An Analysis of Errors in Vnese Leaners Use of E Articles

8/18/2019 An Analysis of Errors in Vnese Leaners Use of E Articles

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Second Language Acquisition

AN ANALYSIS OF ERRORS IN VIETNAMESE LEAR NERS’

USE OF ENGLISH ARTICLES

Vietnam National University

University of Social Sciences and Humanities – Ho Chi Minh CityFaculty of English Linguistics and Literature


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Table of Contents

ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................................. 2

1. INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................... 2

2. LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................... 2

3. METHODOLOGY .............................................................................................................. 4

3.1. Research questions ....................................................................................................... 4

3.2. Participants ................................................................................................................... 4

3.3. Instruments ................................................................................................................... 4

3.4. Data Analysis Procedure ............................................................................................. 5

4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .......................................................................................... 6

4.1. Analysis of data ............................................................................................................ 6

4.1.1. Data from the questionnaire and Test 1 .......................................................... 6

4.1.2. Data from Test 2................................................................................................. 6

4 2 Discussion 8


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ABSTRACT

The present research focuses on analyzing the errors in using English articles made by

Vietnamese learners. Based on an existing classification of English articles (a, the, Ø), data on

articles usage was collected from English major students at Thu Dau 1 University, using

questionnaires and tests. After that, the data was analyzed to find out which article(s) and which

semantic field(s) causing the most troubles for the students and what are the common errors

made by the students. The result revealed that the is the most troublesome article and Type 2and Type 5 are the most difficult semantic fields. For types of error, the overuse of Ø is the

most common one. It was also argued that the causes of errors were not only from the L2 input

but also from L1 interference and teachers’ instructions. The research was concluded with some

suggestions for improving learners’ performance in using English articles.

1.

INTRODUCTION

English articles are among the most frequently used words in English. They appear in almost

every sentence and play an essential role in maintaining successful communication. However,

the English article system is also one of the most problematic elements for ESL/EFL learners.

Many works, including those of Ekiert (2005), Nguyễn, T. H. (2005), Li & Yang (2010), and

Si h (2014) h h h l l i l hi h l l f fi i ill f


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Huebner’s model (1983), which has been widely adapted in many works, including those of

White (2009), Li & Yang (2009) and Świątek (2013), as the theoretical framework.

According to Huebner, a noun phrase is classified by two criteria: (1) whether its referent is

specific [+/- SR], and (2) whether it is known to the hearer (i.e. definite) [+/- HK]. The two

criteria together create four ‘semantic fields’ (Ekiert, 2005) in which the articles occur: Type 1

[-SR, +HK] for the, a/an or Ø; Type 2 [+SR, +HK] for the; Type 3 [+SR, -HK] for a/an or Ø;

and Type 4 [-SR, -HK] also for a/an or Ø (cited in White, 2009). Later, Thomas (1989) and

Butler (2002) have suggested adding a fifth category of idiomatic use into the model. Type 5,

similar to Type 1, contains all three article choices: the, a/an and Ø. A summary of the

environments for the appearance of the, a/an and Ø can be found in Appendix 1.

The English article system, by its nature, causes great difficulties for ESL/EFL learners,

because not only do they have to distinguish between five environments, they also have to

identify whether a noun is countable or uncountable, singular or plural; in order to choose an

appropriate article. However, the complexity of the system is not the only cause of difficulties.

According to Ionin et al. (2008), there are at least three factors affect the acquisition of learners:

(1) the L2 input; (2) their native language; and (3) their innate linguistic knowledge. Master


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3. METHODOLOGY

3.1.

Research questionsThe present research was conducted in order to find the answers for the following questions:

1. Which article(s) cause(s) the most difficulties for Vietnamese learners?

2.

Which semantic field(s) cause(s) the most difficulties for the learners?

3. What are the common errors made by the learners in using English articles?

3.2. Participants

The participants of the research were twenty four English major sophomores at Thủ Dầu 1

University. They were students of the same class and chosen as convenience sample. The

number of years of exposure to English of the group was about ten years and their level of

proficiency was estimated at intermediate.

3.3. Instruments

A questionnaire and a test were used to collect the data. The questionnaire includes eight

questions, asking the subjects’ personal information and their general knowledge about articles.

The test consists of two parts. The first one (Test 1) aims to test the subjects’ understanding

b t th ti f d fi it (i [+/ HK]) Th d (T t 2) d t d f Eki t


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3.4. Data Analysis Procedure

The following procedure was used to analyze the data collected by Test 2, which was also the

main research instrument. First, the tests were marked, with 1 point for each correct insertion

of articles and 0 point for each incorrect one. After that, the marks were transferred into an

Excel sheet where they were arranged and calculated. The digitalized data, then, were analyzed

from different perspectives. Firstly, the percentages of accurate use of each article1 were

calculated using SOC (Supplied in Obligatory Contexts) measure:

=

× 100

(Cited in Li & Yang, 2010, pp. 19)

Secondly, the percentages of accurate use of articles in each semantic field

2

mentioned abovewere also calculated using the same measure. The purposes of these steps were to find out the

answers for the first and the second research question (i.e. which articles and which semantic

fields cause the most difficulties for the students). However, the SOC measure neither takes

into account the overuse of articles nor points out which kinds of error the students have made.

Therefore, for research question (3), another step needed to be done to calculate the number of


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4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

4.1.

Analysis of data

4.1.1. Data from the questionnaire and Test 1

From the questionnaire, several facts emerged. Firstly, most of the students (91.5%) have learnt

the English articles in grammar books. Secondly, while about fifty percent of the students

thought that it was difficult to use the English articles accurately; most of them (20 out of 24)

admitted that the was the most troublesome one for them. There were several reasons for them

to come to this conclusion; some common ones among which were (1) they were not sure about

when to use the, (2) the rules were too complicated to remember, and (3) they did not

understand the notion of definiteness. Last but not least, the result confirmed the researcher’s

hypothesis about the students’ unawareness of the zero article. There were only two students

included Ø in their answers for question 6 in the questionnaire.

With respect to Test 1, the data showed important information. First of all, it confirm the

students’ admission that they were not clear about the notion of definiteness. Only one-third of

the students gave the correct answer for Test 1. Moreover, the result revealed another noticeable

point which was that most of the students who answered incorrectly made the same error. About


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Figure 1 shows the percentage of accurate use for each article type. Among three articles, the

causes the most difficulties for the students, with only about 40% of the answers were correct.

The use of a also proves to be troublesome for the students, but is not as much as that of the.

On the contrary, it seems that Ø did not cause much trouble, since the percentage of correct

answers is up to 84%. However, this number must be interpreted carefully. Since Test 2 only

required the students to fill in a or the; and if none of them was filled in, it was assumed that

Ø was used; nobody can tell whether the students knew exactly where not to use a and the or

they left those places blank just because they did not know what to fill in. Further investigation

58.33%

39.93%

84.23%

0.00%

20.00%

40.00%

60.00%

80.00%

100.00%

A/an The Ø

Figure 1

Accurate uses of articles shown by article type


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Table 1

Overuse of the, a and Ø

Total Type 1 Type 2 Type 3 Type 4 Type 5

Overuse of the 62 11 X 17 18 15

Overuse of a 31 2 10 2 5 13

Overuse of Ø 271 44 87 36 24 80

With respect to Table 1, the data provides another view towards the students ’ errors. While Ø

has the highest percentage of accuracy; it was also overused the most, with a total of 271 cases.

The comes at the second places, with 62 cases of overuse. A is the least-overused one with only

31 cases in total. The results in each semantic fields follow the similar tendency (except for

Type 2, since the cannot be overused in an environment where the use of it is the only option).

4.2.

DiscussionThe results above yield several noticeable findings on the analysis of learners’ errors in using

English articles. The present part will separately discuss the findings for each article type,

starting with ones related to the definite article the.

4.2.1. The definite article the


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inserted the before the second ‘ring’ and ‘necklace’ , whereas, most of them (18 students) failed

to recognize ‘war’ in Item 18 was also a definite noun.

Another possible cause of errors is the differences between the two languages. Although

Vietnamese has an article system; not a single word in Vietnamese can be one-to-one

equivalent of the (Tô, M. T., 2011, pp.33). Moreover, unlike its Vietnamese counterparts,

which are nhữ ng or các in certain situations (Bùi, M. H., 2000b), the does not have clear lexical

meaning; making learners confused when they try to translate the word into Vietnamese. In

addition, many Vietnamese people are not familiar with the notion of definiteness. Therefore,

when definiteness is used as a criteria to decide the use of the, they may find it difficult to

thoroughly understand the rules.

In respect to the overuse of the, the result is similar to those of previous researches. This

phenomenon (also called as ‘the-flooding’) has been observed and confirmed by many

researchers, including Huebner (1983), Ekiert (2005), Sinha (2014). They have explained that

the tends to be overused more than a because the former is acquired earlier than the latter, and

thus easier to be overgeneralized (Ekiert, 2005). So far, the findings related to the have been

discussed; let us now turn to those related to a.


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4.2.3.

The zero article

It seems that Ø caused much less difficulties for the students than the and a did, as the percentage of accurate use was very high. However, as mentioned above, this number must be

interpreted carefully; because there are, at least, two possibilities for each non-use of articles:

(1) the students intentionally used Ø (i.e. they knew that no article is needed) or (2) they just

simply employed the avoidance strategy (i.e. they did not know what to choose and thus chose

not to insert anything). However, the evidences from Test 2 seems to support the second one.

Firstly, some ideas may emerge from the result in Type 5. In this type, there were 4 obligatory

uses of Ø, 2 obligatory uses of the, and two others ones of a. Given that all the test items for

this type are at them same level of difficulty for the students; the percentages of accuracy of

the three article types, by chance, should not be so different. However, while the percentages

of accuracy of the and a are very low (respectively 16.67% and 10.42%), the percentage of

accuracy of Ø is extremely high (about 74%). Moreover, the dominant error in the obligatory

uses of the and a in Type 5 is the overuse of Ø. One possible explanation for these phenomena

is that the students did not have the knowledge to answer these items, and thus they used the

avoidance strategy. In order words, the students just accidentally provided correct answers for

h bli f Ø


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5. CONCLUSION

The present research has certain limitations. Firstly, it was conducted within a very shortamount of time, on a small number of subjects, which may affect the reliability and validity of

the results. Secondly, since the size of sample is small, it would be impossible to generalize the

findings of the study to all Vietnamese learners. Thirdly, due to the tension of time, the test in

the present study has less items than the original one, which may also affect the result. Last but

not least, the exclusion of Ø as an option from Test 2, though necessary in the context of thestudy, did limit the results of the test. Although, it might be deduced that the unusually high

percentage of accuracy was the effect of avoidance; it is impossible to tell to what extent the

students actually used this strategy.

However, the research has its own value, yielding several important implications. First of all,

the is the article that cause the most difficulties for the students. One of the possible causes for

this issues is that the learners do not understand thoroughly the notion of definiteness, although

it is important to the acquisition of the English articles. Moreover, teachers’ instructions which

focus on introducing ‘rules of thumb’ may negatively affect students’ performance in many

situations. Hence, one possible solution for these problems is helping the students understand

h hl h i f d f h h fi h f i l b


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7(266), 27 – 40.

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Wong, B. E. and Quek, S. T. (2007). Acquisition of the English Definite Article by Chinese

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APPENDIX 1

Environments for the Appearance ofa, the

, and Ø


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APPENDIX 2

Data Collecting Tools: Questionnaire & Test

Questionnaire

1. How long have you been studying English? ........................................................................

2. How do you rate your English ability?

3. Where did you learn English articles (mạo từ)?

a. In grammar books

b. Through speaking

c. Through listening

d. Through writing

e. Other (please give specific information) ..............................................................................

4. In your opinion, using English articles is

① ② ③ ④ ⑤ Very

PoorPoor Medium Good

Very

Good

① ② ③ ④ ⑤ Very

EasyEasy Normal Difficult

Very

Difficult


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II. Read the following sentences and insert a/an or the wherever you think it is necessary.5

1. Ø(1) Language is a(2) great invention of Ø(3) humankind.

[Type 1] [Type 4] [Type 1]

2. A/the(4) Cat likes Ø(5) mice.

[Type 1] [Type 4]

3. Ø(6) Love and Ø(7) hate are two Ø(8) extremes.


4. He used to be a(9) lawyer.

[Type 4]

5.

Writing Ø(10) letters is a(11) pain in the(12) neck for me.


6. The(13) Horse I bet on is still in Ø(14) front.

[Type 2] [Type 5]

7. Washington says that Saddam Hussein is playing another game of

Ø(15) cat and Ø(16) mouse.

[Type 5] [Type 5]

8.

Fred bought a(17) car on Monday. On Wednesday, he crashed the(18) car.

[Type 3] [Type 2]

9. Jane bought a(19) ring and a(20) necklace for her mother’s birthday. Her[Type 3] [Type 3]

mother loved the(21) ring but hated the(22) necklace.

[Type 2] [Type 2]

10. We went to a(23) wedding last month. The(24) Bride was beautiful.


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17

APPENDIX 3

Detailed Calculation of Accurate Use for Each Article Type


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18

APPENDIX 4

Detailed Calculation of Percentages of Accuracy in Five Semantic Fields


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19

APPENDIX 5

Detailed Calculation of Types of Error (i.e. Overuse of the, a, and Ø)

Note:

1.

The data was first arranged based on type of semantic field, and was later grouped by the required articles (which were indicated by labels(i.e. the, a, and Ø) and colors (i.e. ‘yellow’ : Ø, ‘light blue’ : a, ‘orange’ : the/a, ‘green’ : the)

2. Types of errors were marked by numbers (i.e. overuse of Ø: 0 , overuse of a: 1 , overuse of the: 2, correct use: ‘blank’ ) 3. The red-letters area show the result (i.e. the overuse of the, a, and Ø in each semantic fields)

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An Analysis of Errors in Vnese Leaners Use of E Articles