RESEARCH PROPOSAL
Error Analysis of Oral Presentations and Academic writing
Introduction
The field of error analysis in Second Language Acquisition
established in the 1970s was an alternative to contrastive
analysis, an approach influenced by behaviorism, through which
applied linguists sought to use the formal distinctions
between learners’ first and second languages in predicting
errors. Error analysis showed that contrastive analysis was
unable to predict the great majority of errors, although the more
valuable aspects have been incorporated into the study of
language transfer. A key finding of error analysis has been
that many learner errors are produced by learners making
faulty inferences about the rules of the new language.
In t h e p a s t , i t w a s b e l i e v e d t h a t m o s t l a n g u a g e e r r o r s
w e r e c a u s e d b y t h e t r a n s f o r m a t i o n f r o m o n e language
to another language. Later, it was found that the influence
of native language on the second language is quite minimal;
that is, it affects only 3-25% of such errors. James (1998) adds
that language learners cannot correct their errors until they have
additional knowledge on the topic. These errors occur in the
course of the learner studying the language because they have
not yet acquired enough knowledge. Once they have done so
they will be able to correct the errors, and the more errors the
learners correct the more conscious of the language they will
become.
Literature Review
Errors, according to James (1998), can be classified into two
types;
the linguistic category classification and surface structure
taxonomy. The linguistic category specifies errors in terms of
linguistic categories and in terms of where the error is located in
the overall system of the target language. First, it indicates at
what level of language the error is located; in phonology,
grammar, lexis, text or discourse. If for example it is at grammar
level, then the next step would be to find out what particular
grammatical construction it involves. Some possibilities listed
are: the auxiliary system and passive sentence complements.
Having established the level of the error, for example, one
next asks about its class; whether it involves the noun, verb,
adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, or determiner. The
other type of descriptive taxonomy is the one proposed by Dulay,
Burt and Krashen (1982). It describes errors as occurring based
on the way surface structures are altered or changed in specific
or systematic ways, i.e. because of change through omission,
addition, misinformation and mis ordering.
Another aspect of study on error analysis is the causes. Earlier
studies (Richards,1974) have also classified causes of errors into
two categories:
1. Interlingual Errors: These are errors that are caused by
mother tongue interference. They occur during the learning
process of the second language at a stage when learners have
not really acquired the knowledge.
2. Intralingual and Developmental Errors: Errors caused
by learning strategies include false analogy, misanalysis,
incomplete rule application, exploiting redundancy,
overlooking co-occurrence restrictions, hypercorrection,
overgeneralization or system-simplification. In addition, the
errors are also caused by the difficulty or the problem of
language itself. Almost 90% of errors are intralingual errors,
as explained by Dulay and Burt (1974). Analysis of oral
presentations presents a good opportunity to study spoken L2
English. Studies related to spoken language the spoken
language is also seen in works done by Hincks (2004), and
Grimshaw (1198). Hinks (2008) for example, looked at five
categories of error in ESP students' representation;
vocabulary, pronunciation, morphological and lexical error,
disfluencies, and sentence boundaries. Vocabulary, and lexical
errors were two of the kinds of errors she examined in detail,
a commendable effort, as there has not been much research
done on the nature of vocabulary in spoken academic English.
Presentations are to a large extent monologues, and can
therefore be more easily transcribed and analyzed than
dialogues. An assessment on academic writing may also be
part of the presentation. In a multidimensional discourse
analysis of a 2.7-million-word corpus of university English,
Biber et Al. (2002) point out the real need for detailed
vocabulary studies of different registers. Research on lexis
used in L2 student writing has been done by Lauder and
Nation (1995) and both of whom would like to see similar
studies done on L2 spoken English.
To fill this gap and to gain a better understanding of the
performance of the communicative competence in this area and
develop a reliable sllybus for ESP in order to meet the current ESP
course objectives, are justification for conducting this corpus
based error analysis study on the students academic
presentation.
This study reports on aspects of error in the communicative
context, providing the analysis and classification of error of the
oral presentation that will be specifically useful in helping to
improve the specific genre of oral presentation and field of oral
communication in the academic context. This would entail
examining and comparing error types that occurs in the same
student’s writing. The results obtained are axpected to further
contribute to the arguments in favour of specificity in ESP course.
Statement of the Problem and Research Objectives
The Malaysian higher education is coming under
increasing pressure to offer degree and post
degree programmes conducted in English, in order to attract stu
dents, especially from foreign countries. University
administrators and politicians may assume that English
skills are sufficient to follow
such programmes, but language experts maintain that it is not cl
ear how students are able to transfer their excellent receptive
skills in English into articulate and precise productive skills.
Errors made are of great concern because of two main reasons:
firstly, they are direct proof of what students know and what they
do not know, and secondly, errors are symptomatic of any
problems that students may have. Both oral
and written language errors must be corrected mo
re carefully as they may get fossilized if left
uncorrected. Careful analysis of these errors would thus enable a
reexamination of teaching and learning strategies in an effort to
correct and avoid errors or repetition of the errors.
Objectives of the study:
-To find out the most frequent errors in a corpus of
E n g l i s h f o r A c a d e m i c p u r p o s e s ( E A P ) s t u d e n t s ’ writing
and oral presentations.
-To identify the types of errors non-native students make in
their oral and written work.
-To compare and contrast between written and oral
errors among EAP students.
The research questions:
-what are the most frequent errors in a corpus of
E n g l i s h f o r A c a d e m i c p u r p o s e s ( E A P ) s t u d e n t s ’ speech
presentation.
-What are the most frequent errors in a corpus of
E n g l i s h f o r A c a d e m i c p u r p o s e s ( E A P ) s t u d e n t s ’ written
work?
-W h a t a r e t h e c a t e g o r i e s o f e r r o r s i n ( E A P ) s t u d e n t s ’
presentations?
-What are the categories of errors in (EAP) students’
academic writings?
- A are there differences between written and oral errors
among ( E A P ) students?
Research Methodology
This study adopts a qualitative design approach.
There will be three sets of data collected for this
s t u d y , o b t a i n e d f r o m a b o u t s i x t y f o u r participants (ie
2 EAP classes), all of whom are non-native speakers between the
ages of 20 and 25. The first set contains a corpus of
approximately 550 minutes of semi-spontaneous (or
rehearsed) student English Monologue which will be collected
using a mini-disc/tape recorder. The recordings
will be conducted in the classroom as students accom
p l i s h t e n - m i n u t e o r a l p r e s e n t a t i o n s o n technical topics of
their choice. The speech will be transcribed (verbatim, omitting
question-and-answer portions of the presentation.
The second set of data will be based on the students’
written work. Interviews conducted and recorded will form
the third set of data. Analysis of data will be based on the
frequency of the lexical items used, the number and nature
of lexical and grammatical errors, and the vocabulary used.
Significance of the Study
The study would enhance our understanding of language errors
in EAP and this could be incorporated into the overall language
curriculum for further language development of the students at
the university .
An understanding of the types of errors made by students in EAP
will enable language educators to offer possible help to students.
Pedagogical implications will also be drawn in terms of how
language educators can incorporate the need for rectifying these
aspects in their curriculum.
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