An error analysis of subordinating conjunctions in written examinations of Vietnamese secondary school students

Abstract

Among syntactic features of English, conjunctions in general and subordinating conjunctions in particular are one of the factors which decides the meaning of a sentence. In Vietnam, conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions were taught in English of the secondary school curriculum. In fact, many students might struggle with this grammatical category. However, little has been done on subordinating conjunction errors in Vietnamese students’ written examinations. This study investigated subordinating conjunction errors in written examinations produced by Vietnamese secondary students as well as analyzed main types of subordinating conjunction errors that they encounter. Two hundred secondary students, grades 6, 7, 8 at Ly Thuong Kiet secondary school in Da Nang took part in the study. Data were collected from the two written tests and questionnaires delivered to those 200 students. Using error analysis as the main method, the study suggested that there are four types of students’ subordinating conjunction errors: omission, addition, misordering, and misformation. Among 178 items of errors, there were 121 misformation errors (accounting for 68%), 31 omission errors (making up 17%), 17 addition errors (10%), and 9 misordering errors (5%). In addition, the findings from the analysis of the subordinating conjunction errors in students’ written examinations suggested that the most dominant error is misformation error which had the frequency of 78%. The second most frequent error was omission with the frequency of 14%. The third most common error was addition with the frequency of 7%. The least frequent error was misordering with the frequency of only 1%. It is important to lay a firm foundation of grammar knowledge and motivate students, teachers may employ more interesting approaches in teaching English in order to make students more interested in learning English (starting with some examples fr