Construction of English Grammar Syllabus:
Focus On the Construction of
Simple Sentences
ADBUL HALIM BIN IBRAHIM, M.Ed.
ABDUL GHANI BIN HJ ABU, Ph.D.
KOD PENYELIDIKAN: 01-03-26-08
-
UNIVERSITIPENDIDIKAN SULTAN IDRIS
2009
DECLARATION
We hereby declare that the work in this report is our own except for the quotations and
summaries which have been duly acknowledged.
Date: 30 August 2009
Signature:
Name: Abdul Halim bin Ibrahim.
Head Researcher
Ill
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
It would not have been possible to complete this study without the great support
and help of a number of people whom we would like to acknowledge and thank.
First of all, we would like to express our deepest appreciation to the Research
Management Centre, UPSI, for the research grant and all the facilities provided
for us to conduct and complete this study.
Secondly we also want to extend our special thanks to the Dean of Faculty of
Languages and all the staff who had provided all the necessary help in the course
of the study.
We also extend sincere thanks to many dear friends at the Faculty of Languages,
who provided us valuable thoughtful insights and comments in conducting this
study.
Finally, we wish to express our sincere gratitude to all the school heads, teachers
and students who had volunteered and given us the opportunity to collect all the
data needed for the study.
IV
ABSTRACT
The ability to produce and understand sentences is prerequisite to learning but many
Malaysian students face serious problem in producing and understanding them. In this
study, the knowledge and skills of simple sentence construction among 600 rural/urban
students were investigated; observation and interviews with their teachers were carried
out to investigate whether teachers taught sentence building. The students were asked to
translate 80 Bahasa Melayu sentences into English. Their sentences were analyzed for
accuracy and errors based on 8 different sentence patterns and different forms such as
questions and passive. The results show that students' ability to construct sentences was
very poor. The easiest sentence pattern was NP + be + NP and the most difficult pattern
was NP + VP in the perfect. Their skills in forming all question forms were poor
especially in using correct auxiliaries. The poor ability to construct simple sentences was
evident due to the negligence of teachers in teaching the skills.
V
ABSTRAK
Pengetahuan dan keraahiran dalam membina ayat simpleks merupakan prasyarat dalam
pembelajaran walhal ramai pelajar menghadapi masalah untuk membina ayat simpleks
yang gramatis. Di dalam kajian ini, pengetahuan dan kemahiran membina ayat simpleks
di kalangan 600 orang pelajar Melayu diselidiki dengan menggunakan ujian terjemahan.
Pemerhatian dan temu-bual dilakukan terhadap guru untuk mengetahui sama ada mereka
mengajar kemahiran membina ayat. Sebanyak 80 ayat Bahasa Melayu daripada 8 jenis
pola merangkunii bentuk pernyataan, pasif dan soalan digunakan dalam ujian. Ayat
terjemahan ke dalam bahasa Inggeris oleh pelajar dianalisa bagi menentukan ayat
gramatis atau tidak. Dapatan menunjukkan kemahiran pelajar sangat rendah. Pola ayat
simpleks NP + be + NP adalah mudah dan bentuk NP + VP dalam kala perfect and
perfect progressive amat lemah penguasaannya dikalangan pelajar. Kemahiran membuat
soalan amat lemah terutama dalam penggunaan kata bantu auxiliariy. Kelemahan ini
sangat ketara memandangan guru tidak memberi perhatian sewajarnya dalam mengajar
pengetahuan dan kemahiran membina ayat simpleks.
Table of Contents
Page
Declaration
Acknowledgements
Abstract
Abstrak
1.0
2.0
3.0
4.0
5.0
6.0
7.0
8.0
9.0
10.0
Introduction
The components of grammar
The focus of grammar lesson
Teaching of ESL/EFL
Objectives
Research Questions
Methodology
Results
8.1
Research Question 1
8.2
Research Question 2
Discussions
91.
Research Question 1
9.2
Research Question 2
Implications on Teaching
References
Appendices
ii
iii
iv
v
1
6
18
20
25
25
26
32
32
35
39
39
40
41
56
vii
List of Tables
Page
Table 1 Framework of analysis
Table 2 Present Tense - Positive
Table 3 Positive Present Tense Wh, Tag and Yes/No Questions
Table 4 Negative Simple Present
Table 5 Negative Simple Present Wh, Tag, Yes/No questions
Table 6 Simple Past
Table 7 Simple Past Wh, Tag, Yes/No questions
Table 8 Negative Simple Past
Table 9 Negative Simple Past Wh, Tag and Yes/No questions
Table 10 The focus of language lessons
Table 11 Spontaneous respond to the focus of language lessons
Table 12 The focus of language lessons
Table 13 Integrating grammar with skills
Table 14 Dimensions of language units
32
32
33
33
33
34
34
35
35
36
36
37
38
42
List of Figures
Page
Figure 1 The contents of a language lesson
Figure 2 Sampling Procedures
18
28
1
1.0
INTRODUCTION
The decline of the English language in Malaysia has been a major interest among
educators, the public and the Ministry of Education (MOE). Many academicians
acknowledge the deterioration in the standard of English Language among primary and
secondary school students and believe it is inevitable due to the fact that English is no
more the medium of instruction in schools (Asmah, 1981). In order to improve the
standards of English, in 2002, MOE introduced a very controversial policy, the teaching
of Mathematics and Science in English (Etems). However, many studies on Etems have
shown that the policy is discriminating the rural students and very unpopular among the
Malays. Recently, MOE reverses its English policy on Etems but the debate on falling
English standards in the country reignited when the deputy prime minister suggested
making English a compulsory pass before getting a high-school certificate. The many
scenarios reveal that English language is going to be a major challenge in the education
system especially in upgrading the competencies among Malaysian students for many
years to come.
Many studies have shown the disparity between the urban and rural students in
mastering English even though it has always been taught as a second language in
Malaysia. Many perceived it as a foreign language especially the rural students and in
fact, English does not play any part in their lives outside school. Unlike the urban
students, the rural students also suffer from a lack of access to good English teachers and
materials. It is questionable whether the syllabus and learning materials supplied by MOE
suit the learning strategies of the rural students. For example the communicative
approach which is currently advocated has many controversies when applied to students
learning English as a foreign language.
Swan (1985) believes that during the mid 1980's, the English Language Teaching
(ELT) profession underwent a major paradigm shift from the focus on communication to
the focus of form and structure in teaching language learners. This change started when
some educators began to question many aspects of Communicative Language Teaching
(CLT). One of the problems of ELT has been in the inability to define exactly what is
2
meant by "communicative language teaching." Jennings and Doyle (1996) state that CLT
has contributed to "unprincipled eclecticism varying from teachers to teachers". Shortall
(1996) points out that the "failure to clarify CLT has allowed for a wide range of
approaches (e.g. Silent Way, Notional-Functional, etc.) to be called communicative." He
also reports that popular applications of many of these approaches have tended to reduce
or to reject the explicit teaching of grammar. Skehan (1996) states that this trend in CLT
to focus on verbal fluency over formal accuracy "runs the risk of learners becoming
confined to the strategic solutions they develop, without sufficient focus for structural
change or accuracy," (1996:30). Ratnawati (1996) claims that many Malaysian teachers
have problems in integrating language lessons within the framework of language skills
and grammar, and topics. Batstone (1994) also warns that such an unbalanced approach
to language teaching can lead to the early fossilization of the learners' language skills
(1995:229). The result has been a renewed interest on the part of many language teachers
in Pedagogic Grammar (PG). Many language teachers have expressed that it is necessary
to consider correcting the imbalance between fluency and accuracy caused by the ELT
community's obsession with CLT.
In Malaysia, CLT was adopted in the early 1970s. CLT is based on the notion that
learners as communicators are naturally endowed with the ability to learn languages and
the target language system in many predictable and unpredictable acts of communication
which arises both in classroom interaction and in real-world situations. Learners develop
language competency from lessons in the classroom as well as subsequent use of the
language outside the classrooms (Yalden, 1987). This approach is normally associated
with the Canadian immersion programs which aim at the achievement of both academic
and L2 learning through an integration of language teaching and content teaching. It
generally has great successes in many areas of the students' language development (e.g.
listening comprehension, fluency, functional abilities, confidence in using the L2);
however, these learners have also been found to have problems in some aspects of the
target language (TL) grammar, especially in morpho-syntactic areas, even after many
years in these programs (Harley & Swain 1984; Swain 1985; Harley 1986, 1992). Swain
(1985) argues that one of the important reasons for this is that these learners engage in
too little language production, which prevents them from going beyond a functional level
3
of L2 proficiency. Many teachers adapt immersion programs without being aware or
without even considering the nature of the learners' background. For example, the
immersion program in Canadian classrooms actually consisted of French speaking
students as well as English speaking students. This situation provides a good environment
for French speaking students to use English with their English speaking friends and is
able to benefit from it. However, the situation in Malaysia is not the same. Even though
students of different races are put together in the national school, most of them hardly
speak English. The situation does not permit Malay students to use and improve English
as the French students do in Canadian immersion programs with their English speaking
classmates.
The other important consideration which is normally neglected by teachers is the
students' different linguistic backgrounds. Settings refer to places where formal
acquisition and learning occur such as schools. A natural setting for L2 acquisition is one
where the L2 is used normally for everyday communicative purposes. The rural setting is
similar to the learning of English as a foreign language (EFL) where students learn and
use English only in the classrooms. There is no support from the environment that
permits students to use the L2 purposefully in a natural interactive communication. The
urban setting is similar to ESL setting where students have a lot of support from the
environment especially in the use of L2 in interactive communication outside their
classrooms. The difference between urban and rural setting is based on the interactive
use of language and support from the environment and not demographic in the normal
sense. Some teachers fail to address the different needs of students in their classrooms.
For example, there are native speakers whose home language is English, and who learn
the language naturally from their parents who use the English language at home or in
their neighborhoods. However, the majority of students, especially those who live in rural
areas whereby the contact with the English language is very minimal, learn English in a
foreign language setting (Mohd Sofi, 2003). These students are normally deprived of
quality input and obviously they will need different types of input to help them learn the
L2 effectively.
Malaysian students come from a mixed language background and are being
exposed to the English language in different ways. Different settings permit different
4
opportunities for language input and use in areas where Malays is the dominant group.
For this group, Bahasa Malaysia will usually be the main language used in
communication. In the urban setting, English is used more widely among the Malay
students since they have the privilege of interacting with other people in the environment
apart from their teachers. The use of English outside the classroom enables the students
to practice and improve their language, especially through conversational interaction.
Urban setting therefore is similar to learning English as an L2 (ESL) where it provides
learners with the opportunities for naturalistic exposure and conversation with fluent
English speakers in the classroom as well as in the community. The rural setting on the
other hand is similar to learning an L2 in a foreign language setting (EFL) which limits
students' exposure to the input provided only by the teachers and the opportunities for
natural use of the language such as conversation is constrained as this is done only with
teachers through classroom and textbook experiences. With different quality of exposure
to the target-language (TL), urban students normally have richer language input as
compared to rural students and these differences might affect the learning of ESL/EFL.
Currently, not all teachers would instantly welcome a resurgence of pedagogic
grammar in TESL (Kerr,1993). Chalker (1994) notes that many classroom teachers
equate grammar with the acquisition of some set of rules that are at times contradictory
and at other times confusing. In Japan, a survey of the preferences of 572 English
language learners showed that grammar was ranked as the least favorable item for study
in a language lesson (Ryan,1996). This implies that grammar as a concept means
different things to different people. For people who speak English as their first language,
grammar is often connected to Structuralist Grammars. However, in Malaysia and many
other countries, it relates to the communicative approach. Tonkyn (1994) relates how the
influence of structural grammar went through a steady decline by the late 1960s.
Linguists and educators alike disagreed on the best way to teach grammar, and years of
research advised against the teaching of structuralist grammars either to native speakers
or second language learners (Hillocks & Smith, 1991).
Grammar is an abstract system of rules (Chomsky, 1976) and because it is
abstract it poses great problems for teachers who have little procedural knowledge of the
language and limited teaching techniques or approaches to produce successful grammar
5
lessons (Kamarul Kabilan, Muhammad, 2007). The abstract nature of language makes it
difficult for teachers to organize aspects of grammar and consequently the subject matter
becomes unexciting and dry. Gribbin (2005) notes that grammar often goes untaught and
concedes that students have had limited success with grammar competence whether the
content is taught in or out of context. Pillay (1995) indicates that teachers are unclear of
the role of grammar in the KBSM teaching of English. Similarly, Abdul Halim and
Mariam (2007) note that teachers do not teach linguistic cues in reading but focus on the
topics as if they are subject matter teachers.
Many educators wish to improve this area of their practice as Gribbin (2005) and
Nunan (2005) confess to being tempted to "desert teaching grammar altogether," because
the success rate is so small in terms of making the connection between grammar exercises
and writing (Nunan, 2005, 71). Mariam and Abdul Halim (2006) note that it is true that
grammar is taught solely in isolation or solely through out of context approach.
However, if a systematic strategy is employed by incorporating both isolated and out of
context instruction students will learn that grammar and writing are intricately related
which builds sentence structure understanding and promotes awareness, growth and
improvement in writing and reading complex, meaningful works (Sams, 2003, 57).
The quality of L2 instruction in schools depends on the quality of input provided
by teachers based on suitable teaching techniques used in the classrooms (Ellis, 2006).
Learning L2 in explicit teaching classrooms requires critical comprehensible input,
whether it is from the natural speech or explicit teaching (Norris & Ortega, 2000). A
learner must have perceptual ability that will determine how much the learner will
receive from the input. The different quality of input significantly provides different pace
of acquisition among the learners. The input reveals how well learners have prepared
themselves to infer morpheme forms from a continuous speech stream or explicit
classroom teaching. They do not receive the speech stream as a discrete sequence of
individual sounds. The input and the perceptual ability together are the basis for any
learners to acquire a morpheme for understanding and producing larger linguistic units
such as words, phrases or sentences. Without adequate input, a learner will not be able to
develop morphological knowledge or lexicon, let alone a language. Hence, without
6
proper perception of input, a learner cannot receive adequate input, and therefore cannot
acquire any language properly (Norris & Ortega, 2000).
Effective teachers provide better input to the students in terms of good language
models, easy presentation and suitable learning experiences (Larsen-Freeman, 1990,
Burden & Byrd, 2003; Ornstein & Lasley, 2004). Even though, all teachers have to use
the syllabus provided by the Ministry of Education, the interpretation of the syllabus is
crucial in determining a successful learning program such as using suitable learning
materials and teaching approaches. There is no way a student in a foreign language
acquisition (FLA) environment can get good language input if the teacher does not
provide it. Quality input obviously depends on the quality of teaching and the ability of
the teachers in teaching the subject and whether they can motivate learners to learn
effectively. One of the most used teaching methods in Malaysian schools is the
communicative method or approach. However, there is a conflict between the official
syllabus, the textbook syllabus and the examination syllabus putting teachers in a
dilemma over what to teach (Pillay & North, 1997). The official syllabus and the
textbooks stress topics or themes; whereas, teachers focus on examinations by teaching to
the tests rather than developing the language skills. It is therefore unclear whether
teachers develop the skills of segmenting the language units explicitly or implicitly based
on the communicative approach in teaching grammar or specifically vocabulary.
2.0
The Components of Grammar
Ability to construct correct sentences is perhaps the most fundamental of language skills,
and writing a simple sentence or having a simple conversation is anything but a simple
process, particularly if someone is learning a new language. Simple sentences are not
easy sentences. The term simple is used by teachers for first language learners but for L2
learners the more appropriate term should be basic simple sentences. The only simple
thing about simple sentences is that it requires only a subject and a predicate (e.g. He
slept). In many cases, simple sentences are constructed using more complex phrase
structures (e.g. The ruler of Palembang).
7
Language units are abstract concepts which require teachers to discuss each unit
in terms of forms, structure, functions and meaning. Figure 1 depicts the matrix of
language unit and its dimensions which ESL/EFL students need to know in order to be
competent and teachers are required to develop these concepts in the teaching of
grammar especially in sentence construction. In this way the abstract concepts can be
concretized in order to help learners to learn. The language units must be understood
when ESL learners want to construct or process sentences in English. Language
knowledge of all the units is required in order to construct a full sentence. However, in
conversation, a fully formed grammatical sentence is sometimes not needed if a word
suffices.
A word is called a free morpheme—a unit of language that can stand on its own
and convey meaning (bus, apply, often). In contrast, bound morphemes are always
connected to words. These include prefixes, such as un- or pre-, as well as suffixes, such
as -tion, -s or -ed. Often, during the pressure of speaking, it is difficult for English
learners to use the expected suffixes—especially if their native language does not utilize
these kinds of morphemes as grammatical markers.
At the initial stage of language acquisition, students must be able to learn
morphological parses and be able to discriminate different morphological and syntactic
segmentation of different linguistic units such as morphemes, words, phrases, clauses and
sentences which are meaningful in the target language. In acquiring morphemes, students
have to discover whether certain affixes are bound or free morpheme. For example, a
student learning English must be able to discover that the word-initial unit, re is a prefix,
and also that the word remake is prefixed, where as the word retail, probably is not, even
though it begins with re. Later, a learner must discover the syntactic and semantic
properties associated with each affix in the language, in order to be able to produce and
understand new words. For example, an ESL/EFL learner must discover that re is a prefix
that is attached to verbs to create other verbs with different meanings (e.g. re + make).
However, to learn the morphological properties of an affix, the learner must first of all
notice the existence of that affix (e.g. re + make).
Knowledge on morphemes is very important in the development of first and
second language (Hannahs & Stotko, 1997; Bardovig-Harlig, 1999, 2000; Salaberry &
8
Shirai, 2002). Morphemes are the smallest meaningful linguistic units used to build other
units, such as words, phrases, utterances, and syntax. Therefore, knowledge on
morphemes is very important in learning word building, semantics or pragmatics in any
language (Bardovig-Harlig, 1999, 2000). The acquisition of morphemes is considered as
a significant initial step towards the proper development of language competence (Pinker
& Prince, 1992; Bardovig-Harlig, 1999, 2000; Murphy, 2000; Salaberry & Shirai, 2002).
Many language development studies, for example those found in Berninger (2001) and
Green et al, (2003) show that morphological knowledge is the basic linguistic knowledge
which is important in the learning of reading and writing, listening and speaking skills
(Carlisle, 2000).
Grammatical morphemes include both bound and free morphemes. Verbal and
nominal suffixes like past tense ed in Ali jumped and the plural s in Birds are flying are
bound grammatical morphemes, and free are like those of the auxiliary verb be in
constructions like Ali is running and as in copula be, Ali is here as well as auxiliary-do in
Do you play football? and the articles in the bird and a bird. Grammatical morphemes are
structure class which are different from content morphemes such as the noun bird and the
verbs play and fly..
A word is a unit which is an element or a part of a phrase, a clause, a sentence and
discourse level. A sound or a combination of sounds represent symbols and communicate
a meaning. Words contain morphemes which can be single or a range of morphemes. A
word is the smallest free form in a language; on the other hand a morpheme is the
smallest unit of meaning. Words are combined to form other units of language.
Basic forms of words:
•
Verb:
state
means a doing word that usually denotes an action, an occurrence or a
of
being.
Examples: help, bring, sing, make
•
Noun:
a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing or abstract idea.
Nouns are usually the first words we learn.
Examples: book, neighbor, friend
9
•
Adjective:
modifies a noun or pronoun by describing, identifying or
quantifying words.
Examples: tall girl, sweet home, blessed person
•
Adverb: modifies a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a phrase or a clause. An
adverb
indicates
manner,
time, place, cause,
or degree and answers
questions such as 'how,' 'when,' 'where,' and 'how much'.
Examples: down, yesterday, upstairs
•
Articles: A small word that comes before a noun. There are two types of articles.
Examples: Definite article - the
Indefinite articles - a, an
•
Determiners: Comes at the beginning of noun phrases but they are not
adjectives.
Examples: The moon, this house, my doll, a nice day
•
Suffix:
An affix which has been placed at the end of a word
Example: girls, worked, kindly
•
Prefix:
An affix which has been added to the front of a word
Examples: misunderstand, underestimate, unexpected
In teaching vocabulary, a teacher is required to address not only the meaning of words
but also the rules of word formation and structures. For example,
1.
Colorful
noun + ful
Beautiful
same pattern
Grateful
2.
Dancer
verb + er
Runner
same pattern
Singer
Different forms of words produce different functions, for example, verb forms
show an acting situation, adjective words describe certain situations, people or things,
tense words show current happening, actions that have taken place before and will talce
11
adverbial in sentence structures. Prepositional phrases function as post-modifiers of a
noun in phrase structure, post-modifiers of an adjective in phrase structure and as
adverbials in sentence structures.
A clause is two or more words that contain a verb marked for tense and a
grammatical subject. Independent clauses are complete sentences that can stand on their
own ("Juan went to work"), whereas dependent clauses cannot ("While Juan was going
to work . . ."). In contrast, a phrase is two or more words that function as a unit but do not
have a subject or a verb marked for tense. These include prepositional phrases ("in the
hospital" or "after school") and infinitive phrases ("to drive" or "to move up"). Clauses
and phrases do not usually appear alone in formal writing, but they are quite common in
speech. Both clauses and phrases can be utterances, as can individual words, the next
level in the pyramid. A clause is an expression including a subject and predicate but not
constituting a complete sentence. The basic kind of sentence consists of a single clause
and more complicated sentences may contain multiple clauses including clauses
contained within clauses.
An adverbial clause contains a subject and a full verb. An adverbial clause begins
with a subordinating conjunction, which makes the clause subordinate or dependent. For
example: I saw the movie before I left for Ipoh. The adverbial clause has a subject (I) and
a fall verb (left). It is introduced by 'before', so it is a dependent clause. This means that
it cannot stand alone: 'before I left for Ipoh' would not be a full sentence. It needs a main
clause (T saw the movie'). An adverbial clause, then, is a dependent clause that does the
same job as an adverb or an adverbial phrase.
A relative clause is also called adjectival clause because it modifies a noun
phrase. It begins with relative pronoun such as who, whom, whose, that or which. For
example, (a) The students who are active in sports will be healthier and (b) There is a
new book that shows good moral values.
Clauses are structured in exactly the same patterns as sentences. Any clause can
be identified as transitive active, transitive passive, intransitive linking or intransitive
complete. In other words, when one knows the patterns of sentences, one also knows the
pattern of clauses. For example:
13
command is. For example (a) Pass the paper to her and (b) Wash the windows! (4) An
exclamatory sentence is a more forceful version of a declarative sentence, marked at the
end with an exclamation mark. It shows strong feelings. Declarative, imperative, or
interrogative sentences can be made into exclamatory sentences by
punctuating
them with an exclamation mark. For example (a) Stop that man! and (b) Wow, what a
wonderful surprise!
Sentences can be transformed into various forms such as WH questions, yes/no
questions, negative forms and so on. For example, a base form 'He is fine' can be
transformed as the following.
How is he?
WH question
Is he fine?
Yes/ No question
He is fine, right?
Tag
He was fine.
Simple past tense
He is not fine.
Negative contraction
Pattern
Carries a same collection of structure.
Example:
Subject + Verb + Object
She + carries + a book.
She + eats + rice.
Same SVO
He + plays + hockey.
Structure.
They + collects + stamps.
Structure
The sentence struture consists of a subject and a predicate. The subject names the topic
and the predicate tells about the subject. A sentence with one subject and one predicate is
called a simple sentence. The receiver of actions is called the object. A Simple sentence
contains only one clause. Usually the sentence has a subject as well as a predicate and
both the subject and the predicate may have modifiers. Simple sentences can range from
very short to very long independent clauses. For example, (a) The girl ran into her
bedroom. This simple sentence has one independent clause which contains one subject,
girl, and one predicate, ran into her bedroom.
14
A compound sentence consists of two or more independent clauses. These clauses
are connected either with a semi-colon or with a comma and coordinating conjunction
such as for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so and others. For examples, 'Tan wanted to be a
lecturer, so he applied for masters program'.
The clauses are connected with a comma and the coordinating conjunction 'so,'
which indicates that a relationship exists between the two, and that this relationship is one
of'cause/effect.'
A complex sentence has one dependent clause which is headed by a subordinating
conjunction or a relative pronoun, joined to an independent clause. For example, (a)
Because I couldn't fall asleep last night, I'm very tired today, (b) I'm very tit'ed today
because I couldn't fall asleep last night.
The dependent clause begins with the subordinating word "because"; so, although
it contains the subject "I" and the predicate "could (not) fall," it is not a complete
sentence. In the complex sentence, however, the dependent clause is connected to the
independent clause I'm very tired today; consequently, this is a complete sentence.
The function of a sentence refers to the purpose in communicating an idea. A
declarative sentence is used to indicate a statement. Most sentences used in
communication are declarative. An interrogative sentence is used to indicate a question.
An interrogative sentence is noted by its ending punctuation, a question mark. An
exclamatory sentence is used to indicate an exclamation, or an expression of thought
mixed with a strong emotion. Like an interrogative sentence, an exclamatory sentence is
noted by its ending punctuation, an exclamation mark. An imperative sentence is used to
indicate a request or a command. An imperative sentence will always use the secondperson "you" form in the subject and the predicate
Concepts of Tenses and Aspects
One of the biggest issues in L2 learning is L1 interference and this is very true for
Malay students in the EFL setting. In order to develop good understanding of the
concepts of language knowledge, issues of language interference must be tackled from
the early stage of explicit teaching of grammar rules. For example, Bahasa Melayu does
not incorporate tenses in the verb forms but it shows "time" using adverbial of time.
15
Bahasa Melayu sentences are normally in the present. Aspects of verb are usually not
shown in sentences and sometimes can be not specific.
In English, many linguist believe that there are only two tenses and four aspects,
however, many prescriptive grammarians will list about 16 tenses (inclusive of aspects).
The framework of this study adopts the earlier classification and will use it to explore
differences and smiliarities of L1 and L2 in preparing suitable concept building and
aspects for the Malay students.
Simple Present Tense
1. The sun rises in the east.
Matahari naik dari sebelah timur.
Simple Past Tense
1. The sun rose in the east.
Matahari naik dari sebelah timur(semalam).
(If the sun rises in the west today)
English uses affixes (ed,) to show the past where by in Bahasa Melayu there is no affixes
used to show the past tense.
Progressive Present Tense
1, The sun is rising in the east when we take our breakfast.
Matahari sedang naik semasa kami makan pagi.
Progressive Past Tense
2. The sun was rising in the east when we took our breakfast.
Matahari sedang naik semasa kami makan pagi (semalam).
English uses the auxiliary be to denote progressive. English be is a structure word
whereas in Malay, the progressive aspect is marked using sedang a content word. The
difference between a content versus structure word can provide different strategy in
learning this aspect.
16
Perfect Present Tense
3. The sun has risen.
Matahari telah naik.
Perfect Past Tense
4. The sun had risen when we reached the town.
Matahari telah pun naik semasa kita tiba di bandar itu.
5. I have seen him.
Soya pernah melihat beliau.
6. I had seen him.
Soya telah melihat beliau.
7. I haven't seen him.
Soya tidak pernah melihat beliau.
The perfect tense in English is denoted by auxiliary have, which is a structure word,
whereas in Malay, telah or pernah are structure words used to show perfectness.
Present Perfect Progresssive Tense
8. I have been playing football since 1970
Saya bermain bola sepak semenjak 1970
Saya masih bermain bola sepak semenjak 1970
9. I have stayed here since 2000
Saya masih tinggal di sini semenjak tahun 2000
Saya telah tinggal di sini semenjak tahun 2000
10.1 had stayed here since 2000
Saya pernah tinggal di sini semenjak tahun 2000
The idea of perfect progressiveness in English is a little different from the Malay
version. Different Malay auxiliaries (kata bantu aspek) are' used to captui'e the meaning
of perfect progressive and thus create problem when translating the meaning in perfect
progressive.
In learning, learners normally do not produce the correct forms of these linguistic
units when they first try to use them in communication. The process of construction of