Transcript An Error Analysis of Taiwanese EFL Learns* Use of Tense and

作者:周維純
NA2C0011
游庭驊
+ Half of the population in the world, about
population of 3 billion, communicates in
English in the decade, and English will become
the real global language (Graddol, 1997).
+ Singapore, Malaysia use English as a second
language. As the widest spoken language in
the world, knowing how to speak and read in
English has a lot of advantages.(travel,
communicate, broaden horizons )
+ Students fail to learn English. Tense
morphological change and word order are the
difficult parts for Taiwanese students.
+ There is no grammatical tense in Chinese. In
English, people use do did as present and past；
in Chinese, people only add “le” (了) to imply
that an action has been completed.
+ Chinese does not have plural words.(s 們)
+ Lack of input, lack of meaningful oral practice.
+ ESL learners can not only learn English in the
classroom setting but also acquire English in an
English-speaking environment. English-learners
need to immerse in an English-speaking
environment to build native-like concept so that
they can use the word or sentence structure
more correctly.
+ Owing to the tough competition for entering
better senior high schools, teachers put much
more emphasis on grammar, reading, and
writing. They ignore the most important skill -speaking.
+ The phenomenon of bimodal distribution(雙峰現
象)
+ Students give up learning English(cloze test
accurate rate 30%)
+ Use translation test to detect tense errors then
analyze if the subjects can tell the tense and
calling subjects’ attention to the tense can make a
difference.
+ The reasons are:1.broaden learner’s
understanding of the second language.2.Not only
assure language learners’ L1 knowledge but also
improve their L2 competence .
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Forget to add ”s”(third and singular)
Misuse ”have”, ”has”
Verb+..ing, verb is always missing.
Forget to add ”ed”
Present perfect(haven’t seen, haven’t saw)
Misuse between be verb and auxiliary in negative
sentences.(I am not walk…I don’t walk…)
+ There may be more tense errors veiled and
researchers intended to find the answer.
+ To explore the causes of the misuse between be
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verb and auxiliary, and examine whether calling
students’ attention to tense could make a
difference in translating Chinese into English.
Analyze 22 declaratives and 18 negatives errors
made by junior students to help teachers
teaching tense.
To find out whether students know the tenses are
but fail to write the correct answer.
To dissect the tense errors in different proficiency
students.
To analyze the misuse between verb and auxiliary
in negative sentences.
+ What are the major type of tense errors committed by
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junior high school students in Taiwan?
Is the inability to detect the tense one of the causes of
errors made by junior high school students in Taiwan?
Can calling subjects’ attention to the tense can make a
difference in different groups.
What are the major types of errors committed by
junior high school students of different proficiency
levels in Taiwan?
What are the students of different proficiency levels
situations of misuse of the be verb and auxiliary in
negative sentences?
+ Quirk et al.(1972, as cited in Hung, 2008)V forms
+ A.base form:talk swim come
+ 1. Present tense except 3rd person singular
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subject: I/They talk.
2. Imperative: Come here at once!祈使句
3. Subjunctive: He demanded that she come
here at once.假設語氣
4. With modal auxiliary: He should come.助動詞
5. In infinitives: He wanted me to come.不定詞
+ V-s (-s form):talks swims comes
+ 1. 3rd person singular present tense: He comes here every
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day.
V-ed (past form):talked swam came
1. Past tense: He came here yesterday.
V-ing (Present participle) talking swimming coming
1. Progressive aspect: He is coming here. 進行式
2. Participle/Gerund constructions: talking to strangers.分
詞 動名詞
+ V-en (past participle):talked swum come
+ 1. Perfect aspect: He has never talked to us.完成式
+ 2. Passive voice: He is talked into buying a new card.被動式
+ Tense and aspects in English: tense refers to the
absolute location of an event or action in time.Aspect
refers to how an event or action is to be view with
respect to time rather than to its actual location in time.
+ *walk walked*fell in love on 18, has fallen in love,is
falling in love
+ Tense and aspects in Chinese: Chinese verbs do not
conjugate. Aspect is used to indicate an action. For
example, conjugates as “going, gone,went,” whereas
the Chinese 去(go) is always the same no matter what
the time frame is.Apect is used to indicate an action.
+ Errors are classified according to:
+ modality (i.e., level of proficiency in speaking,
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writing, reading, listening)
linguistic levels (i.e., pronunciation, grammar,
vocabulary, style)
form (e.g., omission, insertion, substitution)
type (systematic error/ errors in competence vs.
occasional errors /errors in performance)
cause (e.g. interference, interlanguage)
norm vs. system
+ Error analysis in SLA (second language acquisition) was
established in the 1960s by Stephen Pit Corder and
Colleagues.
+ Error analysis bases on two fundamental approaches
(Norris, 1987). The first one emphasizes error categories
which are preconceived and set up. That is to say these
error types are already sorted out and predetermined at
first. The second approach allows the errors themselves
determine which grammatical and semantic categories they
belong to, that is, all errors are classified and sorted out
after they collected.
+ Believed that error analysis provides a key to study the
second language acquisition and a useful tool to figure out
the difficulties language learners are encountering.
+ Subjects:
+ one hundred and twenty-eight students of
ninth-grade junior high school students in Hsin
Sheng Junior High School in Taitung County.
+ Four different classes,age 15. supposed to
start to learn English from the third grade in
elementary school. So, they have learned
English at least seven years or more,were
composed of students of different English
proficiency levels.
+ The four classes of the ninth-grade students
were chosen and categorized into two groups
(called GA and GB) which were based on the
mean scores of the monthly English
achievement examinations.
+ GA and GB would engage in different tasks. GA
would do the Chinese-English Translation Test
Paper (see Appendix A). GB would check what
the tense was of each item before they did the
translation.
+ Appendix A so as to induce the subjects to
display their real knowledge about verb tenses
and aspects. Besides, the researcher added
tense-checking to the Chinese-English
translation test (see Appendix B) in order to
test whether calling attention to tense can
make a difference in doing translation.
+ Adopted an elicitation procedure suggested by
Corder,the requires direct translation from the
native language to the target language.
+ GA translated T1 but they did not need to tell
the tense. GB not only translated the 40
Chinese sentences but also needed to judge
the tense of each Chinese sentence at the
same time.
+ There were six tenses which were distributed
randomly among the translation test.(Be
Verbs,Regular and Irregular Verbs)
+ Pilot Study.(reliable)
+ First of all, the researcher designed the translation test.
+ Before the tests, the subjects were told to take the
tests seriously and were informed write down what
they have learned and what they have known as much
as possible. All the subjects were asked to finish the
test in 45 minutes.
+ The test papers were collected and scored.
+ The subjects were categorized into three groups
according to their scores on the test.
+ The types of tense errors that the subjects made were
indentified and classified respectively, the frequency,
percentages, and distributions of error types by the
subjects were calculated and recorded for analysis.
+ No points were given in misuse of verb tenses.
+ One point was deducted in incomplete forms of verbs
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tenses, more or less a word.
One point was deducted in misuse between be verb and
auxiliary of negative sentences.
Some items (Item 5 ) were combined by two sentences, no
point was deducted.
Some items (Item 39 and 6 ) had different writing forms but
had the same meanings, no point was deducted.
Apart from the v forms of correct tense emphasized, the
rest part of the sentences would not result in any point.
+ I.Overgeneralization Errors
+ 1. Aux substitutions Susan *didn’t (wasn’t) fat at all before.
+ 2. Incorrect forms of tenses I *was sent (sent) a Christmas
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card to her.
3. Verb number errors
Mary *clean (cleans) her house
once a week.
4. Redundant Aux
Mary *did walked (walked) to
school yesterday.
5. Morphology
I *haven’t eated (haven’t eaten)
dinner yet.
6. Misuse of tenses
I *played (was playing) the piano at
8:30 yesterday.
+ II. Transfer Errors:
+ 7. Aux omission Candy *not join (didn’t join) the
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summer camp last year.
8. Word-order errors Jeff *last month every day after
school practiced playing basketball. (practiced playing
basketball after school every day .
III. Translation Errors:
9. Verb substitution: I *was washing my body. (was
taking a bath)
10. Spelling errors: The sun *roses (rises) in the east.
+ Differences of Scores of Samples with Different
Backgrounds in Declaratives, Negatives, Be Verb, and
Auxiliary,the mean of scores of female group is higher
than that of the scores of male group, the results
present that the two groups do not reach significant
differences.
+ Differences of the scores among different English
experience groupsAfter conducting post-comparison,
it shows that the scores of 6~7 ys group are
significantly higher than of above 10 ys(included) group
and the scores of 8~9 ys group are significantly higher
than of above 10 ys(included). The differences are very
+ significant.
+ Differences of the scores in declaratives between
male group and female group, the mean of scores of
female group is higher than that of the scores of male
group, the results present that the two groups do not
reach significant differences.
+ Differences of the scores in declaratives among
different English learning experience groups, after
conducting post-comparison, it shows that the scores
+ of 6~7 ys group are significantly higher than of above
10 ys(included) group. The differences are significant.
+ Differences of the scores in negatives between
male group and female group, the mean of
scores of female group is higher than that of the
scores of male group, the results present that the
two groups do not reach significant differences.
+ Differences of the scores in negatives among
different English learning experience group, it
shows that the scores of 6~7 ys group are
significantly higher than of above 10 ys(included)
group. The differences are very significant.
+ Differences of the scores in be verb between
male group and female group, the mean of
scores of female group is higher than that of the
scores of male group, the results present that the
two groups do not reach significant differences.
+ Differences of the scores in be verb among
different English learning experience group, it
shows that the scores of 6~7 ys group are
significantly higher than of below 5 ys(included)
group, and the scores of 6~7 ys group are
significantly higher than of above 10 ys(included)
group . The differences are very significant.
+ Differences of the scores in auxiliary between
male group and female group, the mean of
scores of female group is higher than that of the
scores of male group, the results present that the
two groups do not reach significant differences.
+ Differences of the scores in auxiliary among
different English learning experience group, it
shows that, and the scores of 8~9 ys group are
significantly higher than of above 10 ys(included)
group. The differences are very significant.
+ Differences of Scores among Samples with
Different English Proficiency. we divide the
samples into three groups and compare the
differences among the three groups in terms of
declaratives, negatives, be verb, and auxiliary.
+ Descriptive statistics of scores among groups
with different English proficiency,it shows that
high-score group is higher than medium-score
group, and medium-score group is higher than
low-score group. The 46 differences are very
significant.
+ Descriptive statistics of scores in declaratives
among groups with different English proficiency,
it shows that high-score group is higher than
medium-score group, and medium-score group is
higher than low-score group. The differences are
very significant.
+ Descriptive statistics of scores in negatives
among groups with different English proficiency,
it shows that high-score group is higher than
medium-score group, and medium-score group is
higher than low-score group. The differences are
very significant.
+ Descriptive statistics of scores in be verb among
groups with different English proficiency, it
shows that high-score group is higher than
medium-score group, and medium-score group is
higher than low-score group. The differences are
very significant.
+ Descriptive statistics of scores in auxiliary
among groups with different English proficiency,
it shows that high-score group is higher than
medium-score group, and medium-score group is
higher than low-score group. The differences are
very significant.
+ Differences of Scores between Tense-Hint Group
and No-Tense-Hint Group, the mean of scores of
tense-hint group is higher than that of the scores
of no-tense-hint group, the results present that
the two groups do not reach significant
differences.
+ Differences of the scores in declaratives
negatives be v auxiliary between tense-hint
group and no-tense-hint group, do not reach
significant differences.
+ We could conclude that the ability to detect
tenses is helpful for translating sentences.
+ Among the sample, the male (58.3%) are
more than the female (41.7%); the 6~7 ys
group (41.7%) surpasses all the other groups,
approximately doubling 8~9 ys group (22.5%).
+ In addition, whether in sum, declaratives,
negatives, be verb, and auxiliary, the scores
between male and female are not
differentiated significantly.
+ In terms of English learning experience,
approximately, 6~7 ys group is superior to
below 5 ys group and above 10 ys(included)
group. From the differences caused by various
learning experience year, we can found that
during 6 ~ 7 ys, golden language learning
period, students learn and absorb English, an
exotic language, most efficiently and fastest.
+ Junior high school students made the most errors
in present perfect tense (58%), then past simple
tense (44%).
+ Students need to choose an appropriate auxiliary,
has or have, in agreement to its subject. Then,
they must memorize right past participle of the
verb.
+ The correlation of scores between checks and
translation is high (.78), and the result reaches a
very significant level. Thus, we conclude that the
students checking the right tense will incline to
write right sentences with appropriate tenses.
+ Whether in declaratives, negatives, be verb,
and auxiliary, although tense-hint group
performs better than no-tense-hint group, the
differences are not significant.(guessing by
chance,not really understand)
+ In the study, we do not ascertain if giving hint
about tense will facilitate students to do
better in the test.
+ Whether in low, medium and high-score group,
the percentages of errors in present perfect tense
are superior to any other tense. It indicates that
in the process of English learning, most junior
high school students tend to become confused at
present perfect tense.
+ Misuse between be verb and auxiliary in
negatives: Percentages of misuse in auxiliary by
junior high school students surpass of
+ misuse in be verb.
+ To teachers: From the results, most junior high
school students tend to make errors in present
perfect tense, suggest that teachers put more
emphasis on present perfect tense, practice more
frequently.
+ cooperative learning
+ To text publishers: Adjust the percentages of
different tenses in the textbook, especially
present perfect tense and auxiliary.
+ Multi-media teaching material and tools.
+ Can not overgeneralize the results to other situations
and subjects. Moreover, owing to limited time and
resources, we only conduct quantitative research. Also,
we can not list and examine all kinds of error types of
individual student’s response on the paper, and the
depth of the study could be criticized.
+ Suggest that the following researchers discuss the
responses of the student with the student item by item
and conduct qualitative research so that they can
gather more abundant information in the process of
interaction.
+ Whole Taiwan.