THE ERROR ANALYSIS OF TENSES IN THE ENGLISH WRITTEN TESTS IN FIRST-GRADE STUDENTS IN THE TRAFFIC AND TRANSPORT ENGINEERING VOCATIONAL HIGH SCHOOL IN ZEMUN

Abstract

Seeing that tenses in the English language are distributed and perceived differently from the Serbian ones, this paper deals with the error analysis of tenses in the written tests of the first graders in the Traffic and Transport Engineering High School. The aim of this research is to determine the types of mistake, their sources and causes. The first part of the paper deals with the theory about error analysis, error description, its explanation and detailed error classification and the methodology, whereas the second one focuses on the research itself, the analysis and interpretation of results and the ways of error correction. Regarding error classifications, some authors define the same terms differently (developmental errors) and it is necessary to opt for one definition. In addition to this, in the literature the names of errors that spring from two different sources are not coined except for ambiguous errors (a combination of a developmental and interlingual error). In this paper such errors will be named ambiguous. As for methodology, 75 students aged 15-16 were involved in the study since the author was teaching these students. Therefore, the author can check whether some of the strategies in classroom were successful or not. The subjects enrolled on different vocational profiles and had a modest and low overall score. Most participants have got beginner and elementary level of English even though they had been learning it for eight years in primary school. Apart from the poor knowledge, other factors that impede the teaching and learning processes are undisciplined, unmotivated, uninterested, irresponsible and neglected students. To obtain data, the researcher used a written test including controlled practice – translation exercises and answering basic questions. The results have shown that students tend to make twice as many errors in the form than in the usage. According to the surface structure taxonomy, the former are mostly errors of omission, misformation and addition, the latter are almost all errors of misformation. Considering the source and cause, morphological errors are predominately ambiguous i.e. they cannot be explained using only one source. Surprisingly, the rest of morphological mistakes are intralingual due to false concepts hypothesized whereas there are only few interlingual ones. Errors in usage are almost all intralingual stemming from mostly ignorance of rule restriction and overgeneralization. To reduce the number of errors, an error is a starting point in teaching and learning. After the test, the teacher can interview students individually to answer the same questions to see whether they can notice their own mistakes and state the reason for such a choice. Thus the teacher can discriminate between errors and mistakes. The teacher can also give corrective feedback explicitly in explaining interlingual errors comparing mother tongue and target language and implicitly in explaining intralingual ones using minimal pairs. Given mixed ability classes, students can attend remedial classes where they will practise form-based tasks and additional classes where they will practise usage of tenses. Students can also be handed out pieces of paper containing their mistakes and can do peer-editing. Since dialogue in pairs proved successful, the teacher may include famous film catchphrases and introduce more exercises in terms of listening and speaking. However, at the end of the day, students should take responsibility for their own learning.