use of english grammatical morphemes among l1-thai
TRANSCRIPT
USE OF ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL
MORPHEMES AMONG L1-THAI LEARNERS
BY
MISS SUWAPORN CHUMKAMON
AN INDEPENDENT STUDY PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL
FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS IN
TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
LANGUAGE INSTITUTE, THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY
ACADEMIC YEAR 2017
COPYRIGHT OF THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY
Ref. code: 25605621032357MVW
USE OF ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES
AMONG L1-THAI LEARNERS
BY
MISS SUWAPORN CHUMKAMON
AN INDEPENDENT STUDY PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL
FULFILLMENT OF
THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF ARTS IN
TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE
LANGUAGE INSTITUTE, THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY
ACADEMIC YEAR 2017
COPYRIGHT OF THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY
Ref. code: 25605621032357MVW
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Independent Study Paper Title USE OF ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL
MORPHEMES AMONG L1-THAI LEARNERS
Author Miss Suwaporn Chumkamon
Degree Master of Arts
Major Field/Faculty/University Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Language Institute, Thammasat University
Independent Study Paper Advisor Associate Professor Dr. Supong Tangkiengsirisin
Academic Years 2017
ABSTRACT
This present research aimed to investigate the use of English grammatical
morphemes among L1-Thai learners, focusing on four grammatical morphemes:
present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s. The
participants were 60 Thai native speaking students. They were divided into two
groups in equal number with 30 persons in a high level group and 30 persons in a low
level group based on their English Ordinary National Education Test scores (O-NET
scores). Participants were assigned to undertake a Grammaticality Judgment Task by
identifying 25 sentences including grammatical sentences and ungrammatical
sentences, then correct grammatical errors of the sentences that they marked as
ungrammatical sentences. The results from data analysis and error analysis showed
the low level group have highest scores in plural –s, then present progressive –ing, 3rd
person singular –s and possessive -’s, while the high level group had highest scores in
plural –s, followed by 3rd person singular –s, present progressive –ing and possessive
–’s. Errors revealed in this research were addition errors, omission errors and
misformation errors. Plausible reasons for these errors were classified as
overgeneralization, incomplete application of rules, ignorance of rule restriction and
L1- interference.
Keywords: grammatical morpheme, error, grammaticality judgment task, morpheme
acquisition, second language acquisition
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my sincere thanks to chairman and my advisor
Associate Professor Dr. Supong Tangkiengsirisin for his kind assistance, extremely
helpful, suggestions and the support offered with warm encouragement. I wish to
thank my co-advisor Assistant Professor Dr. Supakorn Phoocharoensil for useful
comments and warm support. I also would like to thank Dr. Rangsiya Chaengchenkit
for her valuable suggestions and understanding.
I would take this opportunity to thank all staff members of the Language
Institute of Thammasat University, especially Ms.Jiraporn Petchthong for her great
support, warm encouragement and providing the facilities to complete my
independent study.
Finally, I am deeply grateful to my family, especially my mother for her warm
encouragement, understanding, taking good care of me and her endless love. I would
like to thank my friends and my work colleagues for their supports on some work
duties during my study.
Suwaporn Chumkamon
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ABSTRACT (1)
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (2)
LIST OF TABLES (6)
LIST OF FIGURES (7)
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS (8)
CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1 Background of the study 1
1.2 Research Questions 3
1.3 Objectives of the study 3
1.4 Significance of the study 4
CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 5
2.1 Second Language Acquisition (SLA) 5
2.2 Grammatical Morpheme Acquisition 8
2.2.1 Definition of Grammatical Morpheme 8
2.2.2 Acquisition of Grammatical Morpheme 8
2.2.3 Related criticism research 14
2.2.4 Related similar research 16
2.2.5 Difference in L2 Grammatical Morpheme 17
2.3 Interlanguage (IL) 18
2.4 The Processability Theory (PT) 19
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2.5 Error Analysis (EA) 21
2.5.1 Causes of Error 21
2.5.2 Categories of Errors 23
2.6 Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT) 24
2.7 Data Scoring 25
CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 28
3.1 Participants 28
3.2 Research Materials 28
3.3 Threats to validity and reliability 30
3.3.1 Validity 30
3.3.2 Reliability 31
3.4 Data Collection 31
3.5 Data Scoring 32
3.6 Data Analysis 33
CHAPTER 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 35
4.1 Results 35
4.1.1 The Use of Grammatical Morphemes 35
4.1.2 Consistency of The Result 37
4.1.3 The Errors in Grammaticality Judgment Task 41
4.2 Discussion 42
4.2.1 Addition Error 43
4.2.2 Omission Error 44
4.2.3 Misformation Error 45
CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 46
5.1 Conclusions 46
5.2 Recommendations 48
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REFERENCES 50
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A 57
BIOGRAPHY 60
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LIST OF TABLES
Tables Page
2.1 Table 1. Order of Morphemes by L1 English speaking (Brown, 1973) 9
2.2 Table 2. Order of L1 English speaking (de Villiers and de Villiers, 1973) 10
2.3 Table 3. Order of L2 English speaking (Dulay and Burt, 1973) 11
2.4 Table 4. Order of L2 English speaking (Dulay and Burt, 1974) 12
2.5 Table 5. Order of L2 adult (Bailey, Madden, and Krashen, 1974) 13
2.6 Table 6. Order of L2 Japanese ESL (Hakuta, 1974) 14
3.1 Table 7. Item Specification in the Grammaticality Judgment Task 30
4.1 Table 8. The score of the present progressive –ing in High Level
Proficiency Group 38
4.2 Table 9. The score of the present progressive –ing in Low Level
Proficiency Group 38
4.3 Table 10. The score of the plural –s in High Level Proficiency Group 39
4.4 Table 11. The score of the plural –s in Low Level Proficiency Group 39
4.5 Table 12. The score of the possessive –’s in High Level Proficiency Group 39
4.6 Table 13. The score of the possessive –’s in Low Level Proficiency Group 39
4.7 Table 14. The score of the 3 rd person singular –s in High Level
Proficiency Group 40
4.8 Table 15. The score of the 3 rd person singular –s in Low Level
Proficiency Group 40
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LIST OF FIGURES
Figures Page
4.1 The scores of each morpheme in the Grammaticality Judgment Task 36
4.2 The percentages of each morpheme in the Grammaticality Judgment Task 37
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Symbols/Abbreviations Terms
EA
GJT
IL
L1
L2
PT
SLA
Error Analysis
Grammaticality Judgment Test
Interlanguage
First Language
Second Language
Processability Theory
Second Language Acquisition
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
English language is accepted as the first priority second language in Thailand,
where Thai language is the official language. Most Thai students start to learn English
at the age of four or five years old; however; students who live in the countryside may
start learning English around the age of six or seven years old. In many studies of
English error analysis among Thai students, it is indicated that Thai children face
difficulties with English grammatical morphemes. Acquiring English language,
especially grammatical morphemes, it is one of the biggest obstacles in learning.
In Thailand, the National Institute of Educational Testing Service (NIETS)
arranges the Ordinary National Education Test (O-NET), a test of English proficiency
of Thai students in secondary school grade 9 (M.3) and grade 12 (M.6).
Although Thai students learn English since the beginning of study in primary
school, their English ability still does not reach intermediate level as set by the
National Institute of Educational testing service (NIETS). How to improve foreign
language learning in Thailand is a priority topic. The Ministry of Education Thailand
have been trying to find out how there can be effective learning and keeping
improvement.
There are many factors that are involved in how to acquire language well and
many factors which could affect one person’s learning English proficiency - both
internal and external factors; for example, second language acquisition, first language
interference, learners’ ability, curriculum, teaching technique, teacher’s quality and
learning materials.
For Rungrojsuwan (2015), the result of his study showed that although
intermediate language proficiency university students have more English knowledge
than low language proficiency university students, they still faced morphological
difficulty.
Order of morpheme acquisition studies started in the 1970s, and focused on
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the uses of grammatical morphemes in English acquisition among first language (L1)
and second language (L2) learners. Brown (1973) started a longitudinal study of three
children: Adam, Eve and Sara, who learned English as their first language and native
language. Brown spotlighted how these three native-speaking children established
fourteen grammatical morphemes by letting them produce spontaneous conversation
utterances. He finally found a similar order of fourteen grammatical morphemes from
Adam, Eve and Sara. The children acquire Present progressive –ing earliest and face
difficulty with 3rd person singular -s.
de Villiers and de Villiers (1973) did a cross-sectional study by applying
Brown’s (1973) method with L1 English speaking children, a total of 21 persons.
They found participants exhibited a similar order of grammatical morpheme
acqusition as shown in Brown’s study.
Dulay and Burt (1973) investigated the grammatical morpheme acquisition
order from 151 Spanish children who learnt English as a second language (ESL).
They applied a new research instrument - the Bilingual Syntax Measure or BSM. The
results from ESL learners remained similar to the order of grammatical morphemes in
Brown (1973) and de Villiers and de Villiers (1973) research.
Dulay and Burt (1974) adapted the Bilingual Syntax Measure in a cross-
sectional study to confirm their previous research. They conducted a study with L2
participants: 60 Spanish and 55 Chinese children. This research provided great
evidence supporting previous morpheme acquisition research. In summary, there is a
natural order of morpheme acquisition which is universal regardless of age, language
background and time duration of study.
Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974) employed the Bilingual Syntax Measure
(BSM) for their morpheme acquisition study with Spanish and non-Spanish adults to
investigate participants in different language backgrounds. The result displayed the
same as Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974).
According to Brown (1973), de Villiers and de Villiers (1973), Dulay and Burt
(1973, 1974) and Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974) found the similar order of
grammatical morpheme acquisition in their research. It claimed that acquisition order
of English grammatical morphemes is universal across both first language learners
(L1) and second language learners (L2). For grammatical error, they indicated
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children usually have difficulty on Possessive -’s and 3rd person singular –s.
In a previous study involving English grammatical morphemes in Thai
students, Sridhanyarat (2013) investigated whether the acquisition order of Thai ESL
learners was consistent with the pattern found in Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974)
study. He found that the results did not support Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974),
the acquisition order between high and low proficient students was inconsistent, only
present progressive –ing acquired earliest. He also found that low proficiency Thai
students face difficulty on possessive –’s in translation task, but both high and low
proficiency students have difficulty with four grammatical morphemes: present
progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s in a
Grammaticality Judgment Task.
Yordchim and Gibbs (2014) showed some evidence from error analysis of
English inflection among Thai university students, a sample group of Thai students in
the business field. The study showed common errors in the student writing were tense
and aspect 3rd person present simple, morpheme –s or –es after o, present continuous
–ing after e and past simple –ed.
To examine the use of English grammatical morpheme among L1-Thai
learners, this study aimed to investigate the use of four grammatical morphemes,
present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s, by
applying a Grammaticality Judgment Task.
1.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
This research aimed to investigate: “To what extent are four grammatical
morphemes: present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person
singular –s used by L1-Thai learners?”
1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
Since limited time to research Independent Study, there is only one objectives
of the study: “To investigate the use of four grammatical morphemes; present
progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s among L1-Thai
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learners.”
1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
English is the first second language that Thai students have to learn in formal
education in Thailand. Even though Thai people have been studying English in the
class for many years and English fluency holds the key to success for them to get
good jobs after finishing school, most Thai people still face difficulties in using
English to communicate, both in the classes and their real lives.
Bancha (2010) said although Thailand focused on providing English to
students not less than 10 years in the school experience, the curriculum of Thai
schools and universities could not meet the expectation of employers or workplaces
requiring good English competence employees.
Research findings about students’ difficulties on grammatical morphemes
would help teachers to understand students’ difficulties in learning English and also
help teachers to make effective teaching plans. Pica (1983) mentioned that for SLA
study, research findings of grammatical morphemes brought beneficial data to
manage the teaching order of morphemes. It could be suggested that when teachers
explored which grammatical morpheme is the most common for the students and
which one shows difficulty, then they can design the effective course for their
students.
This Independent Study aimed to observe significant aspect of teaching
method; the results that obtained from this study should be a benefit to understand the
difficulties of grammatical morpheme and grammatical errors among Thai secondary
school students.
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CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE
2.1 SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION (SLA)
Second Language Acquisition (SLA) (Ellis, 2005; Gass & Selinker, 2008)
cited in (Celik, H., 2015) has focused on how second language learners achieve in
other languages after they have acquired their first language or native language.
Researchers defended that the knowledge of Second Language Acquisition is a must
for teachers, it can help them to success in language teaching and learning design. The
studies in the field of Second Language Acquisition motivated development of many
other issues, for example, how language learners developed grammatical morpheme
usage in the target language.
The goal of SLA is the description of learners’ linguistic development. Rod
(1994) claimed that the ability to use language successfully required at least one
aspect of language acquisition including phonology, morphology, syntax and
semantics; however, some researchers counted extensive vocabulary as the last
language acquisition aspect.
Input material was claimed as one fundamental factor to develop human
language acquisition (Lightbown & Spada (2006), Alison Mackey (1999)). Long
(1981) stated the input was explained as the linguistic forms which consisted of
morphemes, words and utterances.
In Long’s sample of well-demonstrated findings, he researched various
meaningful factors of verbal interaction called aspects of linguistic environment,
which are outstanding in Second Language Acquisition (Khalid M. Abalhassan,
1997). Three main aspects of interaction could be distinguished as: input, production
(output), and feedback:
1. Input
Input was the language that the learners explored from their environments, it
included four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Input was defined as
pre-modified input and modified input.
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Pre-modified input was the learners themselves language proficiency; it was
used to categorize learners’ language level in the purpose of increasing their language
comprehension. For learners who could not distinguish meanings or could not make
adjustments, the modified input was to be assigned to their study to help them better
acquire new ones (Alison Mackey, 1999).
Modified input was an adapted speech which adult used to guide children for
their language acquisition (Lightbown & Spada, 2006, P. 202) and also included the
speech offered to language learners by native speakers or other language learners.
Modified input came from three sources: Foreigner-talk, Teacher-Talk and
Interlanguage-talk (Krashen, 1982, P.24). Some research indicated that second
language learners basically use modified input to access the target language.
According to Krashen’s input hypothesis, Second Language Acquisition
would occur when the learners understood input which contained grammatical form
as ‘i+1’ ; “i” stood for one’s language level and “+1” mentioned an advanced level
higher than current level of learner’s interlanguage. He suggested that the right level
of input would be expressed naturally when learners succeeded in making themselves
understood in communication (Krashen, 1985). The Input Hypothesis, which was
central to Second Language Acquisition depended on comprehensible input.
As mentioned above, most of the Second Language Acquisition theories
underlined input recognition as a factor of the language acquiring process. So, then it
could be assumed that the input was certainly necessary for Language Acquisition.
However input alone cannot promote second language learning, progress does not
show full effect in SLA until it involves interaction (Shumei Zhang, 2009).
2. Production (output)
Production (output) applies to all current language levels of learners, and is
establish in various interaction activities. Referring to Krashen (1982), an output
provokes advance process of language acquisition; it is commonly said if learners
need to go further on production, they need to produce.
Production not only helps to predict learner’s language skills, it could affect
the quality of the input of the learners. How production relates to SLA is that learners
firstly obtain feedback after composed sentences. When learners are obstructed by
higher language level obstacles, they often receive partner or teacher support to help
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them understand by clarifying their modified output. Learner’s partners should judge
how much to modify by seeing whether the listeners understood what they presented.
It is believed that a second language student who makes lots of mistakes will likely
receive more modified input than one who appears fluent in target language.
Swain (1995) argued for the importance of production, stating that when a
learner was trying to develop their target language, production played a crucial role as
it pushed the learner to try out new forms or modify other aspects into their next
presentation. Based on the output hypothesis, it is suggested learners must have
opportunities exchanging output with other learners to facilitate SLA (Alison Mackey,
1999).
3. Feedback
Long (1996) ’s Interaction Hypothesis suggested corrective feedback as a tool
which could help learners make connections between forms of language and learning
(Lightbown & Spada, 2006, P. 151).
Types of Corrective Feedback (Tedick, D. and Gortari, B. 1998)
1. Explicit correction. Teacher directly identifies incorrect points, then the
teacher provides the correct form.
2. Recast. Teacher does not directly identify incorrect points, but tries to
improve the error, or gives the correct answer.
3. Clarification request. Teacher will try to get them to reform or correct the
sentence if students show some mistakes or are still not clear on the meaning of
sentences.
4. Metalinguistic clues or Metalinguistic feedback. Students realize error
without offering correct forms. The teacher gives some clues by asking questions or
providing comments related to the correct forms.
5. Elicitation. This technique is where the teacher elicits the correct form from
the student directly by supplying utterance, asking some questions to help them, or
lets them reform the output. Elicitation questions differs from questions as it requires
more than a yes or no response.
6. Repetition. The teacher repeats the student's error and leads the student to
recognize it.
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2.2 GRAMMATICAL MORPHEME ACQUISITION
2.2.1 Definition of Grammatical Morpheme
“A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of language that contains a
meaning and cannot be further divided” (Cook, 1993).
Grammatical Morpheme refers to a morpheme that has a role in
grammatical structure and function to specify the relationship between one lexical
morpheme and another.
Úrsula fontana ibáñez (2013) explains that morphemes divide into two
kinds; free morphemes and bound morphemes. Free morphemes can stand alone as
a word and have independent functions as words, for example, article the, copula be,
auxiliary be. Bound morphemes present as parts of words and cannot stand alone.
Most English bound morphemes are prefixes and suffixes, for example, plural -s, third
singular person -s , progressive -ing, past regular -ed, past irregular, possessive -’s.
Bound morphemes are recognized as inflectional morphemes and
derivational morphemes (Donald G. Ellis, 1999). Derivational morphemes could
change internal structures or forms of the base words (Lieber, 2010), they can modify
meaning of words according to its lexical and grammatical class. For example, –tion,
–ly. Inflectional morphemes engaged prefixes and suffixes that add to the base words
to show the grammatical relationship between inflectional morphemes and word
construction (Lieber, 2010). Inflectional morphemes do not affect the meaning but
they can modify the grammatical class of words, which changes the function of the
words, for example, grammatical features, tense, case, number or gender. For
example, the –ing progressive or the –s plural.
2.2.2 Acquisition of grammatical morpheme
The ability to acquire or learn language is human instinct (Chomsky,
1957), which implies that language acquisition is common to every human being.
The study of grammatical morpheme acquisition was begun in the 1970s
by Brown. Brown (1973) explored native English-speaking children’s acquisition
order of English inflectional morphology in his longitudinal study; he also proposed
that not all grammatical morphemes were acquired in the same time, some
morphemes were acquired early but some morphemes were acquired later.
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In 1973, Brown and his colleagues started a longitudinal study with three
native English speaking children: Adam, Eve and Sara, who were selected from 30
outstanding students. Brown targeted how three native English speaking children
established 14 grammatical morphemes by letting them produce spontaneous
conversation utterances. A scoring technique ‘Suppliance in Obligatory Context’
(SOC) was used for measurement and he claimed that topic of conversation would not
affect the percentage of morphemes when Suppliance In Obligatory Context was
applied (Brown, 1973). Children as subjects in the research had to provide 90 percent
correct morphemes in obligatory contexts; if they provided incorrect less than 90
percent or provided none, they would fail the test.
Brown found the order of 14 grammatical morphemes from Adam, Eve
and Sara, shown as the production of Brown’s morphological rules.
Table 1. Order of morphemes by L1 English speaking (Brown, 1973)
Order Morpheme
1 Present progressive -ing
2 In, on
3 In, on (same as order in no.2)
4 Plural –s
5 Past irregular
6 Possessive -’s
7 Uncontractible copula (is, am, are)
8 Articles (a, the)
9 Past regular (-ed)
10 Third person singular (-s)
11 Third person irregular
12 Uncontractible auxiliary (is, am, are)
13 Contractible copula
14 Contractible auxiliary
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After the Brown study in 1973, the topic of grammatical morpheme order
was concentrated on by many researchers as they attempted to find out the validity of
the results shown in the Brown study. This phenomenal activated researchers who
were in the field of second language acquisition.
de Villiers and de Villiers (1973) did a cross-sectional study of the
grammatical morphemes acquisition in children’s speech by applying Brown’s (1973)
method with first language (L1) English speaking children, a total 21 persons. They
found participants exhibited a similar order of grammatical morphemes as shown in
Brown’s study. In de Villiers and de Villiers’ study, the participants acquired plural –
s, and present progressive –ing early, then acquired possessive –’s, and at last
acquired 3rd person singular –s.
Table 2. Order of L1 English speaking (de Villiers and de Villiers, 1973)
Order Morpheme
1 Plural –s
2 Present progressive -ing
3 Past irregular
4 Articles a/the
5 Contractible copular
6 Possessive -’s
7 Third person singular -s
8 Contractible auxiliary
Dulay and Burt (1973) investigated the grammatical morpheme
acquisition order following Brown’s study, but they decided to examine second
language (L2) English speaking children instead of first language (L1) English
speaking children. The participants were 151 Spanish children, aged six to eight years
olds who studied English as a second language (ESL). The children were divided into
three groups: the first group consisted of 95 Spanish children from California who
received extra formal English training. The second group consisted of 26 Spanish
children from Mexico who attended an English school but spoke Spanish as native
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language at home. The third group consisted of 30 Spanish children from New York
who attended a bilingual English and Spanish school.
Dulay and Burt applied a new research instrument - the Bilingual Syntax
Measure or BSM - to collected data from participants’ oral speeches. The Bilingual
Syntax Measure contained a set of color cartoon pictures for participants to explain
and a list of questions for researchers to guide participants’ oral speeches. The
researchers asked participants some questions to see their natural conversations and to
help them to elicit sentences which contained targeted grammatical morphemes.
Dulay and Burt employed a three-point scale to count participants’ production
accuracy, this was similar to the Brown’s concept of obligatory context (Úrsula
fontana ibáñez, 2013).
To evaluate each obligatory context, scoring was considered as follows:
No grammatical morpheme supplied = 0 point
(Ex. He go_ to school),
Misformed grammatical morpheme supplied = 0.5 point
(Ex. He going to school),
Correct grammatical morpheme supplied = 1 point
(Ex. He goes to school).
After data analysis, the results from the English Language Learners (ESL)
remained similar to those order of grammatical morphemes in Brown’s (1973) study
and de Villiers and de Villiers’s (1973) research. The result were as following for
acquisition order: plural –s and present progressive –ing early, then 3rd person
singular –s, and last acquired possessive –’s.
Table 3. Order of L2 English speaking (Dulay and Burt, 1973)
Order Morpheme
1 Plural –s
2 Present progressive -ing
3 Contractible copular -’s
4 Contractible auxiliary -’s
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5 Articles
6 Past irregular
7 Third person singular -s
8 Possessive -’s
To confirm their previous research, Dulay and Burt (1974) adapted an
obligatory occasions method in their cross-sectional study in 1974. In this study they
conducted their research with second language (L2) participants consisting of 60
Spanish children and 55 Chinese children, who were different in first language (L1),
ages and environments. An obligatory occasions method activated participants to
produce verbal utterances which would convey more than one of the targeted
morphemes (Dulay and Burt, 1974). In the analysis process, the researchers employed
three methods: a group scoring, a group mean and syntax acquisition index (SAI),
which counted well-formed grammatical structures which participants produced
between testing processes. The collected data from oral speeches of the two groups
were compared. The result presented acquisitions ordering as present progressive –
ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s. This research provided great
evidence supporting previous morpheme acquisition research. The summary proposes
is that a natural order of morpheme acquisition is universal regardless of age, first
language background, environment and time duration of study.
Table 4. Order of L2 English speaking (Dulay and Burt, 1974)
Order Morpheme
1 Article a/the
2 Copula be
3 Present progressive -ing
4 Plural -s
5 Auxiliary be
6 Past regular -ed
7 Past irregular ate
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8 Possessive -’s
9 Third person singular -s
Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974) employed Bilingual Syntax Measure
(BSM) for their morpheme acquisition study with second language adults. The sample
consisted of a total of 73 adults; 33 were Spanish participants and 40 were non-
Spanish participants. The study investigated these participants with different language
backgrounds for their adult acquisition order. There was the same result as displayed
in Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974); both Spanish and non-Spanish participants presented
a similar order of English grammatical morpheme acquisition: present progressive –
ing, plural –s, then 3rd person singular –s and lastly possessive –’s.
Table 5. Order of L2 adult (Bailey, Madden, and Krashen, 1974)
Order Morpheme
1 Present progressive -ing
2 Contractible copular -’s
3 Plural –s
4 Articles
5 Contractible auxiliary -’s
6 Past irregular
7 Third person singular -s
8 Possessive -’s
Perkins, K., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1975) researched morphemes such as
progressive -ing, indefinite articles, definite articles, third person –s. They applied two
instruments: a translation task which required participants to translate first language
into English and a short video which participants were required to discuss in English.
The result showed the same acquisition order as Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974) and
Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974).
According to Brown (1973), Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974), de Villiers and
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de Villiers (1973), and Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974) and Perkins, K., &
Larsen-Freeman, D. (1975) found similar orders of grammatical morpheme
acquisition in their research. It was claimed that the acquisition order of English
grammatical morphemes was universal across both first language learners and second
language learners.
2.2.3 Related criticism research
Hakuta (1974) argued that his longitudinal study in the topic of second
language acquisition showed different acquisition order of English grammatical
morphemes from Brown’s (1973) and Dulay and Burt’s (1974) study. Hakuta
investigated a Japanese girl who learned English as a second language after she came
to USA. Hakuta collected the five-year-old girl’s spontaneous utterances once a week
and he found that there were positive and negative transfers from Japanese language,
which was the girl’s first language. By the end of the study, Hakuta concluded the
participant’s acquisition order was present progressive –ing, possessive –’s, plural –s,
then 3rd person singular –s. He concluded that the result from his longitudinal study
did not support the 1970’ study of acquisition order. One year later, Fathman (1975)
studied acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes with Korean learners
and Spanish learners and found similar results to those of Hakuta (Wagner, n.d.).
Table 6. Order of L2 Japanese ESL (Hakuta, 1974)
Order Morpheme
1 Present progressive -ing
2 Possessive -’s
3 Past irregular
4 Plural -s
5 Articles
6 Third person singular -s
7 Past regular
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Sridhanyarat (2013) investigated whether acquisition order of Thai EFL
learners was consistent with the pattern found in Bailey, Madden, and Krashen’s
(1974) study and which English grammatical morpheme caused difficulty to Thai
EFL learners. The researcher aimed to investigate four grammatical morphemes:
plural –s, present progressive –ing, 3rd person singular –s and possessive –’s.
Participants were 80 Thai EFL undergraduate learners in Bangkok, Thailand. They
acquired Thai language as native and first language, then acquired English as second
language.
The researcher divided participants into two groups based on their
English national test scores: a high proficient group consisting of 40 persons and a
low proficient group consisting of 40 persons. Participants were asked to complete
two instruments: a Thai-to-English translation task and a grammaticality judgment
task. Data obtained from both tasks were analyzed to find out their acquisition order
of grammatical morphemes. At the conclusion Sridhanyarat found that the acquisition
order by Thai EFL learners did not follow Bailey, Madden, and Krashen’s (1974)
study findings. The acquisition order between high and low proficient students was
inconsistent, with only the present progressive –ing acquired earliest being similar to
the Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974) study. The result of the grammaticality
judgment task demonstrated Thai EFL learners acquired 3rd person singular –s and
present progressive –ing early, then acquired plural –s and possessive –’s later. In
conclusion, the acquisition order of English grammatical morpheme is not universal
among Thai EFL learners (Sridhanyarat, 2013).
Yordchim and Gibbs (2014) examined Error Analysis of English
Inflectional morphemes among Thai university students. Inflectional morphemes,
defined as prefixes and suffixes that add to the base words to show the grammatical
relationship between inflectional morphemes and words’ construction, can modify the
grammatical class of words, which changes the function of the word, for example,
grammatical features, tense, case, number or gender. A sample group of Thai students
in a Business English major exhibited common errors in their writing tense and aspect
3rd person present simple, plural –s or –es after o, present continuous –ing after e and
past simple –ed. Findings suggested that participants faced interlanguage interference
so that they could not properly use English inflectional morphemes.
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2.2.4 Related similar research
Makino (1980) explored a cross-sectional study with 777 English Foreign
Language (EFL) participants. The participants were Japanese high school students
whose ages were 13 - 15 years old. Makino applied fill-in-the blank written tests to
collect data in the study. The result demonstrated that Japanese participants acquired
present progressive –ing and plural –s earlier than possessive –’s and 3rd person
singular –s was acquired last, which was similar to Dulay and Burt's study. As this
research was conducted with 777 Japanese students, it could indicate that the
acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes was universal among Japanese
EFL learners. The significant point in this research was the data collection method.
Although Makino collected data from a written task instead of oral speech as in most
of previous studies, the sequence of acquisition still correlated to Dulay and Burt's
study, it could imply that the different method of data collection did not affect the
result of acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes among Japanese high
school students.
Wang (2000) researched a qualitative case study of a 16-year-old girl
named Lan. She was a native Mandarin speaker who had effective speaking skill. Lan
had studied English since the first year of junior high school in China; when Wang
conducted his longitudinal study of oral production with her, she lived in Canada.
Wang collected data by tape record. He collected Lan’s natural utterances in a
relaxing environment for one year and one month. In Lan’s case, present progressive
–ing and plural –s were acquired before 3rd person singular –s, while possessive –’s
was rarely acquired. Since the result of Wang’s (2000) case study presented similar
acquisition order to Dulay and Burt's (1973, 1974) study, it could be indicated that his
research supports the acquisition order of Dulay and Burt's (1973, 1974) study.
Behjat and Sadighi (2011) investigated 70 female Iranian EFL learners at
different ages and in various learning contexts. The study aimed to examine three
English grammatical morphemes, including present progressive –ing, plural –s and
3rd person singular –s. Participants were divided into three groups according to the
different range of ages. The researchers used a grammaticality judgment task which
contained 40 sentences, including grammatical and ungrammatical sentences.
Although there were different language backgrounds and different conditions between
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the three groups of participants, the results still remained illustrated that they acquired
present progressive –ing, plural –s and 3rd person singular –s in similar order to
Dulay and Burt's (1973, 1974) study.
2.2.5 Difference in L2 grammatical morpheme
Each language has its own complex internal structure and different
languages have different points and different degrees of complexity. An isolating
language is a type of language which contains few morphemes and no
inflectional morphemes to indicate grammatical relationships, for example, Thai
language and Chinese language. An inflectional language is a type of language which
is very complex and has inflectional morphemes to indicate grammatical
relationships, for example, English language or Latin language.
As Thai language is classified as an isolating language while English is an
inflectional language, it could be difficult for Thai L1 learners to acquire English
grammatical morphemes. English has a number of inflections that help learners to
differentiate between singular noun and plural noun by adding plural –s, for example,
trees, birds, classes or present particular plural form, for example, children, men,
geese. In Thai language, when learners produce ‘two dogs’, there is no need to
express the plural –s like in English. Yordchim and Gibbs (2014) pointed out that
Thai language does not have inflection, so learning to add inflections to nouns or
verbs in English might be an obstacle for Thai learners. Rungrojsuwan (2015) gave
examples as following:
1) mǎa 2) mǎa sɔ̌ɔŋ tua
dog dog two CLF
‘a dog’ ‘two dogs’
When learners produced ‘eat’ in Thai, there is no need to express a tense
aspect like in English. For example (Rungrojsuwan, 2015),
3) kin 4) kin kʰaaw
eat eat rice
‘to eat’ ‘eat/ate/will eat rice’
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However, in some cases, there are additional lexical items to show
grammatical class (Rungrojsuwan, 2015) as follows:
5) kin lԑԑ́w 6)ca kin
eat PERFECT/PAST FUTURE eat
‘ate/ have eaten’ ‘will eat’
7) ʔaatca kin 8) tʰuuk kin
maybe eat PASSIVE eat
‘may/might eat’ ‘be eaten’
In examples number five to eight, there are lexical items as markers of
grammatical class: lԑ́ԑw (perfective aspect/past tense), ca (future tense), ʔaatca
(epistemic modality), and tʰuuk (passive voice) which are separated from the base
word.
Morphology thus is accepted to be one of the difficult tasks for Thai L1
learners as there are some differences in morphological complexity between Thai
language and English language. It seems likely that the different types of L1 and L2
languages: Thai language as an isolating language and English language as an
inflectional language, would create a large gap between L1 and L2 in terms of
acquisition.
2.3 INTERLANGUAGE (IL)
Interlanguage is defined as the intermediate language that second language
learners establish while they are in the process of acquiring second languages or other
target languages (Selinker, 1972). It has been claimed that the interlanguage is a
separated language which occurs between native language and second language or
target language. There are two terms in Interlanguage Theory: transfer and
interference. Transfer occurs when L1 and L2 have similar features, so then learners
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transfer those features into the L2 acquisition process. Interference occurrs when L1
and L2 have different features, and learners accidentally employ L1 features in L2
((Ellis, 2008) as cite in McFerren (2015)).
Interlanguage could be affected by native language or first language (L1) and
target language or second language (L2) with both positive and negative transfer. If
the grammatical features in L1 are similar to the grammatical features in L2 and
support learners to apply the rules in the L2 acquisition process, this would be defined
as ‘positive transfer’. If the grammatical features in L1 are different from the
grammatical features in L2 and it tended to lead learners to make some errors, this
would be defined as ‘negative transfer’. For example, Thai language, there is no
adding possessive –’s to indicate possession, this may interfere Thai learners in
producing an English sentence like ‘There are many problems in today’s world’.
Ratnah (2013) indicated in research of Error Analysis on Tenses Usage that
learner’s interlanguage and L1 interference may cause an error of English tense aspect
omission. Hinnon (2014) concluded in the results of a writing task, which was applied
to investigate common errors among Thai students, that first language interference
played an important role in Thai learners’ errors. Hsieh (2008) reported in a study of
English agreement/ tense morphology and copula BE by L1-Chinese that L1
interference caused difficulty for second language learners to recognize correct
morphology.
2.4 THE PROCESSABILITY THEORY
Pienemann (1998) presented the Processability Theory (PT), a model
of second language acquisition involved in second language learning. The
Processability Theory has assisted researchers to understand the general
characteristics of language acquisition. Processability Theory indicated that learners
had their own stages of language development; what they can acquire were what
linguistic forms or characteristics were within their particular learning stage only.
According to the theory, there are many steps of language acquisition development
and learners cannot skip to an upper stage which is more advanced than the current
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stage. The processability hierarchy is based on a concept of grammatical transfer
within the structure or between one structure and another structure.
Processability hierarchy is shown as follows (Pienemann, 1998):
1. No procedure (a simple word e.g. ‘Hi’)
2. Category procedure (verb with attached past-tense morpheme)
3. Noun phrase procedure (matching plurality e.g. “four cats”)
4. Verb phrase procedure (adverb present at the beginning of a
sentence e.g. “I went yesterday/yesterday I went.”)
5. Sentence procedure (subject-verb agreement e.g. These children go
to school. , He rides a bicycle.)
6. Subordinate clause procedure (use of subjunctive in subordinate
clauses produced by information in a main clause e.g. I know where
she is./ They do what they love).
(Pienemann, 2005) as cited in Doman (2012) introduced four stages of
sequence development in English morphological acquisition:
1. Lemma access (a single word without morphological variation such
as home, paper, think);
2. The category procedure (the attachment of some inflections to the
noun or verb bases such as eats, fruits);
3. The phrasal procedure (the use of inflections in noun or verb phrases
such as these girls, she is running);
4. The S-procedure (the use of inflections in sentences to show
relationship with other words in sentences such as ‘He loves
Thailand’).
Each stage is acquired in a specific order and cannot be skipped because they
relate to different levels of morphology and forms (Pienemann, 2005).
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2.5 ERROR ANALYSIS (EA)
Error Analysis was defined as the systematic investigation of errors which are
made by second language learners; it is concerned with the study and analysis of
errors made by those learners (Corder, 1967). Many researchers say that error analysis
could help to predict what errors a learner may produce, and the reason why these
errors were produced, by identifying, describing and explaining learners’ errors. The
aims of error analysis are to identify types and patterns of errors and to establish a
taxonomy of grammar errors. In addition, it is believed that first language and
interlangauge influence on second language acquisition would be negative transfer
which causes the errors among second language learners.
Corder (1974) offered five steps in error analysis as following: Collection of a
sample, Identification of errors, Description of errors, Explanation of errors and
Evaluation of errors. Ellis (1994) offered error analysis that was applied to analyze
learner’s errors in four steps: collect data, classify errors, explain cause of error and
evaluate the errors.
2.5.1 Causes of Error
Richards (1971) classified causes of error that are usually found in the
research of second language acquisition field as following:
1) Overgeneralization
Overgeneralization refers to the errors where learners apply one language
rule to another; these learners apply what they have acquired in their native language
to the target language. White (2003) stated beginner level learners and intermediate
level learners would be influenced by their first language; they tended to conduct or
combine two languages together when they faced a difficult grammatical form. The
learners whose first language features are too different from the second language
features seemed to acquire second language by applying similar patterns from their
native language or other languages they have acquired before the target language to
the present target language (Jürgen Meisel (1987) as cited in Lightbown, P. M., &
Spada, N. (2006)).
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Bergvall (2006) indicated in her research on grammatical morphemes of
young Swedish students that students apply overgeneralization of plural –s on
irregular plural forms of noun such as ‘foots’ (plural noun is ‘feet’).
Overgeneralization of plural –s might occur among learners whose first language has
no similar feature to the target language. Thai language does not have plural forms of
noun as ‘children (plural form of child), people (plural form of person), men (plural
form of man)’; there is no plural marker added after noun as in ‘ants (-s), boxes (-es)’
and there is no irregular noun as in ‘leaves (leaf)’ in Thai language, but it is necessary
for a target language such as English. The learner unconcern of plural form may make
redundant of plural –s or omit plural –s.
Feike (2011) believed second language learners could be confused with
the English morpheme –s which can represent both plural –s and 3rd person singular –
s. This, lead them to produce some errors when they were asked to identify which one
will be used in the sentence. For example, in the sentence ‘The dogs bites him’,
morpheme -s was used in two positions: morpheme -s in ‘the dogs’ refers to plural –s
and morpheme -s in ‘bites’ refer to 3rd person singular –s.
2) Ignorance of rule restriction
Ignorance of rule restriction refers to learners’ unconcern about
restrictions of the language rule; it is sometimes produced by learners who cannot
catch the rules of target language and often occur with English tense created by L2
learners (Ratnah (2013), Kulsirisawad (n.d.)).
3) Incomplete application of rules
Incomplete application of rules is indicated as an incomplete structure
that second learners produced while their language proficiency is not fully developed
to produce correct grammatical sentences or complex sentences. This cause of error
usually occurs in question forms.
4) False Concepts Hypothesized
False Concepts Hypothesized is a wrong hypothesis formed by learners
about the target language (Hanna Y. Touchie, 1986). False Concepts Hypothesized
implied to false learning of a language rule at various stages in target language
acquisition (Ratnah, 2013). Grammatical structure difficulty among learners might
occur when learners acquired second language where there are many different
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structures or features between their first language and second language (Lado (1957)
as cited in Martinez (1989)). Moreover, learners might be confused from the teaching
process so they cannot perceive the difference in or between some features of target
language.
The learners who fall into false concepts hypothesized will be assigned as
‘false beginners’, language learners who acquired prior knowledge of target language
but need to start again from the beginning since they have insufficient command of
target language.
Another topic that may involve false beginners is the phenomenon of
fossilization. Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2006) commented on the term
fossilization in Larry Selinker (1972), where some learners may stop acquiring some
features in their second language because they are satisfied with their present
language proficiency for communication, or because they did not investigate further
instruction or feedback which would help them to develop their language proficiency.
2.5.2 Categories of Errors
Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982) introduced four categories of errors in
the Surface Structure Taxonomy as following:
1. Addition Error: Addition mentions a grammatical item that appears in
the sentence where it has no need to appear. It occurs when the learners ‘overuse or
overapply’ one grammatical rule to other features in the structure of sentence (Dulay,
Burt and Krashen, 1982). For example, ‘She did not cooks dinner last night.’
(Correction: ‘She did not cook dinner last night.’), the morpheme 3rd person singular
–s in ‘cooks’ is implied as addition.
2. Omission Error: Omission involves a grammatical item that must show
in the structure of a sentence, but it is absent. For example, ‘A girl give two pen to her
friends’ (Correction: ‘A girl gives two pens to her friends’), the morpheme plural –s
was not attached with ‘pen’ in ‘two pen’ where it must appear. This phenomenon is
called omission of plural –s. Omissions usually occur when learners are learning a
second language in the early stage.
3. Misformation Error: Misformation means the use of an incorrect form
of grammatical morpheme or sentence structure. For example, ‘He is sings a song.’
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(Correction: ‘He is singing a song.’). In this case learner did not use the morpheme
–ing which contains the meaning of present progressive in the sentence but uses the
morpheme 3rd person singular –s instead. Another example is ‘I love mine parents.’
(Correction: ‘I love my parents.’). The correct form of ‘my parent’ must be possessive
determiner ‘my’ not the possessive pronoun ‘mine’ that has been used to modify a
noun.
4. Misordering Error: Misordering mentions wrong placement of a
grammatical morpheme in the sentence structure. For example, ‘There are flowers
beautiful in the garden back.’ (Correction: ‘There are beautiful flowers in the back
garden.’). In English structure, an adjective is put in front of a noun and modifies the
noun which come after it. In this example of error, ‘beautiful’ was put after ‘flowers’
and ‘back’ was put after ‘garden’; these are regarded as misordering error.
2.6 GRAMMATICALITY JUDGMENT TEST (GJT)
Mackey and Gass (2005) indicated in their book Second Language Research:
Methodology and Design that influence judgment is a task which requires participants
to identify and correct any incorrect sentences, otherwise it becomes an unacceptable
language.
“Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT) is one of the many ways to measure
language proficiency and knowledge of grammar. It was introduced to second
language research from the mid-70s”, Rimmer (2006).
Behjat and Sadighi (2011) used a grammaticality judgment task, which
contained 40 sentences including grammatical and ungrammatical sentences to
examine three English grammatical morphemes: present progressive –ing, plural –s
and 3rd person singular –s, in their study on English grammatical morphemes
acquisition.
Sridhanyarat (2013) investigate four grammatical morphemes: plural –s ,
present progressive –ing, 3rd person singular –s and possessive –’s among Thai
undergraduate learners by applying two instruments: a Thai-to-English translation
task and a grammaticality judgment task. Then the data obtained from both tasks were
analyzed to find out more about acquisition order of grammatical morphemes.
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Bee Hoon Tan (2014) conducted empirical evidence collection to check
reliability of a grammaticality judgment test by applying the grammaticality judgment
tests (GJT), Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia English or the Malaysian Certificate of Education
(SPM English) and the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology Test
(MUET) to 100 ESL undergraduates to explore the correlationship between three
measurements. The comparison results showed a positive relationship among the
three types of English proficiency measurements. It could be inferred that a
grammaticality judgment test has strong reliability as a measure of English language
competence.
To examine the present research question “To what extent are four
grammatical morphemes: present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd
person singular –s used by L1-Thai learners?”, a grammaticality judgment task
focused on four grammatical morphemes: plural –s, present progressive –ing, 3rd
person singular –s and possessive –’s was created.
2.7 DATA SCORING
Scoring depends on how the task is constructed (Mackey and Gass, 2005),
validity and reliability of the measurement, and how the task is appropriate to the aims
of the study.
Dulay and Burt employed a three-point scale to count participants’ production
accuracy; this was similar to the Brown’s concept of obligatory context (Úrsula
fontana ibáñez, 2013). To evaluate each obligatory context, scoring was considered as
follows:
No grammatical morpheme supplied = 0 point (He go_ to school),
Misformed grammatical morpheme supplied = 0.5 point (He going to school)
Correct grammatical morpheme supplied = 1 point (He goes to school)
Dulay and Burt counted participants’ production accuracy as follows:
1. Ungrammatical sentences judged with providing the incorrect form : 0
point
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For example: He is talk to his English teacher now.
He is talks to his English teacher now.
2. Ungrammatical sentences judged with providing misformed grammatical
morphemes: 0.5 point
For example: He is talk to his English teacher.
He is talkin to his English teacher now.
He are talking to his English teacher now.
3. Ungrammatical sentences judged with providing correct grammatical
morphemes: 1.0 point
For example: He is talk to his English teacher now.
He is talking to his English teacher now.
Bailey, Madden, and Krashen’s (1974) study applied the judgment task to
count participants’ production accuracy as follows:
1. Misplace sentences judged : 0 point
For example:
√ 1. He is talk to his English teacher now. (The answer is X mark,
then write the correct sentence)
2. Ungrammatical sentences judged with providing the incorrect form : 0
point
For example:
× 1. He is talk to his English teacher now.
He is talks to his English teacher now.
3. Ungrammatical sentences judged with providing misformed grammatical
morphemes: 0.5 point
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For example:
× 1. He is talk to his English teacher now.
He is talkin/talkng to his English teacher now.
He are talking to his English teacher now.
4. Ungrammatical sentences judged with providing correct grammatical
morphemes: 1.0 point
For example:
× 1. He is talk to his English teacher now.
He is talking to his English teacher now.
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CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter presents details of participants in this research, research
materials, procedure, data collection, and data analyses.
3.1 PARTICIPANTS
The participants were Thai native speaking students who had been studying at
secondary school in Phetburi province. Almost all the students had been studying
English for ten years; their average age was 16-17 years old. The total number of
participants was 60 persons and they were divided into two groups based on their
English Ordinary National Education Test scores (O-NET scores): one was a high
level group and the other a low level group. The high level group consisted of 30
students whose O-NET scores were 60 or higher. The low level group consisted of 30
students whose O-NET scores were 30 or lower.
The National Institute of Educational Testing Service (NIETS) arranges the
Ordinary National Education Test (O-NET), a test of the English proficiency level of
Thai students in secondary school grade 9 (M.3) and grade 12 (M.6).
According to obtained scores from O-NET tests, it is suggested that the
average O-NET score at the national level is quite low, especially in rural areas. In
this research, as participants lived in the countryside, participants whose O-NET
scores were higher than 60 scores were assigned to the high level group and
participants whose O-NET scores were lower than 30 scores were assigned to the low
level group.
3.2 RESEARCH MATERIALS
With a limitation of time constraint, the grammaticality judgment task
contained only 25 English sentences, adapted from Azar and Hagen’s (2006) study
and Sridhanyarat’s (2013) test. The grammaticality judgment task in this research
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consisted of five grammatical sentences and twenty ungrammatical sentences where
each sentence had only one incorrect point. For ungrammatical sentences, participants
were asked to identify an incorrect point and write down a new correct sentence on
the provided space.
The Grammaticality Judgment Task items were categorized as follows:
Five grammatical correct sentences:
1. He watched two movies last night.
2. She forgot to turn off the lights.
3. When the phone rang, I answered it.
4. I sent an E-mail to him yesterday.
5. She went to Phuket with her friends last night.
Five ungrammatical sentences of plural –s:
1. There are sixty minute in an hour.
2. Mr. Bean bought a new house three year ago.
3. Daddy gives some gift to us.
4. I have been in New York five time.
5. The students learned several word in the English class.
Five ungrammatical sentences of present progressive –ing:
1. I am try to contact my classmates now.
2. I am in the park now. I am look for my dog.
3. Lee is in the kitchen. He is now cook Chinese foods.
4. Someone is sing a song right now.
5. Please wait a minute. Now, she is wash her hair.
Five ungrammatical sentences of possessive –’s:
1. There are many problems in today world.
2. The children toys are on the table.
3. He borrowed the secretary pen.
4. People voices always get lower as they age.
5. When I was in Thailand, I stayed at a friend house.
Five ungrammatical sentences of 3 rd person singular –s:
1. Harry usually bring his son an ice cream.
2. Rebecca always wear a uniform to work.
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3. Adam sometimes sit in the first row during class.
4. He is a taxi driver. He drive a taxi.
5. Mark work as a teacher at a local high school.
Table 7. Item Specification in the Grammaticality Judgment Task
Item Specification in the Grammaticality Judgment
Task
Test Types Test Items
The plural –s 5, 10, 19, 21, 23
The present progressive –ing 1, 9, 14, 18, 25
The possessive –’s 3, 6, 8, 12, 24
The 3 rd person singular –s 2, 11, 15, 17, 22
Grammatically correct 4, 7, 13, 16, 20
3.3 THREATS TO VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY
3.3.1 Validity
The research is believed to have internal validity, researcher must control
every different thing that will appear in different contexts and might have affected
the result of the study. To make content valid, the sentences in the grammaticality
judgment task were applied from Azar and Hagen’s (2006) textbooks and
Sridhanyarat’s (2013) grammaticality judgment task. Some content in the sentences
were adapted to meet appropriate English language proficiency of the participants,
then let two language professors considered the content validity.
The two language professors were one American English teacher who has
been teaching as an English teacher in Thailand more than ten years and the other
was a Thai English teacher who has been teaching English in secondary school more
than twenty years and who was selected by the Thai government to join a teaching
exchange program in USA for one year.
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3.3.2 Reliability
Mackey and Gass (2005, P.44) demonstrated a pilot test "can help avoid
costly and time-consuming problems during the data collection procedure ... [as well
as] the loss of valuable, potentially useful, and often irreplaceable data" (p.57). Some
researchers believed that pilot tests or pilot studies could bring useful data for the
main research study.
Some researchers tried to seek if there is no problem with pilot testing and
the data were collected in exactly the same way, then the data will be used in their
study. However, almost all researchers against this opinion because “not all
institutions will give permission for this, and many do not have a process for the
retroactive use of data.” Mackey and Gass (2005)
Bee Hoon Tan (2014) pointed out there is an argument that some formats
of grammaticality judgment task are more reliable than other formats.
To review the effectiveness of the grammaticality judgment task in the
present research, the grammaticality judgment task was piloted with 20 Thai native
students in a secondary school, the same school where the participants were studying.
Students who joined the pilot test were asked to keep the test as a secret.
3.4 DATA COLLECTION
Data collection or data elicitation has played an important role in effective
measurement in second language research for many decades (Mackey and Gass,
2005). A key factor is whether collected data can respond accurately to the research
questions, both in right and wrong cases. Juffs (2001) as cited in Mackey and Gass
(2005) illustrated that it is impossible to compare a study’ results in the right way if
researchers lacked the standardized measurement and scoring.
The sixty participants were divided into two groups based on their English
Ordinary National Education Test scores (O-NET scores): one group was a high level
group which consisted of 30 students, whose O-NET scores equalled 60 or higher; the
other group was a low level group and consisted of 30 students whose O-NET scores
equalled 30 or lower.
Participants were assigned the grammaticality judgment task which contained
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five grammatical sentences and twenty ungrammatical sentences. Each sentence in the
ungrammatical group had only one incorrect point which related to one of four
grammatical morphemes: present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd
person singular –s. Participants had 25 minutes to identify any incorrect points in each
sentence, then write down a new correct sentence on the provided space of each one.
3.5 DATA SCORING
In this study, the scoring method on the grammaticality judgment task was
adapted from Sridhanyarat’s (2013) research, which applied the scoring method from
Bailey, Madden, and Krashen’s (1974) study.
1. Misplace sentences judged : 0 points
For example:
√ 1. He is draw a picture now.
(This sentence is an ungrammatical sentence. The correct answer is to
mark an X in front of the sentence)
2. Correctly judged with producing the incorrect form : 0 point
For example:
× 1. He is draw a picture now.
He is draws a picture now.
3. Correctly judged with producing misformed grammatical morphemes: 0.5
points
For example:
× 1. He is draw a picture now.
He is drawin/drawng a picture now.
He are drawing a picture now.
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4. Correctly judged with producing correct grammatical morphemes: 1.0
points
For example:
× 1. He is draw a picture now.
He is drawing a picture now.
3.6 DATA ANALYSIS
Data Analysis requires clear identification of statistical tests and procedures
(Mackey and Gass, 2005).
To explore “To what extent are four grammatical morphemes: present
progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3 rd person singular –s used by L1-
Thai learners?” a grammaticality judgment task was selected.
The scoring method on the grammaticality judgment task in this study was
adapted from Sridhanyarat’s (2013) research, which applied the scoring method from
Bailey, Madden, and Krashen’s (1974) study.
A percentage calculation formula was applied to present the scores obtained
from grammaticality judgment task as follows:
N x 100
T
N = Number of correct answers of each type of morpheme in the
grammaticality judgment task
T = Total number of each type of morpheme in the grammaticality judgment
task
For example : There are total of 150 items of present progressive –ing in the
grammaticality judgment task; if the number of correct answers from 30 participants
are 121 items, the result will be 80.6666%. The percentage calculation formula would
show as:
N x 100 =
121 x 100
T 150
= 80.6666
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The result of the grammaticality judgment task shows the grammatical errors
made by participants for each type of grammatical morpheme. To find out why
participants made some errors in their tests, the plausible explanations of each error
will be provided in the next chapter which clarifies results and discussion.
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CHAPTER 4
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
This chapter presents the results from the grammaticality judgment task set for
L1-Thai learners and focusing on the usage of four grammatical morphemes which
were present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s.
The chapter presents discussion about errors which may have occurred during the test
and plausible explanations of each error by error analysis.
To respond to the research question “To what extent are four grammatical
morphemes: present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person
singular –s used by L1-Thai learners?”, a Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) was
assigned to L1-Thai participants, a total of 60 high school students. In this research
the grammaticality judgment task was created base on previous studies, and it
consisted of five grammatical sentences and twenty ungrammatical sentences. Each
ungrammatical sentence had only one incorrect point. For ungrammatical sentences,
participants were asked to identify the incorrect point and write down a new correct
sentence on the provided space. After collecting the data, the data was analyzed by a
percentage calculation formula to show statistical data and a descriptive process
analysis to show descriptive information.
4.1 RESULTS
4.1.1 The Use of Grammatical Morphemes
The scores were collected from the grammaticality judgment task, which
was completed by two groups of participants: a high level group and a low level
group.
The high level group showed correct answers of present progressive –ing
as 121 points out of 150, correct answers of plural –s as 135 points out of 150, correct
answers of possessive –’s as 87 points out of 150 and correct answers of 3rd person
singular –s as 128 points out of 150. When we placed the obtained scores of each
grammatical morpheme in rank, it may be assumed that participants in the high level
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group were likely to acquire plural –s earliest, then 3rd person singular –s, present
progressive –ing and lastly possessive –’s.
The low level group showed correct answers of present progressive –ing
as 86 points out of 150, correct answers of plural –s as 91 points out of 150, correct
answers of possessive –’s as 31 points out of 150 and correct answers of 3rd person
singular –s as 64 points out of 150. From this data, it might be assumed that
participants in the low level group were likely to acquire plural –s earliest, then
present progressive –ing, 3rd person singular –s and lastly possessive –’s.
Figure 4.1 The scores of each morpheme in the grammaticality judgment task
121135
87
128
86 91
31
64
020406080
100120140160
present progressive
–ing
plural –s possessive –’s 3 rd person singular
–s
Score
Morpheme
Score of grammaticality judgment task
High Low
The scores collected from the grammaticality judgment task can be shown
in percentage, a ratio that is explicitly expressed as a fraction of 100, by applying the
percentage calculation formula. The scores from the high level group presented
present progressive –ing as 80.67%, plural –s as 90 %, the possessive –’s as 58 % and
3rd person singular –s as 85.33 %. The scores from the low level group presented
present progressive –ing as 57.33 %, plural –s as 60.67 %, possessive –’s as 20.67 %
and 3rd person singular –s as 42.67 %.
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Figure 4.2 The percentages of each morpheme in the grammaticality judgment
task
80.6790
58
85.33
57.33 60.67
20.67
42.67
0
20
40
60
80
100
present progressive –ing plural –s possessive –’s 3 rd person singular –s
percentage
Morpheme
Percentage of the result
High Low
Comparing the above data from the high level group and the low level
group, it indicated that both the high level group and the low level group seem to
acquire plural –s earliest and acquired possessive –’s last. The high level group
acquired 3rd person singular –s at the second rank and present progressive –ing at the
third rank, while the low level group acquired present progressive –ing at the second
rank and 3rd person singular –s at the third rank.
4.1.2 Consistency of The Result
Item Specification in the Grammaticality Judgment
Task
Test Types Test Items
The present progressive –ing 1, 9, 14, 18, 25
The plural –s 5, 10, 19, 21, 23
The possessive –’s 3, 6, 8, 12, 24
The 3rd person singular –s 2, 11, 15, 17, 22
Grammatically correct 4, 7, 13, 16, 20
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The Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) included 25 grammatical
sentences, five sentences were grammatically correct sentences and twenty sentences
were ungrammatical sentences. The twenty ungrammatical sentences contained five
ungrammatical sentences per one target morpheme, and there are totally four
morphemes: present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person
singular –s.
Table 8. The score of the present progressive –ing in High Level Proficiency
Group
High Group
No./Item 1 9 14 18 25 x̄
Total 26 24 28 21 22 24.2
% 86.67 80 93.33 70 73.33 80.6667
Table 9. The score of the present progressive –ing in Low Level Proficiency
Group
Low group
No./Item 1 9 14 18 25 x̄
Total 8 22 25.5 8 22.5 17.2
% 26.67 73.33 85 26.67 75 57.33
Starting with the first morpheme ‘present progressive –ing’, the average
score ( x̄ ) of the correct result in the high level group was 24.2 (80.67%) out of 30.
The average score ( x̄ ) of the correct result in the low level group was 17.2 (57.33%)
out of 30. The low level group showed scores from item no.1 and no.18 as eight
points (26.67%) out of 30 points which is quite low. It can be concluded that the low
proficiency students faced difficulty in attempting to identify item no.1 ‘I am try to
contact my classmates now.’ and item no.18 ‘Someone is sing a song right now.’
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Table 10. The score of the plural –s in High Level Proficiency Group
Table 11. The score of the plural –s in Low Level Proficiency Group
Regarding the second morpheme, plural –s, participants in both high and
low proficiency groups scored the best results for the plural –s with the highest score
of the four morphemes. The average score ( x̄ ) of the correct result in the high level
group was 27 (80.67%) out of 30. The average score ( x̄ ) of the correct result in the
low level group was 18.2 (60.67%) out of 30.
Table 12. The score of the possessive –’s in High Level Proficiency Group
High Group
No./Item 3 6 8 12 24 x̄
Total 26 15 24 7 15 17.4
% 86.67 50 80 23.33 50 58
Table 13. The score of the possessive –’s in Low Level Proficiency Group
Low Group
No./Item 3 6 8 12 24 x̄
High Group
No./Item 5 10 19 21 23 x̄
Total 30 24 24 29 28 27
% 100 80 80 96.67 93.33 90
Low Group
No./Item 5 10 19 21 23 x̄
Total 23 15 14 23 16 18.2
% 76.67 50 46.67 76.67 53.33 60.67
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Total 9 5 7 4 6 6.2
% 30 16.67 23.33 13.33 20 20.67
For the third morpheme possessive –’s, the average score ( x̄ ) of the
correct result in the high level group was 17.4 (58%) out of 30. The average score ( x̄
) of the correct result in the low level group was 6.2 (20.67%) out of 30. The scores of
the possessive –’s in both high and low proficiency groups was recorded as the lowest
score of the four morphemes. The high level group showed scores from item no.12 as
seven points (23.33%) out of 30 points which means students faced difficulty in
attempting to identify item no.12 ‘People voices always get lower as they age.’ This
relates to the score from the low level group in which the score showed as four points
(13.33%) out of 30 points. When looking back to the errors on item no.12 in the
grammaticality judgment task, it was found that some of the students did not correct
‘People voices’ to ‘People’s voices’ but concentrated on ‘they age’ instead. Some of
participants in the low level group changed ‘they age’ to ‘they’s age’ and there was
changing from ‘they age’ to ‘their age’ in the high level group. These addition errors
and misformation errors might be caused from the lack of knowledge and
overgeneralization.
Table 14. The score of the 3rd person singular –s in High Level Proficiency
Group
High Group
No./Item 2 11 15 17 22 x̄
Total 30 28 18 26 26 25.6
% 100 93.33 60 86.67 86.67 85.33
Table 15. The score of the 3rd person singular –s in Low Level Proficiency
Group
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Low Group
No./Item 2 11 15 17 22 x̄
Total 20 12 8 9 15 12.8
% 66.67 40 26.67 30 50 42.67
The fourth morpheme was 3rd person singular –s. The average score ( x̄ )
of the correct result in the high level group was 25.6 (85.33%) out of 30. The average
score ( x̄ ) of the correct result in the low level group was 12.8 (42.67%) out of 30.
In the low level group, the scores from item no.15 were recorded as eight
points (26.67%) out of 30 points, so it can be inferred that the low proficiency
students faced difficulty when trying to identify item no.15 ‘He is a taxi driver. He
drive a taxi’. Some of them applied overuse of possessive –’s; for example, ‘a taxi’s
driver’ and ‘he’s drive a taxi’. These two phrases would occur from lack of English
knowledge. Another cause of the phrases ‘he’s drive a taxi’ might come out from
misunderstanding the short pattern of copula BE ‘is’ and ‘possessive –’s’, plus lack of
English knowledge.
4.1.3 The Errors in Grammaticality Judgment Task
In the grammaticality judgment task, participants were asked to identify
incorrect points and write down new correct sentences in the provided space. There
were some errors exhibited in the answers.
In the high level group, there were errors of addition, omission and
misformation.
1. Addition of plural –s: childrens
2. Omission of possessive –’s: children toys, people voice, friend
house
3. Misformation of present progressive –ing: I am try to contacting my
classmates now.
4. Addition of present progressive –ing: Please waiting
5. Addition of copula BE: He is drive a taxi. , Mark’s work as a
teacher.
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In the low level group, there were errors of addition, omission and
misformation.
1. Addition of present progressive –ing: borroweding, stayeding, the
lightsing (the lights), I senting
2. Addition of –s: wents, forgots, stayeds, children toys, the phone
rangs, answereds, to turns, the first rows
3. Addition of possessive –’s: A taxi’s driver, He’s drive a taxi
4. Omission of possessive –’s: people voice, children toys
5. Omission of present progressive –ing: I am look, I am try
6. Addition of “to” before a verb: He is now to cook Chinese foods. ,
He is now to cooking Chinese foods. , She is to washing her hair.
7. Omission of plural –s: some gift
8. Addition of copula BE: She is forgot to turn off the lights. , He is
borrowed the secretary pen. , When the phone is rang, I answered it. , I have was (I
have been), she is sings
9. Addition of present progressive –ing: lowing, lowering, gifting,
classmating, to turning off
10. Misformation: lowing (in ‘People voices always get lower as they
age’), lowering (in ‘People voices always get lower as they age’), to contacts, wash
(in ‘she is wash her hair’), Mark working as a teacher, Daddy giving, He driving a
taxi, he usually brings
4.2 DISCUSSION
To clarify the reasons why these errors occurred, previous research and related
research were studied. Many researches studies on writing tests, English-Thai
translation and error analysis supported the idea that low proficiency learners
probably cannot acquire appropriated English proficiency level as they need to, thus
they cannot achieve the tasks involved in linguistic features like grammatical
morphemes. As this study applied the grammaticality judgment task to examine the
existence of four grammatical morphemes: present progressive –ing, plural –s,
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possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s, the analysis concentrated on grammatical-
lexical errors.
Error analysis refers to the study which analyzes errors made by learners. It is
used as a procedure to collect learner errors, identify the errors, describe the errors,
explain the errors and evaluate the errors (Corder, 1967). Error analysis can be used
for inspecting children’s language acquisition process, it can also predict the errors
that will be produced by language learners, especially adult learners, and used to
study their learning strategies (Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982) and Ellis (2002) cited
in Hinnon (2014)). Error analysis would prefer to identify student’s language
proficiency and performance.
4.2.1 Addition Error
From the results of the grammaticality judgment task, learners showed the
addition of plural –s as ‘childrens’, 3rd person singular –s as ‘they wents’, present
progressive –ing as ‘he drivesing’, possessive –’s as ‘taxi’s driver’, copula be as ‘she
is forgot’ and addition of “to” before a verb as ‘She is to washing her hair.’ These
errors are called addition errors and it is implied that addition errors occur from
learner’s overgeneralization.
Addition of 3rd person singular –s may relates to understanding of
English tense aspect and subject-verb agreement. Dulay et al. (1982) as cited in
Kulsirisawad (n.d.) argued that grammatical morpheme 3rd person singular –s
problem are quite particular to L2 learners whose first language does not present this
feature; it may bring about redundancy using the morpheme as a marker. The learner
unconcern of plural forms may make for a redundant of plural –s or omission of plural
–s. As there is no plural marker or plural form of the noun in Thai language, plural –s
errors show it may be difficult for low proficiency participants to classify English
inflection or aspect marker. Low proficiency L1-Thai learners may misunderstand
about tense aspect and subject-verb agreement, so they produced addition of 3rd
person singular –s.
For addition of present progressive –ing, Pojprasat (2007) illustrated
English tense contained both lexical and syntactic elements, while Thai marked only
some lexical items and there is no need to express tense aspect. For example, English
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expresses adverbs of time and verb forms in the sentence, while Thai marks only
adverbs of time. The participants made errors because they were not familiar with
verb forms of the present progressive –ing and might not distinguish meanings of the
tense.
4.2.2 Omission Error
While participants in the high level group made more addition errors than
participants in the low level group, participants in low level group seemed to make
more omission errors than participants in the high level group.
Omission of plural –s as ‘some gift’, omission of present progressive –ing
as ‘I am look’ and omission of possessive –’s as ‘children toys’ were shown in the
papers of the low English proficiency participants, whereas some papers from the
high English proficiency participants showed omission of possessive –’s as in ‘people
voice’.
For the demonstration of these errors in the provided task, interlanguage
theory may help to explain why L2 learners made the errors in these cases.
The cause of omission of plural –s, omission of present progressive –ing,
and omission of possessive –’s by Thai learners may involve L1 and L2 language
features difference. Thai language does not have a possessive aspect like -’s, but there
are some features similar to possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives in English.
The word ‘ kŏrng’ such as in ‘kŏrng chán’ in Thai refers to ‘mine’ and the possessive
adjective ‘my’ in English.
Another reason why Thai learners tend to make omissions of grammatical
morphemes when they produce English sentences is student lack of language
knowledge. Low English proficiency learners may not had enough knowledge to
accomplish the grammaticality judgment task correctly.
Moreover, the errors might be the result of first language influence or
negative transfer from Thai to English. As Thai language has no morphological
system and no inflection, it might obstruct the learners’ performance on grammatical
morpheme acquisition.
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4.2.3 Misformation Error
In this research, there were some errors related to misformation, for
example,
1. Misformation of present progressive –ing as ‘She is wash her hair
now.’
* The correct sentence is ‘She is washing her hair now’.
2. Misformation of present progressive –ing as ‘I am try to contacting my
classmates now.’
* The correct sentence is I am trying to contact my classmates now’.
When a learner uses present progressive –ing in the wrong context, it can
imply that they do not observe or are not concerned enough about the
target language’s rule restrictions to build the correct form and correct
structure in the context.
Moreover, some learners understood -’s as the short pattern of copula BE
‘is’, the marker of the present tense, but they did not consider it as possessive –’s, so
they then produced ‘He’s drive a taxi’ because he or she misunderstood between the
short form of ‘is’ and ‘possessive –’s’. For this topic of ‘-s’’, learners not only
misunderstood the form, but also presented overgeneralization, the error in which
learners apply a grammatical rule where there is no need to apply it.
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CHAPTER 5
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.1 CONCLUSIONS
Thai children have been acquiring English since they were young; however,
they still have difficulty identifying English grammatical errors. Acquiring English
language, especially grammatical morphemes, is still a major obstacle in their
learning. Previous research study involving error analysis has indicated that second
language learners seem to produce common errors in grammatical morphemes, for
example, 3rd person present simple among Thai and Chinese learners (Yordchim and
Gibbs (2014), Hsieh (2008)), possessive –’s among Thai learners (Sridhanyarat, 2013)
and present progressive –ing.
To examine the use of English grammatical morphemes among L1-Thai
learners, this study aimed to investigate the use of four grammatical morphemes:
present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s by
applying a grammaticality judgment task. There is a significance of the study because
the findings about students’ difficulties with grammatical morphemes would help
teachers to understand students’ difficulties in learning English and help teachers to
make effective teaching plans.
Before designing the methodology, literature reviews of related studies were
observed. Related theories and studies on Second Language Acquisition (SLA),
Grammatical Morpheme Acquisition, criticism research, similarities and differences
in L2 Grammatical Morpheme study, Interlanguage (IL), Processability Theory (PT),
Error Analysis, Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT), effective materials, validity and
reliability, data collection, data scoring methods and data analysis were studied.
The participants in this research were 60 Thai native speaking students who
had been studying English for 10 years. They studied at a secondary school in
Phetburi province. Participants were divided into two groups based on their English
Ordinary National Education Test scores (O-NET scores), with a high level group
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consisted of 30 students whose scores were 60 or higher and a low level group
consisting of 30 students whose scores were 30 or lower. They were assigned a
grammaticality judgment task which was adapted from Azar and Hagen’s (2006) task,
as cited in Sridhanyarat (2013), and Sridhanyarat’s (2013) test. Participants had to
identify grammatical errors among grammatical sentences and ungrammatical
sentences, then correct what point they thought was an error. This task was applied to
see the distribution of grammatical morpheme errors among L1-Thai learners and to
see their ability to correct errors.
After collecting the data, data analysis and error analysis processes were
carried out. Percentage calculation formula was applied to the scores obtained from
the grammaticality judgment task, then plausible explanations were reported in
discussion.
According to the result of the grammaticality judgment task, the high level
group showed 80 percent up in the marks from three grammatical morphemes, which
are present progressive –ing, plural –s and 3rd person singular –s, and showed lower
than 60 percent in possessive –’s, while the low level group showed above 60 percent
in plural –s and lower than 60 percent in the other three morphemes.
Brown (1973) and de Villiers and de Villiers (1973)’s study’s showed that
children who acquire English as a native language acquired progressive –ing and
plural –s before possessive -’s and 3rd person singular –s
Regarding the results in this research, participants in the low level group
showed a similar order of acquisition as Brown’s (1973) study. Learners acquired
plural –s and present progressive –ing with little different scores and acquired them
earlier than 3rd person singular –s and possessive -’s. However, the results were
opposite in the high level group whose scores showed plural –s was require earliest,
followed by 3rd person singular –s, present progressive –ing and lastly possessive –’s.
For grammatical errors in the use of English grammatical morphemes among
L1-Thai learners, participants showed errors as following:
1. Addition of plural –s
2. Omission of possessive –’s
3. Addition of present progressive –ing
4. Addition of copula be
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5. Addition of morpheme –s
6. Addition of possessive –’s
7. Omission of present progressive –ing
8. Addition of “to” before a verb
9. Omission of plural –s
10. Addition of copula BE
11. Misformation
There were the same errors occurred in both high proficiency learners and low
proficiency learners in the total four categories of errors:
1. Addition of plural –s
2. Omission of possessive –’s
3. Addition of present progressive –ing
4. Addition of copula be
To summarize these errors, high English proficiency students made fewer
errors than low English proficiency students. However, some learners in the high
English proficiency group still made mistakes in the plural –s morpheme which was
indicated from the result of the two groups as the easiest morpheme among the four
grammatical morphemes in the grammaticality judgment task. Analyzing the results
of the grammaticality judgment task, many participants in the low proficiency group
were defined as weak learners. Although they have studied English for 10 years, they
still have very limited knowledge of English. The problems may occur from learner’s
problems in language acquisition with such errors as overgeneralization, incomplete
application of rules, ignorance of rule restriction and L1- interference.
5.2 RECOMMENDATIONS
Referring to research methodology, the role of the task is very important and it
can impact on the results of the study. As there were limitations because of time
constraint, a grammaticality judgment task was chosen to apply in this research. This
may not be enough to completely explore all the grammatical morpheme problems
which may occur among L1-Thai learners.
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The results regarding grammatical morpheme errors in this research could be a
guide to investigate of Thai students’ weakness in English language and it could be a
benefit for teachers to find methods to improve learners’ grammatical errors,
especially those related to English morpheme usage.
According to needs for further investigating the use of English grammatical
morphemes among second language learners, in term of the writing task and the
translation task, it would better to combine a variety of tasks in further research.
Moreover, further research should try to administer any task with a larger group of
participants, and participants in various L1-languages could make for better
confidence in the result.
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APPENDICES
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APPENDIX A
แบบทดสอบ Grammatical Judgment Task
ค ำส ัง่
1. แบบทดสอบมทัีง้หมด 25 ขอ้ ใชเ้วลา 25 นาท ี
2. แบบทดสอบประกอบดว้ยประโยคทีถ่กูและผดิหลักไวยากรณ์ ใหนั้กเรยีนกา
เครือ่งหมาย √ บนชอ่งวา่งหนา้ประโยคทีถ่กู และกาเครือ่งหมาย X บนชอ่งวา่งหนา้
ประโยคทีผ่ดิ
3. ส าหรับขอ้ทีนั่กเรยีนคดิวา่ผดิหลักไวยากรณ์ ใหแ้กไ้ขโดยเขยีนประโยคทีถ่กูลงบน
บรรทดัวำ่งใตป้ระโยคทีผ่ดิ
4. ขอ้ทีผ่ดิหลกัไวยากรณ์ จะมปีระเด็นผดิพลาดทีเ่ดยีว
ตวัอยำ่ง
X 1. He wrote two letter yesterday.
He wrote two letters yesterday.
*********************************************************************
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Grammaticality Judgment Task
Instructions
1. This task consists of 25 sentences. You have 25 minutes to finish it.
2. The task consists of both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. Read each
sentence carefully and decide if it is grammatically correct. Put a check (√) next to
each grammatical sentence, and put an (X) next to each ungrammatical sentence.
3. If the sentence is ungrammatical for you, write down a new correct sentence on
the line provided.
4. In each ungrammatical item, there is only one incorrect point.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
_____ 1. I am try to contact my classmates now.
______________________________________________
_____ 2. Harry usually bring his son an ice cream.
______________________________________________
_____ 3. There are many problems in today world.
______________________________________________
_____ 4. He watched two movies last night.
______________________________________________
_____ 5. Mr. Bean bought a new house three year ago.
______________________________________________
_____ 6. The children toys are on the table.
______________________________________________
_____ 7. She forgot to turn off the lights.
______________________________________________
_____ 8. He borrowed the secretary pen.
______________________________________________
_____ 9. I am in the park now. I am look for my dog.
______________________________________________
_____ 10. Daddy gives some gift to us.
______________________________________________
_____ 11. Adam sometimes sit in the first row during class.
______________________________________________
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_____ 12. People voices always get lower as they age.
______________________________________________
_____ 13. When the phone rang, I answered it.
______________________________________________
_____ 14. Lee is in the kitchen. He is now cook Chinese foods.
_______________________________________________
_____ 15. He is a taxi driver. He drive a taxi.
_______________________________________________
_____ 16. I sent an E-mail to him yesterday.
_______________________________________________
_____ 17. Mark work as a teacher at a local high school.
_______________________________________________
_____ 18. Someone is sing a song right now.
_______________________________________________
_____ 19. The students learned several word in the English class.
_______________________________________________
_____ 20. She went to Phuket with her friends last night.
_______________________________________________
_____ 21. There are sixty minute in an hour.
_______________________________________________
_____ 22. Rebecca always wear a uniform to work.
_______________________________________________
_____ 23. I have been in New York five time.
_______________________________________________
_____ 24. When I was in Thailand, I stayed at a friend house.
_______________________________________________
_____ 25. Please wait a minute. Now, she is wash her hair.
_______________________________________________
End of Task
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BIOGRAPHY
Name Miss Suwaporn Chumkamon
Date of Birth April 17, 1986
Educational Attainment
2009: Bachelor of Arts, Chinese Major
Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University
Work Position Government Teacher
Thayang Wittaya School
Work Experiences 2016 - Present: Chinese Teacher
Thayang Wittaya School
2015 : Chinese Teacher
Amphawan Wittayalai School
2010 : Sale Executive
Panasonic Management (Thailand) Co.,Ltd
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