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Error analysis
A study of Swedish junior high
school students’ texts and
grammar knowledge
Amani Taher
Supervisor: Christine Johansson Examiner: Niklas Norén
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Abstract
This study is an investigation of Swedish junior high school students‟ English grammar knowledge, based on their written production. The Swedish students‟ written productions where analyzed using error analysis as a method to find the most frequent errors that the students make. The errors were identified in texts that were produced in two different ways (free and controlled), and these texts were then compared.
The study was conducted through (a) identifying the most frequent grammatical errors in Swedish students‟ written production, (b) analyzing what causes the errors to be made, and (c) distinguishing if there is any difference between free written or controlled written production. The students‟ grammatical knowledge was discussed on the basis of the results of these procedures.
The results show that the most frequent errors made by Swedish junior high school students are errors of verb tense, verb inflection and subject-verb agreement. The errors are probably caused by lack of grammatical knowledge, but also by incorrect transfer from Swedish into English. Furthermore, the results show that the students from the two target groups to some extent make the same type of errors regardless of their productions were free written or more controlled.
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Table of contents
1. Introduction ...3
2. Background, previous research and theoretical framework ...4
2.1 Second language acquisition...4
2.2 Different approaches to grammar teaching ...5
2.3 Previous research on L2 learners‟ grammar knowledge ...6
2.4 Theoretical framework and error analysis ...7
2.5 Aim and research questions ... 10
3. Material and method ... 11
3.1 Material... 11
3.2 Method of analysis ... 12
3.2.1 Identifying and counting grammatical errors ... 12
3.2.2 Error categories ... 12
3.3 Research ethics... 16
4. Results of the error analysis ... 18
4.1 Results of error categories ... 18
4.2 Presentation of grammatical errors in the ULEC papers ... 19
4.3 Presentation of grammatical errors in the free written productions ... 24
4.4 Comparative analysis ... 28
4.4.1 Comparative analysis of error categories ... 28
4.4.2 Comparison between different error types ... 30
5. Discussion ... 32
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1. Introduction
To be able to use a language properly you have to master its grammar, which is according to me, the most essential part in learning a language. Even though Swedish students have by far the best knowledge of English among other European students (Skolverket, 2004) they still have much to develop when it comes to their grammatical knowledge.
While I have been out in different schools observing and working with Swedish students in junior high school I have noticed that most of them seem to have difficulties in really simple English grammatical structures, e.g. subject-verb agreement. This observation made me very interested and eager to investigate more on what causes students to make these simple grammatical errors and how future teachers can work with teaching English grammar in their classroom.
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2. Background, previous research and theoretical framework
The following section will serve to give an explanation and brief overview of some of the key words used in this study such as second language acquisition, form-focused grammar teaching and the zero option. It will also give an overview of some previous research made on these topics.
2.1 Second language acquisition
In linguistic terms, learning another language that is not your first language is often referred to as Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Even though it is referred to as second language acquisition it is also used to describe third or fourth language acquisition. There are usually two different distinctions of second language acquisition, the first one is formal learning (instructed learning) and the second one is informal learning (naturalistic learning). Formal learning often takes place in classrooms with a specific aim to teach a second language (L2) and with clear language instructions. Informal learning on the other hand occur in more free and natural conditions e.g. when a person visits another country and picks up new words from people around him/her (Saville-Troike, 2006:2). Informal learning is often said to focus on communicative ability whereas formal learning often “focuses on some aspect of the language system” (Ellis, 1994:12). However, one cannot exclude one from the other since second language acquisition could occur both in formal and informal contexts.
SLA researchers have two goals, to describe learners‟ linguistic or communicative competence and then try to explain how and by which means the learners acquire and develop a L2 (Ellis:1994:38). To achieve these two goals researchers have to examine learners‟ knowledge by collecting and analyzing certain data (Ellis, 1994:15).
Over the years SLA research has changed considerably. In the early years of SLA studies researchers focused on examining learner errors by using Corders‟ Error analysis. Even though SLA research has developed over the years, many researchers still consider Corder to be the founding father of SLA research and many still use his method to investigate learners‟ L2 acquisition (Hinkel, 2005:265).
5 rather serves as a guide on how to teach (Ellis, 1997:12). Nevertheless, SLA research is still of great importance as it provides information on how learners acquire a L2. Naturally some L2 learners learn faster than others, but it is still of interest to investigate SLA in order to find different methods than can be used to make L2 learning more efficient. As mentioned earlier, by investigating and learning more about your students‟ grammar knowledge you as a teacher will be able to provide and help your students improve their L2 learning.
2.2 Different approaches to grammar teaching
As mentioned earlier there are different approaches to grammar teaching and how it should be taught out. There are mainly two different approaches, first the form-focused approach which consists of clear grammar instructions and secondly the Zero Option which favors untutored grammar acquisition. Those who are in favor of The Zero option reject the idea of teaching grammar by itself and claim that second language learners learn more grammar when they are working with other things which don‟t require of them to think about their grammatical constructions, i.e. in natural communication. Many of the researchers‟ main argument is based on the fact that we all learned our first language without any grammar introduction but only by using it in natural communication (Thornbury, 1999:19). Hence, there is no need for second language learners to have a grammar instruction as they easily can acquire it from real communication instead. As opposed to the advocates of the Zero option there are researchers who argue that in order to reach a higher level of grammatical knowledge and to be able to produce complex grammatical constructions, second language learners have to acquire a closer grammar introduction first (Ellis, 1997:48). This means that they believe that L2 learners can‟t use complex grammatical constructions if they don‟t know the basics first, therefore a grammar instruction is crucial for L2 learners‟ development.
6 base the selection on the students‟ knowledge and most common errors (Ellis, 2006:89). This is why it is important to detect and analyze Swedish students‟ most common errors with the help of error analysis in order to help them improve their English and acquire a higher level of grammatical knowledge.
2.3 Previous research on L2 learners’ grammar knowledge
7 students‟ texts will make the students more careful and hinder them from using more complex grammatical constructions and hence get in the way of their learning progression. The fact is that some studies show that constantly correcting students‟ grammatical errors lead to little improvement in their language (Köhlmyr, 2003:341). Instead of only correcting errors Köhlmyr suggests that you make the students more aware and raise their consciousness of the most problematic grammatical structures. In this way you raise their awareness without destroying their confidence and even though they do not immediately master the grammar point that you teach, they will most probably master it later on (2003:348).
Köhlmyr concludes by stating that grammar instructions, feedback and awareness are all crucial for L2 learning to be efficient. The most important thing is to know how and when to do things, there are different times for different focuses. For example, there are different ways of giving feedback, and if you know how and when to give feedback it could be of great importance for the L2 learners‟ progression.
2.4 Theoretical framework and error analysis
This study was conducted within the theoretical framework of Corder‟s explanation of errors and mistakes. According to him errors occur because of gaps in the learner‟s English knowledge whereas mistakes occur when the learner has not yet learned how to master a certain grammatical form (Ellis & Barkhuizen 2005:62). The distinction between errors and mistakes is not easily made in the analysis of data makes it difficult to detect an error in a text; however, Corder has created a certain analytical tool that one can use in order to find errors in texts which he calls Error Analysis.
8 When conducting an Error Analysis there are some steps that are included in the process (Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005:57)
Collection of a sample of learner language
When collecting data one has to consider what the purpose of the study is and then try to collect relevant data for the study‟s aim and research questions that needs to be answered (Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005:57).
Identification of errors
Before analysing a text it is important to define what an error is beforehand. For example when identifying grammatical errors in English learners‟ texts one has to compare them to what is grammatically correct in English grammar books which I will do in my study (Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005:58). However, if the aim is to analyze learner‟s errors in oral production one has to take into count which English variety the learners are exposed to when identifying their errors.
Description of errors
Corder writes that in order to describe an error one has to specify how the English learner‟s error differs from the native speaker‟s (Ellis & Barkhuizen 2005:60). Therefore a categorization of the grammatical errors needs to be developed, as these five following principles below show. All examples are taken from Ellis & Barkhuizen (2005:61):
1. Errors of omission: when the learner has left out a word e.g. “My sister happy”.
2. Errors of addition: when the learner has added a word or an ending to another word which is grammatically incorrect e.g. “I have eated”.
3. Misinformation/Substitution: when the learner uses the wrong form of a morpheme or structure e.g. when they use the wrong preposition in a sentence such as “It was the hardest time in my life”.
4. Misordering: e.g. when the learner places a morpheme incorrectly in a grammatical construction such as “She fights all the time her brother”. 5. Blends: when the learner is uncertain of which word to use and blends two
different phrases e.g. “The only one thing I want”.
9 Furthermore, one can categorize the errors by word class, e.g. verb, subject or adjective and also develop further categories within each word class. For example verb related errors can be divided into errors of tense, error of aspect etc. (Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005:60).
Explanation of errors
In order to find out why the error was made in the first place one has to try to explain it. This is the most important part of Error Analysis as it really describes which factor has affected the learner to make such an error. However it is not easy to make a distinction between an error and a mistake which makes the explanation of errors more difficult. Furthermore, when researchers try to explain second language (L2) learners‟ errors they often use different factors to categorize the different types of errors. Some factors are for instance:
1. Transfer errors – this factor includes all errors where the L2 learner has used his/her L1 to create a sentence which has led to the error.
2. Overgeneralization error – when a learner overuses the same type of grammatical rule or structure, thus creating wrong grammatical structures.
Error evaluation.
Furthermore, the last step in Error Analysis is to evaluate and draw a conclusion on the gathered results. It is in this step that the different errors are being weighed in order to distinguish which error should get more attention and be taught in class. The example and figure 1 below serves to give a brief overview on how one can work with errors by using Error Analysis principles:
(1) When we was in Thailand we eat at a very good restaurant (ULEC, male student, aged 15).
Identification of error
Description of error
Explanation of error Error evaluation
Was Subject verb
agreement
The learner has used the wrong form of the verb; it should be “were” as it refers to a plural noun “we”. “Was” is only used with singular nouns.
Problems with subject-verb
agreement are very common among second language learners of English mainly because the learner has trouble identifying the subject in the noun phrase.
Eat Verb
inflection
The learner has used the wrong tense form of “eat”. The sentence refers to something that has happened in the past so the past tense “ate” should have been used instead.
Most students have problems with irregular verbs however as we can see in this example even regular verbs can be problematic for learners. This might happen when the student has not yet mastered the different tense forms.
10 As shown in figure 1, error analysis consists of several different steps. When analyzing the students‟ written productions I have used this type of analysis for identifying and explaining the errors that I found in my collected material. However, the errors that I found will not be presented as thoroughly as figure 1 shows, but in a more general way. Figure 1 only serves to give an idea of how I have been working with identifying and explaining the different types of errors that I have found.
2.5 Aim and research questions
The main aim of this study is to analyze errors in Swedish junior high school students‟ essays in two different target groups and analyze whether their grammar knowledge differs or not and if so discuss what causes the differences. Hopefully, the results of this study will give future teachers in English more knowledge about students‟ grammar knowledge which will help them to improve their English lessons as well as their students‟ grammar.
The research questions are:
Which are the most frequent grammatical errors made by Swedish junior high school students in their free written productions?
Which are the most frequent grammatical errors made by Swedish junior high school students in their controlled written productions?
Are there any differences regarding types and frequencies of errors between free written productions and controlled written production?
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3. Material and method
3.1 Material
My collected data will consist of essays written by students in ninth grade. As mentioned earlier there are two target groups that will be investigated and compared.
The first group consists of 20 written productions written by students from ninth grade who have written essays of a free topic during their usual English lessons. These papers have been collected by me from a junior high school in Uppland, Sweden. These students got the opportunity to write freely about anything they liked. They also got three weeks to complete their essays and had free access to use a dictionary to look up words and phrases. The essays vary in length but most of them are between two-three pages long.
The other group consists of 29 written productions written by students in ninth grade who have contributed to the ULEC project. ULEC which is short for the Uppsala Learner English Corpus is a database which consists of short essays with different subjects written by students in junior high school and senior high school. The material in ULEC is collected by student teachers when doing their degree projects. The purpose of the corpus is to provide student teachers with material which they can use when investigating learners‟ English grammatical knowledge (Johansson & Gesler, 2009:181). The students in this target group wrote their essays under more controlled terms. Their essays are short and consist of approximately 200-400 words. The students had no access to any books, dictionaries or any help from a teacher when writing their essays. Furthermore, their time was limited and they were given specific topics to write about. In this study, those topics were titled “My dream vacation” and “Do you believe in ghosts?”
12 3.2 Method of analysis
3.2.1 Identifying and counting grammatical errors
This section serves to give an idea of how I have been working with identifying and counting grammatical errors in the students‟ texts.
(2) I don‟t belive in ghosts but sometimes if strange things happen i start to wonder. Maybe there is something unknown. When i was younger i belived in ghosts everytime.
(ULEC, female student aged 15) As shown in the example above this student has problems using the capital “I”. When starting the sentence she uses correct capitalization of “I” but in the middle of the sentences she does not use capitalization. I have chosen to consider this a grammatical error since capitalization of words is important in English since it differ from Sweden, e.g. when talking about days, months or like in this case the pronoun “I”. Even though the grammatical error occurs three times in her text I have chosen to count it as one as it is the same type of error made by the same student. When it comes to misspelling as in “belive” I have simply ignored it since it is of no significance for this study that focuses on identifying grammatical errors.
(3)We sleaped on the bus and eat on Mc Donald‟s.
(ULEC, male student aged 15) Example 3 however, contains three different types of errors. The first two including error of verb tense and the third one error of the use of prepositions. The two errors of verb tense cannot be regarded as one, since there are two separate verbs that have been inflected incorrectly. Therefore, they are defined and counted as two different errors.
3.2.2 Error categories
13 Verb related errors
All errors related to verbs are gathered into one category, the different types of errors that were found were errors of verb tense i.e. when a learner has used the wrong tense form of a verb. Most verbs in English are used in these different tense forms:
1. The present – Mary is working today.
2. The present perfect – Mary has been working today. 3. The past – Mary was working today.
4. The past perfect – Mary had been working today. 5. The future – Mary will be working today.
6. The conditional – Mary would have been working today.
(Svartvik & Sager, 1996:19) Most verb related errors occur with the simple present tense even though it is the first tense that Swedish students learn. According to Köhlmyr this is due to the fact that the present tense is the most frequently used tense and thus has the largest amount of errors.
Other very common verb related errors were errors of verb inflection. In English, regular verbs are often inflected with certain suffixes (endings), for example regular verbs use the -ed ending as in (play, played, played). Irregular verbs, however, differ and have different suffixes such as (eat, ate, eaten). The irregular verbs are often very problematic for L2 learners of English because they all differ from each other, thus requiring learners to learn them by heart.
English also uses the progressive form (be + ing) to indicate certain aspect of a verb phrase which sometimes causes learners of English to make errors. The progressive is used to indicate something that is occurring right now (Svartvik & Sager, 1996:85). Compare the two sentences below:
7. He teaches (simple present) – He is teaching( the progressive)
14 present in most of the learners‟ texts, indicating that they don‟t really master the use of it. More examples of this type of error will be presented in “presentation of results”.
Subject-verb agreement errors
Many of the students seem to have difficulties with subject-verb agreement even though it is the first rule that students learn when they start learning English. In phrases where the subject is in singular form the verb should take a 3rd person singular –s ending and when the subject is in plural form there should be no ending. Presumably, the cause of the students making this type of error is because of the fact that they cannot identify the subject of the noun phrase. If they learn to identify the subject they could easily learn to avoid this type of error. In Köhmyhr‟s study the most frequent types of subject-verb agreement errors were found in cases where the subject was a pronoun, precisely when the subject was “I”.
Prepositions
The most problematic word class for L2 learners must be prepositions. There is no good way or rule on how to use prepositions; you just have to learn when and how to use them. The most common prepositional errors that L2 learners make are transfer errors, i.e. when L2 learners translate sentences directly from their mother tongue into the second language. Sometimes the learners L1 can be very helpful when translating a sentence into their L2 but usually they fail and use an incorrect preposition instead.
Definite/indefinite articles
The indefinite articles a/an are relatively easy to use if you know the simple rule of using “an” before words that start with a vowel sound. However there are some instances where the indefinite articles are confusing for L2 learners. For example when a word starts with a vowel sound but is pronounced with a consonant sound as in “a European car” the learner might get confused and use “an” instead. The same applies for instances where a word starts with a consonant letter but is pronounced with a vowel sound as in “an X-ray”. This might confuse L2 learners and cause the errors to be made. Furthermore the definite article “the” confuses many learners because in some phrases where the definite article is used in Swedish the correct translation in English won‟t need any article. Compare this sentence for instance:
8. Coffee is getting too expensive – Kaffe(t) blir alldeles för dyrt.
15 In phrases with uncountable nouns in a generic sense English does not use a definite article; this is why the noun “coffee” in the example above does not require a definite article. In grammatical terms this is referred to as The Zero article (Svartvik & Sager, 1996:166).
Genitive ‘s
Genitive „s can sometimes cause L2 learners of English to make grammatical errors. In Swedish for instance you do not use any genitive „s to express possession whereas in English you have to use it. The position of the apostrophe of genitive „s differs whether it is a plural or singular noun and this is what confuses many learners. Especially problematic are plural nouns that end with an “s” because the apostrophe must be positioned after the “s” to indicate that the noun is in plural. Compare the sentences below:
9. My sister‟s horse - Min systers häst 10. My sisters‟ horse – Mina systrars häst
(Svartvik & Sager, 1996:85) Another common error is also when the students confuse the use between the possessive pronouns mine/his/hers/yours/theirs/ours and make constructions like their‟s and our‟s. Word order
Of all the grammatical errors that were found 5% were errors of word order; this can be due to transfer from Swedish when translating the sentences into English. Sometimes translating a sentence from your L1 can help you in your writing but sometimes the L1 can cause the errors. For example both English and Swedish use the word order SVO (Subject-verb-object). However, when a sentence is introduced by a non-subject the English word order remains the same (SVO) whereas the Swedish word order changes (Kölmyhr, 2001:263). For example in the sentences below the Swedish sentence uses the form AVSO (Adverbial-Verb-Subject-Object) whereas the English sentence is incorrect and should be (ASVO). The verb cannot come before the subject as it can in Swedish sentences.
11. The next day could we take a plane to Canada. 12. Dagen efter kunde vi ta ett plan till Kanada.
16 Capitalization
Even though errors related to capitalization of words did not occur that frequent in this study, they are still worth mentioning since capitalization of words in English differ from Swedish. For example, in English, capitalization is required for words such as months, days of the week, holidays and the pronoun “I”, whereas these words are not capitalized in Swedish. If a student has written “i” once or twice in a text one could consider it to be a fairly minor mistake. However, when several students have written it repeatedly in their texts, it must indicate that they have not yet mastered the use of “I” in written production.
Contracted forms
Some of the errors found in this study consisted of errors of contracted forms. Some of the problematic contracted forms were can‟t, don‟t, shouldn‟t and wouldn‟t. The students did not know where to put the apostrophe and sometimes the apostrophe was omitted completely so that words like “did‟nt” and “wouldent” could be found in their texts. Most of them also contained subject-verb agreement errors e.g. they use “don‟t” for both plural and singular subjects so that they get sentences like “His parents wasn‟t at home”.
All the error categories that have been presented in this chapter will be discussed and presented in a quantitative analysis in the following chapter.
3.3 Research ethics
Even though this study is fairly small compared to other research on this subject there are still some research ethics that the author has to take into consideration while writing. The guidelines and ethical principles below have been translated by me from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskaprådet, 2009). There are four research ethical demands which have to be considered:
The demand of information: When doing any kind of study based on collecting material from other people it is important to make sure that the participants of the project know the reason for the study and what their material is going to be used for. The permission demand: You also have to make sure that the participants give you
their permission to use their material for your research.
17 The demand of confidentiality: Furthermore it is important that the participants remain anonymous and that the collected material cannot be traced to them. The collected material has to be confidential and used for research purpose only.
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4. Results of the error analysis
In this section the results of the error analysis will be presented in different categories depending on their frequency in the collected and analyzed material. An overview of the different error categories will be presented first followed by a presentation of each target groups‟ results. A descriptive presentation of how the material has been analyzed and counted has already been presented in the Method chapter.
4.1 Results of error categories
Figure 2 shows an overview of all error categories that were found in both target groups‟ written production and it also shows their frequency chart. As one can see by the figure, verb related errors (40%) were by far the most frequent ones in this study‟s collected data followed by subject-verb agreement errors (25%). Some of the error categories, such as capitalization and contracted forms that only made up of 3% each of all errors, might be regarded as minor errors, but will still be discussed briefly in order to give an idea of how the students used these grammatical structures incorrectly.
19 4.2 Presentation of grammatical errors in the ULEC papers
After analyzing all the ULEC papers, some grammatical errors occurred more than others as can be seen in figure 3. The errors will be presented below according to their frequency with the most frequent errors first then followed by the others. In total, 77 grammatical errors were found in all ULEC papers.
Figure 3: Overview of most frequent error categories that were found in the ULEC papers Verb related errors
The most frequent errors in both target groups were verb related. In the ULEC papers, 45% of all errors were verb related and most of them (64%) were errors of inflection followed by error of tense and aspect (25%). Below are examples of some of the students‟ verb related errors. The remaining 11% were errors like the one shown in example 18.
(15) ...a mental hospital that has shutted down. (ULEC, female student aged 15). (16) I woked up one day.... (ULEC, male student aged 15).
(17) In the summer of 2007 I gone to the USA. (ULEC, female student aged 15). (18) After the game me and my friend did go to a restaurant and bought some food.
(ULEC, female student aged 15).
As shown in example 15 and 16, the students have added an incorrect ending of the verbs “shut” and “wake”, thus making it an error of inflection. Both verbs are irregular and as stated
20 before, these verbs are the most problematic for L2 learners. In example 17, however, the verb is correctly inflected but not specifically in this context. Instead of using the simple past tense “went” the student has used the past perfect which if correctly used would also require the auxiliary verb “have” before “gone”. This type of error is regarded as an error of tense since the verb is replaced by another verb in a different tense form. In example 18 however, the error is not regarded as an error of verb tense since the verb is replaced by a do-construction instead of a verb in another tense form. The do-construction is often only used in phrases with negation (He doesn‟t know) or in questions (Does he know?). It does not work in this context, where the verb should have been used in the past tense form “went”.
Subject verb agreement errors
(19) When I were at a friend‟s house... (ULEC, male student aged 15).
(20) When we was finished with the food we took a nap. (ULEC, female student aged 15). (21) My dream journey are when I go to Turkey... (ULEC, female student aged 15)
(22) I‟ve never met a ghost the way some people say they has. (ULEC, male student aged 15).
Examples 19-22 show a variety of ways that learners can make subject-verb agreement errors. In examples 19, the student has used the wrong form of the verb “be”. Many learners might have difficulties with this type of construction, since the phrase “If I were you” is grammatically correct. However, the only times that “were” is accepted is in phrases that start with an “If construction” or a matter of “wish” e.g. in “I wish I were you” and “If I were you”. These grammatical constructions are often called “the subjunctive mood” and indicate a non-factual condition. In example 19, however, it is used incorrectly, since the sentence describes something that has actually happened.
21 Prepositions
Of all grammatical errors 9% were prepositional errors, some learners have difficulties using prepositions simply because there are no rules or guidelines on how you use them. The most frequent prepositional errors are of transfer errors, when the learner translates a preposition from his/her L1 into the L2. It often results in the type of errors that you can see in examples 23-26. In example 26 however, the learner has added a preposition where it shouldn‟t be any. Transfer errors of prepositions occurred in (83%) of all cases whereas additional errors occurred in (17%).
(23) My aunt has seen a ghost on a funeral. (ULEC, female student aged 15) (24) I want to believe on something else. (ULEC, male student aged 15)
(25) Me and my siblings started to laugh on a guy. (ULEC, male student aged 15) (26) I heard footsteps in coming up the stairs. (ULEC, female student aged 15)
In examples 23-26 the prepositions might have been transferred from Swedish into English but they could also be regarded as errors of substitution where the learner has simply used an incorrect preposition instead of another. It is very difficult to decide which one it is, therefore I have chosen to consider them to be both. However, errors of addition or omission have been regarded as errors of their own since they cannot really be regarded as either transfer or substitution errors. If one translates example 26 to Swedish you get the phrase “Jag hörde fotsteg komma upp för trappan”. In the Swedish translation there is no corresponding preposition used for the student‟s use of “in”, therefore this error cannot be regarded as an error of transfer.
Definite/Indefinite articles
22 article in English where there should not be any. If we translate the sentence into Swedish we get “Han kom hem från skolan”. In Swedish “skolan” is written in a definite form with a definite ending however in English the phrase requires the zero article. When referring to institutions, e.g. “school” or “church” in a generic sense, English uses the zero article, whereas Swedish uses the definite article (Svartvik & Sager 1996:31).
(27) I took an big cheese and steak sandwich. (ULEC, male student aged 15).
(28) It‟s about a family that is haunted by a evil spirit. (ULEC, male student aged 15). (29) We woke up in ø middle of the night. (ULEC, female student aged 15).
(30) He came home from the school. (ULEC, female student aged 15).
Genitive ‘s
Problems with genitive „s occurred in some of the students texts and the most frequent ones are shown in example 31-32 below.
(31) …the week came to it‟s end we didn‟t want to live. (ULEC, female student aged 15). (32) He showed me the pool and the store next to there‟s house.(ULEC, female student
aged 15).
The error in example 31 shows that learners often use the contracted form of “it is” instead of the possessive pronoun “its” which leads to this kind of error. Example 32, however, shows an error where the student has used the misspelled possessive pronoun “their” with the „s genitive, creating a word that do not exist “their‟s”. As mentioned earlier students often confuse the use of the possessive pronouns and the genitive „s. The genitive „s is only used for nouns as in “his parents‟ house” for example, and thus cannot be used with a possessive pronoun as in example 32.
Errors of capitalization and contracted forms
23 for example 37 where the student has left out the apostrophe in the contracted form of “would not”.
(33) I dream of going to USA where everybody talks english. (ULEC, female student aged 15).
(34) I don‟t believe in ghost but if i saw one i would start to wonder. (ULEC, male student aged 15).
(35) I went to look if it‟s was someone there. (ULEC, male student aged 15).
(36) Because its a big country and I can buy a lot of stuff. (ULEC, male student aged 15). (37) But who wouldnt be if they believed in ghost. (ULEC, female student aged 15).
Types of errors
After analyzing all errors from the ULEC papers I categorized them after which type of error they were. I divided them into five types of errors which will be presented below.
Errors of substitution: 34% of all grammatical errors were errors where the students had substituted a word for another, for example as in subject-verb agreement errors, where the students had replaced was for were.
Errors of addition: 33% were errors of addition where the students had put an incorrect ending of a word as in “shutted down”.
Errors of omission: 19 % of all errors were errors where the students had left an ending or apostrophe such as the 3rd person singular –s ending or when they left out the apostrophe as in “wouldent”.
Transfer errors: 10% were of transfer errors where the students had presumably been affected by Swedish when translating their sentences, as in “believe on something”. Overgeneralization errors: 4% of all errors were left under this category which
indicates overgeneralization of a construction such as the use of “don‟t” for both singular and plural nouns.
24 prepositions are mostly transferred from the L1 into the L2, which then could lead to a high number of transfer errors.
4.3 Presentation of grammatical errors in the free written productions
In this section the most frequent errors that were found in the free written productions will be presented. A total of 81 grammatical errors were found in this target group. They will be presented in figure 4 below according to their frequency.
Figure 4: Overview of most frequent error categories that were found in the free written papers.
Verb related
In both target groups verb related errors were the most frequent ones. In the free written productions most errors were errors of inflection (55%), where the students had incorrectly inflected the verbs creating sentences as shown in example 38. Errors of tense and aspect occurred in 25% of all errors, as shown in examples 38-39, and the last 20% were other errors, such as errors with the progressive, as shown in example 40-41. In example 38 the student has added an incorrect ending of the verb “put”. “Put” is an irregular verb which as stated before are the most problematic verbs for learners. Examples 39-40 show errors of mixing different verb tenses, such as the present and the past tense. In example 39 the student has used the present tense “walks” with the past tense “opened” in the same phrase. This type
25 of error cannot really be regarded as a transfer or addition error, since the student has most probably not been affected by Swedish nor has he added any incorrect ending to the verbs. It is rather a case of substitution or a case where the student has not yet mastered the use of the different tenses and overuses some of them. Mixing verb tenses of this type occurred only in the free written productions and will later be explained and presented more thoroughly. In examples 40-41 the past tense form of the verbs “drove” and “waited” are used instead of the progressive forms “driving” and “waiting”. As mentioned earlier this is a very commonly made error among learners.
(38) William putted on some clothes…. (Free production, male student aged 15). (39) She walks up to the door and opened it. (Free production, male student aged 15). (40) I was so tired that I almost fall asleep when I drove. (Free production, male student
aged 15).
(41) Two hours later Sarah saw him waited for her. (Free production, female student aged 15).
Prepositions
Out of all grammatical errors, 19% were prepositional errors, as opposed to the ULEC papers which only had 9 %. The most common errors were errors of transfer, creating sentences shown in examples 42-45. In all examples, the students have most likely been affected by Swedish since all prepositions correspond to the Swedish ones. Compare the English examples below with the Swedish translations.
(42) It was the hardest time in my life – Det var den jobbigaste tiden i mitt liv. (Free production, female student aged 15).
(43) They would live on a hotel for one week. – De skulle bo på hotell i en vecka. (Free production, male student aged 15).
(44) Paul spent the whole evening on the casino. – Paul spenderade hela kvällen på kasinot. (Free production, male student aged 15).
(45) The party ended on the morning. – Festen slutade på morgonen. (Free production, male student aged 15).
Subject-verb agreement
26 use of 3rd person singular -s. Example 49 shows ones again a case of overgeneralization of the plural form “don‟t” which many students seem to use for both singular and plural nouns. (46) She want me to go. (Free production, male student aged 15).
(47) I felt like all eyes was on me. (Free production, female student aged 15). (48) Amanda comes and hug Sarah. (Free production, female student aged 15). (49) Tom gets mad because he don‟t like to wake up early. (Free production, male
student aged 15).
Word order
In the ULEC papers no errors of word order were found. In the free written productions however, a total of 9% of all errors were of this kind. As mentioned earlier, English has only one word order which is (SVO) and with addition of an adverbial the phrase takes the form of (ASVO). In Swedish however, (ASVO) can be used but also (AVSO) as in examples 50-53 for instance. Compare the examples below with the Swedish translations. The Swedish sentences are perfectly correct whereas the English sentences are incorrect because the subject must always come before the verb.
(50) Now is Sarah at school and eating lunch. - Nu är Sara i skolan och äter lunch. (Free production, female student aged 15).
(51) Then happened something strange with the airplane. - Sen hände något konstigt med flygpanet. (Free production, male student aged 15)
(52) It was only Alex‟s luggage that not was overweight. - Det var bara Alex baggage som inte var överviktigt. (Free production, male student aged 15).
(53) But now was everything grey. - Men nu var allting grått. (Free production, female student aged 15).
Other errors, such as contracted forms, blending and articles
27 rules on how to use them. In example 57 for instance, we have another error with the modal auxiliary “can” which is used with a do-construction. Modal auxiliary verbs can never be used with a do-construction (Svartvik & Sager, 1996:123).
(54) Neither of us don‟t even have a driver‟s license. (Free production, male student, aged 15).
(55) All the feelings came to the surface now. (Free production, male student, aged 15). (56) When they came to the party Sara not see Adam. (Free production, female student,
aged 15).
(57) …if you don‟t can go to the party. (Free production, male student, aged 15). Types of errors
After analyzing all 81 errors from the students‟ free written productions, I categorized them after the same five types of errors that were mentioned earlier. The results will only be presented and explained briefly below. They will however be discussed more thoroughly later on in the discussion of results.
Errors of substitution: The results from the ULEC papers showed that errors of substitution were the most frequent ones and in the free written productions 45% of all errors were of this type. Most of them were related to verb tense. For example, when a student had used the verb “fall” instead of “fell”.
Transfer errors: 26 % of all errors were errors of transfer which is 16% more than what was found in the ULEC papers. Most transfer errors are related to the use of prepositions, as examples 28-31 showed. Thus the reason for the high number of transfer errors could be the fact that this target group had more prepositional errors than the ULEC papers.
Errors of omission: 10 % were errors of omission, for example when the students had left out 3rd person singular –s of a verb or when they left out the genitive„s.
Errors of addition: 13% were errors of addition, where the students had added an incorrect ending to a word as in “woked up”.
28 4.4 Comparative analysis
After analyzing and comparing the two different target groups‟ written productions, some differences and similarities were found which will be discussed in this section. A comparison between the different error categories will be presented first, followed by a discussion of the different types of errors that were found. Furthermore, a comparison between the different error types that were found will be presented followed by a discussion. It is worth mentioning once again that the discussion and explanation of results is the most difficult part of error analysis and the following discussions are completely based on my own analysis of this study‟s collected data.
4.4.1 Comparative analysis of error categories
Overall the students made more or less the same type of errors. Figure 5 shows a comparison between the two target groups‟ different error categories.
Figure 5: Comparison between the two target groups‟ most frequent errors in percentage of As shown in Figure 5, verb related errors were the most frequent ones in both target groups. Johansson & Geisler (2009) also state that the most common errors learners make are related to verb form (2009:184). In both target groups errors of verb inflection were the most frequent ones, followed by errors of verb tense. In the free written productions however, verb tense mixing occurred frequently whereas tense mixing never occurred in the ULEC papers. A reason for that could be the fact that the students who wrote the ULEC papers had been given
29 certain topics to write about which lead them to write in one tense form. For instance, the two topics that they had to write about were “My dream vacation” and “Do you believe in ghosts?”. In the former topic, most students used the past tense when they wrote about their dream vacation or the future tense. In the latter topic however, most of them wrote their answers in the present tense expressing their opinion about ghosts. In the free written productions however, the students got the opportunity to write freely about whatever they wanted, which might have led to the higher frequency of mixing tense forms.
When it comes to subject-verb agreement errors one can see that they were more frequent in the ULEC papers than in the free written productions. This could be due to the fact that the students who contributed to the corpus had less time to write and that they therefore were more careless and did not have time to reflect on whether to use 3rd person singular –s endings or not. As mentioned earlier, if students can identify the noun in the noun phrase they are more likely to avoid subject-verb agreement errors and the students who wrote the free written productions had more time to write, thus more time to reflect on which ending to use. As for preposition, a higher amount of errors were found in the free written productions, a reason for that could be the fact that the students had written longer texts and that they produced more phrases with prepositions than the students in the ULEC project.
Not many errors of the definite and indefinite article occurred in either of the target groups; however they were most frequent in the ULEC papers. It is difficult to draw a conclusion as to why this was the case but a possible reason could be the fact that the students who wrote the free written productions had more help and reflected more over which article to use..
Errors of word order occurred only in the free written productions, which can be explained by the fact that the students wrote longer texts which allowed them to construct longer and more complex grammatical structures than the students in the ULEC project. The ULEC students only had to answer and write about certain topics which might have lead to them writing in a certain way and using certain phrases.
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4.4.2 Comparison between different error types
Different types of errors were found in the two target groups‟ written production; they are presented in figure 6 below.
Figure 6: Frequency chart over the different types of errors that were found in the two target groups.
As shown in figure 6 errors of substitution were the most frequent types of errors in both target groups‟ written production. This could be due to the fact that most errors were related to verb tense where the students had substituted one form of a verb for another. What causes students to make these types of errors is difficult to say but one thing could be that they have not yet mastered the use of the different tenses which leads them to make these kinds of errors.
When it comes to errors of addition the difference between the two target groups was significant since the students in the ULEC project had more errors of addition than the students who wrote the free written productions, 33 % and 13%, respectively. Most of the errors of addition were related to incorrect verb endings that the students had added. One explanation to why the students from the ULEC project had more errors of addition could be the fact that they did not get any help from anyone, nor did they have any resources that could help them in their writing, whereas the other students had free access to both dictionaries and could get help from their teacher.
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 ULEC papers
31 Furthermore, the results also showed that 19% of all grammatical errors found in the ULEC papers were errors of omission compared to the 10% that were found in the free written productions. The reason for the higher number of errors of omission in the ULEC papers could be due to the higher number of subject-verb agreement errors that were found in the ULEC papers, where the students had left out 3rd person singular –s, apostrophes for contracted forms and the genitive „s. However, as mentioned earlier, errors of omission of this kind could also have been caused by carelessness when the students wrote their texts on computers and under limited time.
32
5. Discussion
When starting this study the aim was to investigate which grammatical errors were most frequent in Swedish junior high school students‟ written production. The results would then contribute to give an idea of which grammar points to focus on when teaching English grammar to L2 learners. After analyzing the results, the study showed that the most frequent grammatical errors were errors of verb tense, verb inflection and subject-verb agreement. This was not very surprising since I had already seen these errors being made by many students in the different schools I had been to. I was, however, taken by surprise by the low number of prepositional errors and the fact that no errors of adjectives, relative clauses or errors of conjunctions were found in any of the students‟ written productions. What can be mentioned though is that even though none of these grammar points were found in the study, it does not indirectly mean that the students master these grammatical structures. As Ellis & Barkhuizen state, Error Analysis only reveals what students do wrong and not what they do correctly (2005:70). The fact that no errors of adjectives, relative clauses etc. were found could be explained by the fact that the students simply avoided using these grammatical structures. The study also aimed to discover if there were any differences between free written production and more controlled written production. The results showed that the students tended to make the same types of errors to some extent but that the students who contributed to the corpus and wrote under more controlled conditions had a higher frequency of errors of subject-verb agreement, whereas the students who produced the free written productions had more prepositional errors. Nevertheless, even though the students had had different grammar teaching and that they wrote under different conditions they still made the same types of errors which indicate that the results from this study could be seen as representative of Swedish junior high school students English grammar knowledge.
33 person –s ending and the past tense form of verbs with the –ed ending. He believes that L2 learners are not capable of learning more complex grammatical structures and thus teachers should not focus on more complex instructions. His argument is, however, challenged by researchers that have found L2 learners of English that not only can produce complex grammatical structures and phrases, but also can explain them in grammatical terms. Ellis suggests that one teaches “those forms that differ from the learners‟ first language” (Ellis, 2006:87). This is a quite interesting approach of teaching grammar. As we could see in the results many of the grammatical errors were transfer errors and to teach students the grammatical forms that differ from Swedish might be a good idea.
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