Transcript
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First Language Influencing Hong Kong Students English Learning
Submitted By
Man So Shan Susan
A Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the Degree of Master of Arts
at The University of Hong Kong
July 2006
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Abstract of thesis entitled
First Language Influencing Hong Kong Students English Learning
Submitted By
Man So Shan Susan
For the degree of Master of Artsat The University of Hong Kong
in July 2006
This research investigates the negative effects of first language that interferes the
learning of second language in the written compositions of two groups of subjects, who
are from two diverse ability classes of a local Chinese Medium of Instruction (CMI)
secondary school. Approximately more than 100 pieces of English compositions written
on two separate topics were collected, identified, analyzed and explained with a focus on
two specific errors, which are omission of verb and inappropriate use of adverb very. In
additions, the findings of the study reveal that the more capable class still face difficulties
in avoiding the two specific errors, although they have the data shown that they have
slightly fewer errors than the less capable class. The study concludes that influence of
first language do interfere with second language acquisition.
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Declaration
I hereby declare that this dissertation represents my own work and that it
has not been previously submitted to this or any other institutions in application for
admission to a degree, diploma, or other qualification.
Signed: ___________________________
Man So Shan, Susan
Date: July, 2006
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Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deepest gratitude for those who helped me and supported meduring the period to complete my thesis.
Firstly, I sincerely thank Dr. Stephen Matthews, my supervisor, for his inspiring guidance
and valuable advice throughout my research for this dissertation. I also greatly appreciate
his patience and support, in which have strengthened me to continue my work during the
hardship.
Thank you to all my Form two students, the participants in the present study. Without
their written works for data collection, my study would hardly be completed.
I would like to thank all the teachers of the course and staff in the Department of
Linguistics, which have offered me tremendous help and inspiration for my work in the
whole two years of study.
Last but not least, I would also like to give my warmest thanks to my family, friends andcolleagues, whose encouragement, patience and support have kept me going during this
period of sleepless nights.
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Table of Contents
Abstract iiDeclaration iii
Acknowledgements iv
Table of Contents v
List of Tables and Figures vii
Abbreviations viii
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
1.1 Statement of the problem 1
1.2 Purpose of the study 4
1.3 Significance of the study 4
1.4 Background of the study 6
1.5 Context of the research 7
1.6 Research issues 8
Chapter 2: Literature Review 92.1 Studies of Second Language Acquisition 9
2.2 Input hypothesis 12
2.3 Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CA) 13
2.4 Error Analysis (EA) 16
2.5 Interlanguage (IL) 18
Chapter 3: Methodology 21
3.1 Subjects 21
3.2 Data Collection 23
3.3 Procedure 24
3.4 Data Analysis 24
3.4.1 Three sub-groups of omission of main verb 25
3.4.1.1 Omission of copular verb 25
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3.4.2 Inappropriate use of adverb very 26
Chapter 4: Results 28
4.1 The number of errors made by subjects from Class A 28
4.2 The number of errors made by subjects from Class B 30
4.3 The comparison of the frequency of errors made by Class A and Class B 32
Chapter 5: Discussion 36
5.1 Study of sentence structure in terms of English and Cantonese Grammar 36
5.2 Study of adverb in terms of English and Cantonese Grammar 385.3 Analysis on research issue 40
5.3.1 Discussion on Omission of verb 40
5.3.2 Discussion on Inappropriate use of adverb very 43
5.4 Analysis on research issue two 44
Chapter 6: Conclusion 48
6.1 An overview of the research 48
6.2 Suggestions for future research 49
Reference 50
Appendices
Appendix 1 -- List of errors of Class A: Fear of Halloween 54
Appendix 2 -- List of errors of Class A: Cartoon Characters 55
Appendix 3 -- List of errors of Class B: Fear of Halloween 56Appendix 4 -- List of errors of Class B: Cartoon Characters 57
Appendix 5 -- Sample essays from subjects of class A in English 58
Appendix 6 -- Sample essays from subjects of class B in English 61
Appendix 7 -- English composition Marking code used in school 64
Appendix 8 -- Guidelines of Composition one: Fear of Halloween 65
Appendix 9 -- Guidelines of Composition two: Cartoon Characters 66
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List of Tables and Figures
Table 1 Frequency of Errors for Class A 28
Table 2 Frequency of Errors in Composition 1: Fear of Halloween 29
Table 3 Frequency of Errors in Composition 2: Cartoon Characters 29
Table 4 Frequency of Errors for Class B 30
Table 5 Numbers and Percentages of students in each class with relevant errors 32
Table 6 Numbers of Students with Both Errors 32
Table 7 Average number of errors made by students with errors in each class 34
Table 8 Data of Three Sub-groups of Omission of Verb in Both Compositions 40
Table 9 Number of sentences without any relevant errors 46
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Abbreviations
CA Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis
CI Comprehensible Input
CEI Chinese-English Interlanguage
CMI Chinese as a Medium of InstructionEA Error Analysis
ESL English as a second Language
EFL English as Foreign Language
IL Interlanguage
L1 First Language
L2 Second Language
SLA Second Language Acquisition
UG Universal Grammar
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Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Statement of the problemNowadays, with an estimation of roughly about 6000 languages being
currently spoken all over the world, and with only some 200 countries, a simple
assumption shows that some countries and people must be bilingual, trilingual or
even multilingual ( Dewaele, Housen & Wei, 2003). Apart from their mother tongue,
more and more people acquire a second language or maybe even a third language for
various reasons, such as academic, migration, personal interest or even employment
reasons. Moreover, with the advance of bilingualism or multilingualism, language
education system and foreign language teaching also contributes to the spread of
multilingualism.
In the case mentioned above, it is hard to get precise figures about the
numbers of monolingual native speakers in the world. However, in reverse, it may be
slightly easier to estimate the number of people who are speaking a second language.
English is used widely all over the world for certain purpose. Taking English as a
example, according to the British Council in 1999, there are a billion people studying
English as a second language or even a third language in the world (Cook, 2003).
Hong Kong is a bilingual international city in which both Chinese and English
are legislated as official languages through the Official Language Ordinance in 1974.
As being a British colonized city before the handover in 1997, teaching English as a
second language (TESL) or Foreign Language (TEFL) has been taking place in Hong
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Kong since the 1840s (Evan, 1998). Compared to the education systems in most
Western countries, the education system in Hong Kong offers fewer choices to
students. Although nowadays most students start acquiring their English language as
early as in Kindergartens or nurseries, most of them receive formal English Language
training after they enter primary school. However, except the limited number of
students who enter the well-known English primary schools, the rest of the local
students follow a rigid six-year primary school curriculum and are taught entirely
through the lingua-franca in Hong Kong, Cantonese.
During the six years of mainstream schooling in primary school, pupils are
supposed to acquire the basic English grammar skills and to be able to carry out
simple conversations with teachers and peers. Following that are five years of
secondary schooling, in which English-medium education was introduced from the
1960s, at which time Hong Kong was a major trading centre and English was an
important tool for communication. Although it was the official policy for secondary
schools to use English as the medium of instruction for the entire curriculum before
the mother-tongue educational policy before 1998, in reality, lessons were conducted
in a mixed code of Cantonese with some English words, but textbooks and
examinations were in English (Littlewood & Liu, 1996). After the transfer of
sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, the importance of Putonghua has inevitably
increased due to the close relationship between Hong Kong and the Mainland China
in terms of business, educational and cultural aspects, mainstream schools are no
longer conducting their curricula in English, but in the mother tongue of the majority
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of population, Cantonese, so as to promote the official language policy for citizens to
be trilingual in Cantonese, Putonghua and English, as well as biliterate in written
Chinese and English (Jim, 2005) .
Since most of the population speak Chinese (Cantonese) in their daily life,
despite extensive exposure of English language in this bilingual city and once a
traditional established English-medium education system, students English
proficiency was claimed to be declining and their motivation to learn English as a
second language was dramatically low.
Students in Hong Kong no longer see the importance of English Language as
an international language or communication tool to the world, but regard the language
primarily as a compulsory subject for their examinations (Jim, 2005). They have
realised that English is not personalized and is detached from their first language
knowledge (Law, 2005). They are learning the language mainly for its academic
attainment and career purposes, but there is lack of chance to extend their language
experience outside their education pathway. The lack of real meaningful use of the
language in their everyday life and increasingly examination-oriented curriculum
decreased the students willingness in learning and exploring the use of language
outside the classroom. Especially for local students in mainstream schoolings, they
are often discouraged and could not be convinced of their ability to acquire the
language.
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In the past few years, there were numbers of educational policies and
teachers training aimed to raise the standard of English of both the students and
teachers in Hong Kong. However, in order to enhance the English level of the people
in Hong Kong, particularly language learners in schooling, the problems should be
located and relevant teaching principles and methods should be used.
1.2 Purpose of the study
From my experience as being an English Teacher in a local Chinese-medium
of instruction school (CMI), it is very common for second language learners marking
mistakes during the language learning process due to the interference from their first
language (L1). As the great differences in both spoken and written language system
of their L1 Chinese and L2 English, Chinese L2 learners of English have difficulties
in learning tenses, subject-verb agreements, prepositional phrases, active and passive
voice, certain aspect of morphology etc (Law, 2005).
By collecting samples and examining students production of English output
in the form of written format, this study investigates how and the reasons why first
language interferes second language learners in the omission of verb in the written
sentences. At the same time, how the L1 influence the L2 learning and result in the
grammar errors which are related to the modification of adverbs. In order to exam the
above areas, this study would focus on the grammar errors collected from two groups
of form two students.
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1.3 Significance of the study
The role of the native language in the process of second language learning has
been debated for over 2000 years (Gass, 1996). In order to find out how second
language learning is strongly influenced by language learners first language (L1), a
profile of students errors, in terms of both spoken and written formats, is essential for
investigation. However, for the purpose of this study, only written data are collected
and used for analysis. According to Corder (1981), it is important to collect samples
from learners and have some knowledge of the errors they made, so as to make
researchers easier to understand learners second language acquisition mechanism
and as well as for teachers to provide suitable error-elimination strategies to improve
the learners language learning.
Corder (1981) pointed out two justifications for studying learners errors.
Theoretically, the study of errors can provide insights into the process of second
language acquisition and at the same time the phenomenon of interlanguage, which is
the systematic knowledge of a second language that is independent of both the
learners first language and second language (Ellis, 1985). Pedagogically, the study of
errors can provide contributions to second language methodology and pursue the goal
of error reduction and elimination in second language learners learning process.
The main purpose of this study is that of the pedagogical justification, in
which the result of this study could provide useful pedagogical suggestions for
language teachers in improving learners standard of English. By identifying and
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categorizing the learners error, a study of the psychological process of how the errors
occur should be carried out (Corder, 1981). Therefore, in this study, it is aimed to
observe an emerging pattern of the common errors that was produced by learners and
was mainly caused by the interference from their first language. In other words, with
the analysis of these patterns of common errors and the understanding of second
language acquisition theories, it may be possible for teachers to understand and
explain the errors made by learners and at last come up with some effective teaching
strategies or methods to enhance the language learning.
1.4 Background of the study
Within the past few decades, there are strong debates of ones role of native
language in the process of second language learning (Gass, 1996). It is a popular
belief that second language learning is strongly influenced by learners first language
(L1). No matter from foreign accents in second language (L2) speech to inappropriate
non-verbal behaviour, language learners are all too familiar with experiencing
interfering effects from their native language. When it comes to the interference
effects of first language, it is a generally accepted that first language (L1) plays a
negative role to learners second language acquisition (SLA), that is, L1 interferes or
intrude into the learning of L2 (Ellis, 1985).
This research investigates the negative effects of L1 (Cantonese) that
interferes the learning of L2 (English) in written composition of two groups of
subjects, who are from two separate classes of a local CMI secondary school and their
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first language refers to their mother tongue, Cantonese. While it is the language that is
widely spoken in the majority population in Hong Kong, it is also the only language
they used in their daily life to communicate with their family members and peers. As
mentioned above, English language is one of the core subjects in students curriculum
in both primary and secondary schooling, as well as the most popular second
language learnt by Hong Kong students. This study identifies two common problems
that L2 Chinese learners would face and frequently made by the influences of first
language in their written composition.
1.5 Context of the research
The present research involves 2 groups of Form two students from a co-
educational middle Band 2 Chinese as a Medium of Instruction (CMI) school in New
Territories. The total of 82 written compositions was collected from Class A and the
total of 36 written compositions was collected from Class B. Two composition titles
with guidelines and vocabulary were given to students to complete their composition
within the lesson, therefore it is expected that the samples may be fairly homogenous
in terms of structure and content. The learners first language (Chinese) influence on
the acquisition of their second language (English), in terms of the effects on learners
omission of main verb in written sentences and modification of adverb very in
writing, were examined.
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Chapter 2: Literature Review
Over the last couple of decades, there is great flux in second language
research direction, traditions and assumptions. At the same time, literacy in the
second language has become a significant topic for discussion in research into the
language processes and education policy (Cook & Bassetti, 2005). In this chapter,
there is an overview of some studies of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and the
role of first language (L1), some related studies in this area that includes the Input
Hypothesis, Contrastive Analysis (CA) Hypothesis, Error Analysis (EA),
Interlanguage (IL) Hypothesis and the Universal Grammar Model (UG).
2.1 Studies of Second Language Acquisition
Second Language Acquisition (SLA) is not a uniform and predictable
phenomenon but a complex process that involves many interrelated factors (Ellis,
1985). According to Ellis (1985), Second Language Acquisition (SLA) refers to the
subconscious or conscious processes by which a language other than the mother
tongue is learnt in a natural or a tutored setting. No matter the learning process is
obtain by acquiring the second language through exposure or learning in conscious
study, it is a language development in various aspects that covers phonology, lexis,
grammar and pragmatic knowledge, but has been largely confined to morphosytax
(Ellis, 1985).
During the study of language, it is often interesting to make distinction
between competence and performance, particularly in how competence develops in
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both the first and second language acquisition. According to Chomsky (1965),
competence consists of the mental representation of linguistic rules which constitute
the speaker-hearers internalized grammar, whereas performance consists of the
comprehension and production of language. Although we are interested in the
development of competence of a second language learner, it is impossible to have
direct inspection to ones internalized grammar. Therefore, performance, which is the
actual utterances or production, is used to examine how a learner performs and what
is going on inside the learners head (Ellis, 1985).
As SLA refers to all the aspects of language that the language learner needs to
master, it is doubtless that learners L1 interferes with the acquisition of the new
language system (L2) when the acquisition could not be isolated and there is already
prior knowledge of the first language in their mind (Cook, 1993). According to Ellis,
1985, no matter whether there were differences between the language system of L1
and L2 or the L1 and L2 systems were similar, the learners L1 knowledge would
interfere with the L2 and in the latter case, it would actively aid the L2 learning. The
similarities between L1 and L2 caused the two language system functioned positively,
while the differences in systems caused negative effects. This process was named as
Language transfer or crosslingusitic influence (Ellis, 1985). Corder (1978) has a
similar view that the closer the language system of the learners native language (NL)
and target language (TL) they are, the greater transfers would occur in the acquisition
and the vice versa.
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The terms positive and negative transfer stem from psychological research in
the behaviorist tradition and were commonly used to describe the language transfers
in the 1970s (Ringbom, 1987). Positive transfer was taken to mean that the first and
second language habits are the same, in other words, first language had a facilitating
effect on the second language, whereas negative transfer, or also named as
interference, was caused by proactive inhibition and result in errors in the learners
production (Ringbom, 1987). Thus, differences in L1 and L2 language systems create
learning difficulty and errors occurs, while similarities in language systems facilitates
rapid and easy learning (Ellis, 1985).
As the way of individual L2 learners learn and the use of their L2 knowledge
are different, there is no learner learning L2 in exactly the same way. Apart from the
dominant role of L1 plays in SLA, there is a whole range of learner factors that
potentially influences the way in which the L2 is acquired. Age, aptitude, cognitive
style, motivation and personality are the five general factors that contribute in some
depth to individual learner differences in SLA research (Ellis, 1985). However,
according to the investigation done by Ellis (1985), these individual leaner factors
account for only a substantial amount of the variance in the learning rate and learning
outcomes in the L2 learners, but did not affect the performance in ones natural
sequence of L2 development.
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2.2 Input Hypothesis
It is claimed that Input Hypothesis, which was introduced by Stephen Krashen,
was one of the most controversial theoretical perspectives found in the set of
hypotheses about second language learning (Brown & Douglas, 1993).
The term Input Hypothesis has been commonly used since the early 1980s,
after the most popular terms Monitor Model and Acquisition- learning
Hypothesis(Brown & Douglas, 1993). The hypothesis simply stated by Krashen
(1985) as the human acquire language in only one way, that is by understanding
messages or by receiving comprehensible input. In other words, language
acquisition depends upon the comprehension of what other people are saying,
provided that learners are hearing meaningful speech and endeavours to understand it
(Cook, 1993). Krashens theory claimed that listening is the crucial activity within
second language learning, thus, he emphasis on listening (Cook, 1993). L2 learners
could not acquire a new language if they fail to understand the language in context.
At the same time, speaking is unnecessary or is positively harmful, as Krashen
believes that Speaking is a result of acquisition and not its cause. (Cook, 1993). The
hypothesis also linked to the idea of if input is understood and enough of it, the
necessary grammar is automatically provided. ( Mitchell & Myles, 1998). As an
example given by Cook (1993), if ones learn the set of English pronoun by heart or
consciously understand the various meanings of English tenses, to some extent ones
knows about English. However, this learnt knowledge is not enough to be used to
express the language.
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As Krashen claims that language acquisition occurs with acquirers
understanding of the input language through listening or reading that is a bit beyond
his or her current level. If the acquirer is at stage or level I, the input of his or her
understanding should contain i+1 (Krashen, 1981). In other words, the language that
learners are exposed to should be just far beyond their current competence, which
they could still understand, but still be challenging for them to make progress (Brown
& Douglas, 1993).
Unfortunately, Krashens Input Hypothesis has been treated separately from
the other hypotheses and was not widely accepted by psychologists. The terms of
conscious and unconscious in second language learning, Comprehensible Input (CI)
and no interface between acquisition and learning studies, has arose psychologists
wide disagreement (Brown & Douglas, 1993). A number of empirical research
studies done by various linguists, such as Long (1983, 1988) and Ellis (1990), have
all shown that instruction in conscious rule learning can aid the performance of
successful communicative competence in second language learning (Brown &
Douglas, 1993). Second language is clearly a process which degrees of learning and
of acquisition can be beneficial upon learners style and strategies (Brown & Douglas,
1993).
2.3 Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CA)
It was believed that in the 1950s and early 1960s, many works were based on
the need to produce pedagogically relevant materials for effective language teaching
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and learning (Gass & Selinker, 1994). In order to make teaching as efficient as
possible, with Lado as one of the movers, Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CA) was
developed to make comparison of target language with the native language so as to
find out and predict the real problems. In other words, CA was founded on the
assumption that languages can be compared and the underlying belief of CA is that
native language has significant influence over the learning pattern of the target
language (Ellis, 1985). With CA predicting the potential errors occur from the
interference from the learners L1 and L2, the approach is aiming at solving the
practical problems of language teaching and developing appropriate instructional
practices and materials that could help learners to prevent from producing errors
(Lado, 1957).
According to Wardhaugh (1970), CA had both psychological aspect and
linguistics aspect, which in the psychological aspect, CA is divided into strong and
weak forms. The strong form claims that errors can be predicted by identifying the
difference between the target language and native language. However, the weak form
is used to identify errors occurred as a experience of interference and it has to be
worked with the Error Analysis in order to identify the errors before using the CA
hypothesis (Ellis, 1985). Regarding to the linguistic aspect of CA, the comparison of
languages was carried out by structuralist linguistics with it emphasizing on the
importance of scientific description of languages and it is based on a description of
the different categorises that make up the patterns of a language (Ellis, 1985). The
differences among languages were emphasized by Bloomfield (1933) as this The
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differences ( among language) are great enough to prevent our setting up any system
of classification that would fit all languages.. However, without common categories,
the problem of comparison of languages was ignored, but ideally CA should be on
universal catergories so as to realise one language to another linguistically (Ellis,
1985).
CA was developed in order to predict the areas of difficulties that language
learners experience in L2 with the specific L1, however, the assumption of this
influence was a negative one (Ellis, 1985). In early 1970s, CA was facing attack.
Doubts arose concerning the ability of contrastive analysis to predict errors when
researchers started to investigate in depth with empirical studies. Theoretical criticism
regarding to the feasibility of comparing languages and methodology of CA came
into sight. CA was challenged whether it could be used to improve the effectiveness
and efficient of language teaching (Ellis, 1985).
By carrying out empirical researches, existence of non-interference errors was
recognized (Ellis, 1985). Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974) examined this issue
empirically. They identified four types of errors according to their psycholinguistic
origins:
1) Interference-like errors, which are errors that reflect native language
structure but not found in first language acquisition data.
2) First language developmental errors, which do not reflect native language
structure but are found in first language acquisition data.
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3) Ambiguous errors, which are errors that cannot be categorized as either
interference-like or development errors.
4) Unique errors, which neither reflect first language structure nor found in
first language acquisition data.
In their research, they calculated all the frequency of the errors of speech data
made by Spanish- speaking English learners, particularly in morphological features
like past tense inflections. After eliminating the ambiguous errors, they claimed that
85 percent of errors were developmental and only 3 percent of all errors were the
result of interference. From their studies and similar researches, they argued that L2
learners do not organize the second language by transferring or comparing with their
first language, however, they rely on their ability to construct their L2 as independent
system, which is a same way as in L1 acquisition (Ellis, 1985). Although other
researchers does not bear out with the studies done by Dulay & Burt (1973), the
comparison of L1 and L2 in CA was less certain to predict and explain very much
about in SLA (Ellis, 1985).
2.4 Error Analysis (EA)
Human learning is fundamentally a process that involves the making of
mistakes. It is believed that mistakes, misjudgments, miscalculations and erroneous
assumptions play an important role in aspects of learning virtually any skill or
acquiring information (Brown & Douglas, 1993). Language learning is like any other
human learning, which is it is inevitably to make countless mistakes in the process of
acquisition and indeed will impede that process if they do not commit errors and then
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benefit in turn from various forms of feedback on the errors (Brown & Douglas,
1993). As noted by Corder (1967), a learners errors are significant in providing
researchers evidence of how the language is acquired or learned, what strategies or
procedures the learner is using in the discovery of the language. Therefore, it is
suggested that the mistakes that a person made in the process of acquiring the second
language should be analyzed carefully, as it may contain important keys to
understand the process of second language acquisition (Brown & Douglas, 1993).
Before any discussion of Error Analysis (EA), it is crucial to make a
distinction between mistakes and errors, which they are technically very different
phenomena. According to Brown & Douglas (1993), a mistake refers to a
performance error that is either a random guess or a slip, which it is a failure to
utilize a known system correctly. All language learners, no matter in native language
or second language acquisition, will also make these sort of breakdowns or
imperfections in the process of producing speech. However, an error is a noticeable
deviation from grammar of a native speaker and reflecting the interlangauge
competence of the learner (Brown & Douglas, 1993). Corder (1967, 1981) has a
similar approach, while mistake is a slip of tongue and do not indicate the
competence or proficiency of ones second language, an error is a reflection of a
learners transitional competence and it is an indicator of learners level of linguistic
competence.
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Error Analysis has both pedagogical and a psycholinguistic aim, which errors
could provide useful information to sequence items for teaching and devise remedial
lesson (Ellis, 1985). In fact, learners do make errors and these errors can be observed,
analyzed and classified to reveal some principles of the language operating within the
learner that led to a surge of study of learners errors. This is named as Error Analysis
(EA) (Brown & Douglas, 1993). There are number of procedures for Error Analysis
that spelled out in Corder (1974): 1) Collect Samples; 2) Identify Errors; 3) Classify
Errors; 4) Explain Errors; 5) Evaluate Errors. After the steps in conducting Error
Analysis, the main purpose of EA, as mentioned as above, is pedagogic (Ellis, 1985).
According to Brown & Douglas (1993), it is argued that EA easily superseded
CA as learners do not actually make all the errors that CA predicted they should. It is
also suggested that learners from disparate backgrounds tend to make similar errors in
learning the target language (Brown & Douglas, 1993).
2.5 Interlanguage (IL)
According to Selinker (1972), Interlangauge (IL) refers to learners versions
of the target language. It is the systematic knowledge of a second language which is
independent of both the learners first language and the target language. Corder (1971)
used the term idiosyncractic dialect to describe the idea that learners language is
unique to a particular individual and the rule of the learners language are odd to the
language of that individual as well. IL is a product of interaction between L1 and L2,
therefore through this IL Hypothesis, learners are trying to construct a linguistics
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system of their own and progressively reach the target system (Yip, 1995). Second
language learners are forming their own self-contained linguistics system of the target
language, which this system is neither the system of their native language, nor the
system of the target language (Brown & Douglas, 1993). Thus, according to Yip
(1995), by definition, ILs are incomplete, intermediate and in a state of flux.
As IL reflects the system of language learners that composed of numerous
elements from both their native language and target language, Adejemian (1976)
refines the IL Hypothesis and suggested three important characteristics of IL. The
first characteristic is systematicity, which means that an interlanguage is systematic
from the beginning and cannot be a random collection of entries. The structure of it
should be coherent and amenable to systematic linguistic analysis (Yip, 1995).
The second characteristic is permeability, which refers to the susceptibility of
IL to infiltration by L1 and L2, that is the dynamic character of IL (Yip, 1995).
Adjemian claimed that permeability is unique property to IL and IL is constantly
subject to a number of impinging forces that target rules may be partially acquired or
improperly generalized (Yip, 1995).
The last characteristic of IL is fossilization, which is the persistence of
plateaus of non-target-like competence in the IL (Selinker & Lakshamanan, 1992).
Fossilization is a linguistic phenomenon which linguistic items, rules and subsystems
that speakers of a particular NL will tend to keep in their IL relative to a particular TL,
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regardless of the age of the learners or amount of explanation and instruction they
received in the target language (Selinker, 1972).
Since the formulation of IL, a number of studies concerning IL were done.
According to Yip (1995), the transitional language characteristic of Chinese speakers
learning English as a second language was named as Chinese-English Interlanguage
(CEI). It is a natural human language, with its own unique grammar and structural
features, involving the two specific linguistic systems: Chinese as native language
and English as target language. It shows the transitional competence of Chinese
learners of English.
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communicate with their family members and peers. Therefore, students seldom have
exposure to English language outside the classroom.
The two groups of subjects were from two separate classes. The first group,
which is named as Class A in this study, are 41 Form two students (19 girls and 22
boys, mean age fourteen years old). Students in Class A are believed to have
relatively higher English proficiency than the other group of subjects. They were
assigned to this class as their academic results of the previous year in general were
located at the top 40% of students in the same form in school. The second group,
which is named as Class B in this study, are 18 Form two students (6 girls and 12
boys, mean age fourteen years old). Compared to Class A, students in Class B are
believed to have relatively lower standard of English proficiency, as they were
located at the bottom 20% of students, according to their academic results of their
previous year of studies in general. Students are comparatively weak in all their
academic subjects within the curriculum, thus small-class teaching was introduced for
this class. Because of this, the 18 students in Class B were a sub-group from the
bottom 20% of students, in other words, the class was divided into two groups from
the original total number of students in a class of 39.
Both groups of students had already acquired the basic grammar of English
since their early primary school studies and are required to study English as a second
language in the school curriculum. Both groups of students were taught by the same
English teacher using the same set of textbooks and materials in class. Within the
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academic year, students were scheduled to take six 70 minutes blocks of English
lesson per cycle with the same English teacher, where there were 26 cycles in the
school year. All the six blocks of English lessons were divided to develop students
four macro skills: reading, writing, listening and speaking. Grammar teaching and
library skills were incorporated in the reading lessons and there is at least one block
of writing lesson per cycle.
3.2 Data Collection
The data for this dissertation was collected from both two groups of subjects.
Two pieces of guided composition, which were completed in different periods of time
during the school year, were collected respectively from both groups. Both groups of
students were required to write on the same topics, Fear of Halloween and Cartoon
Characters with the same guidelines and vocabulary provided, while one of the
compositions is a narrative writing and the other is pictorial descriptive writing.
After the instruction and explanation from the teacher on the topic, students were
required to write at least 150 words within the 60 minutes class period. All data were
primary data, with students as the author of the composition and students did not
receive any outside help, but they were allowed to look up in dictionaries and ask for
teachers help. Students were assumed to be highly motivated in order to obtain a
good result in their daily marks. Besides, students were not informed of the data
collection before they did the writing task in order not to affect their performance in
the task. The composition guidelines and sample data from both groups of students
can be found in the Appendix 4.
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3.3 Procedure
The study investigated the reasons why Chinese L2 learners of this study tend
to omit the main verb and use the adverb very with a main verbs in the written
sentences, and how often they omit the main verb or use the adverb verb
inappropriately in written English sentences.
Using the steps of Error Analysis (EA) mentioned above in Chapter 2 by
Corder (1974), data were collected, identified, classified, and explained and evaluated.
All the sample compositions collected were read carefully and marked with the
marking code system, which was used throughout the year at school (Appendix 3).
After identifying and classifying the errors made by each group, the methods of
simple tallying of total error count was used and comparisons were made among two
groups of subjects and across the two types of errors. By adding up all the data
collected from each group, it will be easier to investigate the frequency of errors that
each group has made. Apart from the quantitative analysis, a qualitative analysis of
subjects performance in each error from both compositions was made to have a more
in-depth view for the research.
3.4 Data Analysis
When marking the compositions, all the errors related to omission of main
verbs and inappropriate use of adverb very were identified. The errors of omission
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of main verbs were generally classified into 3 groups, while the inappropriate use of
adverb very was not classified into any subgroups.
3.4.1 Three sub-groups of omission of main verb
In process of data identification, there are two general phenomenons that
could be found: omission of copular verb and omission of other verbs, such as action
verb or auxiliary verb. The omission of copular verb could also be divided into two
sub-groups.
3.4.1.1 Omission of copular verb
According to The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar (Chalker, 1995), the
term copula verb indicates the single verb be, particularly when it is linking a
subject with a complement.
a) Sentences with an adjective used predicatively
One of the errors that subjects made in terms of omission of copula verbs was
sentences using adjectives predicatively, as the meaning of very in the subjects L1
is functioned as a verb. Most of the errors contain the adverb very. Some sample
sentences are shown as follows:
(1) Turtle very frightened.
(2) Superman very happy.
(3) It very funny.
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b) Sentences with a prepositional phrase
Prepositional phrase contains a preposition and object or complement. It
functions as an adverbial or post-modifier after noun phrases (Chalker, 1995). In the
set of data collected, there is tendency of subjects omitting the verb, but using a
prepositional phrase with in or to, which both prepositions function as a verb in
subjects L1. Some of the sample sentences are shown as follows:
(1) One day, a superman and a superturtle ^ in a police station.
(2) Superman and Turtle ^ in the detective agent.
(3) One day, cosmos police stars and his friend supertunel (superturtle) ^ in
police station.
3.4.1.2 Omission of other verbs
From the set of data, a small number of samples were neither using an
adjective predicatively nor using a prepositional phrase as a verb, but missing the
action verb or auxiliary verb have. Thus, these samples were classified into one sub-
group.
(1) They ^ (have) nothing to do.
(2) Oh! My friend was scary and ^ (play) tricks to me it is very horror.
3.4.2 Inappropriate use of adverb very
As the influence of subjects L1, they tend to use the adverb very as a verb,
which the sentences are grammatically meaningful after word by word translation
from L2 to L1. Some samples are shown as follows:
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(1) We very like celebrate Halloween because we think celebrate Halloween
is very exciting.
(2) I very like dressed up contums (costumes).
In the process of data collection, correct use of verb and adverb very were
also observed and identified, given that the subject has made the corresponding errors
in the same pieces of composition. The frequency of correct use of verb and adverb
very from every sample essay was also tallied for reference, although it is beyond
the scope of this research.
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Chapter 4 Results
With all the errors for each group of subject being identified and tallied, this
chapter presents the data and patterns that have been found from the research. Besides,
data comparisons of the two groups of subjects will also be included. A set of detailed
list of errors made by subjects from the two classes on both topics of composition can
be found in Appendix 1 to 4. Some sample compositions and used teaching guidelines
can also be found in Appendix 5 to 9.
4.1 The number of errors made by subjects from Class A
The frequency of errors made by subjects from Class A in both pieces of
compositions has been listed out in Table 1. From the table, there are total 41 students
in Class A, thus 41 pieces were collected from the class. Out of 41 pieces of
compositions, 18 of them, that is 43.90% of the total essays, contained errors of either
omission of verbs or inappropriate use of adverb very in composition one: Fear of
Halloween and 19 of them, that is 46.34% of the total essays, contained any of the
two errors in composition two: Cartoon Characters.
Table 1 Frequency of Errors of Class A
Number of essays Number of essays
with errors Percentage of compositions
with relevant errors
Composition 1: Fear of Halloween 41 18 43.90%
Composition 2:Cartoon Characters 41 19 46.34%
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As mentioned above, there is the number of 18 pieces and 19 pieces of
compositions out of 41 pieces containing the two errors respectively. In composition
one: Fear of Halloween, a total number of 10 errors of omission of verb (Data can
be found in Table 2) were found in 9 pieces of compositions (refer to Table 5),
whereas the total number of 18 errors of inappropriate use of adverb very (refer to
Table 2) were found in 12 pieces of compositions (refer to Table 5). Among all the
subjects, only 3 of them made both of the errors in the same piece of composition
(Table 6).
On the other hand, in composition two: Cartoon Characters, a total number
of 37 errors of omission of verb (refer to Table 3) were found in 18 pieces of
compositions (refer to Table 5), whereas the total number of 3 errors of inappropriate
use of adverb very (refer to Table 3) were found in 2 pieces of compositions (refer
to Table 5). From the data shown in Table 6, none of the subjects made both of the
errors in composition two.
Table 2 Frequency of Errors in Composition 1: Fear of Halloween
Class Total number
of errors
Total number and percentage of
omission of verb
Total number and percentage of inappropriate use
of adverb A 28 10 (35.7%) 18 (64.3%)
B 21 10 (47.6%) 11 (52.4%)
Table 3 Frequency of Errors in Composition 2: Cartoon Characters
ClassTotal number
of errors
Total number and percentage of
omission of verb
Total number and percentage of inappropriate use
of adverb
A 40 37 (92.5%) 3 (7.5%)
B 26 20 (76.9%) 6 (23.1%)
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To conclude, there is slightly more numbers of essays containing both relevant
errors in composition two than composition one (Table 1). In composition one,
subjects in Class A made more errors in inappropriate use of adverb very than the
errors of omission of verb (Table 2). However, in composition two, an opposite
phenomenon was found. There are only 7.5% of errors with appropriate use of adverb
very, but an extremely high percentage of 92.5% of errors with the omission of verb
(Table 3).
4.2 The number of errors made by subjects from Class B
The frequency of errors made by subjects from Class B in both pieces of
compositions has been listed out in Table 4. In total, 18 pieces were collected from
the class for both of the compositions topics. Out of 18 pieces of compositions, 10 of
them, that is 55.6% of the total pieces, contained errors of either omission of verbs or
inappropriate use of adverb very in composition one: Fear of Halloween and 11 of
them, that is 61.1% of the total pieces, contained any of the errors in composition two:
Cartoon Characters.
Table 4 Frequency of Errors of Class B
Number of essays Number of essays
with errors Percentage of compositions
with relevant errors
Composition 1: Fear of Halloween 18 10 55.56%
Composition 2:Cartoon Characters 18 11 61.11%
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The trend of the findings are similar to Class A, however, the figures of Class
B is slightly higher than Class A. In composition one: Fear of Halloween, a total
number of 10 errors of omission of verb (refer to Table 2) were found in 6 separate
pieces of compositions (refer to Table 5), whereas the total number of 11 errors of
inappropriate use of adverb very (refer to Table 2) were found in 7 pieces of
compositions (refer to Table 5). Among all the essays with errors, 4 subjects made
both of the errors in the same pieces of composition (Table 6).
Meanwhile, in composition two: Cartoon Characters, a total number of 20
errors of omission of verb (refer to Table 3) were found in 9 pieces of compositions
(refer to Table 5), whereas the total number of 6 errors of inappropriate use of adverb
very (refer to Table 3) were found in 6 pieces of compositions (refer to Table 5).
From the data shown in Table 6, only 3 of the subjects made both of the errors in
composition two.
In conclusion, a same phenomenon was found as Class A, there is slightly
more numbers of essays containing both relevant errors in composition two than
composition one (Table 4). Similar phenomenon was also found in the frequency of
errors of both of the compositions. In composition one, there is a higher number of
errors found in inappropriate use of adverb very than the errors of omission of verb
(Table 2). However, in composition two, a totally opposite phenomenon was found.
There is less number of errors with appropriate use of adverb very, but a higher
number of errors with the omission of verb (Table 3).
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Table 5 Numbers and Percentages of students in each class on the relevanterrors
Composition 1: Fear of Halloween
Composition 2:Cartoon Characters
ClassTotal number of students
among the classOmission of verb
Inappropriateuse of adverb
Omission of verb
Inappropriateuse of adverb
A 41 9 (22.0%) 12 (29.3%) 18 (43.9%) 2 (4.9%)
B 18 4 (22.2%) 8 (44.4%) 9 (50.0%) 6 (33.3%)
Table 6 Numbers of Students with Both Errors
Class
Composition 1: Fear of Halloween(Students/Number of
essays with errors)
Composition 2: Cartoon Characters(Students/Number of
essays with errors)
A 3/18 0/19
B 4/10 3/11
4.3 The comparison of the frequency of errors made by Class A and
Class B
In conclusion, both groups of students made a number of errors in the two
compositions. However, Class B tends to have a relatively higher percentage of errors
made than Class A, with the percentage of 55.56% and 61.11% respectively in
containing errors in both compositions. In other words, there is slightly more than
half of the group of students has difficulties in making sentences with appropriate
verb and adverb very. It is also noted that both Classes of subjects made errors in
composition two: Cartoon Characters than composition one. From the data shown in
Table 1 and Table 4, although subjects in Class A are believed to be a more capable
group, there is only less than 20% difference in their performance of making the
relevant errors in both of the compositions.
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The frequency of relevant errors found in both groups of students in the two
compositions was shown in Table 2 and Table 3 respectively. From the data in Table
2, it is obvious that both classes of subjects made more errors in using the adverb
very inappropriately. However, this was not the case in composition two, which the
omission of verb had a much higher percentage of errors than composition one. As
there is different number of total students in each group, this data did not reflect the
view of which class has made fewer errors in each of the compositions.
As students may make more than one errors within the same composition,
Table 5 represents the number of students, which in the same case the number of
compositions, contains the relevant errors. It is shown that nearly the same amount of
about 22% of students out of 41 in Class A and 18 in Class B has contained the error
omission of verb in composition one. However, for the inappropriate use of adverb
very, there is only roughly 15% differences in between the two classes has
contained this error in their composition. This indicates that Class B has more
students using the adverb very incorrectly in composition one. In composition two,
although both classes has an approximately close percentage on the error of omission
of verb, the percentage rose dramatically from about 22% to 43.9% and 50%
respectively, whereas 1 student out of 2 in Class B may make this error. While there
was a relatively large number (18) of students made error on omitting the verb in
composition one in Class A, there is only 2 students, with 4.9%, having difficulties
with the usage of adverb very. The significant figure is much lower than 33.3% of
Class B in the same piece of writing. However, it can be also noted that, in terms of
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the inappropriate use of adverb very, there were fewer errors in both classes in
composition one than composition two.
In order to have a better view of the frequency of errors made by Class A and
Class B, the following tables, Table 7 and Table 5, should be looked together. By
calculating the average number of errors made by students, who contain errors in their
writing, a different observable fact has occurred. On one hand, in the data of
composition one, 2.5 errors were made by each student who made mistakes in their
writing. This is much higher than the average number of errors 1.1 in Class A. On the
other hand, regarding to the inappropriate use of adverb very, Class A has a slightly
higher number of errors per students than Class B. A similar trend occurs to
composition two simultaneously.
From the above comparison of both of the compositions, it has shown that
students in Class B are more frequent in omitting the verb in writing, while students
in Class A are more frequent in using the adverb very inappropriately.
Table 7 Average number of errors made by students with errors in each classComposition 1:
Fear of HalloweenComposition 2:
Cartoon Characters
Class Omission of verb Inappropriateuse of adverb Omission of verb Inappropriateuse of adverb
A 1.1 1.5 2 1.5
B 2.5 1.3 2.2 1
Note : The outcome is calculate as follows: Total number of errorsTotal number of students with the relevant
error
For example: Class A omission of verb in Composition oneThe average number of error made by each student with errors: 10/9 = 1.1
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The data from Table 6 may point out an interesting phenomenon that there are
relatively fewer subjects containing both of the relevant within the same piece of
composition in Class B, particularly in composition two, none of the subjects in Class
B made both of the errors in the composition. In other words, subjects from Class B
tends to have difficulties in either omission of verb or inappropriate use of adverb
very, in contrast, a small number of subjects from Class A made both of the errors
in the same pieces of composition. With Class A assumed to be the more capable
class, this reflects that students in Class A may accidentally make a slip mistake or
having difficulties in their level of linguistic competence, which was mentioned
above in Chapter 2 Error Analysis.
After the presentation of the above findings, further analysis and discussion on
the data will be given out in the next chapter.
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Chapter 5 Discussion
Before analyzing the results and explaining the research questions in details, it
is essential to take a deeper look at some distinctive features of sentence structures of
English and Cantonese, regarding to the two relevant errors that has been included in
this study.
5.1 Study of sentence structures in terms of English andCantonese grammar
It is broadly accepted that Cantonese and English are two languages with great
differences. One is a distinctive and diverse dialect of Chinese, which is largely
differs from the Standard Chinese in pronunciation, some in vocabulary and grammar,
but spoken widely in the Pacific Rim (Yip & Matthews, 1999), while the other is an
international language that was widely used by billions of speakers all over the world
as a mean of communication. As mentioned earlier in Chapter 2 in Language transfer,
with the great differences in languages of L1 and L2, L1 will interfere the learning of
L2. The greater the differences between the NL and TL, the more errors will occur
from L1 influence. In order to understand the influence of Cantonese to English
language learners, comparative study will be applied to show the linguistic
similarities and differences between Cantonese structure (L1) and English structure
(L2).
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According to Leech (1989), an English sentence is the major unit of grammar.
A simple sentence consists of one clause, which generally has a subject and a verb,
while object can be optional if there is an intransitive verb. Word order is also an
important feature in English language, which is the order of the elements in a
sentence or the clause, such as subject, verb and object. In English, word order is
rather fixed, as the order indicates which element is the subject or object. If the word
order is disrupted, the sentence may be less acceptable or ungrammatical. The most
common word order founded in statement is: Subject Verb Object, Complement
or Adverbial. For example:
Subject Verb Object
She has left the letters.
This has shown that English is a SVO language in most of the cases.
Cantonese, the native language of the subjects in this study, is a isolated
language with little grammatical morphology, like pluralization, subject-verb
agreement or tense. According to Yip & Matthews (1999), although there is more
freedom of word order than English, the word order of Cantonese is fairly rigid and
replies heavily to express the grammatical relations in subject and object. Similar to
English, the basic word order for simple sentence is: Subject Verb Object, thus it
is also a SVO language. For example:
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Subject Verb Object
Ngh Ngoi Kuih
I love him/her
In short, Cantonese is not very different from English in this aspect, which the
basic word order for simple sentences of both of languages is: Subject Verb
Object. This may raise an interesting question of why the subjects in this study will
omit the verb in a simple sentence, given that both languages are SVO languages.
This will be discussed later in this chapter.
5.2 Study of adverb in terms of English and Cantonese
grammar
According to Leech (1989), adverb is used to add information to another word,
such as adjective or another adverb. Adverbs have many different kinds of meaning.
In this section, only adverb of degree very will be discussed. The adverb very is
used as a modifier to show a high degree and it must come before the word they
modify. The most common order is:
adverb + adjective
very expensive
However, in Cantonese, although one of the functions of reduplication
adjectives is as adverbs, Cantonese lacks a systematic means of forming adverbs from
adjectives Yip & Matthews, 1994). Because of this, the English adverb very is used
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as an adjective marker hu in Cantonese, which means good, to modify the
predictive adjective (Yip & Matthews, 1994).
As the unique features of Cantonese, it is no distinction between adjective and
verb. Therefore, adjectives in English are often described as stative verb, which is
the verbs that describe the state or condition, in Chinese linguistic system. In these
case, adjectives act very much like verbs, particularly when the copular verb to be is
not used with adjective and some adjectives may even take the aspect markers like
verbs. The modifier hu (very) is usually used before the predicative adjective with
similar meaning good or very, whereas the meaning is much weaker than in English.
As mentioned above, predicative adjective do not require the copular verb to be
with hu functioning as an adjective marker, it is noticed that it sometimes can not
make a complete sentence without hu (Yip & Matthews, 1994; 1999). For example:
Kuih n paih hu h is m
s/he these days very happy
Shes happy these days.
* Kuih n paih h is m (An asterisk * represents ungrammatical)
To conclude, with the different linguistic features of the adverb very in
Cantonese and English, a more detailed discussion on the findings of the subjects, in
terms of how their L1 interferes their L2, will be discussed in the following section.
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5.3 Analysis on research issue one
Referring back to the two main research questions mentioned in Chapter 1.6,
first, the reason why do Chinese L2 learners of this study tend to omit the main verb
and use the adverb very as a main verb in the written sentences.
5.3.1 Discussion on omission of verb
As mentioned earlier, from the point of view in English grammar, a simplesentence contains a subject, verb and optional objects or complement. The verb is an
essential unit in the sentence. However, from the findings in Table 2 and Table 3,
subjects from both of the classes in the study tend to omit the main verb in the
sentences, particularly in composition two; there is a high percentage of errors
indicating that subjects omit the verb in their writing. In section 3.4 Data analysis, the
findings were identified and classified to three sub-groups, which may help to explain
the phenomenon.
Table 8 Data of Three Sub-groups of Omission of Verb in Both Compositions
Class
Sentences with an adjective used predicatively
Sentences with a preposition phrase
Omission of other verbs
A 25 6 13 B 19 4 3
Total 44 10 16
From the data shown in Table 8, there is a comparatively large number of
errors in sentences omitting the verb, but using a predicative adjective. As mentioned
in section 5.2, it is a distinctive feature of Cantonese using a predicative adjective
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with the adjective marker hu , functioning as a verb in the sentence. In this case, the
copula verb to be is omitted. This is a remarkable influence from native language
(Cantonese) to target language (English). It has shown that subjects has tend to use
the English adverb very as the same as the adjective marker hu (very) in
Cantonese, in other words, students has translated the meaning of the sentence
directly from Cantonese to English. This L1 induced error occurs as the first language
pattern is different from the second language and subject transferred the pattern by
using the linguistic knowledge of their first language.
Apart from the adjective used predicatively, a small number of subjects used a
prepositional phrase instead as a verb in their writing. In general English,
prepositional phrases are a group of words composed of a preposition and normally a
noun phrase. It is used to express different meanings, such as place, time or reason
(Leech, 1989). However, in Cantonese, the characteristics of absence of word class
morphology, the existing of prepositions in Chinese is unknown (Yip & Matthews,
1994; 1999). The function of preposition in Chinese is played by two different types
of word: coverb and localizer. In this case of omission of verb is using the coverb
and its object to modify the verb, at the same time, functioning as a prepositional
phrase in English. These coverb behave like verbs in many respects. From the
findings of the subjects, they tend to use the preposition in / at , as hi and to as
heung in Chinese, as a locative coverb with a following property word (Yip &
Matthews, 1994). For example:
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yai yat ciujan tong wugwai hi king kuk
One day, superman and turtle in police station.
One day, a superman and a superturtle is in a police station.
It is suggested that hi , in the above case, is referring to in or at in
English prepositional functions. It has the properties of verbs rather than prepositions.
It is argued that with respect to Putonghua, the coverb hi may treat as a verb in all
their manifestations, in the case of their characteristic use as coverb invariably
involves a serial verb construction. From the above sample, it is once again shown
that L2 learners are transfer their prior knowledge of L1 into the construction of an
interlanguage. It is a noticeable transfer of linguistic structure from native language to
target language (Yip, 1995).
The finding of the last sub-group, which is the omission of other verbs, was
mainly missing the action verb or auxiliary verb have. As a similar case to sub-
group one, subjects tend to use the following noun, adverb or adjective as a verb,
however, they were not using the adjective marker hou (very) with the predicative
adjective. It is also believed to be a negative language transfer from L1 to L2.
In summary, the language errors of omission of verb were attributed to
interlingual confusion that arise the influence of transfer from mother tongue. As
learners are supposed to acquire the Basic English grammar of simple sentence
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structure in primary education, this error is an indicator of learners unsatisfactory
level of linguistic competence.
5.3.2 Discussion on Inappropriate use of adverb very
On the surface theory of language transfer, which refers to word by word
translation from L1 to L2, may used to explain the phenomenon of students using the
adverb very inappropriately, however, studies of interlanguage has shown that when
there is another systematic trend of language transfer occurs, a deeper investigation
should be made.
In fact from the data set, students were using the adverb very in most of the
cases as the modifier hou (very) to modify the verb and the adjective that mentioned
above in section 5.3.1. According to Francis & Matthews (2005), it is argued that to
distinguish adjective from other verbs, an intensifier such as the default intensifier
hou (very) should be used with a property word or a stative verb. In order words,
property words corresponding to adjectives in English are members of the category of
verbs in Cantonese. With the absent of the intensifier hou , the sentence will not be
completed. From the set of data, sentence (c) from B25 in Appendix 4 and sentence
(b) from A19 in Appendix 1 are some examples of stative verbs, such as like, was
used directly after the default intensifier as a verb. This class of verbs allows
modification of the intensifier hou.
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Apart from the above cases of inappropriate use of adverbs, some of the
samples have shown features of subjects having difficulties in distinguishing the verb
and adjective, as the samples can not be directly translated back into L1. Although
both L1 and L2 of the subjects are SVO languages and the adverb very has been
used to modify the verb and adjective, the sentences are still ungrammatical. Sentence
(a) from B16 and sentence (c) from B36 in Appendix 4 are some examples of
ungrammatical sentences; both sentences are ungrammatical in L1 and L2. As from
the sample B16 sentences (a), either the word feel of safe can be modified by very,
therefore the placement of verb may be treated as wrong choices of placement.
To conclude, as the set of findings can not provided a better view of the real
interpretation, further developed experiment should be done in order to have a more
detailed understanding.
5.4 Analysis on research issue two
Regarding to the research question of the frequency in omitting the main verb
or modifying the adverb verb in written English sentences between the two groups
of subject, some of the findings was presented in Chapter 4. However, whether the
more capable class (Class A) has fewer errors than the less capable class (Class B), a
more in-depth study will be discussed in this section.
In section 4.3, a simple comparison was made on various data shown in Table
1 to 6. It has shown that in terms of frequency of errors made by subjects from each
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Table 9 Number of sentences without any relevant errorsComposition 1:
Fear of HalloweenComposition 2:
Cartoon Characters
ClassTotal number of students
among the class
Sentences with correct
verb Appropriateuse of adverb
Sentences with correct
verb Appropriateuse of adverb
A 41 14 84 15 45 B 18 19 71 7 33
Total 33 155 22 78
Although students from Class A are more frequent in using the adverb
inappropriately, at the same time, figures shown in Table 9 that the number of
sentences without any relevant errors written by subjects who contain errors in their
writing in higher than Class B, particularly in the number of sentences using adverb
appropriately. This interesting phenomenon may be explained by the length of
composition written by students from different classes. It can be observed from the
writings that students from Class A tend to have a longer piece of writing than Class
B, which means that students in Class A tried to cover all the composition guidelines
in details to enrich the content, therefore this may result in higher frequency of errors.
However, comparing to writing of Class A students, work from Class B is much
shorter and a small number of writings did not use the guidelines fully.
Another observable phenomenon from the findings is that composition one:
Fear of Halloween is a topic which involves more human emotional words. Therefore,
students tend to use more adjectives with adverb of degree very to express humans
feelings. As mentioned before, Class A students used more sentences in the writing,
thus more errors occurred. On the other hand, composition two: Cartoon Characters is
a narrative writing that involves a lot of actions, so more sentences with verbs are
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used. From the nature of the two compositions, it can explain why there was a certain
amount of errors respectively.
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Chapter 6 Conclusion
This chapter outlines a conclusion and recommendation for future research to
conclude the whole research.
6.1 An overview of the research
The present study suggested that the second language acquisition in English of
two groups of local secondary school Form two language learners are influenced by
their first language, Cantonese, particularly in two distinctive grammatical items. By
collecting and analyzing the written data, it is undeniable that their native language is
interfering, in some extent, their learning of target language. After comparing and
contrasting the idiosyncratic features of their L1 and L2, it is suggested that influence
of first language to second language inevitably does exist; however, it does not exist
by the means of direct word by word translation, but after identifying the difference
between the target language and native language. As the belief of Contrastive
Analysis, errors not only being identified, it could be predicted.
After reading the findings and data collected from the subjects, it is noted that
students in the study as second language learners of English are lack of a categorical
distinction in parts of speech between their L1 and L2. As mentioned earlier,
Cantonese is a diverse language with the characteristics of absence of word class
morphology. This causes English learners difficulties in categorizing and identifying
the word classes, such as the finding shown in Chapter 5.3.2, which students are
unable to make distinction between verb and adjective. This reflects in the way that
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students used adjective without the verb to be and use of adverb very with stative
verb.
Although the ability of two groups of subjects are known before the study,
among all the data, there is no significant discovery showing that the more capable
class (Class A) perform better than the less capable class (Class B) in terms of
linguistic competence. This may reflect that more effective and efficient pedagogical
strategies should be introduced to assist and facilitate both groups of learners.
6.2 Suggestion for future research
Future investigation on this topic is worthwhile as a better and clear view of
distinctive linguistics features may provide educator with a better insight in SLA.
Furthermore, this offers valuable information for teachers to raise learners
consciousness of different linguistic features in the target language as well as to help
teachers to reflect and develop teaching strategies to enhance the learners
development of second language.
Apart from the above, for prospective researcher who may work more on this
study, it is advisable to record the students correct use of sentences, with the
particular features, may provide a more comprehensive data to the research. In
addition, experiments may be carried out to test the students knowledge in the
particular language features, such as placement of verb or usage of adverb very, so
as to have a plain statistics for examination.
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Appendix 1
Class: AComposition 1: Fear of HalloweenTotal No. of Compositions in Class A: 41No. of Compositions with Errors: 18
StudentClass No.
Samples
A3 (a) It ^ so fun.A6 (a) I very like dressed up contums(contumes).A9 (a) I will ^ with my friend in Halloween meeting a party.
A11 (a) Sometime I will decoration a very scary Haunte House.A12 (a) I ^ happy because I celebrate Halloween with my best friends.A13 (a) Play TV game only play 30 minutes, but very happy.A14 (a) We very like celebrate Halloween because we think celebrate Halloween is very exciting.
(b) I hope can very quick in Halloween night.A15 (a) It ^ so drak(dark), we can't see each other.A16 (a) I was very twenty many candies.
(b) I ^ feeling this Halloween very funny.A18 (a) This Halloween was very happy, because I got lot of sweet, the sweets are very good too.
(b) I think next year I will play rick(trick) or treat and apple bobbing, too, because they are verygoodplay for me.
A19 (a) It's very good feel.(b) I very like go.(c ) We will very enjoy it.
A20 (a) I with my friends celebrate halloween because I very like Halloween.A22 (a) Oh! My friend was scary and ^ tricks to me it is very horror, but anyway we played very happy.A27 (a) My friend David he like dressed a ghosts, spiderman, badman very cartoons.
(b) In my friend - Joy is very not correct.
(c) I ^ very happy.(e) and we cooperation ^ very good.
A30 (a) Period of time we had very more to laugh at nonsense.(b) In the street, I and friend ^ very happy.
A35 (a) We always ^ scary to people and children.A38 (a) Then decorated our classroom very horror.A39 (a) We will decorated the home to very beautiful.
TotalNote: Words in bracket are the correct spelling of the vocabulary.
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Appendix 3
Class: BComposition 1: Fear of HalloweenTotal No. of Compositions in Class B: 18
No. of Compositions with Errors: 10
StudentClass No.
Samples
O
B7 (a) Is very good play a day.(b) but very beatifull(beautiful)(c ) I ^ very happy have a classroom!(d) I saw the street have very a lot of pretty girl and handsome boy.(e) Very looked funny.(f) I bought very a lot of prentes(present).
B12 (a) I will ^ happy.B15 (a) I very likes HalloweenB18 (a) I very scary because
(b) because this five people dressed up monster costurns(costumes) ^ very real(c) I had ten sweets Miss Chan ^ very generous.(d) I feel this Halloween ^ very funny buy(but) scary.
B19 (a) I feel this Halloween ^ very happy because It was my first in celebrate Halloween.B22 (a) I very a lot of candies.B28 (a) It ^ very funny.B30 (a) We buy more of them this because us is very want to eating.
(b) We are very happy, because this close is very looked funny.
(c) In Ocean Park, my friend ^ very scared play the rides games and play the apple bobbing myfriend fall in to the water.B34 (a) I was got very sweet
(b) ...but my friends ^ very small because they sleep on the bed.B39 (a) This halloween was very good to play, I very love this.
TotalNote: Words in bracket are the correct spelling of the vocabulary.
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Appendix 4
Class: BComposition 2: Cartoon CharactersTotal No. of Compositions in Class B: 18No. of Compositions with Errors: 11
StudentClass No.
Samples
B3 (a) Suddenly they ^ very happy.(b) It was because there is a hugh comet heading directly from the Earth, this comet ^ very quick in Earth.(c ) Superman ^ video telephone.(d) Turtle ^ very frightened.(e) Superman very not happy.(f) Superman ^ very happy.(g) Superman is a very hero.
B5 (a) In police station, the Turtle and Superman very free, because no crimes to solve and no buddies to fight, so very
boring.B7 (a) My ^ very boring.
(b) Man Man and turlte(turtle) ^ very unhappy.B12 (a) There ^ a huge comet heading directly from the Earth!
(b) What ^ we do now!B16 (a) They are very feel safe life.B18 (a) They are in police station, very boring, because in here no crimes to solve.
(b) The comet very fast fly to the earth.B19 (a) Have one day, superman and Mr. Turtle in office,
(b) It very quiet.B24 (a) One day, superman and turtle ^ in the alert doing now.
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