masaryk university brno - IS MU

MASARYK UNIVERSITY BRNO
FACULTY OF EDUCATION

Department of English Language and Literature





Common Primary Learners' Errors



Diploma thesis





Brno 2013






Supervisor: Author:

Mgr. Renata Jan?a?íková Ph.D. Bc. Jarmila
Tomková































Declaration

I declare that I worked independently on this thesis and used only the
sources stated in bibliography.




20th April 2013 _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Jarmila Tomková




































Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mgr. Renata Jan?a?íková, Ph.D. for her great help,
endless patience and valuable advice during my work.



Content


Introduction 1

1 Definition of the Mistake 4

2 Classification of Mistakes 6
2.1 Mistakes of Meaning and Form 6
2.2 Mistakes of Commission and Omission, Covert mistakes 7
2.3 Slips, Errors and Attempts 7
2.3.1 Errors 8

3 Correction 11
3.1 Accuracy and Fluency 12
3.2 Types of corrections 14
3.2.1 Self-correction 14
3.2.2 Peer correction 14
3.2.3 Teacher correction 15
3.3 Correction Techniques in Oral and Written Language 17
3.3.1 Oral Correction Techniques 18
3.3.2 Written Correction Techniques 26

4 Research 31
4.1 Research method 31
4.2 Research sample 32
4.3 Research purpose 32

5 Assessment test - first attemptnn 33
5.1 Exercise 1 33
5.2 Exercise 2 34
5.3 Exercise 3 35
5.4 Exercise 4 36
5.5 Exercise 5 37
5.6 Exercise 6 38
5.7 Exercise 7 39
5.8 Exercise 8 39

6 Practical activities 42
6.1 Activity 1 - Sentence correction 42
6.2 Activity 2 - Put it together 43
6.3 Activity 3 - Sentence formation 44
6.4 Activity 4 - Broken questions + short answers 45
6.5 Activity 5 - Sentence formation 46
6.6 Activity 6 - Casanova's diary 47
6.7 Activity 7 - Picture differences 48

7 Assessment test - second attempt 51
7.1 Exercise 1 51
7.2 Exercise 2 52
7.3 Exercise 3 53
7.4 Exercise 4 54
7.5 Exercise 5 55
7.6 Exercise 6 56
7.7 Exercise 7 57
7.8 Exercise 8 58

Conclusion 60

Bibliography 63

Appendices 64



Introduction

The main aim of this diploma thesis called "Common Primary learners'
errors" is to find out the most common errors that primary students make in
a certain part of English grammar, namely in the present simple, present
continuous and past simple tenses. Furthermore, the purpose is to describe
and evaluate them, introduce and suggest appropriate activities which will
lead to students' improvement, as defined in the practical part of the
thesis. By choosing this topic for my diploma thesis I expect to obtain
deeper knowledge of students' problems in the particular part of grammar
and find the way how to remove them or even avoid them in the future.

As a primary school teacher, I have come across several types of
mistakes that primary school students make. Thinking about their errors, I
decided to carry out a survey that will reveal the most common of them.
Testing students' knowledge on the present simple, present continuous and
past simple tense would show their problems. I expect learners' omission of
the third person -s suffix in the present simple affirmative as the most
common mistake because Czech language does not distinguish the third person
suffix. Not only -s suffix in the present simple tense might cause the
problems, but also do or does in questions and short answers and don't and
doesn't in the negative and short answers, which may cause disagreement
with the person. Czech language does not distinguish the present simple
tense from the present continuous tense, so I also expect learners to
confuse these two tenses.

From my point of view, even if the learners add -ing form to the base
verb, they often omit the auxiliary verb to be when forming the present
continuous tense. However, they may forget to add -ing form to the base
verb when forming the present continuous tense without leaving out the
auxiliary verb. As far as the present continuous is concerned, they might
not use the correct auxiliary verb to be which should agree with the
person. As for using the present continuous tense - short answers, Czech
students of English do not use contractions for positive short answers, but
they use contractions for the negative ones, which primary students might
get confused with. The other errors might be: repeating the main verb in
short answers or not using pronouns in answers to replace nouns.

In my opinion, students' errors with the past simple tense
affirmative tend to include the confusion caused by irregular and regular
forms of the verbs. The use of auxiliary did in question formation or
didn't in negative sentences may also appear as a problem. The past form of
the verb to be in questions, was/were in affirmative or wasn't/weren't in
negative utterances might cause some difficulties too.

I hope that students will enjoy the activities and will be encouraged
to work on improving their English. The suitable selection of activities
should help them to avoid their errors and consolidate their knowledge of
the present simple, present continuous and past simple tense. I also hope
the results will be useful for teachers of English who teach at primary
schools in order to prevent these grammar mistakes with their students. If
teachers know that a certain grammatical structure is particularly
difficult to produce without mistakes, they can pay more attention to this
structure by giving extra practice or telling students what the frequent
errors are.

This diploma thesis consists of two main parts. The first part is
theoretical and includes three sections. In the first section I focus on
defining the mistake. The second one deals with the classification of
mistakes - mistakes of meaning, mistakes of form, slips, errors, attempts,
etc. In the third section I concentrate on the correction, accuracy and
fluency, different types of correction with a special emphasis on self-
correction, peer and teacher correction and correction techniques in oral
and written language.

The second part is practical and consists of four sections. The first
one provides basic information about the research, description of the
research method, sample and purpose. The second section of the practical
part deals with the test assessment where each exercise is introduced and
the results are interpreted and analysed. In the third section, I suggest
appropriate activities to improve students' knowledge of the particular
grammar items which the students are supposed to do in pairs, groups or by
themselves. The fourth section deals with the students' progress.
Basically, primary learners will write the same test, as defined in the
second section of the practical part, to see whether the activities have
helped them to improve their knowledge of English grammar or not.

Theoretical part

Definition of the Mistake


In my opinion, everyone has an idea of what a mistake is. 'Mistake'
can mean for different people different things. But not everyone would
think about the mistake as a grammatical term. When language teachers speak
about mistakes they usually mean the mistake as a grammatical term in the
language learning process. Authors of textbooks, who deal with mistakes,
see them from a different point of view.

Penny Ur defines mistakes with these words: "mistakes may be seen an
integral and natural part of learning: a symptom of the learner's progress
through an 'interlanguage' towards a closer and closer approximation to the
target language" (85). Bartram and Walton share Penny Ur's idea that
mistakes are natural part of learning: "this is wrong language which a
native speaker would not usually produce, something that only learners of
the language produce" (21). Julian Edge also confirms that making mistakes
is a part of learning and states that "the most important sort of mistake
is a mistake that leads to a misunderstanding" (2). In this case
grammatical mistakes are not as important as social mistakes. However,
making linguistic mistakes is an important and necessary part of language
learning. It is all right if our students take risks and make mistakes
because it is one of the methods how to learn the language.

According to the authors, mistakes are an inseparable part of the
language learning process, although teachers and learners tend to believe
that making mistakes is a negative phenomenon. Penny Ur claims: "Language
teachers perceive a mistake intuitively: something sounds or looks 'wrong'"
(85). Unfortunately, people have rather a negative attitude towards
mistakes. They should not think about mistakes as a kind of punishment
(Edge 17). Bartram and Walton assume that "the teachers are worried by
mistakes and non-native teachers tend to be severest of all on mistakes."
These teachers were probably taught 'good English', which means 'free of
mistakes' (24).

From my experience, many learners are afraid of making mistakes,
hoping not to be asked any questions by their teacher. They do not want to
be considered less intelligent if they answer teachers' questions wrongly.
As for making mistakes, even the teacher can put too much pressure on
students. Not o