Abstract
This paper investigated the Thai students’ mastery of parts of speech in English. It is urgent to conduct this study because it would explore the students’ difficulties in identifying parts of speech when producing grammatical sentences and then assist them in tackling the language challenges. The data consisted of 30 written reflections produced by students belonging to two classes and were collected from all of the 30 students of batch 2018 pursuing their Bachelor of Arts degrees at Xavier Learning Community (XLC) in Chiang Rai, Thailand. This error analysis study examined the (mis)use of the four main parts of speech or syntactic categories, namely adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs in written reflections of XLC students. Results showed that in general the students still faced challenges in recognizing and using parts of speech grammatically in writing reflections. The highest number of mistakes involved adjectives, namely 32 times (46.37%), and consecutively followed by nouns, 18 (26.08%), verbs, 15 (21.73%) and adverbs, 4 (5.79%).
Highlights
Among the four English skills, writing is widely considered as the most difficult and challenging skill in English to be acquired by the second language (L2) and English as a foreign language (EFL) learners (Phuket & Othman, 2015). Bram (2012) states that writing is complicated for the reason that it is a “process and product” which involves a lot of learners’ energy
As most students were taught that the word ending –ing in English was considered as ‘gerund’ or ‘noun’, it can be explained from the examples above that Xavier Learning Community (XLC) students used the words challenging and boring as nouns without being aware that these two words normally function as adjectives
This study aimed to examine theuse of the four main parts of speech or syntactic categories, namely adjectives, adverbs, nouns and verbs in written reflections of Xavier Learning Community (XLC) students
Summary
Among the four English skills, writing is widely considered as the most difficult and challenging skill in English to be acquired by the second language (L2) and English as a foreign language (EFL) learners (Phuket & Othman, 2015). Bram (2012) states that writing is complicated for the reason that it is a “process and product” which involves a lot of learners’ energy. In composing grammatical and semantic writing, learners need basic language skills including profound knowledge of grammar structure, and sufficient vocabulary (Hinnon, 2014; see Baron, 2020 & Murtisari, 2020). Watcharapunyawong and Usaha (2013) claim that some negative effects holding back learners’ writing proficiency can be found within those who possess inadequate linguistic knowledge and or imperfect language capability. Vol 4, No 2; 2020 fruitfully achieve writing skills (Hasyim, 2002). Despite many difficulties faced by learners in acquiring writing expertise, being a proficient writer becomes a major goal for many learners. Mastering writing skills is advantageous for learners in both educational and professional aspects
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