenomenon of translational activities. Although the transfer does
not necessarily deal with errors, the model suggests some similarities in terms of the
cognitive processes involved in a person’s mind when shifting from L1 to L2 text. These
explanations can be used to explain the errors which occur among learners. According to
these researchers information transfer happens at two stages: the micro-level and macrolevel. The micro-level stage includes the morpho-syntactic components which at the level
of a sentence and its lower constituents. Some examples are clauses, phrases, words etc.
There are errors which may be explained from two angles, the units as independent
entities and the units as members of other units in the same text. This may give rise to
sub-levels of analysis on the errors produced. Surface level analysis can be conducted
through four theoretical categories namely unit, structure, class and system. These are all
included in the syntactic and functional description of the text. In the macro-level stage,
the analyses account for all variables of texture, culture, style and rhetoric, which
contribute to the occurrence of errors at levels other than the syntactic level. This
includes the semantic components (the relation between meaning and situation), the
textual component (local and global), the pragmatic component, the rhetoric component
and the stylistic component.
Richards (1971) examines typical cases of errors produced by learners and
conclude that developmental errors occur due to several reasons. They include:
i)
Overgeneralisation: Overgeneralisation occurs when a learner uses a deviant
structure based on his knowledge of other instances or language structure
within the same class. For example, the clause ‘he sings’ is further extended to
‘he is sings’. This makes the extended clause a deviant.
ii)
Ignorance of rule restriction: The failure of the learners to see the restrictions
of the existing structures. For example, the clause ‘I will do the assignment’ is
written as ‘I will to do the assignment’, violating the rules of the structure.
This can happen when a learner is making use of the previous acquired
regulation on a new clause. In other instances, this may result from the rote
learning of rules done by the learners.
iii)
Incomplete application of rules: This happens when learners are still
developing the rules of the structure they are learning. A common error occurs
in this category in the formulation of series of questions (Q) and responses
(R). Below are some instances of this error (p.178):
Q. ‘What was she saying?’
R. *She saying she would come.
Q. “What does he have to do?’
R. *He have to do write the address.
iv)
False concepts hypothesized: This happens when learners have faulty
comprehension of the rules of the target language. Sometimes, it may also be
due to poor gradation of teaching items. For instance, the rules of present and
past tense markers may be faultily comprehended as evident in the following
sentences: ‘The event was happened yesterday’ (‘was’ is used to mark a past
tense), ‘He is speaks French’ (‘is’ used to mark a present tense).
These reasons to the occurrence of errors call for a further examination of our
teaching materials in a second language classroom. As teachers, we cannot assume that
learners will photographically reproduce the language structures we taught them. This
kind of reproduction may lead to deviants in their sentence.
In conclusion, studies on learner errors have shown some intriguing findings.
Some of the findings try to relate these errors to the learner’s L1 and point to interference
as the main factor causing the problem. Others tend to relate it to the problems of
developmental and universal characteristics of language learners.
CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY
3.0 Introduction
In this chapter, the methodology of the data collection is reported. The chapter
also includes the procedures involved in the data analysis.
3.1 Subject of the study
The subjects were second year UTM students enrolled in the Faculty of Science.
A total of 59 students participated in this study.
3.2
Data for the Study
For this purpose, 59 examination scripts produced by the students from the
Faculty of Science, UTM were analysed. These students who took English for
Professional Communication were students from the Faculty of Science who were
following different courses. These courses were Bachelor of Science (Health), Bachelor
of Education (Physics) and Bachelor or Science (Chemistry). The task given to them was
to write a 3-4 page report from information (data) given in the examination question. The
report was to contain the sections on introduction, findings and analyses, conclusions and
recommendations.
3.3 Methodology
Common errors were coded using the SPSS win. to determine the frequency of
occurrence of these errors. For the purpose of this investigation, we categorise the errors
into several categories. The data will be explained qualitatively in order to demonstrate
the occurrence of this phenomenon.
For the purpose of this investigation, only the grammatical errors are described.
We classified the errors into the following categories: passive voice, relative clauses,
subject-verb-agreement, verb related errors (e.g. infinitive, modal/auxiliaries, participles),
articles, adjectives, adverbs, determiners, pronouns, nouns and its formation, singularplural. The scripts are segmented into these categories and described. Below are some
samples of the categorization made.
Table 1: Sample of Categories of Errors
Category
Sample data
Passive Voice
*The paper writes by the teacher.
Relative clauses
*The students which fail the test.
Subject-verb-agreement
*The activity go on successfully.
*denotes error
In addition, the Department of Modern Languages’ marking scheme (Table 1)
was used as a guide for marking the examination scripts.
Table 2: Marking scheme for Language Category
Score
Component
Language
Excellent
- Displays wide variety
of sentence structure
- Very appropriate and
varied vocabulary
- Hardly any grammatical
inaccuracies
Good
Fair
Weak
- Displays rather
wide variety of
sentence structure
- Displays limited
variety of sentence
structure
- No variety of
sentence
structure
-Reasonably
appropriate
and
varied vocabulary
- Inappropriate and
limited vocabulary
- Inappropriate
and very limited
vocabulary
- Many grammatical
inaccuracies
- Major grammatical
inaccuracies
which impede
meaning
(Source: UHB 2232/2332 Marking Scheme for Final Examination, Jabatan Bahasa Moden, UTM)
- Few grammatical
inaccuracies
CHAPTER 4
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION
4.0
Introduction
This chapter discusses the findings of this study obtained through the analysis of
59 examination scripts. The discussion of the findings is structured according to the
research questions as follows:
i)
What frequency of errors are produced by students in their report writing
task?
ii)
Which parts of the language students have the tendency to produce more
or less errors?
iii)
Why do these errors occur?
4.1
Findings of Research Question 1 and 2
i)
What frequency of errors are produced by students in their report writing
task?
ii)
Which parts of the language students have the tendency to produce more
or less errors?
The findings show that the writing samples studied contain language errors that
can be classified as errors related to grammar, sentence and paragraph development,
spelling and vocabulary. For this study, we focused on errors produced when students
attempted to complete an authentic task of writing a report in an examination situation.
In general, students were found to produce grammatical errors, which resulted in the
production of flawed sentences in their paragraph development. The findings also showed
that students produced grammatical errors and errors related to vocabulary.
4.2
Grammatical Errors
Overall, students are found to produce all categories of grammatical errors:
Singular and Plural (subject-verb agreement), verbs and verb-formation, article ‘the’,
singular-plural, adjectives, nouns, passives, relative pronouns, infinitive ‘to’, missing
verbs, modals, adverbs and, past participles used in passives. In addition, the findings
show that the students also have problems with spelling, construction of phrases,
vocabulary, sentence construction and, paragraph development.
Figure 4.1 shows the
categories of errors produced, in the order of most frequently occurring errors to the least
frequently occurring errors.
For the purpose of this discussion, the findings are divided into three categories of
frequency. The first category of frequency includes items which occur more than 50%.
This is referred as ‘highly occurred’ errors. The second category of frequency includes
items whose frequency of occurrence ranges from 30% to 40%. This is referred as
‘average occurred’ errors. The last category of frequency includes items with less than
30% occurrence. This is referred as ‘less occurred’ errors.
Figure 4.1 shows that the highest frequency of occurrence of errors is the Subjectverb agreement errors (singular and plural). Subject-Verb Agreement errors register a
total of 95.5%. This high percentage of occurrence shows that students have problems
that can be explained using CAH or EAH. This is followed by Verb related errors and
errors in using the Articles which each shows a frequency of 89.8%. Other categories of
errors produced are Singular-Plural in nouns (74.6%), Descriptive Adjectives (64.4%),
Nouns and noun formation (55.9%), the Passives (57.6%), Relative Clauses (55.9%),
Modal Auxiliaries (52.5%) and the problem of missing main verbs (50.8).
30.00%
55.90%
50.00%
Figure 4.1 Categories of Errors and their Frequency of occurrence
in
er
s
no
un
Ad s
ve
rb
s
60.00%
57.60%
55.90%
52.50%
50.80%
47.50%
40.00%
Pr
o
70.00%
er
m
80.00%
et
90.00%
D
bj
ec
t- V
er
b
Ve
Ag
rb
re
em
R
el
e
at
ed nt
er
ro
rs
Si
ng
ul
ar
Ad
-p
je
l
ct
A d ur a
iv
l
e
j
N
ou s (c ecti
ve
om
ns
pa s
an
ra
d
i ts
tiv
e
fo
rm )
a
Th
tio
e
n
p
R
as
el
si
at
ve
iv
e
s
M
c
od
la
u
a
se
lA
Pa
M
s
is
u
st
x
ilia
Pa sin
g
rie
rti
m
ci
s
ai
pl
n
e
v
(in
e
Pa rbs
ss
iv
es
)
Su
100.00%
91.50%
89.80% 89.80%
74.60%
64.40%
45.80%
39%
28.80%
20.00%
17% 15.30%
10.00%
0.00%
Based on Figure 4.1, students tend to produce average number of errors in the use
of Past Participle in Passive construction. A total of 47.5% occurrence was registered.
Other errors produced are Infinitive “to” (45.8%, Determiners (39%), Pronouns (17%)
and Adverbs 15.3(%).
The findings also show that students produced errors which the writers classified
as Other categories of Errors.
4.3
Other Categories of Errors Produced:
Students were also found to be producing the following errors in their writing:
Phrasal construction =
Spelling
=
42.4%
76.3%
Wrong Choice of words (vocabulary)
4.4
=
57.6%
Discussion of Findings
This section discusses the findings of the research.
question No. 3: Why do these errors occur?
This answers research
4.4.1
Singular and Plural (subject-verb agreement)
The findings in figure 4.1 show that the highest frequency of errors produced was
Subject-Verb Agreement errors related to singular and plural use. It is 91.5%.
We start by looking at the following table that shows some examples of subjectverb agreement errors produced in students’ writing.
Table 3: Examples of Subject-Verb Agreement Errors and the acceptable version
of the errors
SUBJECT-VERB AGREEMENT
(SINGULAR AND PLURAL)
ERRORS ACCEPTABLE VERSION
a) *From the survey, I analyses every data and
do the graph to identified the number of
students in different ethnic group.
b) *Rank 4 show the factors that is no
opportunity to practice English.
c) *They do not know how important English
Language are.
d) *Most of the reason is in rural area it do not
have enough facilities rather than unrural
area.
(*) denotes flawed sentences
… I analyse every data …
Rank 4 shows the factors …
…English language is.
… it does not have enough …
(Refer to Appendix E)
Based on Table 3, sentences (a) – (d) show the difficulties students encountered to
produce acceptable sentences in the target language. In (a) for example, the subject was
probably confused with the application of subject-verb agreement. First, the subject has
to know that the pronoun ‘I’ (the subject) must be followed by the verb ‘analyse’ in the
simple present tense. In sentence (b), the subject applied the L1 grammar rule in his/her
L2 production and this led to the occurrence of error. In Malay and Chinese language,
there is no grammatical morphemes such as ‘s’, or ‘es’ in subject-verb agreement and
therefore no singular or plural verb exists in Malay and Chinese. Verbs remain the same
whether they are used with singular or plural subjects or nouns. These interference of L1
may have caused the error to occur. Thus, it is important for students to understand
clearly the rules of the target language in order to accurately apply them when using the
language. This supports Ellis’ (1985) claim that second language acquisition is strongly
influenced by the learners’ L1. In addition, we the writers believe that foreign or second
language learners must be taught the grammar of the language. We have to discreetly
teach them English grammar in order for them to clearly understand the structure.
Understanding the rules would enable them to avoid errors.
Burt, Dulay and Krashen (1982) suggest six kinds of errors found in learners
language production. One of them is ‘omitting grammatical morphemes’. The findings of
this study with regard to subject-verb-agreement show the tendency of the students to
omit or add morpheme ‘s’ into the structure when it is not necessary. This results in the
production of deviant sentences.
The excerpts in Table 3 demonstrate micro level errors.
The addition and
omission of morpheme ‘s’ in (a) and (b) do not affect the overall meaning of the clauses.
These finds can be explained through Al-Zoubi and Hassnawi’s (2001) model of tansfer
in translational activities. The micro-level errors are those morpho-syntactic components
which operates at the level of a sentence and its lower constituents. The omission and
addition of morpheme ‘s’ suggest the students’ ability to grasp the L2 structure. Since the
problem is localized, these errors can easily be pointed out to students.
4.4.2
Verb Related Errors (Verb Tenses)
Another type of error detected relates to verb and verb formation. A total of
89.8% of occurrence was found. The following excerpts are used to explain the findings.
Table 4: Verb-related Errors
i)
*From they survey, I found that most of the teachers who teaching in the
rural school could not speak and teached well in English and most of them
were not from their study in English.
ii)
*One of the cause why the student didn’t motivated because their parents are
not give him a lesson at home and not encourage the students to talk at home.
iii)
*English standards in rural secondary school were declined steady.
iv)
*So, I as a language officer in the Education Department have been
conducted a study to find out the reasons behind the declining standards of
English in rural secondary school (in italic: given in the instruction).
v)
*Our scope was conducted 5 secondary schools in South Johor.
vi)
*It was due to 10 factors which leaded to the deterioration of English.
vii)
*Teachers are try to proficient in English.
viii)
*From the findings of the study, I can said that our students are knowed how
important to master in English but they are not motivated to learn English.
ix)
*We were separated them according to Ethnic Group for the years 1998 and
2000.
x)
*We have specified 10 factors that are usually been used as a reason among
student of why the derioration of English was happened to them.
(*) denotes flawed sentences
(Refer to Appendix E and A for more examples)
Sentences (i) – (x) in Table 4 show various types of errors that reflect the
inclination of students to turn to L1 in an attempt to complete the writing task. Sentence
(i), for example, shows that the writer omitted the copula verb ‘are’ or ‘were’ in ‘ who
teaching’. The following verb ‘teached’ in (i) shows students’ unstable application of
the past tense for irregular verb. Generalising from the rule that ‘ed’ should be added to
regular verbs, the writer applies the rule to all other verbs. Other errors in the sentences
given are examples of how students performed when they do not have enough knowledge
on the rules of the target language. These errors could be classified as developmental, in
the sense that students’ errors in L2 indicate that they are gradually building the L2
system (Dulay, Burt and Krashen , 1982). Richards (1971) notes overgeneralisation as
one of the reasons for the occurrence of errors. According to him overgeneralisation
occurs when a learner uses a deviant structure based on his knowledge of other instances
or language structure within the same class. The instance ‘teached’ found in the excerpt
suggests the extension of ‘ed’ in irregular verb ‘taught’. Although overgeneralisation is a
learning strategy, it will lead to the production of a deviant sentence. Other reasons that
we feel appropriate to describe are the lack of knowledge on grammar rules and the lack
of contact with the language. Lack of contact here means that students are less interested
in reading English materials that are found in abundance in Malaysia, lack of active
listening activities, and very little involvement in producing the language.
4.4.3
“ING Verb”
In addition to 4.4.1 and 4.4.2, students were found to have problems using the
“ING-verb”. Let us observe the following samples of data:
Table 5: “ING Verb” Errors
i)
*Follow it was factors of teachers are not proficient in English in rank 2 and
factors of lack of teaching aids or materials in rank 3.
ii)
*Before attends English class, teachers should have a well performance in
English because their skills on guides students in study will effectuated.
iii)
*The great teachers exactly will not lack of interest in teach students and there
are willing to be posted to rural area.
iv)
* Realised on the important of English, English Language is been teaching in
the school, no matter in the primary school, secondary school, or even in the
many institution in our country.
v)
*And the teacher in rural area also must always improved themselves by
attend “training class”
The ‘ing’ form can be explained in terms of ‘progressive verb’ (eg. I am walking)
and ‘progressive participle’ (eg. Attending class is boring). Clause iii of table 5 suggests
the students ability to use the correct progressive verb form (e.g. … there are willing to
be posted to rural area).
However, other instances of the clauses demonstrate the
students’ ignorance of the ‘ing’ rules. Richards (1971) notes that ignorance of the
structural rules can be the reason to the violation of the structure. In addition, he also
suggests that faulty comprehension of the rules of the target language may lead learners
to fossilise the usage if it is not corrected.
4.4.4
Infinitive “to”
In the following examples, students were unable to apply the correct word
formation for the infinitive “to” form:
Table 6: Infinitive “to” Errors
i)
*So we should co-operate to increased the standard of English among the
students.
ii)
*The student a need to get motivation and energy to success in their study.
iii)
*In the conclusion, the effectiveness solution must be taken to overcoming
solve this problem.
The use of infinitive can be seen when a clause contains two subsequent verbs.
An infinitive is used with auxiliaries and some selected verbs (eg. “The best thing is to
tell the truth” or “I got/have/want to tell the truth”). The rule of infinitive construction is
that ‘to’ must be followed with a root verb, such as ‘to run’, ‘to sing’ etc. However, this
rule is violated in the sample clauses provided in Table 6. Based on the samples clauses,
it is difficult to pinpoint the reasons to the violation of this rule. The first clause shows
the overgeneralisation of the rule by adding the morpheme ‘ed’. The second clause
suggests the wrong word formation. While the last clause suggests the ignorance of the
rule. The trend seems to show that learners are generally confused with the usage. This
may be due to lack of exposure to the correct form. Makino (1993) points out that
although the roles of teachers are to reduce errors produced by students, students should
be made aware of their own errors as part of the learning process. One of the ways
suggested is the use of detailed cues to errors. This technique is said to activate the
students’ linguistic competence.
4.4.5
Modal Auxiliaries
A total of 54.5% of the students encountered problems in producing modals in
their sentences. Generally, the examples of the errors clearly showed that students did
not understand the rule of the modals.
Table 7: Examples of Modal Auxiliary Errors
i)
*The interesting text books will to attract the student to like to study in
English.
ii)
*Base on what we had findings, we can concluted that the first factors …
iii)
*This situation will made students did not like English and they will had
negative attitude towards English.
iv)
*The old and the damage aids can not attractive student to love English.
v)
*… we can recommend that the government should has a campaign about
how important English Language are.
vi)
*All of us must work together to solve the problem because it is a serious
diseases that can harmful our country development.
(See Appendix G for more examples)
Modal auxiliaries are considered to be among the least understood structure. For
speakers whose L1 does not exist auxiliaries, major difficulties in comprehending this
structure is observed. These speakers tend to make errors at random, resulting in the
violation of this structure sporadically. The sample clauses shown in Table 7 suggest no
systematic production of those errors occur. Although Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982)
suggest that L2 learners make systematic errors due to overgeneralisation, regularisation
and omitting or adding morphemes, the sample clauses provided here seem to relate more
to the learners confusion of the rules. This seems to support Richards (1971) contentions
that errors may be produced due to ‘ignorance of rule restriction’ and ‘false concepts
hypothesized’.
4.4.6
Perfect Tenses
Besides the problems students faced when they constructed the past participle in
the passive voice, they faced the same problem when using the past participles in the
perfect tenses. Here are some examples:
Table 8: Perfect Tense Errors
i)
*… but the number had falled down to 15 students in the years 2000.
ii)
*As a former British Coloni, English had became one of the major language
used in Malaysia.
The sample clauses suggest that students overgeneralised the rule of the perfect
tense. They seem to know that the verb ‘have’ is followed by a participle form, such as
‘have reported’, ‘have studied’, which comes in ‘-ed’ form. However, other participles
are irregular, such as ‘drawn’, ‘shown’ etc. Their failure to internalise these irregular
verbs results in the occurrence of errors, as sampled in Table 8.
To ensure future students do not produce similar errors, we suggest that they must
be taught and drilled systematically on the rules and the application of the rules in the
language.
4.5
Articles ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’
Errors related to articles are abundant.
understanding how and when to use articles.
Students clearly have problems in
The following examples suggest the
confusion they had in applying articles in their writing.
Sentence (i) in Table 9 demonstrates the student’s inability to understand the
notion of singularity and plurality in English. The phrase ‘a hardworking students’
suggests the students’ inability to see that article ‘a’ should not be aligned with plural
noun ‘students’. Whether this problem is due to the student’s L1 influence (CAH) or his
L2 development (EAH) is still unclear. However, we suspect that both hypotheses can be
applied to explain this phenomenon.
Table 9: Errors in the application of Articles
i)
*They also must be a hardworking students to do an exercise and always
ask to their teachers if they have any problems …
ii)
*English is important because it is international language and it is easy to
make a communication if all people can speak in English.
iii)
*The number of students that were failed in English increased in year
2000 compared to year 1998 in all ethnic group no matter Malay, Chinese,
Indian or indigenous.
iv)
*The groups of highest of the table the number of students SPM English
language grades for the years 1998 and 2000 according to ethnic group is
a Malay in this case because a among of number of the secondary school
very big and then percentage of the A1 and A2 or fail also very big.
Amount the student malay for A1 and A2 for the 2000 is a same. And
this problem because overall student malay no motived for the learn
English, for the group Chinese, they have most motivated to personal.
The group Indian, the number of student discrease because they are cannot
understand to make or learning English. And for group indigenous, they
have lowest because amount student at this five school very small and this
amount the A1 dan A2 for the years 1998 dan 2000 very small.
v)
*Must get a many more motivates.
(*) denotes flawed sentences
(See Appendix R for more examples)
Similar to the discussion in 4.4.2 (verb-related Errors), articles in English are not
found in the students’ mother tongue and the lack of the knowledge on English grammar
had prompted them to produce errors that show the learners are developing the new
language system.
4.6 Singular-Plural
The next type of errors found relates to the notion of singularity and plurality of
nouns. To explain this, let us observe the following examples.
Table 10: Singular-Plural Errors and the acceptable version of the errors
SINGULAR-PLURAL ERRORS
ACCEPTABLE
VERSION
a) *This two reason will make us lack to English. These two reasons will…
b) * For the finding, we can conclude that the
deterioration of English is unavoidable due to
the ten factor given.
c) *Giving free English reading materials to the
peoples in public area.
d) *English campaignt is allow students read
more English material book and gt prizes to
whose students read many English book.
e) *Secondly, most of the teacher are not welleducated and there were some of them were
broken in English.
(*) denotes flawed sentences.
… due to ten factors …
… to the people …
…English
materials/books … read
many English books.
…most of the teachers …
(See Appendix N and Appendix A for examples of singular-plural errors as
produced in writing)
Sentences (a), (b), (d) and (e) in Table 10 seem to demonstrate a pattern in the
production of errors. Since plurality in English is marked in the nouns, therefore, the
phrases ‘this two reason’ in (a) or ‘ten factor’ in (b) clearly violate the grammatical rules
of English language.
This type of error is found throughout the students’ writing,
suggesting their inability to understand the whole notion of singularity and plurality fully.
In sentence (c), however, the student generalizes the idea of adding the morpheme
‘s’ to plural noun ‘people’. This generalization, however, results in a faulty sentence.
Overall, CAH can be used to explain this phenomenon.
In the students mother tongue, nouns are not pluralised and the morpheme ‘s’ or
‘es’ are not added after the noun to denote plural number. As a result, students created
errors by transferring the L1 role systems to L2. This frequent L1 interference is shown
in all other categories of grammatical errors. We believe that the most practical way to
solve this problem is to equip them with the knowledge on singular-plural (noun-noncount noun).
4.7 Adjectives
Adjectives are also found to be problematic among the students. The following
excerpts demonstrate the problem.
Table 11: Examples of Adjectival Errors
i)
*Data-collected method.
ii)
*To find out why the decline standard (declining standard) of English in
rural secondry school.
iii)
*The old and the damage aids can not attractive student to love English.
iv)
*They have to speak English with their foreigner teachers because their
teacher will not understand if they speak their own language.
v)
*From the table 1, the seriously factor caused the deterioration of
English was because not motivated to learn English.
vi)
*Before attends English class, teachers should have a well (good)
performance in English because their skills on guides students in study
will effectuated.
vii)
*Education Department should send well training teachers (well-trained
teachers) to the rural school so that they can help the students.
(*) denotes flawed sentences
(See Appendix J for more examples)
The examples of the adjective errors produced by students in (i) – (iv) in table 11,
clearly show their inability to apply L2 rules when writing. Students need to understand
the types of compound adjectives that are found in English, how they are formed and
when to use them in the text. This is because in the students’ L1, adjectives are applied
after nouns and compound adjectives are not found in their L1. Although the errors show
that students are learning to develop their L2 and that their L2 ability is still not stable,
they have to be taught of the L2 rules in order to speed up their acquisition of the
language. As teachers, we believe that being in the tertiary education, students should by
now know how to correct their own errors. Instead, they were found to be still making
errors in their L2. Steps should be taken to ensure that learners understand the grammar
rules of the target language to help solve their difficulties in acquiring the language.
4.8
Passive Errors
Another problematic area is the passive construction. Table 12 shows some of the
examples.
Table 12: Examples of Passive Errors and the acceptable version of the errors
PASSIVE ERRORS
ACCEPTABLE VERSION
… followed by …
a) *The highest rate of the student is among
Malay, follows by Chinese, Indian and
Indigenous.
b) *It is ranking no. 1.
It is ranked …
c) *Students should exposed to more
materials and book in English such as
English new paper and story book to
improve their language.
Students should be exposed to
…
d) *The drastic step need to take for increase
… step needed to be taken …
we English language and not become
or should be taken …
English blind.
e) *The facilities in rural area should add by
the government.
The facilities … should be
added by …
f) *Suitable text books also have to offer for
rural school.
(*) denotes flawed sentences
Suitable text books also have
to be offered …
(See Appendix F for more passive errors and past participle errors used in passive
construction)
Table 12 shows passive errors students produced in their writing. Based on our
experience and observation, passive construction proved to be the most difficult category
for students to comprehend. They have to understand how passives are formed and the
knowledge of past participles that needs to be applied in the passives. Because of these,
students must be taught exactly how passives are used. They are to be drilled on this
component to enable them to perform competently in their L2. If this is not carried out,
errors as in Table 8 will continue to exist.
Students should be clearly taught on how passives are formed. For example, in a
sentence that follows: “The patient was examined by the doctor” clearly conveys a
different message. As noted by Noss (1979) in legal communication, a type of errors
produced which results in ambiguous syntactic pattern is called ‘mismatch’. These errors
may cause in the production of misleading information. This is the type of errors which
users need to avoid in order to communicate the right message.
(subject)
(be)
(past participle)
(if it is important to know, insert
the by phrase)
The patient
was
examined
by the doctor.
In the construction of passives, students should know that only transitive verbs are
used and they need to know the structure to be followed, for example, the patient
(subject) was (be) examined (past participle). Besides this, the formation of the past
participle used in the passives should be understood. The failure to understand the past
participle used in passives would result in the production of the following errors:
i)
*A study was carry out.
ii)
*All the factors at these problem was already shows.
iii)
*Extra classes should carry out for those students who weak in English.
In sentences (i) and (ii), the use of past participle of the verb “carry” was not
observed.
In example (iii), students who produced such structure showed that they failed to
understand the rule of the passives and the differences between the actives and the
passives.
4.9 Other Errors on the use of Parts of Speech
Other errors that students produced were, the
prepositions, determiners, adverbs and pronouns.
4.9.1 Errors in Preposition
Here are some of the errors produced:
Table 13: Errors in Preposition
i)
*Look to both year 1998 and 2000.
ii)
*To have tuition class of English at school.
iii)
*Let oral in English becomes one of the subject in the examination.
iv)
*At 1988, 61 of malay students get this grades and the number of them were
decreased to 55 students at year 2000.
v)
*Maybe they still ashamed to speak because maybe their friend will laugh to them.
vi)
*English language was important to our people in this time.
vii)
*Meanwhile, by the table 1, we can conclude that there were 10 factors had been
identified as the reason of deterioration of the English language.
viii)
*In this research, the data obtained by questionnaire, interview, and observation.
The examples in Table 13 (i-viii) clearly show that writers of the reports were not
able to use the prepositions correctly. And this proves that they were not systematically
taught on the rule of using prepositions. If they were clearly taught about English
prepositions, these errors could have been avoided.
4.9.2
Errors in using Determiners
Examples of determiners which were wrongly produced by the students are as
follows:
i)
*Many type of factor why the problem going on.
ii)
*Most of the looser were Malays.
iii)
*Most of the reason is in rural area.
These errors also showed that our students were unsure on the correct use of the
determiners and singular-plural formation.
4.9.3
Errors in using Adverbs
The following errors in adverb construction clearly showed the students’
knowledge in the use of adverbs. These errors were produced as a result of ignorance
over the rule of using the adverbs.
Table 14: Adverb Errors
i)
*… English standards in rural secondary school were declined steady.
ii)
*Down ranking number two was the teachers themself were not proficient
in English and might teach the wrong thing to the students.
iii)
*Down Forward was factor that lack of teaching aids or materials and this
somehow lead teachers cannot teaching English efficiently.
iv)
*It was seen that the number of students who got A1 and A2 in English
language did not increase so far.
4.9.4
Errors in Pronoun Construction
Examples of Pronoun Errors found are as follows:
Table 15: Pronoun Errors
i)
*Students in rural liked to use their mother tongue in communication so that their
were not interested in learning English.
ii)
*Overall the ethnic that suffer to major deterioration of English language were
Malay and Chinese which both of them score the highest increasing percentages
of students who fail or down grades.
iii)
*From the survey, in 1998 and 2000, they (there – repeated many times) were 400
candidates of SPM.
iv)
*They parents did not trained them to speak English when they were still young.
v)
*They wanted they lecturer become more interesting and lighting.
vi)
*That because they knew how the knowledge important to theirself.
vii)
*We can’t blame our circumstance not allow we to learn and master the languages.
Similar to the reasons given earlier, students were also not able to produce the
correct usage of pronouns. If we teachers would want to see acceptable use of the
language, we should then think of ways of making them to cease producing errors.
4.10 Errors Produced in Sentences
From structural errors, students produced errors in the use of phrasal constructions
and relative clauses. Finally, they produced flawed sentences and paragraph.
The following examples show the errors produced in sentences:
Table 16: Structural Errors resulted in the production of sentence errors
i)
*From the Year 1998 to 2000, normally the total to get A1 – A2 between ethnic group
are same. Just maybe have increase 1 to 3 students. Besides that the gred in fail
students are increase between ethnic group around 1 to 20 students. In year 1998, the
most of students fail are Chinese, this because they learn in Chinese, but in year 2000,
the highest was Malay students, there are 31 students, this happened because the total
of students to sit for the SPM exam are increase.
ii)
*A result of survey are indicate that, the factors of Questionnaire are fill by students
are the most important to increase our English language standard. The main factors
were not motivated to learn English are very serious, it because when student don’t
have motivation to learning, so, automatically, they can’t get a good result in SPM
English language and speaking in English.
iii)
*The lowest races were indigenous students in year 1998.
iv)
*Environment, friends and ideology made rural student unmotivated, hate and hard in
expertise the subject.
(See Appendix A for examples of sentential error)
Sentences i -iv contain all categories of errors.
4.10.1 Relative Pronouns/Relative Clause
A total of 55.9% of the students were found to produce errors in the use of
pronouns in the construction of relative clauses and sentences. The following examples
show their failure to produce correctly:
i)
*There were 10 questions had been created in the questionnaire to obtain the
opinion from the students …
ii)
*The second serious is the teachers which teaching them are not proficient in
English.
iii)
*They (they for there – repeated many times) were 40 students fail in English.
(More examples in Appendix K, Appendix A and Appendix S)
4.10.2 Errors in Phrasal Construction
A total number of 42.4% of the students produced problems in constructing
phrases in their sentences. Students were found not to have the knowledge on the use of
phrases that they tried to produce. Let us look at the following examples:
Table 17: Errors in Phrasal Construction
i)
*… and in one other hand, we almost only used ours mother tongue language
to communicate daily.
ii)
*In the other hand, the number of students who fail were oppositely increase
from 40 students in year 1998 to 73 students in year 2000.
iii)
*In spite of, some of good teachers, meaning that the teachers who are good in
English.
iv)
*At the end of all, using unsuitable text books as a references. Many of
grammatical error and lack of exercise.
v)
*In the conclusion, the effectiveness solution must be taken to overcoming
solve this problem.
The errors found in 4.10.2 (i – vii) show that students did not have a clear
understanding of the expression used in the target language in the use of phrases. How
can we teacher help our students to write acceptable English sentences? Well, the only
way is to drill them to ensure that they learn by heart the expressions or phrases that they
need in the target language.
4.11 The Development of Flawed Paragraphs
The following examples were the paragraphs produced by students in their report
writing.
Table 18: Flawed Sentences in Paragraphs
i)
*The first ranking is a not motivated to learn English. Why this not motivated happened
because overall student can not motivated and this will can started from the family. Ranking
two about the teachers are not proficient in English. In this case, because the overall teachers
study to secondary school least to Diploma education and can not same the lecturer English at
IPTA. And the last ranking about unsuitable text books in this problem this school can not or
can make text books English a the school library. The all factor, and very important we can to
motivated and studying with hard for learn and for expected to English.
ii)
*Cause students failure in English so many. Here we put parts of first factor. First is the
students not motivated to learn English (this sentence was given). They feel an English not
important for them and they like to use their mother language.
Second, teacher are not
proficient in English (given). They don’t know how to teach their student. They only know
speak English but don’t know to teach. Third is no opportunity to practice English and negative
attitude towards English (given). They think English for west life only. Environment also
become cause students fail in English. Condition in class very important. The students need
the giant class and fresh air. Last, have not suitable text book for students to refer their
learning.
iii)
*In this research, the data obtained by questionnaire interview and observation.
The questionnaire give it to students after SPM, teachers, parents and others. I
also do the interview from them. The observation doing in the schools among the
student in every form.
*denotes flawed sentences.
(See Appendix S for more examples of flawed paragraphs)
From the problems found in sentences and paragraphs in 4.11 (i-iii) it was found
that students produced a variety of errors which could be categorized as developmental or
as a result of L1 interference. Whatever hypothesis that supports the reasons/s for the
production of such errors, our future students should have a sound knowledge on the
grammar of English. With this knowledge, students will be aware on the appropriate use
of grammatical elements in the target language production.
4.12 Errors in Choice of Words (Vocabulary)
In addition to structural errors produced by students, they also had a lot of
problems to choose appropriate correct words in their writing.
The following errors
show some examples of students’ difficulty in choosing the right vocabulary:
Table 19: Errors in vocabulary
i)
*… because at city we can have materials everyway (for everywhere), but in rural area it’s
difficult.
ii)
*The Education department must take action to build up English library or consist English
language in slibers (for syllabus).
iii)
*From analyses in SPM English Language grades for the years 1998 and 2000 according to
ethnic group, number of students failed was added (for increase/d) every years.
iv)
*… and they (for there) were lack of proficient English teachers.
v)
*The contain (for content) are same and it is the most suitable books for them.
vi)
*Students think and fell (for feel) that learning English Language is difficult and waste time.
vii)
*This problem caused by many reasons as we stated in front (for earlier).
viii)
*While at 2000, the amount (for number) of students scored a distinction was same as year
1998.
ix)
*Teks books are supported (for supplied) to student which it can help them to learned read
and speak.
x)
*Firstly, make (for organize/offer) a training to the teacher who want to teach English.
xi)
*To fulfilled this report we identified 5 secondary schools in South Johor as the scope to find
out the root sources (for causes) deterioration of English Language…
xii)
*… and the lack of teaching materials could be caused by a low (for insufficient/lack of)
substitution (for provision) of financial from the government to the rural schools.
xiii)
*In Malay rice (for race – repeated five times) in 1998 12 student was failed, 61 student get
P7 – P8 …
xiv)
*Besides, the number of students that gained extinction (for distinction or excellence?) in
SPM was also decreasing.
xv)
*In this school the teacher are not influence (for fluent) in English because some of the
teacher are not based on original English (probably for native speakers).
xvi)
*We cannot just point the witnesses (for weaknesses) to the students only, but the teachers
also need to improve their English to teach the students.
xvii)
*Secondly, teachers are not very well (for proficient/good) in English it means, they did not
proficient in English.
xviii) *We can make Singapore as our rule (role) model.
xix)
*They wanted they lecturer become more interesting and lighting (probably for enlightening
or entertaining).
xx)
*In person, it will be very hard to that particulate people to face the increasing globalization
where English is a major need.
xxi)
*Positive attitude towards English will help them to determine their weakness and repair
themself in English.
xxii)
*Secondly, most of the teacher are not well-educated and there were some of them were
broken in English. Although, the teacher have degree from local university but, they cannot
manage to learn the proficient English proper.
(Refer to Appendix U for more examples)
The examples given in Table 19 highlight the failure of our students in identifying
the right choice of words in their writing. Errors made could be due to mistakes or
ignorance as a result of lack of language contact. Some of the errors do not seem to
impede the meaning of the sentence. But some such as this one (xviii) will obviously
give a different meaning from the one intended by the writer: *We can make Singapore
as our rule model. The word “rule” is entirely different from the word “role” chosen by
the writer.
The choice of words or the phrase “had falled down” in the statement “… but the
number had falled down to 15 students in the years 2000,” clearly showed that the
writer failed to identify the correct choice of the past participle of the verb fall and the
right choice of the phrase which is “had decreased” or just “decreased.”
With such errors produced, more contact of the language through extensive
reading and active listening would help to solve this problem. This is because, in the
given example, the writer has not identified the word correctly. However, the subjects
have heard of the sound of the word which sounds something like “rule” for the word
role and “rice” for the word “race” in (xiii).
4.13
Description of errors produced
All the errors analysed in the 59 answer scripts were found to be structural errors.
However, some errors found were not serious and did not impede meaning while some
others did. Examples given in 4.4 – 4.10.4 are some of the structural errors that did not
impede or seriously impede the meaning of the content presented. Both proficient and
weaker students were found to produce these types of errors. There was one student
however, who did not produce grammar errors in his writing. This student qualified
himself to belong to the category of ‘excellent’ based on the marking scheme for English
for Professional Communication course, designed by Department of Modern Languages,
UTM. A total of 23% of the students were under the category of ‘good’, 45% fair and,
30% was considered to be ‘weak’.
The weak learners were those who were not proficient in the language and they
produced all categories of errors, i.e. structural, vocabulary (word choice) and spelling.
They were also found to have difficulties in producing correct phrases and sentences and
developing good paragraphs. Some of these flawed sentences impeded the meaning
intended by the writers.
The following examples are sentences that were produced by weak students in
their writing. These examples could impede the meaning of the content:
Table 20: Errors that may impede intended meanings
i)
*Nowadays, standards of English in rural secondary school are faced problem.
ii)
*To get a standart same like any rice
iii)
*This report we will can tell me about the rangking factor who the ethnic at the
place above? And the information to all, why the student can not and very poor
about the English language. And we can to amount the student for can A1 and A2,
C3 to C6, P7 to P8 and fail for the ethnic group such as Malay, Chinese, Indian and
indigenous.
iv)
*Most of the looser (probably the weaker learners/achievers) were Malays.
v)
*In Malay rice in 1998 12 student was failed, 61 student get P7 – P8 …
vi)
*We can make Singapore as our rule (role) model.
From flawed sentences weak students were found to develop unacceptable
paragraphs as seen in the following examples:
Table 21: Errors produced in Paragraphs
i)
*The first ranking is a not motivated to learn English. Why this not motivated happened
because overall student can not motivated and this will can started from the family.
Ranking two about the teachers are not proficient in English. In this case, because the
overall teachers study to secondary school least to Diploma education and can not same
the lecturer English at IPTA. And the last ranking about unsuitable text books in this
problem this school can not or can make text books English a the school library. The all
factor, and very important we can to motivated and studying with hard for learn and for
expected to English.
ii)
*For the conclusion, we can sound that the low performance in English not caused by
individual but also their background. Unquestionable, the environmental was left the
impact to us to learn English. But the most important thing was our aspiration to learn
it. We can’t blame our circumstance not allow we to learn and master the languages.
This phenomena had proved by the table 1, it is not motivated to learn English was
stand steadily of most serious reason in learning English. Although our main language
is Bahasa Malaysia but the English is the International language. Just imagine, if we
failed to master English, how many chances had lost from our hand just because we lazy
to learn or refused to learn it.
The examples of texts given in 4.11 and 4.12 (sentence errors and flawed
paragraph development) do not reflect students who had received sufficient language
instruction.
When the sample was collected, all students had completed 11 years
of primary and secondary school education where English was taught to them throughout
their education in schools. At the university level, they had undergone three levels of
English courses offered by UTM (UHB 1312,
UHB
1222, English
for
Proficiency
Skills
in English;
Academic Communication; UHB 2232, English for
Professional Communication). However, we have not been able to change the students’
level of proficiency much. This could probably caused by our neglect to teach grammar
discreetly.
4.14
Acceptable Language Pattern
Students who came in with good English grades were found to produce very little
errors in their report writing. With a strong language foundation, they were able to
understand the language input given to produce reports.
In addition, they could
understand better the skill in using the language for report writing compared to the
weaker learners.
As a result, they produced acceptable sentences as found in the
following paragraphs.
Here are some “acceptable” sentences or paragraphs produced by “good”
students:
Table 22: Acceptable Language Pattern produced
i)
*From the survey we know that the deteriorating of the students’ level of English become very
serious in recent years. There were many factors behind the problems. The main factor was the
students were not motivated in learning English. This problems must be solved to ensure the
students to have a brighter future. To achieve that, more English teachers should be trained and
posted especially to the rural schools. It was to expose the students the usage of English before
entering university.
ii)
*To overcome this problem, more experienced and good English teachers should be transfer
to the rural area. Even though teachers prefer to teach town schools, government can offer
other incentives such as extra allowences, free air tickets and etc, to attract them.
iii)
*School principals also can introduce English week once a month in their school. They can
invite officer from the Education Department to have a activities such as essay writing
competition, debates, quiz and many more. They should avoid having speech or other activities
which can bore the students. This step should be continues to gain a good feedback from the
students.
In the examples given in Table 22, we can see that there were still some errors
produced by the “good” students. However, they are what we categorised as high level
errors. In sentence (ii) and (iii), the writer could not produce the right use of the past
participles in passive constructions. With the spelling error, it could possibly be a slip of
the pen or what is termed as mistakes. Generally, these paragraphs are better developed
compared to the ones produced by weak students.
CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
5.0
Introduction
This chapter discusses the conclusion of the study and the recommendation for the
study.
5.1
Conclusion
As a conclusion, when this study was carried out, we found that students in our
institution were still producing serious errors at micro and macro levels. The causes of
these errors are explained using CAH and EAH. It was proven that ‘interference’ of the
L1 system seems to be the main factor in causing the production of the errors. When
students rely heavily on L1, errors will recur and the process of L2 development will be
very much slower. In addition to this, our students’ errors were made as a result of lack
of knowledge on the rules of the target language and inadequate vocabulary of the target
language. These are further worsen by the lack of exposure to the language and the lack
of learners’ interest to acquire the language effectively. The combination of these would
result in the following production (a note left at one of the researchers’ door):
1)
“ Mdm xxxxxxxx,
*Sorry for put my self access under the door. *Maybe
was late to meet madam and pass up it.
(Signed)
30/1/04 – 12.00 p.m.
* denotes flawed sentence.
The ignorance on the rules of the language and insufficient vocabulary that the
students had reflected partly the manner they were taught, the learners’ attitude and their
learning strategies in the whole learning process. Although these would mean that there
is a need to conduct another study, the following opinions on how some students would
like their English class to be taught, give us some thought on their attitude towards
learning English in UTM.
*As a conclusion, I and my group was decided that we like to make this
course to be enjoyable than others because of the others give us stressed.
*So, we hope that this course make us happy with more activities such as
discussion about current issues, playing riddle and make competition
among us to build good relationship. Beside that, we want this course not
to be taught totally in English. *So, we can get a mark easily and have a
second change to improved the test mark (produced by UHB1412 Section
26,2004/05).
*denotes flawed sentences
Being in the tertiary level, we strongly emphasise that students should not be
producing too much errors in their written texts or even in their speech. We agree that
students or learners of a foreign language must have a strong foundation on the rule of the
language and vocabulary before entering our university.
Based on the findings, we, the researchers could understand that students or
learners of foreign languages do make errors which could be explained using the CAH
and EAH. However, too many errors found in all categories could not be accepted at this
level, we mean at a university level. The question would be, “When would our students
be able to produce correct or acceptable sentences or paragraphs?” or “When will the
students stop producing errors (too many) in their language use?”
5.2
Recommendation
The recommendations given in this study are classified into two.
First,
recommendations for our institution to solve our English Language learning and teaching.
Next, recommendations for future studies.
5.2.1
Recommendations to Enhance Language Learning and English Language
Acquisition
i)
Grammar should be taught discreetly. Students should have the knowledge on
grammar rules to ensure that they could apply them when they write.
ii)
Remedial programme for grammar could be built into the English programme
offered and more contact hours may be allocated for remedial programme.
Evaluation (quizzes and examination) should reflect the implementation of the
programme and the allocation of contact hours.
iii)
Students should have their own initiatives to have more contact with the language.
This could be done through extensive reading (books, journals, etc.) and using the
language in the real context, both oral and written. More language contact would
enable learners to build up the vocabulary and to use words and phrases
appropriately and accurately in sentences or texts.
iv)
Courses in this institution could be taught in English. Teaching in the language
would bring in direct contact with the language in an authentic situation.
Beginning the academic session 2004/05, some faculties in UTM, such as Faculty
of Built Environment and Faculty of Science had started the use of English to
teach all the courses in their faculties. With this change implemented, we would
be seeing the positive impact on the enhancement of the English language
acquisition in a very near future.
v)
The university should take in only candidates with Credit 6 and above in their
SPM (Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia) and/or with a score of 4 and above for their
MUET (Malaysian University Entry Examination) English. This does not sound
acceptable as candidates with lesser scores will not be able to gain entry into our
institution. However, this choice could solve a lot of the proficiency problems
because students should have at least the intermediate level of English to help
them through comfortably in all their academic activities. Another reason is that
we the language teachers have a clear understanding that the undergraduates
already acquired the intermediate or advance stage of English.
The steps given, we hope could speed up our undergraduates’ language
proficiency.
5.2.2
Recommendation for Future Studies
i.
To carry out a comparison study between the writing produced by “good”
students and “weak” students to find out which level (low or/and high
level) of errors they both produced.
ii.
To find out the problems on the language conventions used in students’
report writing.
iii.
To find out undergraduate learning strategies in acquiring English.
iv.
To find out whether problem based learning and teaching could be the
appropriate approach to effective language acquisition.
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APPENDIX A
Examples Of Sentences With Errors As They Were Produced By Students:
1)
Nowadays, standards of English in rural secondary school are faced problem.
2)
From the Year 1998 to 2000, normally the total to get A1 – A2 between ethnic
group are same. Just maybe have increase 1 to 3 students. Besides that the gred
in fail students are increase between ethnic group around 1 to 20 students. In year
1998, the most of students fail are Chinese, this because they learn in Chinese, but
in year 2000, the highest was Malay students, there are 31 students, this happened
because the total of students to sit for the SPM exam are increase.
2)
A result of survey are indicate that, the factors of Questionnaire are fill by
students are the most important to increase our English language standard. The
main factors were not motivated to learn English are very serious, it because when
student don’t have motivation to learning, so, automatically, they can’t get a good
result in SPM English language and speaking in English.
3)
Teachers are try to proficient in English.
4)
Number of students who are score grades C3 to P8 also unsuitable to know. This
is because most of them; Malay, Chinese and Indian excep Indigenous are became
lower.
5)
From the findings of the study, I can said that our students are knowed how
important to master in English.
6)
The lowest races were indigenous students in year 1998.
7)
From the bar charts, we know that the highest number of student were failed SPM
English Language at a year 1998 was Chinese and about 17 students. Malay the
highest number of student were failed SPM English language than Indian with 12
students. Meanwhile the indigenous was the 5 of students were failed in SPM
English Language.
8)
The number of Chinese students who got P7 – P8 was decreased on a year 2000
with the 50 of students.
9)
However, there were not changing the number of students who were get A1 and
A2, it is 16 of them.
10)
Environment, friends and ideology made rural student unmotivated, hate and hard
in expertise the subject.
11)
The groups of highest of the table the number of students SPM English language
grades for the years 1998 and 2000 according to ethnic group is a Malay in this
case because a among of number of the secondary school very big and then
percentage of the A1 and A2 or fail also very big. Amount the student malay for
A1 and A2 for the 2000 is a same. And this problem because overall student
malay no motived for the learn English, for the group Chinese, they have most
motivated to personal. The group Indian, the number of student discrease because
thy are cannot understand to make or learning English. And for group
indigenous, they have lowest because amount student at this five school very
small and this amount the A1 dan A2 for the years 1998 dan 2000 very small.
12)
The English language among rural school children as reported by many quarter of
the population for the exchallenge of the english language the are have motivated
to learn English of any time and the school have the teacher of professional for
the study students at the secondary school. And the all students and teachers have
positive attitude towards the English. We can also practice english language any
time. And education department can will have the text books English to all
school for student learning this books.
13)
This report we will can tell me about the rangking factor who the ethnic at the
place above? And the information to all, why the student can not and very poor
about the English language. And we can to amount the student for can A1 and
A2, C3 to C6, P7 to P8 and fail for the ethnic group such as Malay, Chinese,
Indian and indigenous.
14)
In this case, because the overall teachers study to secondary school least to
Diploma education and can not same the lecturer English at IPTA.
15)
In year 1998 and 2000, the number of Malay students are score A1-A2 are same.
16)
The questionnaire give it to students after SPM, teachers, parents and others. I
also do the interview from them. The observation doing in the schools among the
student in every form.
For the conclusion we can sound that the low performance in English not only
caused by individual but also their background.
Unquestionable, the
environmental was left the impact to us to learn English. But the most important
thing was our aspiration to learn it. We can’t blame our circumtance not allow we
to learn and master the languages. This phenomena had proved by the table 1. It
is not motivated to learn English was stand steadily of most serious reason in
learning English. Although our main language is Bahasa Malaysia but the
English is the International language. Just imagine if we failed to master English,
how many chances had lost from our hand just because we lazy to learn or refused
to learn it ?
17)
18)
Realised on the important of English, English Language is been teaching in the
school, no matter in the primary school, secondary school, or even in the many
institution in our country.
19)
In order to carried out the data and findings, the following recommended are
English language must be the medium language in school or college. Ministry of
Education supposed to launch the English campaignt. English campaignt is allow
students read more English material book and get prizes to whose student read
many English book.
20)
We from English Language Officer in the Education Department had been surved
a 5 secondary schools in South Johor to find out the reasons behind the declining
standards of English in rural secondary schools. This survey was by different
ethnic group according to SPM English Language Grades for the years 1998 and
2000.
21)
Some other reasons is teacher are not proficient in English cause that student
cannot conqurer the English for their future especially exam.
22)
English is the international language and must study for them.
23)
Always read English book and newspaper
24)
Always do exercise and speak everytime also everywhere.
25)
Student must love English such as love their girlfriend.
26)
To get a standart same like any rice.
27)
1 are the very serious for 10 are least serious. The highest factor were the first
rangking are their not get motivated to learn English.
28)
Learn English to be carefully
29)
30)
Must get a many more motivates.
In years 1998, Chinese student who get result fail are 17 students. (This type of
sentence was repeated for one and a half page)
31)
From they survey, I found that most of the teachers who teaching in the rural
school could not speak and teached well in English and most of the were not from
their study in English
32)
The Chinese students also decrease from 52 at 1998 to 50 at 2000.
33)
The drastic step need to take for increase we English language and not become
English blind.
34)
It is because the students (verb) not interest (adjective) in learning English due to
they (pronoun) not very well (adverb) known (wrong choice of word) about the
important (noun) of English in nowadays (spelling).
.
35)
Secondly, most of the teacher are not well-educated and there were some of them
were broken in English. Although, the teacher have degree from local university
but, they cannot manage to learn the proficient English proper.
36)
A lot of teachers are not good in English, that why their no have any interest on
that subject.
37)
Based on that, the weak teacher are not prepared well-service training.
38)
Steady deterioration of the English Language among rural school are seems to
come to its worse.
39)
Based on these findings, parents, teacher, schools, community and the student
itself should motivated themselves so there would no long be this kind of
situation.
40)
It is must be to perfect the self communication to community. Now, the English
language in Malaysia is so important. The rising rate English language among
rural school children as many quarters of the population. They standart languiage
not same between the race. This is courses the teacher, their attitude, text books
and others.
41)
Recommendations: Must get a many more motivate; learn English to be
carefully; speaking English our times.
42)
The teachers also must give the student extra class and extra revision books. This
will make them not only learn in text books.
43)
This factors will make their self-motivation decreased to study English as a
medium instruction.
44)
In findings and analyses, I as an English Language Officer in the Education
Department interpret the data with table and bar chart.
45)
Furthermore, teachers have not any technic to teach English into good ways. The
lack of teaching aids is not profect which had use is school.
46)
Environment, friends and ideology made rural student unmotivated, hate and hard
in expertise the subject.
APPENDIX B
Errors Produced When Using Verbs
i)
We interpret that rural student think that this subject doesn’t so important
compare to the other subject.
ii)
However insufficient money in our Department maked us impossible to fulfill
this factor at this moment.
iii)
Many type of factor why the problem going on.
iv)
From they survey, I found that most of the teachers who teaching in the rural
school could not speak and teached well in English and most of the were not
from their study in English.
v)
One of the cause why the student didn’t motivated because their parents are not
give him a lesson at home and not encourage the students to talk at home.
vi)
English standards in rural secondary school were declined steady.
vii)
So, I as a language officer in the Education Department have been conducted a
study to find out the reasons behind the declining standards of English in rural
secondary school (given in the instruction).
viii)
Our scope was conducted 5 secondary schools in South Johor.
ix)
It was due to 10 factors which leaded (word formation) to the deterioration of
English.
x)
Teachers playing a big role in teaching.
xi)
Teachers are try to proficient in English.
xii)
From the findings of the study, I can said that our students are knowed how
important to master in English but they are not motivated to learn English.
xiii)
The study are focusing to the students of 5 secondary schools in South Johor.
xiv)
We were separated them according to Ethnic Group for the years 1998 and 2000.
xv)
The ten factor were students do not motivated to learn English …
xvi)
We have specified 10 factors that are usually been used as a reason among
student of why the deterioration of English was happened to them.
xvii)
I’m also have identified 5 secondary schools in South Johor as my sample.
xviii) I’m also received reported by many quarters of population.
APPENDIX C
Errors in Prepositions
i)
Look to both year 1998 and 2000.
ii)
To have tuition class of English at school.
iii)
Let oral in English becomes one of the subject in the examination.
iv)
At 1988, 61 of malay students get this grades and the number of them were
decreased to 55 students at year 2000.
v)
Maybe they still ashamed to speak because maybe their friend will laugh to them.
vi)
English language was important to our people in this time.
vii)
Meanwhile, by the table 1, we can conclude that there were 10 factors had been
identified as the reason of deterioration of the English language.
viii)
In this research, the data obtained by questionnaire, interview, and observation.
APPENDIX D
Errors in Infinitive “to”
i)
So we should co-operate to increased the standard of English among the students.
i)
The student a need to get motivation and energy to success in their study.
ii)
In the conclusion, the effectiveness solution must be taken to overcoming solve
this problem.
APPENDIX E
Errors in Subject-Verb Agreement
i)
From the survey, I analyses every data and do the graph to identified the number
of students in different ethnic group.
ii)
Rank 4 show the factors that is no opportunity to practice English
iii)
They do not know how important English Language are.
iv)
Most of the reason is in rural area it do not have enough facilities rather than
unrural area.
v)
The table and figure shows reasons and the grades by ethnic which has collected
from 5 secondary schools (passive construction) in South Johor.
APPENDIX F
Errors in Passive Construction
i)
The highest rate of the student is among Malay, follows by Chinese, Indian and
Indigenous.
ii)
It is ranking no. 1.
iii)
Students should exposed to more materials and book in English such as English
new paper and story book to improve their language.
iv)
The drastic step need to take for increase we English language and not become
English blind.
v)
The facilities in rural area should add by the government.
vi)
I have been identified 5 secondary school in South Johor as my sample.
vii)
Suitable text books also have to offer for rural school.
viii)
I had been interviewed (wrong choice of verb) 5 professors from different field
and find out their opinion about this topic of study.
ix)
The questionnaire give it to students after SPM, teacher, parents, and other.
x)
The observation doing in the schools among the student in every form.
iii)
In the some of duration time, students should be attends or join the English
language campaigns, …
Errors in Past Perfect Construction (In Passive)
i)
A study was carry out.
ii)
All the factors at these problem was already shows.
iii)
Extra classes should carry out for those students who weak in English.
APPENDIX G
Errors in Modals
i)
The interesting text books will to attract the student to like to study in English.
ii)
The Education Department must prepared the good teachers in English and
willing to be posted to rural area.
iii)
To solve this problem, we must co-operated each others.
iv)
Base on what we had findings, we can concluted that the first factors …
v)
This situation will made students did not like English and they will had negative
attitude towards English.
vi)
The old and the damage aids can not attractive student to love English.
iv)
… we can recommend that the government should has a campaign about how
important English Language are.
v)
In the some of duration time, students should be attends or join the English
language campaigns, …
vi)
If the teachers themselves not proficient in English, the students will lost
confident to the teachers.
vii)
Teachers must interest and willing to be posted to rural area.
viii)
All of us must work together to solve the problem because it is a serious diseases
that can harmful our country development.
APPENDIX H
Errors in Past Participals (Past Perfect)
i)
… but the number had falled down to 15 students in the years 2000.
ii)
As a former British Coloni, English had became one of the major language used
in Malaysia.
Errors in Past Participle Construction
i)
As a conclusion, many factors caused the declining of English standard in rural
secondary school.
APPENDIX I
Errors in Determiner
i)
Many type of factor why the problem going on.
ii)
Most of the looser were Malays.
i)
Most of the reason is in rural area.
ii)
In the some of duration time, students should be attends or join the English
language campaigns, …
APPENDIX J
Errors in Adjective
i)
Data-collected method
ii)
To find out why the decline standard of English in rural secondry school.
iii)
The old and the damage aids can not attractive student to love English.
iv)
They have to speak English with their foreigner teachers because their teacher
will not understand if they speak their own language.
v)
From the table 1, the seriously factor caused the deterioration of English was
because not motivated to learn English.
vi)
Before attends English class, teachers should have a well performance in English
because their skills on guides students in study will effectuated.
vii)
Although Bahasa Malaysia is very important as our nation language, people must
also learn English.
viii)
Education Department should send well training teachers to the rural school so
that they can help the students.
ix)
The teachers also the very important factors, if no proficient teacher in teaching
English, student couldn’t get the correctly format to sit for exam and when teacher
didn’t have materials to teaching, it’s students for students, becose can’t learn
without materials.
APPENDIX K
Errors in Relative Pronoun
iv)
There were 10 questions had been created in the questionnaire to obtain the
opinion from the students …
v)
The second serious is the teachers which teaching them are not proficient in
English.
vi)
They (they for there – repeated many times) were 40 students fail in English.
APPENDIX L
Errors in Adverb
i)
… English standards in rural secondary school were declined steady.
i)
Down ranking number two was the teachers themself were not proficient in
English and might teach the wrong thing to the students.
ii)
Down Forward was factor that lack of teaching aids or materials and this
somehow lead teachers cannot teaching English efficiently.
iii)
It was seen that the number of students who got A1 and A2 in English language
did not increase so far.
APPENDIX M
Errors in Pronoun
i)
Students in rural liked to use their mother tongue in communication so that their
were not interested in learning English.
ii)
Overall the ethnic that suffer to major deterioration of English language were
Malay and Chinese which both of them score the highest increasing percentages
of students who fail or down grades.
iii)
From the survey, in 1998 and 2000, they (there – repeated many times) were 400
candidates of SPM.
iv)
They parents did not trained them to speak English when they were still young.
v)
They wanted they lecturer become more interesting and lighting.
vi)
That because they knew how the knowledge important to theirself.
vii)
We can’t blame our circumstance not allow we to learn and master the languages.
APPENDIX N
Errors in Singular-Plural
i)
This two reason will make us lack to English.
ii)
For the finding, we can conclude that the deterioration of English is unavoidable
due to the ten factor given.
iii)
Giving free English reading materials to the peoples in public area.
APPENDIX O
Errors in Phrase
ix)
… and in one other hand, we almost only used ours mother tongue language to
communicate daily.
x)
In the other hand, the number of students who fail were oppositely increase from
40 students in year 1998 to 73 students in year 2000.
xi)
In the some of duration time, students should be attends or join the English
language campaigns, …
xii)
In spite of, some of good teachers, meaning that the teachers who are good in
English.
xiii)
At the end of all, using unsuitable text books as a references. Many of
grammatical error and lack of exercise.
xiv)
In conclusion, the most serious factor was no motivation to learn English.
xv)
In the conclusion, the effectiveness solution must be taken to overcoming solve
this problem.
APPENDIX P
Errors on “ING”-Verb
i)
Follow it was factors of teachers are not proficient in English in rank 2 and
factors of lack of teaching aids or materials in rank 3.
ii)
Before attends English class, teachers should have a well performance in English
because their skills on guides students in study will effectuated.
iii)
The great teachers exactly will not lack of interest in teach students and there are
willing to be posted to rural area.
iv)
Realised on the important of English, English Language is been teaching in the
school, no matter in the primary school, secondary school, or even in the many
institution in our country.
v)
And the teacher in rural area also must always impoved themselves by attend
“training class”
APPENDIX R
Errors in Articles, A/An/The
i)
They also must be a hardworking students to do an exercise and always ak to
their teachers if they have any problems …
ii)
English is important because it is international language and it is easy to make a
communication if all people can speak in English.
iii)
The number of students that were failed in English increased in year 2000
compared to year 1998 in all ethnic group no matter Malay, Chinese, Indian or
indigenous.
APPENDIX S
Examples of Paragraphs (Bad)
i)
From rank 4 to rank 10 there is other factors are the problem behind decline of
standard. Rank 4 show the factors that is no opportunity to practice english.
Sometime student didn’t ignore English subject and when whey in class major are
speak malay and that cause them no time to practice English.
ii)
This report we will can tell me about the ranking factor and who the ethnic at the
place above? And the information to all, why the student can not and very poor
about the English language. And we can to amount the student for can A1 and
A2, C3 to C6, P7 to P8 and fail for the ethnic group such as Malay, Chinese,
Indian and indigenous.
iii)
The first ranking is a not motivated to learn English. Why this not motivated
happened because overall student can not motivated and this will can started from
the family. Ranking two about the teachers are not proficient in English. In this
case, because the overall teachers study to secondary school least to Diploma
education and can not same the lecturer English at IPTA. And the last ranking
about unsuitable text books in this problem this school can not or can make text
books English a the school library. The all factor, and very important we can to
motivated and studying with hard for learn and for expected to English.
iv)
The groups of highest of the table the number of students SPM English language
grades for the years 1998 and 2000 according to ethnic group is a Malay in this
case because a amoung of number at the secondary school very big and then
percentage of the A1 and A2 or fail also very big. Amount the student malay for
A1 and A2 for the two years is a same. And this problem because overall student
Malay no motived for the learn English for the group Chinese, they have most
motivated to personal. The group Indian, the number of student discrease because
they are can not understand to make or learning English And for group
indigenous, they have lowest because amount student at this five school very
small and this amount the A1 and A2 for the years 1998 and 200 very small.
v)
This figure 1 about the number of students SPM English language grades for the
years 1998 and 2000 and according to ethnic group. Group Malay, the number of
student at the year 1998 increase to year 2000 with the increasing amount 8
peoples. But, the numbner of students for A1 and A2 with mount the same with
16 peoples for C3 to C6 descrease with the 5 people and for p7 to p8 also descrese
with total 6 peoples and fail increase with total 19 peoples. For the group
Chinese, two years at this discrease with total 8 peoples. With the number of
student for years 1998 amount 152 peoples and the year 200 amount 140 student.
And for A1 and A2 decrease amount the 3 student. For group Indian, the bar graf
same with the bar graf Chinese where discrease with total one student. And for
P7 to P8 this total for two years is same with 18 student. The number of student
for the group indigenous, increase for two years with 8 students. And the number
of student for can A1 and A2 lowest from the group Malay, Chinese and Indian
with one student for years 1998 and 2 students for the years 2000.
vi)
Cause students failure in English so many. Here we put parts of first factor. First
is the students not motivated to learn English (this sentence was given). They feel
an English not important for them and they like to use their mother language.
Second, teacher are not proficient in English (given). They don’t know how to
teach their student. They only know speak English but don’t know to teach.
Third is no opportunity to practice English and negative attitude towards English
(given). They think English for west life only. Environment also become cause
students fail in English. Condition in class very important. The students need the
giant class and fresh air. Last, have not suitable text book for students to refer
their learning.
vii)
In this research, the data obtained by questionnaire interview and observation.
The questionnaire give it to students after SPM, teachers, parents and others. I
also do the interview from them. The observation doing in the schools among the
student in every form.
viii)
The teachers must lack out the negative mind and try to be a nice teachers and
favourite teachers in the class. Teachers must teaching interesting and go to inservice training.
ix)
The bar graph shows the number of students in every rate. The highest rate of the
student is among Malay, follows by Chinese, Indian and Indigenous. In year
1998 and 2000, the number of Malay students are score A1 – A2 are same. The
grade C3 – C6 is decrease in year 2000 also in grade P7 – P8. The students are
failed is increase in every rate. The Chinese student are decrease students in
grade A1 – A2. In grade C3 – C6 decrease 5 students and in grade P7 – P8 also
decrease 2 students. The Chinese students is increase in year 2000 in fail grade 8
students. The Indian student also decrease in year 2000 but the Indigenous
students only increase in year 2000 in grade A1 – A2 and C3 – C6.
x)
Base on what I have done, we can conclude that most of the malay students were
had a matters a good skills in English. Besides that, many factors caused was the
important thing for teacher or students to make sure they like the english. If the
students not do well in their English examination it will effects their result and
maybe they can’t exit to university. So, it was important to students to improve
their English and to knews the English was importants to them.
xi)
Provided a night-class to students and teachers that are not good in English. Also
give a motivation to teacher about the important of English without thinking the
certain area. No need to choose the area, if the spirit of teaching and helps others
existed in their humanity.
xii)
It was possible to claim that the lack of interest on teaching English in schools are
not relevant in the this millenium’s era. This is because, there is many kind of
ways to make the way of teaching became more enjoyable to students and cause,
the duty of the teacher will be easier. Examples, the internet materials can be use
to tech students about English without having difficult to find informations in a
book about any kind of facts. The graphics picture from the computer screen also
will help a lots on understands the English learning process. Actually, it depends
on the willing of the English teachers. They should be more alert of any kind of
changes that happen on this world so that there is no more reasons why there is
teachers who lack interest and having problems of less materials. As we know,
the rural schools is usually situated far away from towns and lack of
accommodations. Because of this reasons, there is many teachers who did not
willing to posted to these area. The teachers will have difficulties to teach their
students without having a good accommodations at schools examples, computers
and others.
xiii)
Nowadays, our country had excellence (verb) performance in may sectors such
as technology, education, sports, business even in heavy industralise (noun –
word formation). But, why the standard of English Language of our student made
a lot of worried to our society? Refer to our report, we found that not only
teachers even if parents, they didn’t concerned about the achievement of English
language of their pupils or outsprings. From our repot, we also agree that the
deterioration of the English Language influence by one’s background. It is
means one’s culture and race.
xiv)
For the others communities in Malaysia. It’s had 5 peoples failed in 1998 but the
number had gained double in the years 2000 it is 10 peoples. In1998, 8 students
had got P7 – P8 and the number were same in 2000. 10 students of indigenous
achieved grades C3 – C6 in 1998 but had 12 students got the same grades in 2000.
However, only one student achieve best result in SPM for the English paper and
two students were successed to get grades A1 A2 in the years 2000.
vi)
For the conclusion, we can sound that the low performance in English not
caused by individual but also their background. Unquestionable, the
environmental was left the impact to us to learn English. But the most important
thing was our aspiration to learn it. We can’t blame our circumstance not allow
we to learn and master the languages. This phenomena had proved by the table
1, it is not motivated to learn English was stand steadily of most serious reason
in learning English. Although our main language is Bahasa Malaysia but the
English is the Internasional language. Just imagine, if we failed to master
English, how many chances had lost from our hand just because we lazy to
learn or refused to learn it?
vii)
And the teacher in rural area also must always impoved themselves by attend
“training class” And built a public library in each rural school if the goverment
can affort it. As we know, the rural students were poor and they shortage in
belongs their own books.
xv)
The figure 1 shows that the SPM English Language grades for the years 1998 and
2000 according to Ethnic Group. For year 1998, Malay are have 16 students get
gred A1-A2. 79 students are get C3-C6, 61 students get P7-P8 and 12 students
are fail.
APPENDIX T
Examples of “Acceptable” Sentences/Paragraph Development
i)
From the survey we know that the deteriorating of the students’ level of
English become very serious in recent years. There were many factors behind
the problems. The main factor was the students were not motivated in
learning English. This problems must be solved to ensure the students to have
a brighter future. To achieve that, more English teachers should be trained
and posted especially to the rural schools. It was to expose the students the
usage of English before entering university.
ii)
To overcome this problem, more experienced and good English teachers
should be transfer to the rural area. Even though teachers prefer to teach town
schools, government can offer other incentives such as extra allowences, free
air tickets and etc, to attract them.
iii)
School principals also can introduce English week once a month in their
school. They can invite officer from the Education Department to have a
activities such as essay writing competition, debates, quiz and many more.
They should avoid having speech or other activities which can bore the
students. This step should be continues to gain a good feedback from the
students.
APPENDIX U
Examples of Wrong Word Choice/Word Formation/Wrong Phrasal
choice
1)
… because at city we can have materials everyway (for everywhere), but in rural
area it’s difficult.
2)
… the percentage of students who failed in SPM English was raising (for
rising)between 1998 and 2000 from 10% to 18.25%.
3)
The Education department must take action to build up English library (to build
up the accumulation of English materials) or consist English language in slibers
(for syllabus).
4)
From analyses in SPM English Language grades for the years 1998 and 2000
according to ethnic group, number of students failed was added (for increase/d)
every years.
5)
… and they (for there) were lack of proficient English teachers.
6)
The contain (for content) are same and it is the most suitable books for them.
7)
Students think and fell (for feel) that learning English Language is difficult and
waste time.
8)
This problem caused by many reasons as we stated in front (for earlier).
9)
While at 2000, the amount (for number) of students scored a distinction was
same as year 1998.
10)
Teks books are supported (for supplied) to student which it can help them to
learned read and speak.
11)
Firstly, make (for organize/offer) a training to the teacher who want to teach
English
12)
To fulfilled this report we identified 5 secondary schools in South Johor as the
scope to find out the root sources (for causes) deterioration of English
Language…
13)
… and the lack of teaching materials could be caused by a low (for
insufficient/lack of) substitution (for provision) of financial from the government
to the rural schools.
14)
Most of the looser (probably the weaker learners/achievers) were Malays.
15)
The indigenous students were little (the number is small) because Malay, Chinese
and Indian are the three big (for major) races in Malaysia.
16)
In Malay rice (for race – repeated five times) in 1998 12 student was failed, 61
student get P7 – P8 …
17)
Besides, the number of students that gained extinction (for distinction) in SPM
was also decreasing.
18)
Following was the 9th factor as most teachers were not willing to be posted to
rural area and resulting unsufficient (for insufficient) teacher in rural area. In
spite of, Malay students are most week for (weak) compareds with other ethnic.
19)
In the other had, the number of students who fail were oppositely (probably for
sharply or significantly) increase from 40 students in year 1998 to 73 students in
year 2000.
20)
Put out the negative attitude towards English.
21)
Overall the ethnic that suffer to major deterioration of English language were
Malay and Chinese which both of them score the highest increasing percentages
of students who fail or down grades (with low/weak grades).
22)
At 1998, 18 students in Indian Ethnic not credit in their English and that number
exchange at year 2000.
23)
In this school the teacher are not influence (for fluent) in English because some of
the teacher are not based on original English (probably for native speakers).
24)
We cannot just point the witnesses (for weaknesses) to the students only, but the
teachers also need to improve their English to teach the students.
25)
Exactly, we should responsible to insufficient (for solve) these problem.
26)
Secondly, teachers are not very well (for proficient/good) in English it means,
they did not proficient in English.
27)
Fourthly, there’s were not opportunity to practice English for the weakers (for
weak learners/students).
28)
We can make Singapore as our rule (role) model.
29)
They wanted they lecturer become more interesting and lighting (probably for
enlightening or entertaining).
30)
In person, it will be very hard to that particulate (word formation) people to face
the increasing globalization where English is a major need.
31)
From that we know the malay are the week (for weak – spelling or wwch) ethnic
in English in rural secondry (spelling) school.
32)
… the percentage of students who failed in SPM English was raising (for rising)
between 1998 and 2000 from 10% to 18.25%.
33)
The Ministry of Education should expense (for spend) more to increase the
teaching aids.
34)
Give student more motivated to learn English.
35)
Sometime student didn’t ignore English subject and when they in class major (for
the majority) are speak malay and that cause them no time to practice English.
36)
Positive attitude towards English will help them to determine their weakness and
repair themself in English.
37)
Secondly, most of the teacher are not well-educated and there were some of them
were broken in English. Although, the teacher have degree from local university
but, they cannot manage to learn the proficient English proper.
APPENDIX V
Spelling Errors
i)
Readers dijes for Readers Digest.
ii)
Besides, most of the referens book and text book were in Malay.
iii)
Students should exposed to more materials and book in English such as English
new paper and story book to improve their language.
iv)
Down ranking number two was the teachers themselves were not proficient in
English and might teach the wrong thing to the students.
v)
To get a standart same like any rice.
vi)
From rank 4 to rank 10 there is other factors are the promblem behind decline of
standard.
vii)
Summing up students todays are the leaders of tommors.
APPENDIX W: Marking Scheme UHB 2332 (JBM, FPPSM)
MARKING SCHEME UHB 2332, JABATAN BAHASA MODEN, FPPSM, UTM
Score
Component
Content and
Organisation
Score
Component
Language
Excellent
- Presents and describes
data very clearly
- Provides relevant
conclusions and
recommendations
- Links ideas coherently
- Presents information in
report format (appropriate
headings, subheadings,
numbering, sequencing)
Excellent
- Displays wide variety
of sentence structure
- Very appropriate and
varied vocabulary
- Hardly any grammatical
inaccuracies
Good
Fair
Weak
- Presents and
describes
data
clearly
-Shows
some
critical analysis of
data
- Provides some
relevant
conclusions
and
recommendations
- Links ideas quite
coherently
Presents
information
in
report
format
(appropriate
headings,
subheadings,
numbering,
sequencing)
Presents
and
describes data quite
clearly
- Shows superficial
analysis of data
Provides
conclusions
and
recommendations;
some of which are
irrelevant
- Lacks coherence in
presentation of ideas
- Does not follow
report
format
(inappropriate
headings,
subheadings,
numbering,
sequencing)
Fair
- Lacks clarity
in presentation
and description
of data
- Shows very
superficial
analysis of data
Does
not
provide
conclusions and
recommendations
- No coherence
in presentation of
ideas
Does not
follow
report
format
(inappropriate
headings,
subheadings,
numbering,
sequencing)
Weak
- Displays rather
wide variety of
sentence structure
- Displays limited
variety of sentence
structure
- No variety of
sentence
structure
-Reasonably
appropriate
and
varied vocabulary
- Inappropriate and
limited vocabulary
- Inappropriate
and very limited
vocabulary
Good
- Few grammatical
inaccuracies
- Many grammatical
inaccuracies
- Major grammatical
inaccuracies
which impede
meaning
APPENDIX X(i): Samples of Bad Scripts
Bad script 1
Bad Script 1
Bad Script 1
Bad Script 1
Bad Script 2
Bad Script 2
Bad Script 2
Bad Script 2
Bad Script 3
Bad Script 3
Bad Script 3
Bad Script 4
Bad Script 4
Bad Script 4
Bad Script 4
Bad Script 4
Bad Script 5
Bad Script 5
Bad Script 5
Bad Script 6
Bad Script 6
Bad Script 6
Bad Script 6
Bad Script 6
Bad Script 6
Bad Script 7
Bad Script 7
Bad Script 7
Bad Script 8
Bad Script 8
Bad Script 8
Bad Script 8
Bad Script 8
Bad Script 8
Bad Script 9
Bad Script 9
Bad Script 9
Bad Script 9
Bad Script 10
Bad Script 10
Bad Script 10
Bad Script 10
Bad Script 10
Bad Script 10
Bad Script 11
Bad Script 11
Bad Script 11
Bad Script 11
Bad Script 12
Bad Script 12
Bad Script 12
APPENDIX X(ii): Samples of Acceptable Script
Good Script 1
Good Script 1
Good Script 1
APPENDIX Y: Seminar Paper Presented
SEMINAR KEBANGSAAN MEMPERKASAKAN SISTEM
PENDIDIKAN
Common Errors Produced by UTM students in Report Writing
By
Sahirah Marzuki
Zaidah Zainal
Jabatan Bahasa Moden, FPPSM, UTM
Abstract
Students entering tertiary level of education are expected to have the linguistic
competence in English to be able to perform in their academic activities. One of the tasks
they need to perform is report writing. With the linguistic competence expected, students
are required to produce good reports. Our observation, however, shows that students have
the tendency to produce errors at both micro and macro levels. The purpose of this study,
therefore, is to investigate errors produced by students when writing reports. For this
purpose, 59 examination scripts produced by students from the Faculty of Science, UTM
were analysed. Common errors were coded to determine the frequency of occurrence of
these errors. The findings show that students tend to produce grammatical errors such as
subject-verb-agreement, active/passive construction, singular-plural and the use of past
participles, to name a few. Grammatically, all the errors were found to be structural ones
and these had resulted in the construction of flawed sentences. On the basis of these
findings, we recommend that grammar should be explicitly taught to future students to
give them the opportunity to improve their grammar in writing.
Common Errors Produced by UTM students in Report Writing
By
Sahirah Marzuki
Zaidah Zainal
Jabatan Bahasa Moden, FPPSM, UTM
1.0
Introduction
In learning and acquiring a second language, a learner is bound to make errors. As
many researchers claim, making errors is inevitable in second language acquisition (see
Dulay, Burt and Krashen, 1982, Zainal, 1990 and Brown, 2000). Since making errors is
considered part and parcel of language learning, we need to investigate into the nature of
errors commonly produced by students.
What are errors? According to Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982), errors represent
the language deviations produced by a learner when completing a task. The deviations are
clearly defined by comparing the errors with the norms of a language production. In sum,
Dulay Burt and Krashen (1982:138) note that ‘errors are the flawed side of learner speech
or writing.’ Brown (2000) suggests that a clear distinction between errors and mistakes
needs to be made. To Brown, errors are deviations that cannot be self-corrected while
mistakes can. This means errors reflect the competence level of a learner, i.e. what the
learner actually knows about the language system, while mistakes reflect the performance
level of a learner, i.e. what slips the learners produced even though they may know the
language system. This study undertakes to examine the errors that reflect a learner’s
competence level.
Many theories and hypotheses have been developed in an attempt to explain the
phenomenon of error production in second language. Among the many, there seem to be
two hypotheses popularly used in investigating and analysing errors produced by
learners. The first approach relates to the notion of contrastive analysis hypothesis
(CAH), an approach which compares the students’ L1 structure to their L2 structure
produced in their report writing. The approach is said to provide the platform for
researchers to systematically investigate errors and in turn provides the basis for ‘an
empirical method of prediction.’ (Brown, 2000: 209). Brown (2000 :208) notes that:
… the CAH claimed that the principal barrier to second language
acquisition is the interference of the first language system, and that a
scientific, structural analysis of the two languages in question would yield
a taxonomy of linguistic contrast between them which in turn would
enable the linguist to predict the difficulties a learner would encounter.
This seems to suggest that CAH aims at identifying and predicting the problems faced by
learners during the language learning process. As learners have already established or
developed their own L1 system, the tendency for them to extend this L1 system to their
developing L2 system is high. The term ‘interference’ seems to be the main factor in
causing the production of errors by a learner. Zainal (1990: 47) in her study with
Malaysian learners, for instance, claims that ‘the transfer errors depicted in this article via
the students’ writing samples, have shown that the problems of learning English is due to
the frequent interference of L1 structure. What can be concluded here is that the students
are relying very heavily on the L1 structure while learning L2. This has resulted in the
regular substitutions and literal translation of Bahasa Malaysia words to English.’
In her study, Zainal (1990) suggests two main categories of errors produced by
Malaysian learners in their essays. The first category of errors relates to morphological
errors which include the omission of grammatical morphemes such as ‘s’ , ‘es’ in subjectverb-agreement and apostrophe ‘s’ in the possessive structure. The second category of
errors relates to syntactical errors, such as past tense agreement and auxiliaries. All these
forms do not exist in Bahasa Malaysia, resulting in the tendency for the students to omit
these forms in their essays.
Despite its widely used theory regarding errors, CAH has, however, received
criticisms. Whitman and Jackson (1972) in Brown (2000), for instance, point to the
inadequacies of CAH. They conclude that CAH fails to theoretically explain the
behaviour of a language learner. Furthermore, they also note that this hypothesis fails to
predict the interference (Littlewood, 1984) problems faced by a learner.
From CAH, the movement swings to another type of hypothesis, error analysis
hypothesis (EAH). Unlike CAH, EAH suggests that learner errors are not solely caused
by the learner’s L1, but rather by his developing L2 knowledge which is not yet stable.
Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982: 138) sum up:
Error analysis has yielded insights into the L2 acquisition process that
have stimulated major changes in teaching practices. Perhaps its most
controversial contribution has been the discovery that the majority of the
grammatical errors second language learners make do not reflect the
learner’s mother tongue but are very much like those young children make
as they learn a first language. Researchers have found that like L1
learners’ errors, most of the errors L2 learners make indicate they are
gradually building an L2 rule system.
Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982:138) suggest six kinds of errors produced by learners.
1. omitting grammatical morphemes
2. double marking
3. regularising
4. using archiforms
5. using two or more forms in random alteration
6. misordering.
These six categories suggest the tendency for learners to produce errors relating to their
development in the L2 system. As their L2 system is not yet stabilised, they tend to
produce systematic errors based on their understanding of the new language system.
These two hypotheses, CAH and EAH have provided insights into the behaviour
of second language learners. Because of their characteristics, they are used to explain the
data in this study.
1.1 Objective of the Study
The objective of this study is to investigate errors produced by students when
writing reports and to find out the problems they faced in their writing performance. To
explain this phenomenon empirically, we employed the two hypotheses mentioned
earlier.
1.2
Methodology
For this purpose, 59 examination scripts produced by a group of students from the
Faculty of Science, UTM were analysed. These students who took English for
Professional Communication were students from Faculty of Science who were following
different courses.
These courses were Bachelor of Science (Health), Bachelor of
Education (Physics) and Bachelor or Science (Chemistry). The task given to them was to
write a 3-4 page report from information (data) given in the examination question. The
report was to contain the sections on introduction, findings and analyses, conclusions and
recommendations. Please refer to appendix (i) for the final examination question.
Common errors were coded using the SPSS win. to determine the frequency of
occurrence of these errors. For the purpose of this presentation, we categorise the errors
into several categories. The data will be explained qualitatively in order to demonstrate
the occurrence of this phenomenon.
The Department of Modern Languages’ marking scheme (Table 1) was used as a
guide for marking the examination scripts.
Table 1: Marking scheme for Language Category
Score
Component
Language
Excellent
- Displays wide variety
of sentence structure
- Very appropriate and
varied vocabulary
- Hardly any grammatical
inaccuracies
Good
Fair
Weak
- Displays rather
wide variety of
sentence structure
- Displays limited
variety of sentence
structure
- No variety of
sentence
structure
-Reasonably
appropriate
and
varied vocabulary
- Inappropriate and
limited vocabulary
- Inappropriate
and very limited
vocabulary
- Many grammatical
inaccuracies
- Major grammatical
inaccuracies
which impede
meaning
(Source: UHB 2232/2332 Marking Scheme for Final Examination, Jabatan Bahasa Moden, UTM)
- Few grammatical
inaccuracies
See Appendix (ii) marking scheme
2.0
Findings and Discussion
2.1
Classification of Errors
The findings showed that the writing samples studied contain language errors
related to grammar, sentence and paragraph development, spelling and vocabulary. For
this paper, we are focussing on errors produced when students attempted to complete an
authentic task of writing a report in an examination situation. In general, students were
found to produce grammatical errors, which resulted in the production of flawed
sentences in their paragraph development.
2.2 Grammatical Errors
Overall, students were found to produce all categories of grammatical errors:
Singular and Plural (subject-verb agreement), verbs and verb-formation, article ‘the’,
singular-plural, adjectives, nouns, passives, relative pronouns, infinitive ‘to’, missing
verbs, modals, adverbs and, past participles used in passives. Besides these, the findings
show that the students also had problems with spelling, construction of phrases
vocabulary, sentence construction and, paragraph development.
This paper, however, concentrates on six classifications of errors that are found to
be the most frequently occurring ones. The six most frequently occurring errors were the
Singular and Plural (Subject-Verb agreement errors). It was found to be 91.5%. This is
followed by verb related errors (89.8%), article ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘the’ (89.8%), singular-plural
(74.6%), adjectives (64.4%) the passives (57.6%) and nouns (55.9%). These structural
classifications are based on Azar’s (1981) taxonomy.
2.3 Singular and Plural (subject-verb agreement)
The following table shows some examples of errors produced in students’ writing.
Table 2: Examples of Subject-Verb Agreement Errors and the acceptable version
of the errors
SINGULAR AND PLURAL (SUBJECT- ACCEPTABLE VERSION
VERB AGREEMENT ERRORS)
a) *From the survey, I analyses every data and
do the graph to identified the number of
students in different ethnic group.
b) *Rank 4 show the factors that is no
opportunity to practice English.
c) *They do not know how important English
Language are.
d) *Most of the reason is in rural area it do not
have enough facilities rather than unrural
area.
(*) denotes flawed sentences
… I analyse every data …
Rank 4 shows the factors …
…English language is.
… it does not have enough …
Based on Table 2, sentences (a) – (d) show the difficulties students encountered to
produce acceptable sentences in the target language. In (a) for example, the writer was
probably confused with the application of subject-verb agreement. The first fact is the
writer has to know that the pronoun ‘I’ (the subject) must be followed by the verb
‘analyse’ in the simple present tense. In sentence (b), the writer applied the L1 grammar
rule in his/her L2 production and this led to the occurrence of error. In Malay and
Chinese language, there is no grammatical morphemes such as ‘s’, or ‘es’ in subject-verb
agreement and therefore no singular or plural verb exist in Malay and Chinese. Verbs
remain the same whether they are used with singular or plural subjects or nouns. These
interference of L1 had caused the error to occur. Thus, it is important for students to
understand clearly on the rules of the target language in order to accurately apply them
when using the language.
This supports Ellis’ (1985) claim that second language
acquisition is strongly influenced by the learners’ L1. In addition, we the writers believe
that foreign or second language learners must be taught the grammar of the language.
We have to discreetly teach them grammar in order for them to clearly understand the
structure. Understanding the rules would enable them to avoid errors.
The excerpts above demonstrate micro level errors. The addition and omission of
morpheme ‘s’ in (a) and (b) do not affect the overall meaning of the clauses. Since the
problem is localized, these errors can easily be pointed out to students.
2.4 Verb related Errors
Another type of error detected relates to verb and verb formation. The following
excerpts are used to explain the findings.
Table 3: Verb-related Errors
xi)
*From they survey, I found that most of the teachers who teaching in the
rural school could not speak and teached well in English and most of the were not
from their study in English.
xii)
*One of the cause why the student didn’t motivated because their parents are
not give him a lesson at home and not encourage the students to talk at home.
xiii)
*English standards in rural secondary school were declined steady.
xiv)
*So, I as a language officer in the Education Department have been
conducted a study to find out the reasons behind the declining standards of
English in rural secondary school (in italic: given in the instruction).
xv)
*Our scope was conducted 5 secondary schools in South Johor.
xvi)
*It was due to 10 factors which leaded to the deterioration of English.
xvii)
*Teachers are try to proficient in English.
xviii)
*From the findings of the study, I can said that our students are knowed how
important to master in English but they are not motivated to learn English.
xix)
*We were separated them according to Ethnic Group for the years 1998 and
2000.
xx)
*We have specified 10 factors that are usually been used as a reason among
student of why the derioration of English was happened to them.
(*) denotes flawed sentences
Sentences (i) – (x) show various types of errors that reflect the inclination of
students to turn to L1 in an attempt to complete the writing task. Sentence (i), for
example, shows that the writer omitted the copula verb ‘are’ or ‘were’ in ‘ who
teaching’. The following verb ‘teached’ in (i) shows students’ unstable application of
the past tense for irregular verb. Generalising from the rule that ‘ed’ should be added to
regular verbs, the writer applies the rule to all other verbs. Other errors in the sentences
given are examples of how students perform when they do not have enough knowledge
on the rules of the target language. These errors could be classified as developmental, in
the sense that students’ errors in L2 indicate that they are gradually building the L2
system (Dulay, Burt and Krashen , 1982).
2.5 Article ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’
Errors related to articles are abundant.
understanding how and when to use articles.
Students clearly have problems in
The following examples suggest the
confusion they had in applying articles in their writing.
Table 4: Errors in the application of Articles
vi)
*They also must be a hardworking students to do an exercise and
always ask to their teachers if they have any problems …
vii)
*English is important because it is international language and it is
easy to make a communication if all people can speak in English.
viii)
*The number of students that were failed in English increased in
year 2000 compared to year 1998 in all ethnic group no matter Malay,
Chinese, Indian or indigenous.
ix)
*The groups of highest of the table the number of students SPM
English language grades for the years 1998 and 2000 according to ethnic
group is a Malay in this case because a among of number of the
secondary school very big and then percentage of the A1 and A2 or fail
also very big. Amount the student malay for A1 and A2 for the 2000 is a
same. And this problem because overall student malay no motived for the
learn English, for the group Chinese, they have most motivated to
personal. The group Indian, the number of student discrease because they
are cannot understand to make or learning English. And for group
indigenous, they have lowest because amount student at this five school
very small and this amount the A1 dan A2 for the years 1998 dan 2000
very small.
x)
*Must get a many more motivates.
(*) denotes flawed sentences
Sentence (i) demonstrates the student’s inability to understand the notion of
singularity and plurality in English. The phrase ‘a hardworking students’ suggests the
students’ inability to see that article ‘a’ should not be aligned with plural noun ‘students’.
Whether this problem is due to the student’s L1 influence (CAH) or his L2 development
(EAH) is still unclear. However, we suspect that both hypotheses can be applied to
explain this phenomenon.
Similar to the discussion in 2.4 (verb-related Errors), articles in English are not
found in the students’ mother tongue and the lack of the knowledge on English grammar
had prompted them to produce errors that show the learners are developing the
acquisition of the new language being learnt.
2.6 Singular-Plural
The next type of error found relates to the notion of singularity and plurality of
nouns. To explain this, let us observe the following examples.
Table 5: Singular-Plural Errors and the acceptable version of the errors
SINGULAR-PLURAL ERRORS
ACCEPTABLE
VERSION
a) *This two reason will make us lack to English. These two reasons will…
b) * For the finding, we can conclude that the
deterioration of English is unavoidable due to
the ten factor given.
c) *Giving free English reading materials to the
peoples in public area.
d) *English campaignt is allow students read
more English material book and gt prizes to
whose students read many English book.
e) *Secondly, most of the teacher are not welleducated and there were some of them were
broken in English.
(*) denotes flawed sentences.
… due to ten factors …
… to the people …
…English
materials/books … read
many English books.
…most of the teachers …
Sentences (a), (b), (d) and (e) seem to demonstrate a pattern in the production of
errors. Since plurality in English is marked in the nouns, therefore, the phrases ‘this two
reason’ in (a) or ‘ten factor’ in (b) clearly violate the grammatical rules of English
language. This type of error is found throughout the students’ writing, suggesting their
inability to understand the whole notion of singularity and plurality fully.
In sentence (c), however, the student generalizes the idea of adding the morpheme
‘s’ to plural noun ‘people’. This generalization, however, results in a faulty sentence.
Overall, CAH can be used to explain this phenomenon.
In the students mother tongue, nouns are not pluralised and the morpheme ‘s’ or
‘es’ are not added after the noun to denote plural number. As a result, students created
errors by transferring the L1 theory to L2. This frequent L1 interference is shown in all
other categories of grammar error. We believe, the most practical way to solve this
problem is to equip them with the knowledge on singular-plural (noun-non-count noun).
2.7 Adjectives
Adjectives are also found to be problematic among the students. The following
excerpts demonstrate the problem.
Table 6: Examples of Adjectival Errors
viii)
*Data-collected (data collecting) method.
ix)
*To find out why the decline standard (declining standard) of
English in rural secondry school.
x)
*The old and the damage aids (damaged aids) can not attractive
student to love English.
xi)
*They have to speak English with their foreigner teachers (foreign
teachers) because their teacher will not understand if they speak their
own language.
xii)
*From the table 1, the seriously factor (serious factor) caused the
deterioration of English was because not motivated to learn English.
xiii)
*Before attends English class, teachers should have a well (good)
performance in English because their skills on guides students in
study will effectuated.
xiv)
*Education Department should send well training teachers (welltrained teachers) to the rural school so that they can help the students.
(*) denotes flawed sentences
The examples of the adjective errors produced by students in (i) – (iv), clearly
show their inability to apply L2 rules when writing. Students need to understand the
types of compound adjectives that are found in English, how they are formed and when to
use them in the text. This is because in the students’ L1, adjectives are applied after
nouns and compound adjectives are not found in their L1. Although the errors show that
students are learning to develop their L2 and that their L2 ability is still not stable, they
have to be taught the L2 rules in order to speed up their acquisition of the language. As
teachers, we believe that being in the tertiary education, students should by now know
how to correct their own errors. Instead, they were found to be still making errors in their
L2. Steps should be taken to ensure that learners understand the grammar rules of the
target language to help solve their difficulties in acquiring the language.
2.8 Passive Errors
Another problematic area is the passive construction. Table 7 shows some of the
examples.
Table 7: Examples of Passive Errors and the acceptable version of the errors
PASSIVE ERRORS
ACCEPTABLE VERSION
… followed by …
a) *The highest rate of the student is among
Malay, follows by Chinese, Indian and
Indigenous.
b) *It is ranking no. 1.
c) *Students should exposed to more
materials and book in English such as
English new paper and story book to
improve their language.
It is ranked no. 1.
Students should be exposed to
…
d) *The drastic step need to take for increase
… step needed to be taken …
we English language and not become
or should be taken …
English blind.
e) *The facilities in rural area should add by
the government.
The facilities … should be
added by …
f) *Suitable text books also have to offer for
rural school.
(*) denotes flawed sentences
Suitable text books also have
to be offered …
Table 7 shows passive errors students produced in their writing. Based on our
experience and observation, passive construction proved to be the most difficult category
for students to comprehend. They have to understand how passives are formed and the
knowledge of past participles that needs to be applied in the passives. Because of these,
students must be taught exactly how passives are used. They are to be drilled on this
component to enable them to perform in their L2. If this is not carried out, errors as in
Table 7 will continue to exist.
2.9
Description of errors produced
All the errors analysed in the 59 answer scripts were found to be structural errors.
However, some errors found were not serious and did not impede meaning while some
others did. Examples given in 2.3 – 2.8 are some of the structural errors that did not
impede or seriously impede the meaning of the content presented. Both proficient and
weaker students were found to produce these types of errors. There was one student
however, who did not produce grammar errors in his writing. This student qualified
himself to belong to the category of ‘excellent’ based on the marking scheme for English
for Professional Communication course, designed by Department of Modern Languages,
UTM. A total of 23% of the students were under the category of ‘good’, 45% fair and,
30% was considered to be ‘weak’.
The weak learners were those who were not proficient in the language and they
produced all other categories of errors, such as infinitive ‘to’, modals, adverbs, adjectives
and, determiners. They were also found to have difficulties in producing correct phrases
and sentences and developing good paragraphs. Some of these flawed sentences may
impede the meaning intended by the writers.
The following examples are sentences that were produced by weak students in
their writing. These examples could impede the meaning of the content:
E.g.
i) *Nowadays, standards of English in rural secondary school are faced problem.
ii) *To get a standart same like any rice
iii)*This report we will can tell me about the rangking factor who the ethnic at the
place above? And the information to all, why the student can not and very
poor about the English language. And we can to amount the student for can
A1 and A2, C3 to C6, P7 to P8 and fail for the ethnic group such as Malay,
Chinese, Indian and indigenous.
iv)*Most of the looser (probably the weaker learners/achievers) were Malays.
v)*In Malay rice in 1998 12 student was failed, 61 student get P7 – P8 …
vi)*We can make Singapore as our rule (role) model.
From flawed sentences weak students were found to develop unacceptable
paragraphs as seen in the following examples:
i)
*The first ranking is a not motivated to learn English. Why this not motivated
happened because overall student can not motivated and this will can started from
the family. Ranking two about the teachers are not proficient in English. In this
case, because the overall teachers study to secondary school least to Diploma
education and can not same the lecturer English at IPTA. And the last ranking
about unsuitable text books in this problem this school can not or can make text
books English a the school library. The all factor, and very important we can to
motivated and studying with hard for learn and for expected to English.
ii)
*For the conclusion, we can sound that the low performance in English not
caused by individual but also their background.
Unquestionable, the
environmental was left the impact to us to learn English. But the most important
thing was our aspiration to learn it. We can’t blame our circumstance not allow
we to learn and master the languages. This phenomena had proved by the table 1,
it is not motivated to learn English was stand steadily of most serious reason in
learning English.
Although our main language is Bahasa Malaysia but the
English is the International language. Just imagine, if we failed to master English,
how many chances had lost from our hand just because we lazy to learn or refused
to learn it.
The examples of texts given in 2.9 (sentences and paragraphs) do not reflect
students who had received sufficient language instruction.
collected,
all
When the sample was
students had completed 11 years of primary and secondary school
education where English was taught to them throughout their education in schools. At the
university level, they had undergone three levels of English courses offered by UTM
(UHB 1312, Proficiency Skills in English; UHB 1222, English for Academic
(*) denotes flawed sentence construction
Communication; UHB 2232, English for Professional Communication). However, we
have not been able to change the students’ level of proficiency much. This could
probably caused by our neglect to teach grammar discreetly.
3.0
Conclusion
As a conclusion, when this study was carried out, we found that students in our
institution were still producing serious errors at micro and macro levels. The causes of
these errors are explained using CAH and EAH. It was proven that ‘interference’ of the
L1 system seems to be the main factor in causing the production of the errors. When
students rely heavily on L1, errors will recur and the process of L2 development will be
very much slower. In addition to this, we the writers believe that our students’ errors
were made as a result of lack of knowledge on the rules of the target language. We
therefore recommend that grammar should be taught discreetly to speed up L2
acquisition.
4.0
Recommendation
i)
Grammar should be taught discreetly. Students should have the knowledge on
grammar rules to ensure that they could apply them when they write.
ii)
Remedial programme for grammar could be built into the English programme
offered and more contact hours may be allocated for remedial programme.
Evaluation (quizzes and examination) should reflect the implementation of the
programme and the allocation of contact hours.
iii)
Students should have their own initiatives to have more contact with the language.
This could be done through extensive reading (books, journals, etc.) and using the
language in the real context, both oral and written. These steps, we believe could
speed up their language proficiency.
NOTE: This study was made possible through Vote No. 75013 (RMC,UTM)
References
Azar, B. S. (1981). Understanding and Using English Grammar. Prentice-Hall.
Brown, H.D. (2000). Principles of language learning and teaching (4th edition).
Longman.
Dulay, H. , Burt, M. & Krashen, S. (1982). Language Two. Oxford University Press.
•
Ellis, R. (1985). Understanding Second Language Acquisition. OUP.
•
Richards, J. C, Platt, J. and Platt, H. (1992). Longman Dictionary of Language
Teaching and Applied Linguistics. Longman.
Whitman, R. and Jackson, K. L. (1972). The unpredictability of contrastive analysis.
Language Learning.
Zainal, Z. (1990). Contrastive analysis: the problems of L1 interference faced by UTM
students when learning English. ELA, 3 (July), 40-49.
APPENDIX Z: CD of 59 Examination Transcripts Analysed