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A CASE STUDY
Dorothea Rahardani Abstract
This study reports the common grammatical error of the spoken English made by a Biology teacher of Bethany School, Salatiga. Many scholars have conducted several studies about Error Analysis (EA), however there were still a little study about EA which investigates the
errors made by the teacher. Seeing the importance of the teacher’s role in the teaching and
learning process, this study is aimed at investigating the teacher’s grammatical error as she was
teaching in the classroom. Using the sample linguistic category taxonomy proposed by Burt, Dulay and Krashen (1982) in classifying the errors such as plural forms, verb tenses, subject-verb agreements, determiners, and pronouns, the data were collected through six-time
observations in order to get the audio records of teacher’s utterances while teaching in the
classroom. Then, the data would be analyzed and specified based on the linguistic category to get the result. The result of this study showed that the most common grammatical error made by the teacher was the use of determiners that worth for 119 errors, 27.87%. Other errors that found out were singular/plural forms (91 errors, 21.31%), pronouns (62 errors, 14.52%), subject-verb agreements (60 errors, 14.05%), verbs tense (57 errors, 13.35%), and prepositions (38 errors, 8.90%). Pedagogical implications would be made in this study for the development of SLA and TESOL.
Keywords: Error Analysis, Grammatical Errors, Linguistic Category Taxonomy, Immersion Program
Introduction
Human learning, in any form, may never be free from mistakes. Learning how to swim, play badminton, and how to walk for a baby involve in making mistakes (Brown, 2000), but from these mistakes, people get feedback and they learn how to produce the correct ways or forms. This is also true when people are learning a foreign language. Learners also make
mistakes. However, mistakes should not be seen as something negative because ―making of
mistakes is an important part of learning‖ (Williams & Burden, 1997, p. 11). Kavaliauskienė
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positively‖ (p. 51). Finally, Norrish (1983) in Sanal (2007, p. 598) notes, ―Making mistakes can
indeed be regarded as an essential part of learning‖.
Ellis (2005) also explained that learners often make some mistakes or errors both in the
comprehension and production process in the language learning. Therefore, ―making errors is the
most natural thing in the world and it is evidently attached to the human being‖ (Maicusi &
Lopez, 1999, p. 168). Errors can also giving feedback to the learners and the teacher, because by
knowing the feedback from the errors, we could know about the effectiveness of the teacher‘s
teaching materials.
The study of learner‘s errors has become a primary focus in the L2 research during the
last decade (Burt, Dulay & Krashen, 1982, p. 140). Wardaugh (1983) did the first study on learner errors under Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH). CAH is an approach to study the
learner‘s errors. It rested on a comparison of the learner‘s native and target languages (Burt,
Dulay & Krashen, 1982). This kind of hypothesis looked the errors as a result of interfering the first language habits to learn new linguistic behaviors (Burt, Dulay & Krashen, 1982). This statement was also claimed by Brown (1980) that the principal barrier to second language acquisition is the interference of the first language system with the second language system. It believed that CAH would predict the areas in the target language that would reflect the most difficulty in language learning. Then, the CAH hypothesis rests on the assumptions that: (1) language learning is habit formation, (2) an old habit facilitates the formation of a new habit.
Since the CAH appeared, many critics toward CAH also appeared. Brown (1987) argued that CAH focused on the interference of L1 on L2 learning.
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uninformative (teachers has already known these errors before) and also inaccurate, i.e.
many of the errors that CA has predicted in fact occur‖ (Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005 in
Husada, (2007, p. 95).
Sanal (2007, p. 597) also stated that ―there were a number of theoretical criticisms
regarding the feasibility of comparing languages and methodology of CAH.‖ Burt, Dulay, &
Krashen (1982) also argued
Errors should therefore result from first language habits interfering with the learner‘s
attempts to learn new linguistic behaviors……This and other similar observations
documented in journal articles pointed out an embarrassing gap between theory and reality and set the scene for the acceptance of a more comprehensive approach to errors. (p. 140)
Because of the controversy and criticisms, Error Analysis (EA) approach appeared.
Dulay, Burt, & Krashen (1982) contend that EA attempts to account for learners‘ errors that
cannot be explained or predicted by CA or behaviorist theory. ―EA has made a significant
contribution to the theoretical consciousness-raising of applied linguistics and language
practitioners‖ (Krashen, 1982, p. 141). Darus (2009) also notes that EA can help the teachers to
identify in a systematic manner of the specific and common language problems that the students have.
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group consisted of the students who had no experience with the TOEIC test (low level). The results of the study show that there was no correlation between the number of errors and the
participants‘ TOEIC scores. In the other words, high scores of the TOEIC did not mean less
number of errors. The study also found that the most common errors were transfer errors from
the participants‘ L1 (26%). These errors were considered as crucial errors because the intention
of the writers was not clearly delivered. Eun pyo‘s study also suggested that the teachers of
English should produce a kind of guide book on the errors that most of the students made and let them to study the errors. By doing so, the students would know their errors patterns and knew how to handle them in the future.
In a later year, Bataineh (2005) analyzed the grammatical errors in using the indefinite article produced by EFL students at Yarmouk University in Jordan. The participants were 209 male and female freshmen, sophomores, junior and senior students. Based on the analysis of their 50 minutes essays, she found that even though juniors and seniors wrote the compositions twice as long, their errors were 20% and 23% less than those made by the freshmen and 34% and 40% less than those made by the sophomores respectively. The result of the study also showed
that the influence of the learners‘ native language was minimal. Instead, the majority of errors
occurred due to the results of developmental factors and common learning processes, such as overgeneralization or simplification.
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although the participants knew and understood the passage that they had read, errors still
occurred in the participants‘ essays. Here, most of the errors occurred due to the absence of
transitional words (90.93%), lack of organizations (85.87%), and no introduction and conclusion
(82.84%). The study suggests that teachers should know their students‘ writing abilities so that
they could identify which area needed to be developed.
Darus (2009) did a similar study on the EA to 72 students in a secondary school in Semenyih town in Malaysia. Except for one, all of the participants had had their primary education in National school and spoke Malay at home. Here, the participants were given 60 minutes to write 200-to-250-word-guided writing with the topic of ‗Cleanliness of the School
Canteen‘. The result of the study shows that singular and plural forms were found to be the most
errors (13.30%). She speculated that the errors occurred due to the absence of plural marker for a noun in Malay. She also noted that the study of EA could help the teachers to identify in a systematic manner the specific and common language problems that the students usually had.
Recently, Liu & Wang (2011) also did the study on EA. Their study aimed to analyze the paragraph-level errors in 90 English compositions, because they saw that Chinese university
students were still incompetent in English especially in the writing tasks. ―Errors, among all
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had (great) difficulty in developing a paragraph. In other words, the weaker a writer was at developing a paragraph, the worse s/he performed in the writing task, the more paragraph level errors a writer made, the worse s/he performed in a writing task; or vice versa‖ (Ibid., pp. 584 -593). The study suggested that further research to help students to write the effective paragraphs was needed so that they were able to improve their quality in English writing.
Despite a lot of studies on EA in many different countries, almost all of EA studies
focused on students‘ errors either grammar or vocabulary. To my best knowledge little or even
none of EA studies deal with the errors produced by the teachers. Therefore, I believe it is still
necessary to conduct additional EA study which focuses on teacher‘s errors. In this study, I
would like focusing on the teacher of an immersion class. Referring to Keith (1997), immersion program is a new education development program within bilingual education. As Swain and Johnson (1996) remarked, immersion language teaching is one of the most effective ways of learning a second language. In the immersion programs, the target language is taught not only as a subject but it is also used as the language of instruction in other subjects. The subject teacher in immersion class was using the target language as the medium of teaching. The aims of the programs are to enable students to obtain the same education as in the English language program and to acquire fluency in the target language. The central characteristics of immersion is teaching
of the target language, content, and culture in combination without the use of students‘ first
language (Krashen & Terrel, 1983).
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caused by the language used by the subject teachers. One of the problems may come from the lack of the grammar knowledge. Grammar is defined as something which is deal with the sentence form and its smaller units: clauses, phrases, and words (Huddleston and Pullum, 2005) and it specifically deals with language rules that govern the systematic work of language and it is used to be seen as the most important part of teaching a foreign language. Therefore, the research
question that I would like to address is ―What is the most common grammatical error made by
the science teacher in the immersion class?‖ The common grammatical error would be found
using linguistic category taxonomy proposed by Burt, Dulay, & Krashen (1982), linguistic category taxonomy is a tool to emphasize or highlight the ways surface structures are altered. By analyzing errors from a surface strategy perspective, I could identify the cognitive processes that
underlie the teacher‘s reconstruction of the new languages. This study also maintains the use of
the term ―error‖ as I did not set out to differentiate whether the errors were systematic or merely
mistakes.
The Study Context of the study
This study was conducted at the third grade of Bethany school. Located in a small town of Salatiga, Central Java, Indonesia, the school is full immersion where both the teachers and the
students are required to use English in their school‘s activities including in the teaching and
8 Participant
The participant of the present study was a Biology teacher who taught in the third grade of the elementary school. She is Ms. Lovina Prastyanti (pseudonyms), 25 years old. The participant graduated from the faculty of Biology, Satya Wacana Christian University in Salatiga. She has been teaching Biology in Bethany school since May 2010. Instead of learning English while she was studying in Biology faculty, she was taking a short course in LIA (formal English course). Ms Lovina also had got a challenge in studying English with the native speaker for about two weeks when she was about to teach in one school in Semarang before she was teaching in Bethany school.
Data Collection
The data for this study were collected from six observations. Each observation was audio
recorded and lasted for about 70 minutes. In the observations, I focused on the teacher‘s
utterances which included the teacher‘s greeting, giving explanation, asking questions, and
giving commands. After getting the data, I transcribed them verbatim. The transcribed data would be used for the data analysis.
Data Analysis
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After that, the discussion of each error type would be written for further explanation. The last step in this study was drawing the conclusion from the result of the data analysis.
Findings and Discussions
The research question asked what was the most common grammatical error made by the science teacher in the immersion class. Based on the native speaker‘s correction, it was found that there were in total 427 errors found in the spoken English made by the participant. The finding showed that the most common grammatical error made by the participant was determiners (119 errors, 27.87%). Other errors that found out were singular/plural forms (91 errors, 21.31%), pronouns (62 errors, 14.52%), subject-verb agreements (60 errors, 14.05%), verb tense (57 errors, 13.35%), and prepositions (38 errors, 8.90%). Table 1 below shows the
participant‘s grammatical errors.
NO Linguistic Category Frequency Percentage
1 Determiners 119 27.87%
2 Plural forms 91 21.31%
3 Pronouns 62 14.52%
4 Subject/Verb agreements 60 14.05%
5 Verb Tenses 57 13.35%
6 Prepositions 38 8.90%
Total 427 100%
Table 1. Grammatical Errors Made by The Participant
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example in the sentence We are going to have * review and then on * 26th you will have monthly test ya, the participant omitted a and the in the utterance. Another example occurred in the sentence * stages in * frog and lady bug lifecycle look very different. Here, the participant also omitted the and a. The result of the study also indicated that the most common errors in the use of determiners were indefinite article a/an as well as definite article the, although demonstrative adjectives that, this, those, and these were also found among the errors. For example, in the sentence So, *this is the differences yaa, the participant misformation the demonstrative adjective these with this. Similar with this sentence In *the stage, the young, the adult is totally different.
Based on the native speaker‘s correction, the in the beginning of this sentence should be shifted
with in this.
Omission of the determiners often happened in the errors. For example, in the sentence This is for * cockroach and grasshoper, the participant omitted the indefinite article a in the utterance. Similarly, she also omitted the definite article the in the sentence Today is * 19th instead of Today is the 19th. Table 2 below shows the participant‘s errors in the use of determiners
Errors Corrections Descriptions of Errors
Do you have * star? A Omission of indefinite article a in a singular countable noun.
And then on * 26th
you … The Omission of the definite article the in a noun.
*Second one is … The Omission of the definite article the in a noun. This is *the
example… the Misformation of the definite article definite article the should be shifted by the the. The indefinite article an.
*This is the stages This Misformation of the demonstrative adjective this. The demonstrative adjective this should be shifted by these followed by are
Do you have * questions?
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Who wants *? some Omission of the determiner some in a countable plural noun
Table 2. The Participant‘s Errors in the Use of Determiners.
The result of the study also supported the findings of some previous research that determiners especially articles were difficult and problematic to a lot of non native speakers of English. For example, Lightfoot (1998) in Chang (2010) who investigated the use of articles among the Japanese second language learners found that errors in the use of English articles were significantly high and they occurred due to ―the direct interference from the article-less
Japanese language‖ (p. 1). In line with this, Master (2010) also commented, ―article is one
grammatical area that is universally acknowledged to be a great difficulty for nonnative speakers of English‖ (p. 1).
The second most frequent grammatical error was the plural form, (91 errors or 21.31%). The participant made errors in omitting the use of s and es for plural countable nouns. For example in the sentence It is four page*. 4 halaman (4 pages), the participant omitted s in the end of the plural countable noun. Another example occurred in the If you poop in the *pant, the participant omitted the plural form in the plural noun pants. The participant omitted s or es in the plural form of a noun. Table 3 below shows the participant‘s errors in the plural form
Errors Corrections Descriptions of Errors ... to classify things,
look for the
*similarity…
similarity Omission of plural form es in the similarities
… but some
airs Misformation of uncountable noun form of air. ... the stages of
some animal life *cycle
cycle Ommision of the plural form s in the word cycle
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This result was in line with Maros (2007) in (Ibid, 2010)
The difficulty with plural form may be due to L1 influence, in Bahasa Melayu, plurality form expressed by the used of kata bilangan - the word numbers and kata majemuk – compound words for example dua tugasan, tugasan-tugasan (p.61)
Here, Bahasa Indonesia uses numbers and reduplication such as dua kelapa (two coconut) instead of *dua kelapas (two coconuts) and teman-temanku (my friends) instead of *temansku. This kind of phenomenon could influence the usage of singular and plural form as the teacher forgot to add s for the plural form and differentiate the countable and uncountable noun, because in Bahasa Indonesia there is no specific structure in differentiating the countable and uncountable noun.
Pronouns rank the third among the grammatical errors made by the teacher in her teaching process (62 errors or 14.52%). The participant made errors in the used of subject pronouns and the possessive pronouns. For example in the sentence Because it is my pet, so I should give *them. Here, the participant used the inappropriate subject pronoun in the utterance.
A similar example occurred in the sentence For number two, *we can put the picture into three
groups according to the… Here, the participant used the subject pronoun we, whereas the
command was only given for the students excluding the teacher, but the participant used the subject pronoun we instead of you. Table 4 below shows the participant‘s errors in the use of pronouns
Errors Corrections Descriptions of Errors ..but a strawberry
plants keeps *their fruits
their Misformation of the pronoun their instead of its
So, if you want to plant something you need to put *
near a window
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it (is) Misformation of the pronoun it(is) instead of they (are)
Table 4. The Participant‘s Errors in The Use of Pronouns.
Omission and misformation of the subject pronoun were often happen in making the errors as we can see from the examples above. Missing pronoun in an utterance would lead to misunderstanding between speakers and listeners because there would be some missing information in the utterances.
Errors in the subject-verb agreements were found as many as 60 errors or 14.05%. For example Yes, because it *need air. Here, the participant omitted the s in the end of the verb in the present tense. The same thing happened in the sentence I want you to stick it in your book after you * done it. In this sentence, the participant omitted auxiliary have in the present perfect tense.
Table 5 below shows the examples of the participant‘s errors in the subject-verb agreements.
Errors Corrections Descriptions of Errors What *is the
differences?
is Misformation of the subject-verb agreement is in the plural noun form
have Misformation of the subject-verb agreement have instead of are
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This result of the study was in line with Flowerdew‘s finding (2001) that subject-verb agreement is as one of the common surface errors faced by the non-native writers of English. Flowerdew said that the future investigating of subject-verb agreement error in the spoken English is needed.
In this study, 57 verb tenses errors or 13.35% were identified. The participant produced errors in the use of inaccurate form of the verb tenses used in the utterance. For example in the sentence I *have make it rather that made. In this sentence, the participant used the incorrect past participle verb-form. Misforming of verbs that were not appropriate with the tenses often happened in the errors particularly in misforming the past and present perfect tense. For example, in the sentence *Have you finish?, the participant used the verb finish in the present tense form, whereas we can see that the utterance was in the form of present perfect tense. Similarly, in the sentence I *have explain it before, the participant used the incorrect verb form in the utterance. Table 6 below shows the participant‘s errors in the use of verb tenses.
Errors Corrections Descriptions of Errors Yesterday you
*have write this ...
Have write Misform the past participle tense verb-form
I *have ask you … Have ask Misform the past participle tense verb-form
If you *have finish
Have finish Misform the past participle tense verb-form
I *have ask you to freeze
Have ask Misform the past participle tense verb-form
Table 6. The Participant‘s Errors in The Use of Verb Tenses.
The result of the study was in line with the findings of some previous research that verb tense tended to be the major factor in the tenses errors. For example, Chang (2010) pointed out
Students tended to use the correct form of tenses but the forms were wrongly constructed
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of tenses understanding may be the major factor of the errors. It was also assumed that
the participant wasn‘t mastering English tenses theory (p.62).
The English tenses system especially past tense form seemed more difficult compared to Bahasa Indonesia. In Bahasa Indonesia, the time of the action was added before a verb. For example, Kemarin saya membuat kue ini untukmu (Yesterday I made this cake for you). Another example happens in this sentence Saya akan pergi ke Bali (I am going to go to Bali). In Bahasa Indonesia, there was no changing of the verb tense if the time of speaking changes. However, in English if the time of speaking changed, the tenses form also would change.
Finally, errors in prepositions account for 38 errors or 8.90%. The participant made errors in the used of in, and on in the utterance. For example in the sentence Put the fish *on the aquarium instead of Put the fish in the aquarium. Similarly, it also happened in the sentence Put
your exercise *on your bag! rather than Put your exercise in your bag!. Table 7 below shows the
participant‘s prepositions errors.
Errors Corrections Descriptions of Errors *On our last class
we have…, In Misform the preposition on instead of in
I want you to stick *on your book after you have done it
in Misform the preposition on instead of in
I want you to write it and draw
it *on your book
in Misform the preposition on instead of in
Ahh….it‘s really
Table 7. The Participant‘s Errors in The Use of Prepositions.
Tetreault & Chodorow (2008) proposed that the writer‘s purpose in using the linguistic
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The teacher seemed to face the difficulties in adjusting the used of preposition. Errors that found
in the finding‘s result may occur because of a large amount linguistic function which can be
used.
Conclusion and Pedagogical Implications
This study aimed to investigate the most common grammatical errors made by the science teacher in an immersion class. After series of calculation and errors classification, the result showed that determiner was the most common grammatical error made by the participant (119 errors, 27.87%). Other errors that found out were singular/plural forms (91 errors, 21.31%), pronouns (62 errors, 14.52%), subject-verb agreements (60 errors, 14.05%), verb tenses (57 errors, 13.35%), and prepositions (38 errors, 8.90%).
The findings led to two pedagogical implications on the development of Immersion program and Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL). Do to the results that found out,
there were still necessary to develop the teacher‘s grammar knowledge. Bethany school needs to
provide some helps and facilities to the teachers in developing their English grammar knowledge especially the determiners. For example, it could be by providing some English grammar training, send the teachers to the English course such as LIA, EF, LTC, etc or providing some grammar books in school so that teachers in Bethany school would have a kind of discussion and group study. It hopes that it would help in developing the teachers and also the quality of immersion program in Bethany school.
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other grammatical aspects such as determiners or prepositions were seemed to be seen less important in compared to tenses as grammatical focus study. As Master (2010) noted
Determiners were important to pick out a certain element or certain elements from a certain set of entities over which the hearer intends to qualify or to modify the scope of the set designated by the noun that follows i.e., to restrict or widen to specify or generalize the meaning of the modified noun (p.2).
This preference, of course, should be re-consider as in the real life application, determiners and other grammatical aspects play an important role as much important as tenses. Therefore, to minimize grammatical errors as applied in the real life conversation, the portion for each grammatical aspect should be proportionally arranged in the curriculum. However, EFL practitioners should also realize this concern, as they use English in their daily basis. Their grammatical awareness should not only cover the correct tenses, but also other grammatical aspects. To build this awareness, as I mentioned earlier, the portion for each grammatical aspect should be equally divided in the curriculum. The method of teaching those aspects should also be carefully monitored, as the final aim of teaching grammar is making the students able to apply the theories received in their real life. Varied methods such as situational dialogues and role-play are two suggested methods in practicing grammar, in which after adequate practices students can apply the theories properly in the real life.
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Acknowledgments
It would not have been possible to write this thesis without the help and support from a large number of individuals. First, I owe my deepest gratitude to Jesus for answering my pray. It is an honor of me to give thank to my supervisor and my examiner, Mr. Hendro S. H., M. A and Prof. Dr. Gusti Astika, M. A. who have made available their supports in number throughout the process of finishing this study. For Andrew Thren, B. A thank you for your help in correcting the verbatim. The headmaster and all teachers of Bethany school thank you for giving me chance to collect the data in Bethany school. I want to give my special thank to Bapak, Ibu, and Nena for all the patience along my thesis writing, thank you for the prayers and especially the financial supports. Special thanks to Yanuar Tesla, thank you for the big supports and care. Last but not least, my best friends Yutta N D, Ika Tri Y H, Tyas Putri A, and Pricillia W A thank you for the advices and supports.
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