AN INVESTIGATION INTO SYNTACTIC AND PHONOLOGICAL ERRORS IN THE ENGLISH CONVERSATIONS SPOKEN BY STUDENTS AT SON HA HIGH SCHOOL IN QUANG NGAI PROVINCE
INTRODUCTION
1.1. RATIONALE
Son Ha is a mountainous district in the western highlands of Quang Ngai Province with a population of 65.000 people. Half of them are minority ethnic people and very little education. One of the most difficult things ethnic pupils have to face is learning a new foreign language because they have their own languages. Vietnamese is the second language they have to learn and use after their mother tongue. This means the ethnic pupils have to learn English as a second language. And when they talk to a person who is not from their ethnic group, they will use another language. Therefore, the influence of the native language in learning a foreign language is certainly indispensable. Most of the students find learning a foreign language difficult, especially in applying grammar in their speaking and writing skills. So, they will make mistakes and errors in learning English. Making errors in second language learning is an unavoidable process, so errors have always been an important part of second language learning and teaching. In order to solve these problems, it is advisable that an analysis of the syntactic and phonological errors should be made to help Vietnamese learners of English in general and students of Son Ha High School in Quang Ngai Province in particular. These theoretical cornerstones will be the basic to investigate into syntactic and phonological errors in the English conversations spoken by the students of Son Ha High School in Quang Ngai Province. Common mistakes were found out, which can help teachers and students to recognize and realize the significance of errors in learning foreign language acquisition.
1.2. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
1.2.1. Aims of the Study
This study tries to identify, grammatically categorize, and explain the syntactic and phonological errors occurred in the speech of students at Son Ha High school. For the identification and linguistic categorization of the errors, the procedures of EA will be used in this study. After the identification of the number and the nature of the errors, we will refer to the means of CA and EA as a priority with the aim to discover and analyze the causes of the most frequently occurring errors. Besides, the research suggests some solutions for error correction positively based on some effective solutions and applications of the study for Vietnamese students in error recognition in acquiring English language at school.
1.2.2. Objectives of the Study
The objectives of the study are:
– to identify the common types of syntactic and phonological errors that Son Ha students commit in the English conversations.
– to explain the possible causes of those errors.
– to suggest some solutions to help students at Son Ha High School overcome these errors.
1.3. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
To our knowledge, English speaking courses are not common in Vietnamese high schools. Moreover, when learning English at schools, we do not get much practice of speaking since the emphasis is mostly put on the reading and writing skills. However, speaking is one of the language skills which should be paid attention to by both the teachers and learners. In fact, speaking is the actual use of the language, and being able to listen and understand, write and read does not yet mean being able to speak in that language. This study will indicate the potential difficulties that learners have in speaking, which maybe later addressed during the possible speaking activity. Hopefully, this study might be helpful both for the teachers and the learners in developing writing as well as speaking activities.
1.4. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This study mainly focuses on syntactic and phonological errors in the English conversations when students at Son Ha High School do some speaking activities. Based on the results of the investigation, some errors will be recognized and will be avoided during the process of learning English.
- RESEARCH QUESTIONS
The study tries to answer the following questions:
1. What are the common types of syntactic and phonological errors committed by students in the English conversations?
2. What are the possible causes of these errors?
3. What solutions can help students overcome these errors?
1.6. OrganiZation of the Study
The thesis consists of 5 chapters:
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Literature Review and Theoretical Background
Chapter 3: Research Methodology
Chapter 4: Findings and Discussions
Chapter 5: Conclusions and Implications
Chapter 2
LITERATURE REVIEW AND
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1. A REVIEW OF PREVIOUS STUDIES
Various studies have been conducted to account for the process of second language acquisition in many languages around the world. Close consideration of the linguistic research dedicated to this topic shows that most of the studies carried out so far have been fundamentally based on either the Contrastive or Error Analysis approaches. Contrastive Analysis (CA) is rooted in behaviourism and structuralism (Magnan, 1983). In contrast, Error Analysis (EA) is a type of linguistic analysis that focuses on errors committed by learners (AbiSamara, 2003). Error Analysis has drawn the attention of linguists and has become an important part of applied linguistics, since its recognition in the 1970s. Many researchers and authors consisting of Kambel [14], Zughoul [12], Smith [23], Butler [20], Snape [21], Brown [1111], Dulay and Burt [17] concerned it.
Although those authors have published articles on investigation of error analysis, there is less focusing on analyzing syntactic and phonological errors in the English conversations than that on other errors such as morphological, semantic and stylistic errors. For such reasons, the study will investigate into syntactic and phonological errors in the English conversations spoken by the students at Son Ha High School in Quang Ngai Province as an effective way to enhance the speaking skill for the students in high schools as well as to help themselves and the teachers in high schools recognize the significance of errors in learning language acquisition.
2.2. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.2.1. Errors in language learning process
a. Notions of errors
Learning a language in general and a foreign language in particular is really a complicated process in which errors are unavoidable part in the learning process. A number of different categories for describing errors have been identified according to some researchers such as Corder [11], Brown [4], Norrish [37], or Nunan [38], Richards et al [42], Snow [47], Edge [14], Ellis [15] and James [26]. Concomitant with the notion of errors, Nguyen Tu Trong [50] also gave his views.
b. The significance of learners’ errors
To discuss the significance of learners’ errors, Richard states that errors are significant in three different ways:
Firstly to the teacher, in that they tell him, if he undertakes a systematic analysis, how far toward the goal the learner has progressed and, consequently, what remains for him to learn.
Secondly, they provide to the researcher evidence of how language is learned or acquired, what strategies or procedures the learner is employing in his discovery of the language.
Thirdly (and in a sense this is their most important aspect) they are indispensable to the learner himself, because we can regard the making of errors as a device the hypotheses about the nature of the language he is learning. The making of errors then is a strategy employed both by children acquiring their mother tongue and by those learning a second language.
2.2.2. Contrastive analysis and error analysis
a. Contrastive analysis
b. Errors analysis
2.2.3. Error Classification
a. Pit Corder’s classification
b. Burt and Kiparsky’s classification
c. Edge’s classification
2.2.4. Sources of errors
a. First Language Interference
b. Cause of intralingual and developmental errors
2.2.5. Cognitive theory
2.2.6. Communicative Language Teaching
2.2.7. Error Correction
a. Should learners’ errors be corrected?
b. Which learners’ errors should be corrected?
c. How should learners’ error be corrected?
2.3. SUMMARY
This chapter has reviewed the previous studies and theoretical concepts relevant to the study. The study focuses on the error analysis in students’ conversations, so the concepts of error, error analysis, error classification, causes of errors, interlanguage and intralingual transfer have been presented. The chapter has also contained an overview of the linguistic cognitive and communicative approach in order to serve the error analysis and error correction.
Chapter 3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
3.1. RESEARCH METHOD
The study follows the design of a qualitative research. Recording and questionnaires are main instruments for data collection. Questionnaires are delivered to both teachers and students in order to get information on their opinions about issues mentioned in the study. The techniques of error analysis were employed in order to identify, grammatically categorize, and explain the occurrence of syntactic and phonological errors in the English conversations spoken by students. In the end, all the collected data will be qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed to answer the proposed research questions.
3.2. DESCRIPTION OF POPULATION AND SAMPLES
Participants involved in the research are 10th, 11th, & 12th students and teachers of English at Son Ha High School in Quang Ngai Province. This is the highland high school in Quang Ngai. All of the teachers have good educational qualifications. Most of students whose proficiency level of English might be considered elementary, and high intermediate. They were selected randomly. The data consist of their speech recorded at their speaking periods and outdoor speaking activities. The recorded and analyzed data for this study consist of 150-minute speech of 40 students. The length of the speeches ranges from 3 to 5 minutes.
3.3. DATA COLLECTION PROCEDURE
The data collection procedure was conducted over a six-week period. In order to get information, the data were mainly collected through recording and questionnaires delivered to both teachers and students.
3.3.1. Recording
Recording was employed to have more details on types of syntactic and phonological errors committed by students and to find out causes of such errors. The total conversations recorded 20 respectively during the speaking lessons and outdoor speaking activities. The researcher chose to record the conversations with the given topics in the speaking lessons.
3.3.2. Survey questionnaires
In this research, the survey questionnaires were designed and delivered to 12 teachers who were teaching English and 120 students were randomly chosen from three classes at Son Ha high school. There are two different questionnaires: one for students and one for teachers but they have the same structure.
3.4. DATA ANALYSIS
The procedures for this study can be as follows:
The first part of the survey has been done to gather the information about the students and teachers’ acknowledgement about syntactic and phonological errors in the students’ conversations such as the frequency of committing errors, types of syntactic and phonological errors and reasons for committing errors.
The second part for the recording, data analysis was carried using the procedures of tallying frequencies, recording the results, presenting the data in frequency and percentage distribution tables, and analyzing and interpreting the data in the light of the research objectives.
3.5. VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY
Validity determines whether the research truly measures what it was intended to measure or how truthful the research results are.
Since the extent of data and the perspective of the researcher may become biases that affect the validity of the study, the data collection procedures were carried out carefully to increase the degree of the validity. The data collection was done with 120 students taking part in the questionnaires and 40 students for actual performance in free conversations which provide more reliable empirical evidence for syntactic and phonological errors. They were satisfied the demand of establishing the representative samples.
All the questionnaires were given out and collected. All the informants had an adequate amount of time to consult and answer the questions thoughtfully.
Some strategies were applied to guarantee the reliability of the study. Firstly, the students were asked to record 20 conversations freely. Secondly, the questionnaires were designed as anonymity to make the informants answer questions honestly.
In general, to obtain the validity and reliability, the research were followed the research design exactly. The data collection procedures were carried out carefully with some appropriate strategies.
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