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English has become an 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. Students who have the ability and competency in writing in English will be able to engage meaningfully in local and international trade and commerce. Students need to be proficient in English and being able to write well in English is definitely a crucial skill for their future.
English has become an 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. Students who have the ability and competency in writing in English will be able to engage meaningfully in local and international trade and commerce. Students need to be proficient in English and being able to write well in English is definitely a crucial skill for their future.
English has become an 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. Students who have the ability and competency in writing in English will be able to engage meaningfully in local and international trade and commerce. Students need to be proficient in English and being able to write well in English is definitely a crucial skill for their future.
Done by : SAADIYAH DARUS & KHOR HEI CHING School of Language Studies and Linguistics Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2 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
3 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
5 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 6 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 7 To investigate errors in essays written in English by Form One Chinese students in a public school in Perak 8 What are the four most common errors in their written English essays? 9 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 10 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 11 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
12 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 learners linguistic system at a given stage of learning Meanwhile, Dulay et al. (1982) define error as : the flawed side of the learners 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) 13 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 14 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
15 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
17 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
18 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
19 20 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) 21 22
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 24 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 25 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] 26 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 27 Therefore students were incapable of choosing the correct prepositions when more than one English prepositions corresponds to a single Chinese or Malay prepositions
28 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 29 Example : a) My family have five members [has] b) There is five family members in my house [are]
30 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 31 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 32