VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
PHẠM THỊ BÍCH NGỌC

LINGUISTIC ERRORS IN WRITING A PARAGRAPH OF 10
TH

HANOI - 2012

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
PHẠM THỊ BÍCH NGỌC

LINGUISTIC ERRORS IN WRITING A PARAGRAPH OF 10
TH
FORM
STUDENTS AT NGUYEN TRAI HIGH SCHOOL IN HAI PHONG AND
SOME SOLUTIONS

(NHỮNG LỖI VỀ NGÔN NGỮ KHI VIẾT ĐOẠN VĂN CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP
10 TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN TRÃI – HẢI PHÒNG
VÀ MỘT SỐ BIỆN PHÁP KHẮC PHỤC)
M.A. MINOR THESIS


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
PHẠM THỊ BÍCH NGỌC

LINGUISTIC ERRORS IN WRITING A PARAGRAPH OF 10
HANOI - 2012

i

TABLE OF CONTENT
Page
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale 1
2. Objectives of the study 2
3. Research questions 2
4. Scope of the study 2
5. Method of the study 2
6. Organization of the study 2
PART II: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter I: Literature review
I.1. Teaching writing
I.1.1. Reasons for teaching writing 4
I.1.2 Principles of teaching writing 5
I.2. Teaching paragraph writing
I.2.1. Definition of Paragraph 5
I.2.2. Classifications of paragraph 6
I.3. Writing errors
I.3.1. Definitions of errors 7
I.3.2. The role of “errors” in English Language Teaching 8
I.3.3. Classifications of writing errors 9
I.3.4. Error correction 10
I.3.5. Teacher‟s role in error correction 10
I.4. Previous studies 11

iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

N.T.H.S: Nguyen Trai high school

Table 8: Linking words difficulties in writing a paragraph
v


1

PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
Teaching and learning a foreign language aims at providing the learners with
means of communication. To acquire the communicative competence, four
language skills (reading, speaking, listening and writing) are taught regularly at
schools and universities, among which writing skill is very important because it
helps learners to learn other skills better.
“First, writing reinforces the grammatical structures, idioms, and vocabulary
that we have been teaching our students. Second, when they write, they have a
chance to be adventurous with the language, to go beyond what they have just
learned to say, to take risks. Third, when students write, they necessarily become
very involved with the new language; the effort to express ideas and constant use of
eye, hand and brain is the unique way of expressing their idea. They discover a real
need for finding the right word and the right sentence. The close relationship
between writing and thinking makes writing a valuable part of any language
courses” (Raimes, 1938: 3).
Due to the importance of writing skill, it is part of the English syllabus at high
school. However, from the writer‟s teaching-experience at Nguyen Trai high school,
not enough attention has been paid to the teaching and learning of writing skill at
high school. Writing is both dismal and neglected: many students never get a
writing assignment, and many writing exercises in the textbook are abandoned.
Besides that, teachers are also afraid of teaching writing skill. They think that
teaching writing is really a challenge.
The ignorance of writing skill at high school has resulted in students‟ poor
writing skill: they have a lot of mistakes and many of them are unable to write an
understandable paragraph. One of the most serious problems that the writer has
identified from her experience teaching paragraph writing to students is linguistic
difficulties. For example students often use wrong verb tenses in a paragraph, they

Mistakes were identified and classified into different categories. Statistical counting
was carried out to bring about the real picture of students‟ linguistic difficulties.
6. Organization of the study
3

In order to achieve the above mentioned aims, this paper is divided into three
parts:
The first part is the Introduction, which points out the rationale, aims, and
scope of the study. Research questions are also specifically defined to serve as
guidelines for the whole paper.
The second part is the Development. In this part, three chapters are
presented. In chapter one, literature related to teaching writing, paragraph writing
and writing errors is reviewed. In chapter two, the method of the study is presented.
It includes careful descriptions of the subjects, sampling method, instrument and
method of data collection and analysis. The last chapter presents data analysis and
discussion. In this part, questionnaires and writing samples collected from 10
th
form
students at Nguyen Trai high school are analyzed to find out students‟ typical errors
in order to recommend effective strategies for teaching paragraph writing.
The last part of the study is the Conclusion, which points out what has been
addressed as well as what has not been completed and offers recommendations for
further study.


after they have just studied it.
Language development is also a reason for teaching writing. It seems that the
actual process of writing helps students to learn language better. The highest level
of writing skill involves critical thinking. To deal with their mental activities,
students have to construct proper written texts using all their learning experience.
The third and also the most important reason for teaching writing is that it is a basic
productive language skill. Obviously, students need to know how to write a letter,
how to write a report, etc. Therefore, they need to know some writing conventions
such as punctuation, paragraph construction, forms of paragraph.
5

I.1.2. Principles of teaching writing
There are several principles of writing. But according to Huong, T.T, Minh
N.T.T.etal (2007: 58), teachers should consider some following principles when
teaching writing.
First of all, teachers should provide many opportunities for students to write.
Students‟ writing skills just improve when they practice writing a lot. Therefore,
just asking students to practice in writing lesson is not enough. Teacher can create
writing tasks from listening, reading and speaking lessons with different styles of
writing such as letter writing, e-mail writing, etc.
Then, teachers should make their feedback to students helpful and
meaningful by giving detailed comments at the end of students‟ writings. Teachers‟
comments should help students to be independent writers. It means that teachers‟
comments should help students to correct the errors themselves instead of teacher
correcting students‟ errors.
Moreover, to evaluate students‟ writings clearly and exactly, teachers should
have specific criteria for marking such as spelling, accuracy of vocabulary, use of
cohesive devices, etc.
Besides, as often as possible teachers should create the right conditions for
students‟ generation of ideas, Moreover, teachers should always consider

effects, reasons, example, etc. The supporting sentences are connected together by
cohesive devices. The concluding sentence signals the end of the paragraph, and it
summarizes or restates the main point the writer made.
In addition to three structural parts of a paragraph, a good paragraph also needs to
have unity and coherence. Unity means that the writer discusses only one main idea
in a paragraph. Coherence means that the paragraph is easy to read and understand.
A coherent paragraph contains sentences that are logical and flow smoothly.
Therefore, in order to have coherence in writing, the movement from one sentence
to the next must be logical and smooth; and there must be no sudden jumps.
I.2.2. Classifications of paragraph
According to Feist (1996), there are four main kinds of paragraph:
informative, descriptive, narrative and persuasive.
An informative paragraph is a paragraph that informs information.
7

A narrative paragraph is a paragraph that tells about something that
happened.
“Persuasive writing convinces the reader to take action or to support an
idea” (Feist, 1996: 54). In this kind of paragraph, the main idea is your opinion on
the topic. It is usually stated in a topic sentence. The others support the opinion with
reasons and evidence. The tone of persuasive paragraph should be strong, but polite
in order to encourage the reader to act.
A descriptive paragraph tells what something or someone is like. It helps
readers see, feel, taste, smell and hear the things being described. The topic sentence
gives the overall impression. Supporting sentences include specific details about the
person or thing being described.
In English 10 textbook, most of the writing tasks require students to write a
descriptive paragraph, so the author also chose the topics about descriptive
paragraph for students to write to collect the data.
I.3. Writing errors

deviant forms of language because of their deficient competence of selective items
of the target language but not because of their carelessness or lack of attention, etc.
In the light of the aforementioned definitions, the researcher would like to
employ the third view by Corder (1967) as it proves to be the most
comprehensive. According to Corder (1967), an error is characterized with two
features namely systematic deviancy and learner's deficiency to self-correct. These
two features can be considered criteria to determine whether students have made an
error or not.
I.3.2. The role of "errors" in English Language Teaching
Corder (1967) argues that errors are the most important source of
information revealing that learners are organizing knowledge available to them to
produce the language at a particular point of time.
Edge (1997) is also in line with this school of thought. He regards errors as
necessary learning steps which are evident for the fact that students are learning
the language successfully.
By the same token, Bartram & Walton (2001:11) see errors as "an
inescapable natural part of language learning" and that they are "part of the learning
9

process: not the wrong turning on the road of mature language use but actually part
of the road itself." These two scholars consider the process of learning a second
language similar to that of a baby learning his mother tongue.
In particular, errors benefit both the learner and the teacher. As for the
former, errors could assume the role of stimuli to facilitate learning and assist
students in achieving writing fluency (Lyons & Heasley, 1992).With respect to the
later, errors serve as an invaluable implication of what strategies used by learners
and an indication of what they have learnt or have not (Crystal, 1987).
In short, there has been positive spectrum in the view concerning the
importance of errors in the field of English language teaching and learning. It can be
concluded that errors are by no means to be avoided at any expense.

thought reach an extreme that would not benefit students to the best. Thus, the
researcher would like to employ the Communicative Language Teaching approach
to error correction. That is, error correction should be provided when needed
because the very goal of this approach is to develop students‟ communicative
competence and errors are seen as a sign of their real learning but not a sign of
incomplete learning
Lee (1990) mentions three kinds of errors that require more concern from
teacher namely errors that interfere with intelligibility or communication, errors
which stigmatized or irritate common errors and high frequency errors.
I.3.5. Teacher’s role in error correction
Traditionally, the role of teacher in error correcting has always been
dominant. Teacher is the only source to both point out the errors and show how to
correct them. Edge (1997) coins the term "over-correct teacher" to
imply this. Teachers always strive to be correct in terms of linguistic form when
they are in class and this poses profound effects on students. Thus, learners will see
that what their teachers prioritize is freedom from any kinds of mistakes or errors.
"Even if the teacher tells the students that they should try to express themselves
freely, it will be difficult for the students to behave in this way when they see that it
is not the teacher's way." (Edge,1997). Besides, teacher assumes the role as the only
linguistic model in their setting for students to look at. Learners always have a
strong desire to be themselves and to be able to express themselves in English.
Teacher, to some extent, has become the model of the same background culture to
11

enjoy the language, to express himself/ herself in the target language. Thus, from
students' perspectives, teachers earns their status "based on the fact that they are
successful examples of what their students aim to be; people from a shared
background who have achieved an ability to communicate in English"
(Edge, 1997). Therefore, teachers should provide correction that helps learner to
express themselves more accurately and "make correction a part of the teaching and

In this chapter, the author describes the situation of teaching and learning
English at N.T.H.S, the subjects of the study, data collection instruments,
research method and the research procedure.
II.1. The situation of teaching and learning English at N.T.H.C
N.T.H.S is located in An Duong district, which is in the rural areas of Haiphong.
It is a poor district because agriculture plays the main role in its economy. This
heavily affects people‟s thinking here. According to them, being able to speak their
mother tongue (that is Vietnamese) correctly is enough, so it is not necessary for
them and their children to learn to speak English. Although learning a foreign
language (for example, English) at lower secondary schools and high schools has
been considered an official subject among Maths, Literature, Chemistry, Physics,
and others, it is not appreciated at lower secondary schools. Therefore, teachers and
students‟ attitudes towards teaching and learning English are negative. They
consider English a minor subject at schools. As a result, students do not pay
attention to learning English. They learn it very badly.
When these students enter N.T.H.S, they have to take part in exams in three
subjects: Maths, Literature, and English at the beginning of the school year. They
often gain high scores in Maths and Literature but most of them get low scores in
English. All students at lower secondary schools have learned English for four years
but most of them have not paid any attention to learning it. Thus, it is very difficult
for teachers at N.T.H.S to teach them English because the new English textbooks at
high schools now are written based on the English textbooks at lower secondary
schools. Teachers have no time to re-teach all the English knowledge students have
learned at lower secondary schools. They have to follow the syllabus. Day by day,
both teachers and students feel tired and bored when having to teach and learn
English. During the teaching period at N.T.H.S, the researcher sees that, among four
language skills, writing is the most difficult for students. She often hears students
rumbling, teachers avoiding such meticulous task of teaching and learning writing.
Linguistic difficulties in writing a paragraph is one of the big problems in writing
skill.

employed quantitative method including questionnaires and students‟ writing
analysis.
a. Questionnaires:
The questionnaire is designed to find out students‟ perception of their
linguistic errors in writing a paragraph, the causes of the errors, the
correction of the errors, the students‟ revision on the errors.
The questionnaire helps the researcher gather information quickly and
objectively and gather information from a large portion of a group.
b. Students’ writing analysis:
14

The analysis of students‟ writing aims at finding the real situation of the
linguistic errors in students‟ writing. This analysis helps the researcher
classify the major linguistic errors in students‟ writing, compare them with
the result from the questionnaire to come to an agreement of the linguistic
errors students often make.
II.3.2. Method of data analysis
Data from questionnaires was calculated and summarized to identify the
general trends of students‟ linguistic errors when writing a paragraph
Students‟ writing samples were carefully studied. Errors were classified into
different categories to help researcher find out the most common linguistics errors
made by 10th form students.
Whenever relevant, data from two sources were compared and contrasted to
have the most comprehensive picture of the situation.
II.4. Research procedure
The procedure of data collection was as follow:
(1) Choosing 60 students who are in grade 10 of N.T.H.S randomly to conduct the
survey of the study.
(2) Giving topics to students to write English paragraphs. The subjects were
required to write about one of the following topics:

Results
Yes
100%
No
0%
Table 1: Students’ perception of making linguistic errors
It can be seen from Table 1 that students themselves recognized their
weaknesses in writing a paragraph and they were aware of the linguistic errors they
often make when writing.
III. 2. Students’ feeling when making errors in writing
As mentioned above, all students often make linguistic errors in the process of
writing. However, when asked “How do you feel when you make errors in writing”,
different students have different answers:
Options
Results
I am disappointed with my English
48%
I consider it the chance to know what I have lacked and to get
experience
46%
I have no feeling
6%
Table 2: Students’ feeling when making errors in writing a paragraph
As can be seen, after making errors when writing a paragraph, the proportion
of students who were disappointed with their English (48%) seemed to be equal to
16

those who consider making errors the chance to know what they have lacked and to
get experience (46%). In other words, 10th form students at N.T.H.S had a positive
attitude towards learning English. There were only 4 out of 60 students,

teachers usually correct students‟ errors in writing.
Options
Results
Correct some remarkable errors only
71%
Give a comment at the end of the paragraph only.
33%
Correct all errors
2%
Table 3: Teacher’s errors correction in students’ paragraphs
According to Table 3, most teachers (71%) chose the common errors to
correct. Besides, it was unexpected that there were many teachers (33%) who only
gave comment at the end of the paragraph. A small portion (2%) represented those
who corrected all errors.
III.5. Students’ revision on their errors
The author collected the information by asking students: “What do you often do
when having back your paper” and students‟ answers were:
Options
Results
I look carefully at my errors and self-correct them
2%
I compare my work with the others and correct the errors together
5%
I glance over indicated errors
23%
I have a look at the remarks given by the teacher
61%
Knowing the mark is enough
9%
Table 4: Students’ revision on their errors

preposition usage. So, only these kinds of errors were studied and discussed
carefully. The results from questionnaire and students‟ papers are as follows:

Linguistic difficulties
Grammar
Vocabulary
Linking words
Students‟ paragraphs
50%
41%
9%
Questionnaire
56%
34%
10%