Common types and possible causes of sentence fragment among second year student of english education at can tho universuty

CANTHO UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

COMMON TYPES AND POSSIBLE CAUSES OF SENTENCE
FRAGMENTS AMONG SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS OF
ENGLISH EDUCATION AT CANTHO UNIVERSITY
B.A. Thesis

Supervisor:

Student: Hồ Xuân Tiên

Nguyễn Văn Lợi, Ph.D.

Code: 7075910, Course 33
Class: NN0752A2

Cần Thơ, 4/2011


Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
From the beginning to the end of the process of writing this thesis, I had many
difficulties; however, I have luckily received the boundless help and the great
encouragement from my parents, teachers, and friends; especially, my supervisor, Dr.
Nguyen Van Loi, who has helped me to shape ideas, has given me advice, guidance,
corrections, encouragement and relevant sources for the accomplishment of this study.
I would like to express my deep gratitude to him. Without his important help, I could
not have completed my research on time.

I would like to thank all my teachers in the English Education department, School of
Education, Cantho University for their lectures which are the foundation for my study.
I would also like to send my thankful message to Mrs. Ngo Thi Trang Thao, Mrs.
Truong Nguyen Quynh Nhu, Mr. Do Xuan Hai, Mrs. Chung Thi Thanh Hang and
Mrs. Tran Thi Chau Pha, who helped me to correct my proposal from first steps,
provided me with useful ideas, helped me to collect writing papers of students and
correct my drafts.
I am also indebted to my family for the encouragement whenever I have difficulties or
stresses during the time of work.
Finally, I am grateful to the students of English Education class 01, 02 course 33, 34,
35, and 36. They have given me the sincere help, encouragement and provided many
writing papers that constitute the data for this study.

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

ABSTRACT
This study attempts to find out the causes for and the most common kind of sentence
fragments which occur among the English Education major students of Cantho
University, using data from

interviews and writing papers. The two kinds of data

were collected from 40 second-year students during the second semester of the school
year 2011 when they took Writing courses. The data analysis reveals that the students
often have trouble with sentence fragments possibly because of their attitude to study
Grammar or Writing courses and the influence of the mother tongue; and fragments
which lack a main verb and the ones which are the subordinate clauses are the two

most common kinds. This study also suggests some helpful strategies for teachers and
students in teaching and learning sentence errors, especially sentence fragments.

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

TÓM TẮT
Bài nghiên cứu này sử dụng dữ liệu từ những cuộc phỏng vấn cũng như các bài viết
của sinh viên nhằm tìm ra nguyên nhân và loại câu fragment (câu không hoàn chỉnh)
phổ biến nhất mà sinh viên ngành Sư phạm Anh văn ở trường Đại học Cần Thơ
thường mắc phải. Việc thu thập số liệu được tiến hành trên 40 sinh viên năm thứ hai
trong quá trình họ học môn Viết ở học kỳ 2 năm học 2011. Kết quả cho thấy sinh viên
thường gặp rắc rối với câu fragment có thể do hai nguyên nhân chính: thái độ học tập
hai môn Ngữ Pháp và Viết, và do ảnh hưởng của tiếng mẹ đẻ. Câu chính phụ thiếu
một mệnh đề và câu thiếu động từ chính là hai loại câu không hoàn chỉnh phổ biến
nhất. Cuối cùng, bài nghiên cứu cũng đưa ra một số một số góp ý tham khảo cho giáo
viên cũng như sinh viên trong việc dạy và học về lỗi về câu, đặc biệt là lỗi câu không
hoàn chỉnh.

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

Contents
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................................. 1
ABSTRACT.................................................................................................................... 2
TÓM TẮT....................................................................................................................... 3

CONTENTS.................................................................................................................... 4
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 6
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ......................................................................... 8
1. What is a mistake or an error? ............................................................................... 8
2. What is a fragment?............................................................................................... 9
3. Types of sentence fragment ..................................................................................10
4. Causes of errors in learning the second language..................................................12
CHAPTER 3: METHOD...............................................................................................14
1. Research design....................................................................................................14
2. Participants and sample ........................................................................................14
3. Data collection .....................................................................................................14
3.1.

Writing papers ...............................................................................................14

3.2.

Interview........................................................................................................15

4. Research process ..................................................................................................15
5. Procedure for data analysis ...................................................................................17
5.1.

Steps in errors analysis...................................................................................17

5.2.

Steps in interview analysis .............................................................................18

CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS ...........................................................19

1. Writing papers......................................................................................................19
2. Interview ..............................................................................................................20
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION, LIMITATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS..........25
1. Conclusion ...........................................................................................................25
2. Limitations of the study........................................................................................25
3. Recommendations ................................................................................................25
3.1.

Recommendation for students........................................................................25

3.2.

Recommendation for teachers ........................................................................26

3.3.

Recommendation for later research ................................................................26
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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

APPENDIX 1.................................................................................................................27
APPENDIX 2.................................................................................................................34
REFERENCES ..............................................................................................................33

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Writing is one of the important and necessary skills for students of English. But
writing is a complicated process of conveying information, which is often difficult for
students to learn. Making mistakes in writing is therefore very common. From my
observation, many students whose major is English Education often make errors in
sentence fragments when they write in English. I am very surprised at this
phenomenon and wish to understand it by doing a mini- research on sentence
fragments.
Sentence fragment is a common error in Writing. Andrea (2010) introduced twenty
common types of errors which appear frequently in the writing papers, and fragments
sentences are among these typical errors. In the same way, Kahn (2011) also agrees
that fragment sentence is one of the mistakes writers should avoid. In addition,
fragments are also listed as the most common errors in writing essays (Flemming,
2011). Students commonly find themselves either with a long winded sentence or one
that is not a complete idea. This is also a very common problem among professional
writers. For fragment sentences, it is important to express a freestanding idea in the
sentence. This type of sentence errors has been described and discussed a lot in books
about academic writing. Foll (2001), Glencoe (2001), Langan (1997), and Marchant
(2000) described the types of sentence fragments which students often produce.
However, these writings have not pointed out the most common type of sentence
fragments, as well as the causes of making mistakes in this kind of sentence error.
This research aims to find out the types of sentence fragments that Vietnamese
commonly produce, and discover the causes for this. Specifically, the research
investigates the two following questions:
Question 1: What types of sentence fragments occur among the English Education
major students in Cantho University, and what is the most common type?
Question 2: What are possible causes for the errors?

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

With what I draw out at the end of this study, I think that my study can help teachers
to know the fact of making errors of sentence fragments of the second-year English
Education major students in CTU, and then they can consider it as a suggestion for
changing the teaching method to be more effective. To students, the study can help
them to be more careful and be able to avoid this type of sentence error when they
write; therefore, the writing skill of students can be improved.
The report for the study is outlined in five chapters:
Chapter 1: Introduction
This chapter has presented the the reasons why I am interested in this topic and the
research questions
Chapter 2: Literature Review
This chapter is the review of literature which provides a critical assessment of what
has been written about the topic such as definition of sentence fragments, kinds of
sentence fragments, main causes of making erors in sentence fragments.
Chapter 3: Research Methods
In this chapter, I present the research design, participants, instruments, and research
procedure I make this research.
Chapter 4: Results and discussions
This chapter will present the error types related to sentence fragments, the most
common kind of errors in sentence fragments and the causes of this. The data is
analyzed and based on the writing papers of English Education major students and the
result of interview.
Chapter 5: Conclusion, limitations, and recommendations
Finally, the conclusion is made, and some implications are raised

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter is the review of literature which provides a critical assessment of what
has been written about the topic such as distinguishing between a mistake and an
error,

definition of sentence fragments, kinds of sentence fragments, the sentence

fragment, a typical problem, and the influences of the first language on the process of
learning the second language.
1. What is a mistake or an error?
This study examines errors in sentence production, so it is necessary to define what is
meant by ‘error’.
Corder (1997) stated errors are typically produced by people who do not yet fully
command some institutionalized language system. Meanwhile, according to Haryanto
(2007) “error” is the failure to use the grammatical system correctly made by students
which is caused by lack of student’s competence. Errors themselves are competence
errors. True errors are of the learners’ competence (Richards, 1974). Errors are caused
by deficiency in competence and a short coming in the knowledge of language.
Learners make errors when they have not learnt something correctly.
Mistake is different from error. A mistake refers to a performance error, in that it is
failure to utilize a known system correctly (Brown, 1980). The learners, who make
mistakes, will sometimes use one form and sometimes the others. This shows the
inconsistency. A mistake is an understanding of something that is not correct or a
wrong action attributable to bad judgment or ignorance or inattention. For example,

“he wasn't going to admit his mistake”; "he made a bad mistake”. The mistake here
means the wrong action which can cause some effects.
“Error” means the condition of having incorrect or false knowledge; it is sometimes
the synonym of a mistake. For example, “I made an error in my calculations.”
However, it is necessary to distinguish two this concepts. According to Haryanto
(2007), “mistake” refers to the failures to use the language system correctly caused by
some factors such as carelessness, memory lapses, and physical condition, while error
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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

refers to the failure to use the system correctly caused by lack of learners’
competence. In this study, I consider the sentence fragment as an error.
2. What is a fragment?
It is impossible to discuss sentence fragments without an understanding of the
sentence concept. According to Werner and Baker (1997), every complete sentence in
English has at least one subject and one verb. A simple sentence has one subject-verb
combination. A compound sentence is composed of two or more simple sentences.
Langan (1997, p.97), added that every sentence must have a subject and a verb and
must express a complete thought. However, when an incomplete sentence is
punctuated as though it were a complete sentence, a fragment can occur. In general,
there are two different ways to understand the concept of sentence fragments.
First, some linguists define sentence fragments by what components the sentences
lack. According to Morgan (2010), sentence fragments are sentences that lack one or
more of the necessary components of a sentence. What are the necessary components
of a sentence? They are a subject and a verb. In more details, Raimes (2001) defines a
sentence fragment as an incomplete sentence. It can occur when a subject is missing,
when there is not a complete verb, or when there is no subject-predicate structure in an
independent clause. Meanwhile Abram (2000) defines fragments as incomplete

sentences which miss a verb or a subject or both. Let’s consider three examples below
Example 1: Running for the bus that was turning the corner.
In this example, although this sentence consists of one subject “the bus”, and two
verbs “run” and “was turning”, it is not a complete sentence. The important
component which is not present is the subject. We need to know who did the action
“run”. This is one case of sentence fragment.
Example 2: The feeling of cool sand running through your toes.
Similarly, the example above is also a sentence fragment. In this sentence, only a noun
phrase stands as the subject of the sentence, but the main verb is absent. This makes

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

the sentence unclear in meaning. The reader wants to know what happens when there
is the feeling of cool sand running through your toes.
Example 3: Also the different kinds of entertainment such as videos and television.
The third example is another case of sentence fragment according to the abovementioned authors. The example sentence lacks a subject-predicate combination.
Readers do not know what the writer wants to show.
Second, sentence fragments are defined in terms of the completion of sentence
meaning. According to Langan (1987, p. 97), a sentence that lacks a subject or a verb
and does not express a complete thought is a fragment. In the same words, Abram
(2000) stated that a sentence fragment is a group of words that cannot stand alone as a
sentence but is punctuated as if it were a sentence. A fragment is difficult to
understand because it is an incomplete statement. For example, the sentence when the
dentist began drilling is a fragment because we do not know what happened when the
dentist began drilling. The group of words does not follow through and does not
express a complete thought.
The study reported in this thesis uses the following concept: a sentence fragment is an

incomplete sentence which lacks a subject, a complete verb or both, and does not
express a complete thought.
3. Types of sentence fragment
Different writings about sentence fragments classify them in indifferent ways.
According to Glencoe (2001), sentence fragments can be divided into four types.
They are fragments that lack a subject, fragments that lack a complete verb, the
fragments that lack both a subject and a main verb, and fragments that are composed
of a subordinate clause. The following examples illustrate each type.
Example 1: Jamal is very athletic. Plays a great game of tennis (a fragment lacking a
subject).
Example 2: We can hardly hear ourselves think. Ruth trying out her new set of drums
(a fragment lacking a main verb).

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

Example 3: Kate felt ill and left the theater. Before the end of the movie (a fragment
lacking both a subject and a main verb).
Example 4: I am reading a book by Alice Walker. Who is one of my favorite writers.
(a fragment composed as a subordinate clause)
Other authors such as Morgan (2010) and Marchant (2010) divide sentence fragments
into three types which are similar to three of the four types in Glencoe’s opinion. They
did not mention the fragment which lacks both a subject and a verb. Like Glencoe,
Langan (1997) agrees that there are four types of sentence fragments. However, he
based on the appearance of these sentences to name them. According to him, sentence
fragments can be divided into the following types:
Dependent-word fragments
Whenever we start a sentence with one of the dependent words, we must be careful

that a dependent-word fragment does not result.
For example: After I stopped drinking coffee. I began better at night. (dependent
fragments )
A dependent fragment is the one which starts with a dependent word and cannot stand
alone. It depends on another statement to complete the thought. When the writer does
not follow through and complete a thought, a fragment results.
–ing and to fragments
These are some examples for this type.
* I spend all time in the employment office. Trying to find a job that suited me. .
* Mel took an aisle seat on the bus. His reason being that he had more legroom.
* To remind people of their selfishness. Otis leaves handwritten notes on cars that
wake up two parking spaces.
When a word ending in –ing, or the word to appears at or near the start of a word
group, a fragment may result. Such fragments often lack a subject and part of the verb.
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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

Added-detail fragments
Added-detail fragments lack a subject and a verb. They often begin with one of the
following words: also, especially, except, for example, including, such as. Some
examples are given below.
* Tony has trouble accepting criticism. Except from Lola. She has a knack for tact.
* My apartment has its drawbacks. For example, no hot water in the morning.
* I had many job while in school. Among them, busboy, painter, and security guard.
Missing-subject fragments
People write missing-word fragments because they think the subject in one sentence
will apply to the next group as well. But the subject, as well as the verb, must be in
each group to make it a sentence. These following examples are missing-subject

fragments:
* One example of my father’s generosity is that he visits sick friends in the hospital.
And takes along get-well cards with a few dollars folded in them.
* The weight lifter grunted as he heaved the barbells into the air. Then, with a loud
groan, dropped them.
In short, we can have a general vision on the types of sentence fragments. They are
incomplete sentences, and the fact that we can divide them into how many kinds
depends on what parts they lack. In this study, I base on Glencoe’s taxonomy which is
rather comprehensive and complete to do the research. There are four types of
sentence fragments: the fragments lacking a subject, the fragments lacking a main
verb, the fragments lacking both a subject and a main verb, and the fragments as
subordinate clause.
4. Causes of errors in learning the second language
Some studies have argued some causes of making errors when the people learn the
foreign language, especially errors in writing. From an interlanguage perspective,

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

Yates and Kenkel (2002) agreed that many errors in the process of learning the second
language are the result of the interaction between developing linguistic competence
and basic principles of ordering information in texts which learners already know.
Meanwhile, when discussing the influence of first language over the second language,
Lado (1971) said that “those elements that are similar to his native language will be
simple for him and those elements that are different will be difficult”. In this context,
it is evident that the language teacher and language learners should ideally know the
structures of both the mother tongue and the second languages. If the different
elements cause difficulties, it also helps to make errors easily.

With the same view point that the mother tongue also has influences on learning the
second language, Maniam (2010) found that Tamil linguistic items heavily influenced
the writing of L2 among the Tamil school students. This caused the breakdown of the
grammatical items that were negatively transferred.
In Vietnam, Vo (2007) researched about difficulties of students in writing. According
to her, some popular difficulties are sentence problems. Vietnamese students are often
influenced by traditional literature, so when writing in English, they get trouble,
especially sentence problems.
From the review of the literature, we can consider that the influence of the mother
tongue is a factor which may cause trouble for L2 learners. In terms of making
sentence errors, specifically sentence fragments, I wonder whether it is also one of the
causes or not. With this question, I do this research.

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

CHAPTER 3
METHOD
This chapter will describe the research design and methodology. The chapter includes
five parts. The first part is about the research design including the decision on research
questions and the reason why I use this. The second part is about participants joining
in the study and the samples on which I base to analyze the data. The third part is the
data collection. Next, I will describe the research process and the procedure of data
analysis in two last sections.
1. Research design
I chose the descriptive research method, focusing on error analysis to achieve the aim
of this study. The conclusion about the most common type of sentence fragments of
this error was reached by basing on the occurrence of this type in writing papers of a

group of English Education major students in Cantho University. A descriptive
research often describes data and characteristics about the phenomenon being
studied; however, it cannot describe what caused a situation. Therefore, I also used
interview, to discover the causes of making errors in sentence fragments.
2. Participants and sample
The subjects of my research are a group of English Education major students at the
second year of English Education Department, Can Tho University. The participants
are 40 second-year students of English Education Department. Writing samples were
collected randomly from these students by stratified sampling method.
3. Data collection
The data were collected in two ways. First of all, I collected writing papers of 40
students of English Education to identify errors. Secondly, the interview was used to
help me discover the causes of making errors in sentence fragments.
3.1.

Writing papers

To answer the first research question, I chose the writing papers as one of the
instruments for this research. The writing papers were collected from 40 English

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

Education major students at the second year who are attending the Writing courses.
There are some reasons why I decided to employ the writing papers instead of the
writing test. Firstly, the criterion of testing is not suitable. Each student has to follow a
different schedule, so it is very difficult to arrange the time for the test. Secondly, I
want to describe the phenomenon of making errors in sentence fragments from the

writing papers they write and hand in. The writing papers are produced during the
process they learn the Writing subject; therefore, the result can be more practical.
Thirdly, designing a writing test which is suitable for all of English Education major
students seems to be impossible. Some students maybe feel forceful when they have
the test. Because of these reasons, I only chose writing papers as one of the
instruments to analyze.
3.2.

Interview

I used the semi-structured interview to explore the causes of making errors in
sentence fragments. In this type of interview, there are specific core questions
determined in advanced from which the interviewer branches off to explore in-depth
information, probing according to the way the interview proceeds, and allowing the
elaboration, within limits (Seliger & Shohamy, 1989). To the causes of making errors
in sentence fragments, I designed the interview questions and approached students
who have trouble with this kind of sentence errors to explore the causes. I have
focused on what the literature shows, especially the influences of L1 on L2, and the
habit of writing to design the interview questions. During the process of interviewing,
I explained and tried to expand some details to get the specific information.
The interview includes 6 questions about the general knowledge of sentence
fragments; questions focusing on the way the students who often make errors in the
sentence fragments through the process of production from getting the topic to
handing in the writing papers. (see appendix 2)
4. Research process
There are six steps:
* Collecting the writing papers from students of English Education Department.

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

I collected 40 writing papers of English Education major students at the second- year
in CTU to analyze.
* Analyzing these writing papers:
Basing on the writing papers I have collected, I analyzed them in 3 sections: how
many sentence fragment they make, in what kinds of sentence fragments they make
errors and which kind is the most common kind.
* Designing interviewing questions:
After analyzing the writing papers, I could give the conclusion about the frequency of
making errors in sentence fragments and the most common kind. With the aim to
draw out the causes, I designed the interviewing questions and focused on the way
they produce the writings. There are 6 questions which aim to help me discover the
causes.
* Piloting the instruments (on about 10 students):
To make sure that the interview questions are not ambiguous, I piloted on 10 students
before interviewing them who make errors in the sentence fragments. The result was
that all of them are easy to understand and the answers are fixed to the purpose I want.
I can discover some possible causes from what the interviewees answer.
* Interviewing students who often make mistakes in sentence fragments.
The interview happened in three days, I used the piloted interview questions to ask
students who often make errors in sentence fragments, and took notes the answers.
* Analyzing data
The last one is analyzing the data. I designed a table consisting of 4 columns: name,
times of making errors in the most common kind of sentence fragments, causes and
the conclusion. After that, I wrote the analysis to draw out the conclusion for my
research.

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

5. Procedure for data analysis
5.1.

Steps in errors analysis

In analyzing the data, I used error analysis method suggested by Brown (1980) and
Corder (1974). These following steps were used to conduct an error analysis
research:
* Identification of errors
After having the samples, the process of identifying errors started to find out sentence
fragments from writing papers collected. These sentence fragments were identified
by underlying.
* Classification of errors
The sentence fragments found were classified and grouped by basing on Glencoe’s
taxonomy in 4 types: the fragments lacking a subject, the fragments lacking a main
verb, the fragments lack both a subject and a main verb, and the fragments as
subordinate clause.
* Evaluation of errors
This step involves evaluating, explaining of errors and drawing conclusion.
To this step, I used the following structure to make the statistics of data

P=

x 100%

In which,

P: percentage of each types of sentence fragments
N1: total of each types of sentence fragments
: Total of the whole sentence fragments

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

5.2. Steps in interview analysis
The data from the interview was analyzed through 3 steps:
* Making statistics of the answers
To each interview question, the answers were classified in groups of the same
ideas, and then their population was transferred into the percentage to analyze
easily.
* Discussing
Basing on the statistics of the answers, I discussed to explore the possible causes
of making errors in sentence fragments.

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

CHAPTER 4
RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS
This chapter presents the research results synthesized from the writing papers and the
interview. The result will reveal the most common kind of sentence fragments and
the causes of this.
1. Writing papers

After trying to find out the sentence fragments in 40 writing papers of English
Education major students, I draw out some results. First of all, it is necessary to
synthesize all kinds of sentence fragments in their writing papers in the following
table.

The number

Percentage

Kinds of sentence fragments
of errors
2. Fragment lacking a subject

7

18.4%

3. Fragment lacking a main verb

12

31.6%

4. Fragment lacking both a subject and a main 3

7.9%

verb
5. Fragment as subordinate clause

16

42.1%

As can be seen from the table, English Education major students made errors in all
four kinds of sentence fragments: fragments lacking a subject, fragments lacking a
main verb, fragments lacking both a subject and a main verb, and fragments as
subordinate clause. However, there is a difference in the frequency of making
mistakes in these kinds. The largest number of mistakes (42.1%) is in the second kind
which is fragments as subordinate clause, whereas 31.6% in fragments lacking a main
verb, 18.4% in fragments lacking subjects, and 7.9% in fragments lacking both a

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

subject and a main verb. Comparing with my guessing I have just mentioned in
chapter one, the result shows a surprising fact. I suppose the rule that a sentence
basically has at least a subject and a main verb will be mastered extremely;
nevertheless, more than a half of number of errors in sentence fragments gather into
fragments lacking a subject and fragments lacking a main verb. This reflects that
advanced learners also make simple mistakes. Actually, that fact is worth to noticing.
From the table above, we can easily recognize the most common kind of sentence
fragments is fragments as subordinate clause (42.1%). This proves that students lack
the notice on the content when they write. The sentences which are fragments show
incomplete thought although they are fixed in English grammar.
2. Interview
The interview was designed to explore the causes of making errors in sentence
fragments. It was used for students who have trouble with this kind of sentence

errors.
After synthesizing, the results were showed in the following tables:
Question 1: Do you think Writing is an important subject? How?
Ideas

Number

Reasons

Number

Important

20

- apply many grammar points

18 (85.7%)

(95.2%)

- practice other skills such

11 (52.4%)

reading, speaking and listening

Not

1

important

(4.8%)

- practice using vocabulary

9 (42.9%)

- be able to express the ideas

3 (14.3%)

Do not like

From the table, we can see that most of students who have trouble with sentence
fragments (95.2%) appreciate the role of Writing. There are many different reasons
why they consider the importance of Writing such as Writing is a subject students can

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

apply many grammar points; practice other skills such as reading, speaking and
listening; practice using vocabulary or express the ideas what they think. However,
there is still one student look Writing down. According to him, Writing is not
important; therefore, he does not often pay attention to this subject. He writes without
the review. I think that this can be one of the factors leading the carelessness in
writing. It is easy to make errors if students write without notice.

Question 2: Have you heard about sentence fragments? If so what are they?

Facts

Number

Kinds

Number

Heard already

18

- remember

1 (5.6%)

(85.7 %)

- forget

17 (94.4%)

Have

not 3

heard yet

(14.3%)

Question 3: Have you studied it? When?
Fact

Number

When

Number

Studied

18

-Grammar 1

1 (5.9%)

already

(85.7 %)

-Grammar 2

9 (52.9%)

-Grammar 3

3 (17.6%)

-Writing 1

0 (0%)

-Writing 2

2 (11.8%)

-Writing 3

2 (11.8%)

Not yet

3
(14.3%)

The tables above show that there are still 14.3% of students who have not heard about
this kind of sentence errors. Meanwhile 85.7% among the students who make errors in
sentence fragments state that the concept of sentence fragments is an old one. It means
it is not strange for them to know. However, when answering the question: “What are

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

they?”, the students hesitate. As a result, 94.4% of students forget what they are; only
5.6% of students can answer. According to student (17), they are sentences which lack

a subject, a verb, and a dependent clause; and she remembers them because she has
presented the sentence erors in class, it was her duty. Basing on what students answer
for these two questions, we can discover that their studying attitudes are not good.
They seem to forget this kind of sentence error despite learning already, and now they
have trouble with it.
Another fact which the tables above show is the students are often taught when they
take Grammar 2 (52.9%), Grammar 3 (17.6%) and Writing 2 or 3 (11.8%) course.
Only through two courses, Writing and Grammar, students have chances to master
sentence fragments.
Question 4: Are you aware of any differences between Vietnamese sentence
structures and English sentence structures? If so what are they?

Awareness

Number

Difference

Different

21

- the position of complements

(100%)

- the position of words
- the way to translate
- the way to write

Same

0
(0%)

All of students interviewed are aware of the differences between Vietnamese sentence
structures and English sentence structures. They give some justifications to support
their ideas. According to them, the differences focus on the position of complements,
the position of words, the way to translate, and the way to write. We can consider that
almost differences they think focus on the appearance of words, where the words are
placed; and then this influences on the way to translate or write. However, they have no
ideas about the punctuation as well as conjunctions, transitions, or the rules of forming
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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

a sentence, etc. It means the awareness of differences between English and Vietnamese
structures has not been deep and enough. Therefore, the fact of making mistakes is
certain.
Question 5, question 6: Can you describe the process in which you write something
(e.g., an essay); do you tend to translate ideas in Vietnamese into English? How?
Idea

Number

Ways of translate

Translation

15 (71.4%)

3.

Number

Translate word by 2 (13.3%)

word
4.

13 (86.7%)

Think
Vietnamese,

in
then

translate into English
No translation

6 (28.6%)

Review before handing in

20 (95.2%)

No review before handing 1 (4.8%)
in

It is very surprising when the results in the table above shows that 71.4% of students
interviewed still keep the habit of translation when they write. They have not escaped
from the influences of the mother tongue. The majority think in Vietnamese, after that
the process of writing begins. Sometimes, they write a complete sentence in
Vietnamese, and then translate it into English word by word, for instance student (7)
and student (31). When the students produce writings, 95.2% of them review what
they write; nevertheless, the fact that the student who dislikes Writing ignores to look
back still happens. This student considers writing is a duty, producing the writing
paper is completion.
The students who participate in the interview have trouble with sentence fragments.
Generally, they have already studied about them but they do not remember what they
are. The possible causes of making errors of sentence fragments among students of
English Education at CTU may be the attitude in studying, or the method the lecturers

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Sentence fragments- possible causes and the most common types

teaching them in class and the influence of the first language on the process of
learning the second language.

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