Source :

European Journal of Social Sciences – Volume 10,

Number 2 (2009)

Done by :

SAADIYAH DARUS & KHOR HEI CHING

School of Language Studies and Linguistics

Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia

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Educational system in Malaysia – based on Razak Report (1956)

Malaysian educational structure a) Primary education – 6 years b) Secondary education – 5 years c) Sixth Form education – 2 years

Prior to Razak Report, medium of instruction a) National school – Malay b) National type (Chinese & Tamil) – native language

English & Malay – compulsory subjects to learn

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Secondary level of education

a) Lower secondary level

- - 3 years (Form 1 - Form 3)

b) Upper secondary level

- - 2 years (Form 4 & Form 5)

Secondary level - medium of instruction is Malay

Vernacular students will have to endure effects from

the changes of medium of instruction

Chinese students from vernacular school – English

and Malay are taught in primary level as one

subject respectively

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When they enter Form One – all subjects are taught in Malay except for English and Mandarin subjects

English has become L2 in Malaysia

From being the medium of instruction in schools since pre-independence, it has now become a compulsory subject that students need to take (Asmah, 1997)

Chitravelu et al. (2004:12) talk about the position of English as an L2 and its importance to “…enable Malaysians to engage meaningfully in local and international trade and commerce”

Thus, students need to be proficient in English and being able to write well in English is definitely an advantage for their future

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Out of the four skills, writing is the most complex

aspect but it is a crucial skill for students to learn

Students who have the ability and competency in

writing in English will be able to express themselves

effectively

Moreover, they will have more privilege when

applying for any job compared to other students

especially in private sectors and companies that

are involved at international level

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The Form One Chinese students in vernacular

schools need to master three languages – their

native language, Malay and English

Out of these three languages, English is neglected

and not being paid attention to

They are not very much exposed to English and do

not have sufficient training in the language

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To investigate errors in essays written in English by

Form One Chinese students in a public school in

Perak

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What are the four most common errors in their

written English essays?

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There can be a huge difference between English

writing by native speakers (NS) and English writing

by English as a second language (ESL) learners

ESL learners have more than one language while

they are composing as compared to NS

Since they have more than one language in hand,

it brings more problems

ESL learners tend to switch those languages

interactively, causing some confusion in the

structure and meaning

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As several studies have reported,

a) L2 writers use their L1 to plan their writing for text

generation (Cumming, 1989; Jones & Tetroe,

1987),

b) Transfer their L1 knowledge to L2 writing contexts

(Edelsky, 1982; Friedlander, 1990; Lay, 1982), and

c) Develop ideas and produce text content and

organization (Lay, 1982)

In short, L2 writers always make use of their L1 first,

while composing in the L2 before translating it to L2

This shows that L1 influence the L2 writer in their

process of writing in L2 and the influences can be

positive or negative

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PARTICIPANTS

70 students from two Form One classes in a

selected public school in Perak

They came from Chinese vernacular schools with

Mandarin as the main language of instruction

They scored on average a grade B or C in their

„Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah‟ (UPSR) and other

monthly English tests

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Errors in language learners‟ performance including

writing process have long become the subject of

interest among teachers, linguists and syllabus

planners

According to Corder (1967), error can be defined

as a systematic, consistent deviance characteristic

of the learner‟s linguistic system at a given stage of

learning

Meanwhile, Dulay et al. (1982) define error as :

“…the flawed side of the learner‟s speech or writing

They are those parts of conversation or composition

that deviates from selected norm of mature

language performance.” (Dulay et al., 1982: 138)

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All of these students came from Chinese speaking

family

They write in Mandarin for many occasions

especially in informal situations

They only use English during their English classes or

when needed to

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WRITING SAMPLE

Following Halliday and Hassan (1976) who stated

that writing allows writers to demonstrate their ability

to construct a string of well-connected sentences

that are grammatically and logically correct, the

students were asked to write a short essay

The writing sample for the study - 70 essays written in

English by these 70 students

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INSTRUMENT

In order to identify the errors, an error classification

scheme developed by Darus et al. (2007) was

adapted in this study

It consists of 18 types of errors as follows :

a) Tenses

b) Articles

c) Subject verb agreement

d) Other agreement errors

e) Infinitive

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f) Gerunds

g) Pronouns

h) Possessive and attributive structures

i) Word order

j) Incomplete structures

k) Negative constructions

l) Lexical categories (preposition)

m) Other lexical categories

n) Mechanics

o) Word choice

p) Word form

q) Verb to be

r) Malaysian typical words

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Markin 3.1 software (Holmes, 1996-2004) was used in

the process of identifying the errors in the students‟

essays

The software was chosen because it enabled

researchers to obtain accurate classification and

statistical analysis of errors

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RESEARCH PROCEDURE

Students were asked to write a short essay (in the

range of 80 – 300 words)

The topic of the essay was My Family

They were given one week to write their essays

before researchers collected them for text analysis

Essays collected were typed so that they were

computer readable

The errors of each essay were identified using

Markin 3.1 software based on the error classification

Scheme

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Table 1

Table 1 shows the total number of errors for each

category of grammatical errors as well as its

percentage and mean value

10,147 words were analyzed that consist of

approximately 145 words for each essay

The results of the mean values show that four

common errors are mechanics (2.73), tense (1.73),

preposition (1.29) and subject-verb agreement

(1.24)

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4 COMMON

ERRORS

Mechanics

Tenses

Preposition

Subject-Verb Agreement

19.1% of total number of errors

In the area of spelling, punctuation and

capitalization

Spelling – „read‟ vs „rid‟ (mainly due to phonetics

perception)

Punctuation – commas (,)

a) I feel happy to have a lovely family, and I hope

my family will always happy

b) There are my father, mother * eldest sister and

me

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Capitalization

a) My mom occupation is a House Wife

b) My brother is a Form two student

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12.1 % of total number of errors

English verbs change according to aspect of time

(present, past, future and continuous tense)

For example :

I go to the market Saya pergi ke pasar

I will go to the market Saya akan pergi ke pasar

I went to the market Saya telah pergi ke pasar

I am going to the

market

Saya sedang pergi ke pasar

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The verb „pergi‟ in the sentences did not indicate

time

Time was shown separately by auxiliary verb and

particles such as „akan‟, „telah‟, „sedang‟

- Difficult for students to understand the idea of

tense usage

Errors identified :

a) Every night we watching TV [watch]

b) I study in SMJK Yuk Chong [am studying]

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9.0 % of total number of errors

Errors includes omissions, additions and wrong

selections

For example - Chinese and Malay preposition „di‟

refers to „in‟, „at‟ and „on‟ in English

Dia bekerja di Kuala

Lumpur

He works in Kuala Lumpur

Salmah bekerja di

pejabat pos

Salmah works at the post

office

Dia letakkan buku itu di

atas meja

He puts the book on the

table

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Therefore students were incapable of choosing the

correct prepositions when more than one English

prepositions corresponds to a single Chinese or

Malay prepositions

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8.7% of total number of errors

Errors includes difficulties in distinguishing the verb

„is‟ or „was‟ with „are‟ or „were‟

Confuse with some nouns such as „people‟ or

„homework‟

I go to school Saya pergi ke sekolah

She goes to school Dia pergi ke sekolah

They go to school Mereka pergi ke sekolah

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Example :

a) My family have five members [has]

b) There is five family members in my house [are]

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Errors are caused by :

1) Interference of L1

2) Inadequate understanding of grammatical rules

of English

This study shows that the four most common errors

made by the Chinese students are mechanics of

writing, tenses, preposition and subject-verb

agreement

In general, the finding of this study shows that the

Chinese students were very much influenced by the

L1 in their process of learning English

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Suggestions :

1) Teacher should emphasize on how the

concepts are handled in English, Malay and

Chinese

2) Teachers should highlight certain rules in L1 and

Malay that are inappropriate to be used when

they write in English

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