A CORPUS-BASED STUDY OF SIMPLE PAST TENSE ERRORS IN MALAYSIAN LEARNERS’ ENGLISH WRITING

Abstract

In mastering the English language, learners need to be able to comply with its grammatical rules. Most previous corpus-based studies about learners’ grammar errors have examined the non-Malaysian context. Therefore, the overarching aim of this study is to investigate simple past tense errors in Malaysian English as a Second Language (ESL) secondary school learners’ writing. Employing a corpus-based error analysis approach, it specifically intends to identify the types of simple past tense errors in Malaysian ESL secondary school learners’ writing and the frequency of simple past tense errors in Malaysian ESL secondary school learners’ writing. To this end, the English of Malaysian School Students (EMAS) corpus, in particular the sub-corpus of Malaysian learners’ narrative essays was analysed based on two main frameworks. The Error Analysis Framework was adapted for the error analysis procedure, while the Surface Strategy Taxonomy Framework was used for the classification of types of errors. Online corpus tools such as Part-Of-Speech (POS) the Constituent Likelihood Automatic Word-Tagging System (CLAWS) and Antconc version 3.5.8 were employed as the instruments of the study. The findings of the study showed that there are three types of simple past tense errors in the learners’ writing, namely Error of Omission, Error of Addition and Error of Misformation. Misformation is the most popular type of simple past tense error committed by the learners. The findings of the study would be useful for the Malaysian context of ESL learners’ curriculum design and pedagogy.