Difficulties of

Students in Grammar
and Speech
Sheena Bernan
Ella Cuba
Allysa Alcaide
Kyle Duadua
Christian Ian Palgan
 Introduction

• Background of the Study

English is the language of science, technology and global communication.
English plays a vital role in developing the status of a country. Besides its
importance as an international language it is also called the major window
in the world in terms of communicating, which means that English gives
us the view of the various progresses taking place in the world. It also
provides us distilled essence of advance and up-to-date knowledge in all
fields of human developments and activities.
• The language is one of the most important things in communication and it is
used as an aspect of communicating among all nations all over the world. As
an international language, English have many interrelationships with various
aspects of life by human beings such as in community, work life and health.
The People will be able to easily express their thoughts and feelings about
something by using language through speaking and gestures. The Language,
communication and life cannot be separated. The Language can be applied in
many aspects, such as: education, society, politics, economics, and lastly
culture.
 Statement of the Problem

• This research study aims to determine the disadvantages of students in

the field of grammar and speech in their daily activities. The issue that is
aforementioned is vital to a student’s daily needs when communicating in
global terms.
 Research Questions:

• 1. Does having insufficient knowledge about the usage of grammar and speech
affect the student’s daily activities? If yes, what are those activities?
• 2. What will be the advantages of the students that have sufficient knowledge
about the right usage of grammar and speech?
• 3. What are the possible causes for the difficulties in grammar and speech
according to the students?
• 4. What are the possible activities that can help the students to improve their
capability in speaking and writing in English language?
REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE
• Ally A. Zhou, an associate professor of TESOL at Oklahoma City University, Michael
Busch, a teacher in the English Language Program in Saginaw Valley State University, and
Alister Cumming, a professor and Head of the Centre for Educational Research on
Languages and Literacies (CERLL, formerly the Modern Language Center) at the Ontario
Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto (2014) investigated the views of
learners and teachers on learning grammar in writing tasks. The results show that there is
limited correspondence between the intentions of learners and teachers for grammar
teaching. Learners were found to hold the view that learning specific grammar rules would
help in their writing tasks whereas the teachers focused on higher level writing skills.
Therefore, a mismatch exists between students’ and teachers’ views on grammar teaching.
• To lend an insight into the kind of difficulty young Myanmar
learners have been internalizing grammar rules and putting
them to use, a look at some common difficulties faced by
learners from other language backgrounds would be in order.
• Among perspectives on difficulties faced by Asian learners of
English, distinction between singular and plural forms is one
that has gained the attention of several researchers. Newbrook
(2006) observes the lack of expected plural -s in nouns after
‘one of to be common in Hong Kong English. Deterding and
Salbrina (2013) also found the widespread omission of the
plural suffix -s after one of and another of in the writings of
learners in Brunei.
• Kirkpatrick (2010) notes a Laotian speaker saying some of my friend to mean
one of my friends. Budge (1989) and Newbrook (2006) also notice the use of
singular nouns after one of the writings by Malaysian ESL learners. The
occurrence of this common difficulty among Asian learners of English has led to
the assumption that some non-standard grammatical features are shared in the
language production of ESL/EFL learners ASEAN nations and that this may give
rise to a regional variety (Kirkpatrick, 2010). It seems that the occurrence of
singular nouns after one of, another of and each of is shared in the Southeast
Asian region. It is possible that a regional variety of English might be emerging
in which such usage is acceptable. In addition to Southeast Asian English, in
Jamaica English, this feature, one of + singular noun, regularly occurs in
newspaper reports, in speech by prominent members of the business community
and in the conversation of university lecturers (Shields, 2006). Therefore, this
feature seems to be common in varieties of World English.
• Teachers of English to Myanmar young learners have observed the
students’ confusion of the two rules of English (third-person singular -s and
plural -s) in their language use. This confusion is possibly due to the use of
the same marker to signal noun plurality and verb singularity. Learning
third-person singular is also found to be quite problematic for them
because of the different linguistic representation in the Myanmar language.
Furthermore, Myanmar learners have difficulty in the use of regular past
tense marker ‘-ed’ since it does not have its phonetic equivalent in
Myanmar and omission of past tense markers in the colloquial Myanmar
language is a common practice. Employment of the suffix indicating the
progressive aspect ‘-ing’ is difficult for them and the learners are
frequently heard using the present progressive form inappropriately.
• In general, morpheme errors are basic but persistent and they can be
found even in the EFL writing of PhD students (James, 1998).
• It is believed by some researchers that language elements are acquired
in order, easier ones internalized before the more difficult ones.
Krashen (1987), for instance, claimed that English as a second
language learners, both children and adults, acquire the grammatical
morphemes in the order progressive aspect, plural -s, copula, auxiliary,
article, irregular past tense, regular past tense, third person singular -s,
and possessive -s. According to this theory, regular past tense are
presumably acquired later than progressive aspect and plural –s.
Whether this assumption can prove to be true for Myanmar learners
need to be verified by an analysis of the collected data.
• In the area of teaching and learning language especially
English, there have been some research conducted with the
purpose of finding the effective and suitable media to increase
the learning and teaching process. It cannot be denied that
media is needed to support the process of transferring the
material from teacher to student to gain the aim of learning
and teaching itself. Moreover, they compared one media with
another to get the most effective media to reach the goal. In
this research the writer use some local and international
journal as the references in doing his research.
• The first was a study entitled “A Classroom Action
Research: The Use of Language Chunks to Develop
Students’ Speaking Skill in Year Five Students of
Elementary School” conducted by Lasriati Manulang
(2010). Her study aimed at finding out how language
chunks were effective in teaching speaking for young
learners. Based on her study, the teacher can use
language chunks as medium to improve student’s ‟
ability in speaking, especially for young learners.
• Another study was focused on Junior High School students
Second reference was a study entitled: The Use of Language
Chunks in Teaching Transactional Spoken Text to Improve
Students’ Speaking Skill (An action Research at the Eight
Grader Students of State Junior High School 01 Pecalungan
Batang in the Academic Year of 2011/2012) conducted by
Burhanudin (2012). His study aimed at finding out the student’s
improvement in speaking English and the effectiveness of using
chunks in teaching speaking. Based on his study the use of
lexical chunks was effective in improving students‟ speaking
skill.
• The third reference was a study entitled: The Use of Single Slot
Subtitution Drills to Teach Simple Present Tense for The
Seventh Grader Students of SMP N 1 Bawang, Batang in the
academic year of 2010/2011 conducted by Kakariza Purwito
(2011). His study aimed at finding out the contribution of single
slot substitution drills to the development of the students‟
mastery in simple present tense.
• In addition, a study conducted by ZoёBogart (2011) entitled:
Don’t Let’s Try to Break this Down: Teasing Apart Lexical
Chunks. In his study Bogart proved that lexical chunks play an
important role in proficient and fluent language use.
• The other study was a study conducted by Paul Doyle (2009)
entitled: Lexical bundles in Classroom Discourse a corpus-
based approach to tracking disciplinary variation and
knowledge construction. The study focused on recurrent word
sequences, or lexical bundles, as a markers of disciplinary
variation in a corpus of primary and secondary teacher talk.
• This study also mention some functional categories of lexical
bundles. Based on the previous studies, the writer tries to solve
the problem in improving students speaking skill using lexical
bundles. This research is going to reveal how effective is lexical
bundles in developing students‟ speaking ability.