ERROR RATE AND OVERUSE OF INFLECTIONAL BOUND MORPHEMES IN THE IELTS SPEAKING TEST: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

This study casts light on the use of five inflectional morphemes, namely progressive\ present participle -ing, plural -s, past tense -ed (for both regular and irregular verbs), past participle -en and third-person -s by three candidates at three different band levels in the IELTS Speaking test. The candidates were to take part in a simulated IELTS Speaking test, and their performances were transcribed verbatim to calculate the error rate and overuse errors of the five morphemes. The results showed that the candidates’ use of different morphemes followed distinctive features. In terms of the error rate, past participle -en was the group where candidates made the most mistakes. Third person -s came second, past tense -ed was in the third place, plural -s came next and progressive\present participle was the group where candidates made the least mistakes. With respect to overuse, plural -s was the morpheme which was overused the most. Third person -s was in the second place and followed closely were progressive\present participle -ing and past tense -ed, respectively. Past participle -en was the group with no overuse errors. Some pedagogical implications were then offered for improvement in using morphemes in speaking English.