The Analysis of Grammatical Errors in University Students’ Essays

This study aims to identify and analyze grammatical errors in student essays. In this case, every student's grammatical error consisting of errors in the use of diction, syntactic structure and meaning were identified and described in detail within the framework of the correct grammatical rules. This research was conducted using a qualitative descriptive method because the data collected was in the form of language use, especially grammatical errors. The subject of this research is English Education Study Program students who joined essay writing courses. Meanwhile, the object of research was grammatical errors in student essays. The data were collected through the collection of student essays obtained from the end-of-semester test and interview guide. The percentage of grammatical errors made by students in their essays in sequence were as follows; fragments: 280 (17.5%), runs on: 235 (14.7%), verb forms and verb tense: 225 (14.1%), passive: 220 (13.8%), linking verb deletion: 160 (10 %), plural disagreement: 120 (7.5%), unclear reference: 115 (7.2%), proposition misuse 89: (5.6%), subject-verb disagreement: 80 (5%), and parallelism: 74 (4.6%). Grammatical errors that needed to be considered more seriously were parallelism and passivity, which, although they look low in percentage terms, for they were rarely used in student essays; but when both forms were present, the grammatical construction tended to be wrong. In addition, both forms were also difficult to understand, compared to other types of errors that could be learned quickly.

Reporting Verbs and Related Syntactic Choices in Students' Theses: A Study of Two Disciplines

Adopting Hyland's (2002) framework of reporting words (RVs), the paper investigates the use of RVs in Master's theses written in English by students of two disciplines, Economics and Management and Natural Resources. The data were drawn from two sub-corpora, each consisting of 82 Literature Reviews, where other authors' research is summarised and commented on. Besides determining the most frequent communicative functions, in this paper, the RVs are further analysed in terms of the verb tense, voice, and subject-agent. The findings revealed significant differences between the two disciplines. In the former, most RVs were in the present active with named-author as the subject, conveying a neutral attitude towards the reported message and neutrally summarising previous research outcomes. Most RVs were in the past tense in the latter, reporting on past research procedures or outcomes. The findings reveal infrequent use of evaluative or critical verbs. Each discipline's predominant choice may suggest writers' lower ability to highlight the cited sources' direct relevance to their research. The study hopes to contribute to the efficacy of teaching English for Academic Purposes to non-native speakers. It has pedagogical implications for academic writing in both undergraduate and postgraduate courses at non-philological tertiary education institutions.

“Dollars and Nicotine”—Construction Mechanism of Evaluative Meaning in Political Speeches

Objectives: Economy and health are the most basic guarantee for a country’s stable development, they are also mandatory themes in every US President’s State of the Union Address. These two issues will directly determine the Congress and people’s evaluation towards the president’s governing capacity. Based on the binary division of explicit and implicit evaluation, taking the economic (employment and tax reform) and health (nicotine and drug addiction) of Trump’s State of the Union Address as data, this study has carried out a comparative analysis on the construction of evaluation meaning, attempting to build the evaluation model. We found that, Trump shows a very strong preference for implicit or indirect evaluation, which includes various graduation resources, infused process of AMOUNT and QUALITY, shared knowledge, specific numerals and verb tense. A closer analysis indicates that, under different themes, different constructing mechanisms have been utilized to form or strengthen the evaluation implication. To be specific: (1) both explicit and implicit resource are applied in constructing the evaluative meaning; (2) at different stages under the same theme, the constructing model shows difference, with the explicit resources being more prominent at the beginning or ending stage. In the body part, both explicit and implicit resources are of prominence, which tend to cooperate with each other, evoking or strengthening the established evaluative meaning. It proves that different types of evaluative resources show different degrees of prominence across stages within same theme.

CAUGHT IN A CROSSFIRE: CAMPAIGN SPEECHES OF PRESIDENT RODRIGO ROA DUTERTE (PRRD)

Through the use of critical discourse analysis, this study aimed to analyze PRRD’s campaign speeches with the purpose of establishing its discursive patterns. The study employed the descriptive-qualitative design which utilized Critical Discourse Analysis, anchored with Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) by Halliday. Results show the highest frequency of the following lexico-grammatical features: modals will, would, should, and shall; pronoun I (me); and verb tense present simple. Results also reveal that verbal process constitutes the highest in terms of transitivity, while it is positive median politeness for modality. Also, the analysis reveals that the informative, regulatory, and instrumental are the dominant functions of language used by PRRD. Based on the findings, PRRD stressed his campaign speeches with willingness, determination, certainty, and fortitude, with greater involvement of himself; PRRD had gone extra-mile to attack the personalities of the other parties for self-projection and self-promotion, along with the expression of enthusiasm, optimism, and determination to elicit support from the populace; and PRRD focused on neutralizing the asymmetrical power relations that existed between him and the electorate, but with the emphasis of control, and needs of his countrymen. KEYWORDS—Critical Discourse Analysis, Campaign Speeches, Language Functions, Discourse Features, Transitivity, Modality

English and the use of the simple past in Dutch

The global dominance of English has resulted in contact-induced change in many of the world’s languages. While lexical influence is perhaps the most widespread and the most visible form of change, there are indications that English may also be influencing languages on a structural level. In this article, we investigate a case of potential contact-induced structural change in the verb tense system of Dutch. Non-standard use of the simple past (instead of the standard present perfect) has been noticed for some time, and often linked to English influence. Based on an acceptability judgment questionnaire, we show that there is little evidence for language change in this feature in apparent time, but that judgments do depend on raters’ exposure to English, with higher exposure correlating with more positive judgments. This suggests that contact-induced change through diffusion may be a factor in the use of this construction.

ANALYZE THE USE OF PROGRESSIVE VERB ON SPONGEBOB MOVIES SERIES

Progressive verb or continuous tense is a verb tense that uses to describe an action or activity that still ongoing. This progressive verb can be in past, present, and future tense. This article inspects progressive verbs in SpongeBob SquarePants Movie Series. Descriptive qualitative is the method of this article. It analyzes the distribution of progressive verb on the movie series, and which one from the progressive verb form that most distribution in movie series.

Vowels Reading Of Arabic Present Tense In Yaf’al Form For Lip And Coronal Articulation/ Pembacaan Vokal Pola Fiil Mudhori Yaf’al Bagi Artikulasi Bibir Dan Koronal

The Arabic vowel consists of three main vowels namely /a/ (fathah), the vowel /i/ (kasrah), and the vowel /u/ (dhammah). This study aims to analyze the vowels of the Arabic present tense in the pattern' af'al which is determined by the arrangement of letters. This study also aims to help read active verbs of yaf’al Arabic among Arabic language students who have difficulty determining the correct vowel of the three vowel fractions. In addition, this study can help linguists in general and Arabic in particular to determine the vowel reading of the letter 'ain (ع) on the active verb pattern of modern Arabic' af'al which is divided into vowels / a / (fathah), vowel /i/ (kasrah), and the vowel /u/ (dammah). This study uses a qualitative method. Samples of this study were taken from Al-Khalil dictionary as well as al-Ma'aniy online dictionary. Only three syllable active verbs are analyzed as the three syllable active verbs in Arabic will change to three different vowels when in the verb tense. The analysis is focused on the arrangement of the letters' ain (ع) in the past tense verb. Clearly, the study's findings have shown that the arrangement of 'ain (ع) on the active Arabic verb of the past affects the vowel on the 'ain (ع) active verb of the present Arabic. At the same time, this study provides an alternative that shows that the vowels at the letter 'ain (ع) of the active Arabic verb of the present time are non-random.

An Analysis of the Linguistic Errors Made by Students in Saudi Arabian Schools in the Acquisition of the Auxiliary “Do”: A Comparison Between Boys’ and Girls’ Performances

Recently there has been an upsurge in research into why students of foreign languages make mistakes. There have been many reasons given including interference of the mother tongue and over-generalisation of the rules of the language being studied. This research is concerned with the reasons for mistakes but will concentrate on a particular focus, i.e. the mistakes made by English language students regarding the auxiliary verb “do”. This is seen as a particularly difficult area for many foreign students of English language as this linguistic term does not feature in many other languages and is, therefore, a problem for some language students to grasp.It is hoped that reasons for the many mistakes (i.e. omissions, incorrect verb tense, etc.) can be identified and that from this identification, methods can be found to teach this term in a way that will allow students to grasp the concept and retain it throughout their language- learning careers.This dissertation is based on an error analysis of English written performances by students in the Third Grade (equivalent to Ninth Grade elsewhere) of the Intermediate Boys and Girls’ schools in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It focuses on the examination and analysis of the students’ performances in a translation test. This should reveal information about some of the students’ errors in the acquisition of the auxiliary “do”, and other factors which might affect their English language learning. Furthermore, this dissertation seeks to find out whether there are any disparities in the responses of each of the two groups to the translation test which may be attributable to gender.