Common errors in the use of english articles by vietnamese third year english major students at an giang university submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY - HO CHI MINH CITY
UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES AND HUMANITIES




PHAN THỊ MINH TUYỀN

COMMON ERRORS IN THE USE OF ENGLISH ARTICLES
BY VIETNAMESE THIRD-YEAR ENGLISH-MAJOR STUDENTS
AT AN GIANG UNIVERSITY

M.A. THESIS
SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS IN TESOL

Supervisor

Assoc. Prof., PhD. ĐINH ĐIỀN
HO CHI MINH CITY, 2010


CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled:

COMMON ERRORS IN THE USE OF ENGLISH ARTICLES
BY VIETNAMESE THIRD-YEAR ENGLISH-MAJOR STUDENTS
AT AN GIANG UNIVERSITY

in terms of the statement of Requirements for theses
in Master’s Programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee.
This thesis has not been submitted for the award of any degree
or diploma in any other institution.

Ho Chi Minh City, 2010

PHAN THỊ MINH TUYỀN


RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS
I hereby state that I, PHAN THỊ MINH TUYỀN, being the candidate for the
degree of Master of Arts (TESOL), accept the requirements of the University
relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library.

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited in
the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in
accordance with the normal conditions established by the Library for the care,
loan or reproduction of theses.

Ho Chi Minh City, 2010

PHAN THỊ MINH TUYỀN


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am deeply indebted to a number of people for helping to make this MA thesis
possible. First and foremost, my deepest gratitude goes to my supervisor, Associate
Professor Dr. Dinh Dien for his insightful comments, invaluable suggestions and a
great encouragement during the process I conducted the thesis.

I would also like to express my special thanks to Dr. To Minh Thanh, my
teacher at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, for her useful suggestions
on my thesis proposal.
Next, my appreciation is also extended to the Vietnamese teachers and students
who participated in my study. Their help is highly appreciated. I would also like to
thank the English Department of An Giang University for providing the most favorable
conditions which made my study possible.
Last but not least, I would like to thank my family and friends for their great
support and willing assistance in completing this work.


ABSTRACT
This study was intended to investigate common errors in the use of English
articles made by the third-year English major students at An Giang University in order
to enhance the effectiveness of EFL teaching and learning in Vietnam in general and
teaching and learning English article system in particular. The participants in the study
consisted of 44 third-year English major students at An Giang University. The data
were collected via writing essays which aimed to identify common article errors,
determine the frequency of the article errors in comparison with other types of errors.
A fill-in-the-blank test was also employed to get more information about the particular
types of article errors made and explain the reasons which the students finally arrived
at their choices of articles. In addition, a pretest-posttest comparison group design was
conducted to confirm the effectiveness of using corpus-based analysis in helping
students overcome their problems of acquiring the English articles. Both quantitative
and qualitative data were analyzed to answer three research questions concerning three
areas: (1) common article errors in the writing essays made by the Vietnamese thirdyear English-major students at AGU, (2) difficulties of acquiring the semantic notions
of the English articles, and (3) the effectiveness of applying corpus-based analysis in
helping students overcome their problems.
The findings showed that the English majors made different types of errors and
among them the English articles were found their most concerning problems. The

students tended to make more errors relating contextual choices such as unique types,
maximal instances, and actual instances, non-definite actual instances, and specificity
with definite and count with non-count nouns. The study also found out the
effectiveness of teaching and learning the English articles with the use of corpus-based
analysis. The results showed that the treatment group did better the control group after
the experiment, especially in using zero and zero in maximal set environments. These


findings suggested that Vietnamese EFL learners, especially learners at high
proficiency level, needed to be equipped with grammatical competence, particularly
the English articles in order to be confident and become professional writers.


LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1 COBUILD list of the ten most frequent words in English ................ 1
Table 1.2 Percentage of occurrence of the articles in the five genres ............... 2
Table 2.1 Quirk et al.’s classification of nouns .............................................. 11
Table 4.1 Types and descriptions of errors .................................................... 34
Table 4.2 Frequency of different categories of errors in essays ..................... 35
Table 4.3 Environments for the occurrence of the articles ............................. 36
Table 4.6 Group statistics .............................................................................. 42
Table 4.7 Group performance at six NP environments in Post Test 1 ............ 43
Table 4.8 Group performance at six NP environments in Post Test 2 ............ 44


LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1 Main entries for agree from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary (CD-ROM 2003) .......................................................... 20

Figure 2 Sample of concordance lines for agree from the PolyU Language
Bank Concordancer ....................................................................... 20


TABLE OF CONTENTS
Certificate of originality ................................................................................... i
Retention and use of the thesis......................................................................... ii
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................ iii
Abstract .......................................................................................................... iv
List of tables ................................................................................................... vi
List of figures ................................................................................................ vii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................. 1
1.1.

Background to the Study ................................................................. 1

1.2.

Statement of Purpose ....................................................................... 4

1.3.

Research Questions ......................................................................... 4

1.4.

Scope of the Study........................................................................... 4

1.5.

Significance of the Study ................................................................. 5

1.6.

Methodology ................................................................................... 5
1.6.1.

The participants of the Study.............................................. 5

1.6.2.

Data collection instruments ................................................ 6

1.6.3.

Procedures of the Study ..................................................... 6

1.7.

Assumptions .................................................................................... 7

1.8.

Overview of the Study ..................................................................... 8

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ..................................................... 9
2.1.

Articles ............................................................................................ 9
2.1.1.

Definition of articles .......................................................... 9


2.1.2.
2.2.

2.3.

2.4.

Types of articles ............................................................... 10

Classes of Nouns ........................................................................... 11
2.2.1.

Classification of nouns proposed by Quirk at al (1985) .... 11

2.2.2.

Classification of nouns proposed by Langacker (1991) .... 12

2.2.3.

The suggested classification of the article environments .. 13

Acquisition of the English articles by Vietnamese learners ............ 14
2.3.1.

Definite articles ................................................................ 14

2.3.2.

Indefinite articles ............................................................. 15

Corpora and the application of corpus-based analyses in language
teaching and learning..................................................................... 17
2.4.1.

What is a corpus? ............................................................. 17
2.4.1.1. A corpus is a principled collection of texts .......... 18
2.4.1.2. A corpus is a collection of electronic texts ........... 18
2.4.1.3. A corpus is available for qualitative and quantitative
analysis ............................................................... 19
2.4.1.4. Which corpus, what for and what size? ................ 19

2.4.2.

Overview of existing corpora ........................................... 21

2.4.3.

Types of corpora .............................................................. 22

2.4.4.

Corpus use in Vietnam ..................................................... 23

2.4.5.

Applying corpus-based analyses to teaching .................... 24
2.4.5.1. Syllabus design ................................................... 24
2.4.5.2. Materials development........................................ 24


2.4.5.3. Classroom activities ............................................ 24
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ....................................... 26
3.1.

3.2.

Research questions and hypotheses ............................................... 26
3.1.1.

Research questions ........................................................... 26

3.1.2.

Hypotheses ...................................................................... 26

Research design ........................................................................... 27
3.2.1.

Participants ...................................................................... 27

3.2.2.

Data collection instruments .............................................. 27
3.2.2.1. The writing essay ................................................ 27
3.2.2.2. The fill in the blank test ...................................... 28

3.2.2.3. A pretest-posttest comparison group design ........ 29

3.3.

Summary ....................................................................................... 32

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION .......................................... 33
4.1.

4.2.

Data analysis and results of the writing essay ................................ 33
4.1.1.

Classification of article errors and other type of errors ..... 33

4.1.2.

Data analysis .................................................................... 34

4.1.3.

Discussion ....................................................................... 35

Data analysis and results of the fill in the blank test ....................... 35
4.2.1.

Some explanations relating to zero vs. null and a ............. 35

4.2.2.

Data analysis .................................................................... 38

4.2.3.

Discussion about causes of errors ..................................... 40
4.2.3.1. Names ................................................................. 40


4.2.3.2. Unique types ....................................................... 40
4.2.3.3. Uniquely identified instance ................................ 41
4.2.3.4. Actual instance .................................................... 41
4.2.4.
4.3.

Summary ......................................................................... 41

Data results of the pretest-posttest group design ............................ 42

CHAPTER 5: SUMMARY AND PEDAGOGICAL IMPLICATIONS.... 45
5.1.

Summary of the findings ............................................................... 45

5.2.

Pedagogical implications ............................................................... 46

5.3.

Limitations of the study ................................................................. 48

5.4.

Suggestions for further research .................................................... 49

BIBLIOGRAPHY ....................................................................................... 51
APPENDICES ............................................................................................. 58
Appendix 1A Writing task sample ............................................................... 59
Appendix 1B A graded essay ...................................................................... 60
Appendix 2

Article error analysis test ....................................................... 61

Appendix 3

Pretest 1 on the English articles ............................................. 65

Appendix 4

Pretest 2 on the English articles ............................................. 68

Appendix 5

Post-test 1 on the English articles .......................................... 71

Appendix 6

Post-test 2 on the English articles .......................................... 75

Appendix 7

Taxonomy of the use of English articles based on insights
by Quirk et al and Langacker ................................................. 79


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1

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
The first chapter begins with the background of the research. The next section,
section 1.2, addresses the research purposes, followed by section 1.3 stating the
research questions. In addition, the chapter also presents the limits of the scope of the
study, the significance, methodology and outlines the structure of the thesis.
1.1

Background to the study
In the process of learning English, the mastery of English articles has often

been considered as one of the elementary lessons. Though English articles are so-called
‘little words’, they play a very important role. They occur very frequently and signal
about how the structure of a sentence is to be interpreted. Therefore, incorrect use of
English articles may affect communication negatively.
In the COBUILD (Collins Birmingham University International Language
Database) list of the ten most frequent words in English (Sinclair, 1991), the English
specific deictic terms such as articles, demonstratives, and possessives rank top
positions in the corpus of 20 million words.
Table 1. COBUILD list of the ten most frequent words in English (Sinclair,

1991)
1. the (309 497)

25.1%

6. in (100 138)

8.1%

2. of (155 044)

12.6%

7. that (67 042)

5.4%

3. and (153 801) 12.5%

8. I (64 849)

5.3%

4. to (137 056)

11.1%

9. it (61 379)

5.0%

5. a (1129928)

10.5%

10. was (54 722) 4.4%


2

Master (1997) also pointed out the great occurrence of the English specific
determinatives, especially the English articles in complete works representing five
written genres in the following table
Table 1.2 Percentage of occurrence of the articles in the five genres (Master,
1997)
Genre

Source

Research
Journal
Science
Magazine
News
Magazine

Technical
articles (16)
Science News
(4 issues)

Newsweek
(1 issue)
The Tenth
Man
Macbeth and
Julius Caesar
(24) Samples

Novel
Plays*
All

Zero

The

A(n)

Arts/Dets

Total
words

49.7

38.6

11.8

90.3

63 289

57.0

28.7

14.3

88.4

34 987

46.6

34.4

19.1

82.6

31 896

27.9

45.9

26.2

77.7

30 956

44.7

38.7

16.7

58.8

36 516

48.0

36.3

15.7

82.6

197 644

*Vocatives (forms of direct address, e.g. fool, sirrah, and lady) were not counted in the
plays.
The collected data in Table 2 confirmed the potential role of articles in
discourse. The percentage of the English articles is higher in non-fiction texts than in
fiction. Such difference, as Master explained, is due to the great word frequency of
possessive determiners in fiction.
Additionally, the mastery of English articles contributes to maintain successful

communication. Pica (1983), who investigated native speakers using articles in
exchanges involving the requesting and giving directions, asserted as follows:


3

…even though participants spoke in grammatically correct utterances,
communication broke down when articles were used in reference to items in
one participant’s experience but not in another’s (Pica, 1983: 231).
However, the lack of mastery of the English articles can be remarkably found in
An Giang University (AGU) students’ performance of English, both in oral (e.g. roleplay, discussion, oral presentation, etc.) and in written production (e.g. writing
paragraphs, essays, letter writing, etc.). Therefore, the present research attempts to find
a solution for improving AGU students’ performance in using English articles.
Previous researches have been conducted and addressed the popularity of
article errors in second language learners’ compositions. Such authors as Tarone
(1985), Pica (1983), Parrish (1987), Master (1987), Mizuno (1999), Robertson (2000),
and Goto Butler (2002), have dealt with the acquisition of the English articles. Other
linguists like Whitman (1974), McEldowney (1977), Pica (1983); Master (1990),
(1997), Berry (1991), Beaumont and Gallaway (1994) have tried to provide solutions
to improve learners’ performance in using the English articles. However, as Master
(1990) points out, ‘there are comparatively few attempts in the literature to provide a
coherent grammar for teaching the articles as a system’. In the context of teaching
English as a foreign language (EFL) in general and Asia in particular, some attempts
have been made to find solutions for Chinese and Japanese learners. However, there
have been few of research so far on Vietnamese EFL students as well as on AGU
English-major students in dealing with the English article system, and that is what this
study intends to do.


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1.2

Statement of Purpose
The present study aims at:
 Identifying what the problems may be for Vietnamese third-year
English-major students at AGU in dealing with the English articles.
 Finding out major causes of the students’ errors in using English articles.
 Providing some

recommendations for improving the

students’

competence in using English articles.
1.3.

Research Questions
The research questions of the study are:
1.

What common errors of the English articles are found in the written
production made by the Vietnamese third-year English-major students at
AGU?

2.

What difficulties do the students meet and deal with when acquiring the
semantic notions of the English articles?

3.

Should corpus-based analyses be applied to help the students overcome
the difficulties?

1.4.

Scope of the Study
Vietnamese students can make errors in various aspects in their process of

learning of English. When they write or speak in English, some students may have
difficulty in determining genre (content, context), in writing or speaking process itself
and in the language system (lexis and grammar). In addition, these are believed to
occur at different levels of English proficiency. However, the present study simply


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focuses on one aspect of errors – English articles made by the third-year English-major
students at AGU. The other types of errors are excluded from the study.
1.5.

Significance of the Study
Within current teaching approaches that focus on communication, English

articles viewed as ‘short and unimportant’ words have been received relatively little
attention. In reality, they are the most frequent of all errors that are caught in the
English-major students’ essays at AGU. So far, only a few studies have been done in
the application of teaching and learning English articles in Vietnam in general and in
AGU in particular. For that reason, carrying out this study, I would like to identify

common errors in the use of English articles by Vietnamese third-year English-major
students at AGU. It is hoped that the study can help both the teachers and students at
AGU to raise their awareness of the problems as well as to improve their teaching and
learning of English articles.
1.6.

Methodology
This study employed both qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative

method was used to interpret and analyze documents. The quantitative techniques was
applied to give a full analysis of the descriptive data related to common errors in the
use of the English articles made by the third-year English-major students at An Giang
University, the major causes for the errors as well as possible difficulties that the
teachers of English and students could face while teaching and learning the English
articles.
1.6.1. The participants of the study
The participants of the study were 44 third-year students majoring in English at
An Giang University, who are from 20 to 21 years old. The students are studying the