Use of English grammatical morphemes among L1-Thai ...

USE OF ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL

MORPHEMES AMONG L1-THAI LEARNERS

BY

MISS SUWAPORN CHUMKAMON

AN INDEPENDENT STUDY PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL

FULFILLMENT OF

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS IN

TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

LANGUAGE INSTITUTE, THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

ACADEMIC YEAR 2017

COPYRIGHT OF THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

Ref. code: 25605621032357MVW

USE OF ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL MORPHEMES

AMONG L1-THAI LEARNERS

BY

MISS SUWAPORN CHUMKAMON

AN INDEPENDENT STUDY PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL

FULFILLMENT OF

THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

MASTER OF ARTS IN

TEACHING ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

LANGUAGE INSTITUTE, THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

ACADEMIC YEAR 2017

COPYRIGHT OF THAMMASAT UNIVERSITY

Ref. code: 25605621032357MVW

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Independent Study Paper Title USE OF ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL

MORPHEMES AMONG L1-THAI LEARNERS

Author Miss Suwaporn Chumkamon

Degree Master of Arts

Major Field/Faculty/University Teaching English as a Foreign Language

Language Institute, Thammasat University

Independent Study Paper Advisor Associate Professor Dr. Supong Tangkiengsirisin

Academic Years 2017

ABSTRACT

This present research aimed to investigate the use of English grammatical

morphemes among L1-Thai learners, focusing on four grammatical morphemes:

present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s. The

participants were 60 Thai native speaking students. They were divided into two

groups in equal number with 30 persons in a high level group and 30 persons in a low

level group based on their English Ordinary National Education Test scores (O-NET

scores). Participants were assigned to undertake a Grammaticality Judgment Task by

identifying 25 sentences including grammatical sentences and ungrammatical

sentences, then correct grammatical errors of the sentences that they marked as

ungrammatical sentences. The results from data analysis and error analysis showed

the low level group have highest scores in plural –s, then present progressive –ing, 3rd

person singular –s and possessive -’s, while the high level group had highest scores in

plural –s, followed by 3rd person singular –s, present progressive –ing and possessive

–’s. Errors revealed in this research were addition errors, omission errors and

misformation errors. Plausible reasons for these errors were classified as

overgeneralization, incomplete application of rules, ignorance of rule restriction and

L1- interference.

Keywords: grammatical morpheme, error, grammaticality judgment task, morpheme

acquisition, second language acquisition

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere thanks to chairman and my advisor

Associate Professor Dr. Supong Tangkiengsirisin for his kind assistance, extremely

helpful, suggestions and the support offered with warm encouragement. I wish to

thank my co-advisor Assistant Professor Dr. Supakorn Phoocharoensil for useful

comments and warm support. I also would like to thank Dr. Rangsiya Chaengchenkit

for her valuable suggestions and understanding.

I would take this opportunity to thank all staff members of the Language

Institute of Thammasat University, especially Ms.Jiraporn Petchthong for her great

support, warm encouragement and providing the facilities to complete my

independent study.

Finally, I am deeply grateful to my family, especially my mother for her warm

encouragement, understanding, taking good care of me and her endless love. I would

like to thank my friends and my work colleagues for their supports on some work

duties during my study.

Suwaporn Chumkamon

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT (1)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (2)

LIST OF TABLES (6)

LIST OF FIGURES (7)

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS (8)

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background of the study 1

1.2 Research Questions 3

1.3 Objectives of the study 3

1.4 Significance of the study 4

CHAPTER 2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE 5

2.1 Second Language Acquisition (SLA) 5

2.2 Grammatical Morpheme Acquisition 8

2.2.1 Definition of Grammatical Morpheme 8

2.2.2 Acquisition of Grammatical Morpheme 8

2.2.3 Related criticism research 14

2.2.4 Related similar research 16

2.2.5 Difference in L2 Grammatical Morpheme 17

2.3 Interlanguage (IL) 18

2.4 The Processability Theory (PT) 19

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2.5 Error Analysis (EA) 21

2.5.1 Causes of Error 21

2.5.2 Categories of Errors 23

2.6 Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT) 24

2.7 Data Scoring 25

CHAPTER 3 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 28

3.1 Participants 28

3.2 Research Materials 28

3.3 Threats to validity and reliability 30

3.3.1 Validity 30

3.3.2 Reliability 31

3.4 Data Collection 31

3.5 Data Scoring 32

3.6 Data Analysis 33

CHAPTER 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 35

4.1 Results 35

4.1.1 The Use of Grammatical Morphemes 35

4.1.2 Consistency of The Result 37

4.1.3 The Errors in Grammaticality Judgment Task 41

4.2 Discussion 42

4.2.1 Addition Error 43

4.2.2 Omission Error 44

4.2.3 Misformation Error 45

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 46

5.1 Conclusions 46

5.2 Recommendations 48

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REFERENCES 50

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A 57

BIOGRAPHY 60

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LIST OF TABLES

Tables Page

2.1 Table 1. Order of Morphemes by L1 English speaking (Brown, 1973) 9

2.2 Table 2. Order of L1 English speaking (de Villiers and de Villiers, 1973) 10

2.3 Table 3. Order of L2 English speaking (Dulay and Burt, 1973) 11

2.4 Table 4. Order of L2 English speaking (Dulay and Burt, 1974) 12

2.5 Table 5. Order of L2 adult (Bailey, Madden, and Krashen, 1974) 13

2.6 Table 6. Order of L2 Japanese ESL (Hakuta, 1974) 14

3.1 Table 7. Item Specification in the Grammaticality Judgment Task 30

4.1 Table 8. The score of the present progressive –ing in High Level

Proficiency Group 38

4.2 Table 9. The score of the present progressive –ing in Low Level


4.3 Table 10. The score of the plural –s in High Level Proficiency Group 39

4.4 Table 11. The score of the plural –s in Low Level Proficiency Group 39

4.5 Table 12. The score of the possessive –’s in High Level Proficiency Group 39

4.6 Table 13. The score of the possessive –’s in Low Level Proficiency Group 39

4.7 Table 14. The score of the 3 rd person singular –s in High Level


4.8 Table 15. The score of the 3 rd person singular –s in Low Level


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LIST OF FIGURES

Figures Page

4.1 The scores of each morpheme in the Grammaticality Judgment Task 36

4.2 The percentages of each morpheme in the Grammaticality Judgment Task 37

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Symbols/Abbreviations Terms

EA

GJT

IL

L1

L2

PT

SLA

Error Analysis

Grammaticality Judgment Test

Interlanguage

First Language

Second Language

Processability Theory

Second Language Acquisition

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

English language is accepted as the first priority second language in Thailand,

where Thai language is the official language. Most Thai students start to learn English

at the age of four or five years old; however; students who live in the countryside may

start learning English around the age of six or seven years old. In many studies of

English error analysis among Thai students, it is indicated that Thai children face

difficulties with English grammatical morphemes. Acquiring English language,

especially grammatical morphemes, it is one of the biggest obstacles in learning.

In Thailand, the National Institute of Educational Testing Service (NIETS)

arranges the Ordinary National Education Test (O-NET), a test of English proficiency

of Thai students in secondary school grade 9 (M.3) and grade 12 (M.6).

Although Thai students learn English since the beginning of study in primary

school, their English ability still does not reach intermediate level as set by the

National Institute of Educational testing service (NIETS). How to improve foreign

language learning in Thailand is a priority topic. The Ministry of Education Thailand

have been trying to find out how there can be effective learning and keeping

improvement.

There are many factors that are involved in how to acquire language well and

many factors which could affect one person’s learning English proficiency - both

internal and external factors; for example, second language acquisition, first language

interference, learners’ ability, curriculum, teaching technique, teacher’s quality and

learning materials.

For Rungrojsuwan (2015), the result of his study showed that although

intermediate language proficiency university students have more English knowledge

than low language proficiency university students, they still faced morphological

difficulty.

Order of morpheme acquisition studies started in the 1970s, and focused on

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the uses of grammatical morphemes in English acquisition among first language (L1)

and second language (L2) learners. Brown (1973) started a longitudinal study of three

children: Adam, Eve and Sara, who learned English as their first language and native

language. Brown spotlighted how these three native-speaking children established

fourteen grammatical morphemes by letting them produce spontaneous conversation

utterances. He finally found a similar order of fourteen grammatical morphemes from

Adam, Eve and Sara. The children acquire Present progressive –ing earliest and face

difficulty with 3rd person singular -s.

de Villiers and de Villiers (1973) did a cross-sectional study by applying

Brown’s (1973) method with L1 English speaking children, a total of 21 persons.

They found participants exhibited a similar order of grammatical morpheme

acqusition as shown in Brown’s study.

Dulay and Burt (1973) investigated the grammatical morpheme acquisition

order from 151 Spanish children who learnt English as a second language (ESL).

They applied a new research instrument - the Bilingual Syntax Measure or BSM. The

results from ESL learners remained similar to the order of grammatical morphemes in

Brown (1973) and de Villiers and de Villiers (1973) research.

Dulay and Burt (1974) adapted the Bilingual Syntax Measure in a cross-

sectional study to confirm their previous research. They conducted a study with L2

participants: 60 Spanish and 55 Chinese children. This research provided great

evidence supporting previous morpheme acquisition research. In summary, there is a

natural order of morpheme acquisition which is universal regardless of age, language

background and time duration of study.

Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974) employed the Bilingual Syntax Measure

(BSM) for their morpheme acquisition study with Spanish and non-Spanish adults to

investigate participants in different language backgrounds. The result displayed the

same as Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974).

According to Brown (1973), de Villiers and de Villiers (1973), Dulay and Burt

(1973, 1974) and Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974) found the similar order of

grammatical morpheme acquisition in their research. It claimed that acquisition order

of English grammatical morphemes is universal across both first language learners

(L1) and second language learners (L2). For grammatical error, they indicated

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children usually have difficulty on Possessive -’s and 3rd person singular –s.

In a previous study involving English grammatical morphemes in Thai

students, Sridhanyarat (2013) investigated whether the acquisition order of Thai ESL

learners was consistent with the pattern found in Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974)

study. He found that the results did not support Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974),

the acquisition order between high and low proficient students was inconsistent, only

present progressive –ing acquired earliest. He also found that low proficiency Thai

students face difficulty on possessive –’s in translation task, but both high and low

proficiency students have difficulty with four grammatical morphemes: present

progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s in a

Grammaticality Judgment Task.

Yordchim and Gibbs (2014) showed some evidence from error analysis of

English inflection among Thai university students, a sample group of Thai students in

the business field. The study showed common errors in the student writing were tense

and aspect 3rd person present simple, morpheme –s or –es after o, present continuous

–ing after e and past simple –ed.

To examine the use of English grammatical morpheme among L1-Thai

learners, this study aimed to investigate the use of four grammatical morphemes,

present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s, by

applying a Grammaticality Judgment Task.

1.2 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

This research aimed to investigate: “To what extent are four grammatical

morphemes: present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person

singular –s used by L1-Thai learners?”

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

Since limited time to research Independent Study, there is only one objectives

of the study: “To investigate the use of four grammatical morphemes; present

progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s among L1-Thai

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learners.”

1.4 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY

English is the first second language that Thai students have to learn in formal

education in Thailand. Even though Thai people have been studying English in the

class for many years and English fluency holds the key to success for them to get

good jobs after finishing school, most Thai people still face difficulties in using

English to communicate, both in the classes and their real lives.

Bancha (2010) said although Thailand focused on providing English to

students not less than 10 years in the school experience, the curriculum of Thai

schools and universities could not meet the expectation of employers or workplaces

requiring good English competence employees.

Research findings about students’ difficulties on grammatical morphemes

would help teachers to understand students’ difficulties in learning English and also

help teachers to make effective teaching plans. Pica (1983) mentioned that for SLA

study, research findings of grammatical morphemes brought beneficial data to

manage the teaching order of morphemes. It could be suggested that when teachers

explored which grammatical morpheme is the most common for the students and

which one shows difficulty, then they can design the effective course for their

students.

This Independent Study aimed to observe significant aspect of teaching

method; the results that obtained from this study should be a benefit to understand the

difficulties of grammatical morpheme and grammatical errors among Thai secondary

school students.

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CHAPTER 2

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION (SLA)

Second Language Acquisition (SLA) (Ellis, 2005; Gass & Selinker, 2008)

cited in (Celik, H., 2015) has focused on how second language learners achieve in

other languages after they have acquired their first language or native language.

Researchers defended that the knowledge of Second Language Acquisition is a must

for teachers, it can help them to success in language teaching and learning design. The

studies in the field of Second Language Acquisition motivated development of many

other issues, for example, how language learners developed grammatical morpheme

usage in the target language.

The goal of SLA is the description of learners’ linguistic development. Rod

(1994) claimed that the ability to use language successfully required at least one

aspect of language acquisition including phonology, morphology, syntax and

semantics; however, some researchers counted extensive vocabulary as the last

language acquisition aspect.

Input material was claimed as one fundamental factor to develop human

language acquisition (Lightbown & Spada (2006), Alison Mackey (1999)). Long

(1981) stated the input was explained as the linguistic forms which consisted of

morphemes, words and utterances.

In Long’s sample of well-demonstrated findings, he researched various

meaningful factors of verbal interaction called aspects of linguistic environment,

which are outstanding in Second Language Acquisition (Khalid M. Abalhassan,

1997). Three main aspects of interaction could be distinguished as: input, production

(output), and feedback:

1. Input

Input was the language that the learners explored from their environments, it

included four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Input was defined as

pre-modified input and modified input.

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Pre-modified input was the learners themselves language proficiency; it was

used to categorize learners’ language level in the purpose of increasing their language

comprehension. For learners who could not distinguish meanings or could not make

adjustments, the modified input was to be assigned to their study to help them better

acquire new ones (Alison Mackey, 1999).

Modified input was an adapted speech which adult used to guide children for

their language acquisition (Lightbown & Spada, 2006, P. 202) and also included the

speech offered to language learners by native speakers or other language learners.

Modified input came from three sources: Foreigner-talk, Teacher-Talk and

Interlanguage-talk (Krashen, 1982, P.24). Some research indicated that second

language learners basically use modified input to access the target language.

According to Krashen’s input hypothesis, Second Language Acquisition

would occur when the learners understood input which contained grammatical form

as ‘i+1’ ; “i” stood for one’s language level and “+1” mentioned an advanced level

higher than current level of learner’s interlanguage. He suggested that the right level

of input would be expressed naturally when learners succeeded in making themselves

understood in communication (Krashen, 1985). The Input Hypothesis, which was

central to Second Language Acquisition depended on comprehensible input.

As mentioned above, most of the Second Language Acquisition theories

underlined input recognition as a factor of the language acquiring process. So, then it

could be assumed that the input was certainly necessary for Language Acquisition.

However input alone cannot promote second language learning, progress does not

show full effect in SLA until it involves interaction (Shumei Zhang, 2009).

2. Production (output)

Production (output) applies to all current language levels of learners, and is

establish in various interaction activities. Referring to Krashen (1982), an output

provokes advance process of language acquisition; it is commonly said if learners

need to go further on production, they need to produce.

Production not only helps to predict learner’s language skills, it could affect

the quality of the input of the learners. How production relates to SLA is that learners

firstly obtain feedback after composed sentences. When learners are obstructed by

higher language level obstacles, they often receive partner or teacher support to help

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them understand by clarifying their modified output. Learner’s partners should judge

how much to modify by seeing whether the listeners understood what they presented.

It is believed that a second language student who makes lots of mistakes will likely

receive more modified input than one who appears fluent in target language.

Swain (1995) argued for the importance of production, stating that when a

learner was trying to develop their target language, production played a crucial role as

it pushed the learner to try out new forms or modify other aspects into their next

presentation. Based on the output hypothesis, it is suggested learners must have

opportunities exchanging output with other learners to facilitate SLA (Alison Mackey,

1999).

3. Feedback

Long (1996) ’s Interaction Hypothesis suggested corrective feedback as a tool

which could help learners make connections between forms of language and learning

(Lightbown & Spada, 2006, P. 151).

Types of Corrective Feedback (Tedick, D. and Gortari, B. 1998)

1. Explicit correction. Teacher directly identifies incorrect points, then the

teacher provides the correct form.

2. Recast. Teacher does not directly identify incorrect points, but tries to

improve the error, or gives the correct answer.

3. Clarification request. Teacher will try to get them to reform or correct the

sentence if students show some mistakes or are still not clear on the meaning of

sentences.

4. Metalinguistic clues or Metalinguistic feedback. Students realize error

without offering correct forms. The teacher gives some clues by asking questions or

providing comments related to the correct forms.

5. Elicitation. This technique is where the teacher elicits the correct form from

the student directly by supplying utterance, asking some questions to help them, or

lets them reform the output. Elicitation questions differs from questions as it requires

more than a yes or no response.

6. Repetition. The teacher repeats the student's error and leads the student to

recognize it.

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2.2 GRAMMATICAL MORPHEME ACQUISITION

2.2.1 Definition of Grammatical Morpheme

“A morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of language that contains a

meaning and cannot be further divided” (Cook, 1993).

Grammatical Morpheme refers to a morpheme that has a role in

grammatical structure and function to specify the relationship between one lexical

morpheme and another.

Úrsula fontana ibáñez (2013) explains that morphemes divide into two

kinds; free morphemes and bound morphemes. Free morphemes can stand alone as

a word and have independent functions as words, for example, article the, copula be,

auxiliary be. Bound morphemes present as parts of words and cannot stand alone.

Most English bound morphemes are prefixes and suffixes, for example, plural -s, third

singular person -s , progressive -ing, past regular -ed, past irregular, possessive -’s.

Bound morphemes are recognized as inflectional morphemes and

derivational morphemes (Donald G. Ellis, 1999). Derivational morphemes could

change internal structures or forms of the base words (Lieber, 2010), they can modify

meaning of words according to its lexical and grammatical class. For example, –tion,

–ly. Inflectional morphemes engaged prefixes and suffixes that add to the base words

to show the grammatical relationship between inflectional morphemes and word

construction (Lieber, 2010). Inflectional morphemes do not affect the meaning but

they can modify the grammatical class of words, which changes the function of the

words, for example, grammatical features, tense, case, number or gender. For

example, the –ing progressive or the –s plural.

2.2.2 Acquisition of grammatical morpheme

The ability to acquire or learn language is human instinct (Chomsky,

1957), which implies that language acquisition is common to every human being.

The study of grammatical morpheme acquisition was begun in the 1970s

by Brown. Brown (1973) explored native English-speaking children’s acquisition

order of English inflectional morphology in his longitudinal study; he also proposed

that not all grammatical morphemes were acquired in the same time, some

morphemes were acquired early but some morphemes were acquired later.

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In 1973, Brown and his colleagues started a longitudinal study with three

native English speaking children: Adam, Eve and Sara, who were selected from 30

outstanding students. Brown targeted how three native English speaking children

established 14 grammatical morphemes by letting them produce spontaneous

conversation utterances. A scoring technique ‘Suppliance in Obligatory Context’

(SOC) was used for measurement and he claimed that topic of conversation would not

affect the percentage of morphemes when Suppliance In Obligatory Context was

applied (Brown, 1973). Children as subjects in the research had to provide 90 percent

correct morphemes in obligatory contexts; if they provided incorrect less than 90

percent or provided none, they would fail the test.

Brown found the order of 14 grammatical morphemes from Adam, Eve

and Sara, shown as the production of Brown’s morphological rules.

Table 1. Order of morphemes by L1 English speaking (Brown, 1973)

Order Morpheme

1 Present progressive -ing

2 In, on

3 In, on (same as order in no.2)

4 Plural –s

5 Past irregular

6 Possessive -’s

7 Uncontractible copula (is, am, are)

8 Articles (a, the)

9 Past regular (-ed)

10 Third person singular (-s)

11 Third person irregular

12 Uncontractible auxiliary (is, am, are)

13 Contractible copula

14 Contractible auxiliary

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After the Brown study in 1973, the topic of grammatical morpheme order

was concentrated on by many researchers as they attempted to find out the validity of

the results shown in the Brown study. This phenomenal activated researchers who

were in the field of second language acquisition.

de Villiers and de Villiers (1973) did a cross-sectional study of the

grammatical morphemes acquisition in children’s speech by applying Brown’s (1973)

method with first language (L1) English speaking children, a total 21 persons. They

found participants exhibited a similar order of grammatical morphemes as shown in

Brown’s study. In de Villiers and de Villiers’ study, the participants acquired plural –

s, and present progressive –ing early, then acquired possessive –’s, and at last

acquired 3rd person singular –s.

Table 2. Order of L1 English speaking (de Villiers and de Villiers, 1973)

Order Morpheme

1 Plural –s


3 Past irregular

4 Articles a/the

5 Contractible copular

6 Possessive -’s

7 Third person singular -s

8 Contractible auxiliary

Dulay and Burt (1973) investigated the grammatical morpheme

acquisition order following Brown’s study, but they decided to examine second

language (L2) English speaking children instead of first language (L1) English

speaking children. The participants were 151 Spanish children, aged six to eight years

olds who studied English as a second language (ESL). The children were divided into

three groups: the first group consisted of 95 Spanish children from California who

received extra formal English training. The second group consisted of 26 Spanish

children from Mexico who attended an English school but spoke Spanish as native

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language at home. The third group consisted of 30 Spanish children from New York

who attended a bilingual English and Spanish school.

Dulay and Burt applied a new research instrument - the Bilingual Syntax

Measure or BSM - to collected data from participants’ oral speeches. The Bilingual

Syntax Measure contained a set of color cartoon pictures for participants to explain

and a list of questions for researchers to guide participants’ oral speeches. The

researchers asked participants some questions to see their natural conversations and to

help them to elicit sentences which contained targeted grammatical morphemes.

Dulay and Burt employed a three-point scale to count participants’ production

accuracy, this was similar to the Brown’s concept of obligatory context (Úrsula

fontana ibáñez, 2013).

To evaluate each obligatory context, scoring was considered as follows:

No grammatical morpheme supplied = 0 point

(Ex. He go_ to school),

Misformed grammatical morpheme supplied = 0.5 point

(Ex. He going to school),

Correct grammatical morpheme supplied = 1 point

(Ex. He goes to school).

After data analysis, the results from the English Language Learners (ESL)

remained similar to those order of grammatical morphemes in Brown’s (1973) study

and de Villiers and de Villiers’s (1973) research. The result were as following for

acquisition order: plural –s and present progressive –ing early, then 3rd person

singular –s, and last acquired possessive –’s.

Table 3. Order of L2 English speaking (Dulay and Burt, 1973)

Order Morpheme

1 Plural –s


3 Contractible copular -’s

4 Contractible auxiliary -’s

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5 Articles

6 Past irregular


8 Possessive -’s

To confirm their previous research, Dulay and Burt (1974) adapted an

obligatory occasions method in their cross-sectional study in 1974. In this study they

conducted their research with second language (L2) participants consisting of 60

Spanish children and 55 Chinese children, who were different in first language (L1),

ages and environments. An obligatory occasions method activated participants to

produce verbal utterances which would convey more than one of the targeted

morphemes (Dulay and Burt, 1974). In the analysis process, the researchers employed

three methods: a group scoring, a group mean and syntax acquisition index (SAI),

which counted well-formed grammatical structures which participants produced

between testing processes. The collected data from oral speeches of the two groups

were compared. The result presented acquisitions ordering as present progressive –

ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s. This research provided great

evidence supporting previous morpheme acquisition research. The summary proposes

is that a natural order of morpheme acquisition is universal regardless of age, first

language background, environment and time duration of study.

Table 4. Order of L2 English speaking (Dulay and Burt, 1974)

Order Morpheme

1 Article a/the

2 Copula be


4 Plural -s

5 Auxiliary be

6 Past regular -ed

7 Past irregular ate

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8 Possessive -’s


Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974) employed Bilingual Syntax Measure

(BSM) for their morpheme acquisition study with second language adults. The sample

consisted of a total of 73 adults; 33 were Spanish participants and 40 were non-

Spanish participants. The study investigated these participants with different language

backgrounds for their adult acquisition order. There was the same result as displayed

in Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974); both Spanish and non-Spanish participants presented

a similar order of English grammatical morpheme acquisition: present progressive –

ing, plural –s, then 3rd person singular –s and lastly possessive –’s.

Table 5. Order of L2 adult (Bailey, Madden, and Krashen, 1974)

Order Morpheme


2 Contractible copular -’s

3 Plural –s

4 Articles

5 Contractible auxiliary -’s

6 Past irregular


8 Possessive -’s

Perkins, K., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1975) researched morphemes such as

progressive -ing, indefinite articles, definite articles, third person –s. They applied two

instruments: a translation task which required participants to translate first language

into English and a short video which participants were required to discuss in English.

The result showed the same acquisition order as Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974) and

Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974).

According to Brown (1973), Dulay and Burt (1973, 1974), de Villiers and

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de Villiers (1973), and Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974) and Perkins, K., &

Larsen-Freeman, D. (1975) found similar orders of grammatical morpheme

acquisition in their research. It was claimed that the acquisition order of English

grammatical morphemes was universal across both first language learners and second

language learners.

2.2.3 Related criticism research

Hakuta (1974) argued that his longitudinal study in the topic of second

language acquisition showed different acquisition order of English grammatical

morphemes from Brown’s (1973) and Dulay and Burt’s (1974) study. Hakuta

investigated a Japanese girl who learned English as a second language after she came

to USA. Hakuta collected the five-year-old girl’s spontaneous utterances once a week

and he found that there were positive and negative transfers from Japanese language,

which was the girl’s first language. By the end of the study, Hakuta concluded the

participant’s acquisition order was present progressive –ing, possessive –’s, plural –s,

then 3rd person singular –s. He concluded that the result from his longitudinal study

did not support the 1970’ study of acquisition order. One year later, Fathman (1975)

studied acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes with Korean learners

and Spanish learners and found similar results to those of Hakuta (Wagner, n.d.).

Table 6. Order of L2 Japanese ESL (Hakuta, 1974)

Order Morpheme


2 Possessive -’s

3 Past irregular

4 Plural -s

5 Articles


7 Past regular

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Sridhanyarat (2013) investigated whether acquisition order of Thai EFL

learners was consistent with the pattern found in Bailey, Madden, and Krashen’s

(1974) study and which English grammatical morpheme caused difficulty to Thai

EFL learners. The researcher aimed to investigate four grammatical morphemes:

plural –s, present progressive –ing, 3rd person singular –s and possessive –’s.

Participants were 80 Thai EFL undergraduate learners in Bangkok, Thailand. They

acquired Thai language as native and first language, then acquired English as second

language.

The researcher divided participants into two groups based on their

English national test scores: a high proficient group consisting of 40 persons and a

low proficient group consisting of 40 persons. Participants were asked to complete

two instruments: a Thai-to-English translation task and a grammaticality judgment

task. Data obtained from both tasks were analyzed to find out their acquisition order

of grammatical morphemes. At the conclusion Sridhanyarat found that the acquisition

order by Thai EFL learners did not follow Bailey, Madden, and Krashen’s (1974)

study findings. The acquisition order between high and low proficient students was

inconsistent, with only the present progressive –ing acquired earliest being similar to

the Bailey, Madden, and Krashen (1974) study. The result of the grammaticality

judgment task demonstrated Thai EFL learners acquired 3rd person singular –s and

present progressive –ing early, then acquired plural –s and possessive –’s later. In

conclusion, the acquisition order of English grammatical morpheme is not universal

among Thai EFL learners (Sridhanyarat, 2013).

Yordchim and Gibbs (2014) examined Error Analysis of English

Inflectional morphemes among Thai university students. Inflectional morphemes,

defined as prefixes and suffixes that add to the base words to show the grammatical

relationship between inflectional morphemes and words’ construction, can modify the

grammatical class of words, which changes the function of the word, for example,

grammatical features, tense, case, number or gender. A sample group of Thai students

in a Business English major exhibited common errors in their writing tense and aspect

3rd person present simple, plural –s or –es after o, present continuous –ing after e and

past simple –ed. Findings suggested that participants faced interlanguage interference

so that they could not properly use English inflectional morphemes.

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2.2.4 Related similar research

Makino (1980) explored a cross-sectional study with 777 English Foreign

Language (EFL) participants. The participants were Japanese high school students

whose ages were 13 - 15 years old. Makino applied fill-in-the blank written tests to

collect data in the study. The result demonstrated that Japanese participants acquired

present progressive –ing and plural –s earlier than possessive –’s and 3rd person

singular –s was acquired last, which was similar to Dulay and Burt's study. As this

research was conducted with 777 Japanese students, it could indicate that the

acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes was universal among Japanese

EFL learners. The significant point in this research was the data collection method.

Although Makino collected data from a written task instead of oral speech as in most

of previous studies, the sequence of acquisition still correlated to Dulay and Burt's

study, it could imply that the different method of data collection did not affect the

result of acquisition order of English grammatical morphemes among Japanese high

school students.

Wang (2000) researched a qualitative case study of a 16-year-old girl

named Lan. She was a native Mandarin speaker who had effective speaking skill. Lan

had studied English since the first year of junior high school in China; when Wang

conducted his longitudinal study of oral production with her, she lived in Canada.

Wang collected data by tape record. He collected Lan’s natural utterances in a

relaxing environment for one year and one month. In Lan’s case, present progressive

–ing and plural –s were acquired before 3rd person singular –s, while possessive –’s

was rarely acquired. Since the result of Wang’s (2000) case study presented similar

acquisition order to Dulay and Burt's (1973, 1974) study, it could be indicated that his

research supports the acquisition order of Dulay and Burt's (1973, 1974) study.

Behjat and Sadighi (2011) investigated 70 female Iranian EFL learners at

different ages and in various learning contexts. The study aimed to examine three

English grammatical morphemes, including present progressive –ing, plural –s and

3rd person singular –s. Participants were divided into three groups according to the

different range of ages. The researchers used a grammaticality judgment task which

contained 40 sentences, including grammatical and ungrammatical sentences.

Although there were different language backgrounds and different conditions between

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the three groups of participants, the results still remained illustrated that they acquired

present progressive –ing, plural –s and 3rd person singular –s in similar order to

Dulay and Burt's (1973, 1974) study.

2.2.5 Difference in L2 grammatical morpheme

Each language has its own complex internal structure and different

languages have different points and different degrees of complexity. An isolating

language is a type of language which contains few morphemes and no

inflectional morphemes to indicate grammatical relationships, for example, Thai

language and Chinese language. An inflectional language is a type of language which

is very complex and has inflectional morphemes to indicate grammatical

relationships, for example, English language or Latin language.

As Thai language is classified as an isolating language while English is an

inflectional language, it could be difficult for Thai L1 learners to acquire English

grammatical morphemes. English has a number of inflections that help learners to

differentiate between singular noun and plural noun by adding plural –s, for example,

trees, birds, classes or present particular plural form, for example, children, men,

geese. In Thai language, when learners produce ‘two dogs’, there is no need to

express the plural –s like in English. Yordchim and Gibbs (2014) pointed out that

Thai language does not have inflection, so learning to add inflections to nouns or

verbs in English might be an obstacle for Thai learners. Rungrojsuwan (2015) gave

examples as following:

1) mǎa 2) mǎa sɔ̌ɔŋ tua

dog dog two CLF

‘a dog’ ‘two dogs’

When learners produced ‘eat’ in Thai, there is no need to express a tense

aspect like in English. For example (Rungrojsuwan, 2015),

3) kin 4) kin kʰaaw

eat eat rice

‘to eat’ ‘eat/ate/will eat rice’

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However, in some cases, there are additional lexical items to show

grammatical class (Rungrojsuwan, 2015) as follows:

5) kin lԑԑ́w 6)ca kin

eat PERFECT/PAST FUTURE eat

‘ate/ have eaten’ ‘will eat’

7) ʔaatca kin 8) tʰuuk kin

maybe eat PASSIVE eat

‘may/might eat’ ‘be eaten’

In examples number five to eight, there are lexical items as markers of

grammatical class: lԑ́ԑw (perfective aspect/past tense), ca (future tense), ʔaatca

(epistemic modality), and tʰuuk (passive voice) which are separated from the base

word.

Morphology thus is accepted to be one of the difficult tasks for Thai L1

learners as there are some differences in morphological complexity between Thai

language and English language. It seems likely that the different types of L1 and L2

languages: Thai language as an isolating language and English language as an

inflectional language, would create a large gap between L1 and L2 in terms of

acquisition.

2.3 INTERLANGUAGE (IL)

Interlanguage is defined as the intermediate language that second language

learners establish while they are in the process of acquiring second languages or other

target languages (Selinker, 1972). It has been claimed that the interlanguage is a

separated language which occurs between native language and second language or

target language. There are two terms in Interlanguage Theory: transfer and

interference. Transfer occurs when L1 and L2 have similar features, so then learners

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transfer those features into the L2 acquisition process. Interference occurrs when L1

and L2 have different features, and learners accidentally employ L1 features in L2

((Ellis, 2008) as cite in McFerren (2015)).

Interlanguage could be affected by native language or first language (L1) and

target language or second language (L2) with both positive and negative transfer. If

the grammatical features in L1 are similar to the grammatical features in L2 and

support learners to apply the rules in the L2 acquisition process, this would be defined

as ‘positive transfer’. If the grammatical features in L1 are different from the

grammatical features in L2 and it tended to lead learners to make some errors, this

would be defined as ‘negative transfer’. For example, Thai language, there is no

adding possessive –’s to indicate possession, this may interfere Thai learners in

producing an English sentence like ‘There are many problems in today’s world’.

Ratnah (2013) indicated in research of Error Analysis on Tenses Usage that

learner’s interlanguage and L1 interference may cause an error of English tense aspect

omission. Hinnon (2014) concluded in the results of a writing task, which was applied

to investigate common errors among Thai students, that first language interference

played an important role in Thai learners’ errors. Hsieh (2008) reported in a study of

English agreement/ tense morphology and copula BE by L1-Chinese that L1

interference caused difficulty for second language learners to recognize correct

morphology.

2.4 THE PROCESSABILITY THEORY

Pienemann (1998) presented the Processability Theory (PT), a model

of second language acquisition involved in second language learning. The

Processability Theory has assisted researchers to understand the general

characteristics of language acquisition. Processability Theory indicated that learners

had their own stages of language development; what they can acquire were what

linguistic forms or characteristics were within their particular learning stage only.

According to the theory, there are many steps of language acquisition development

and learners cannot skip to an upper stage which is more advanced than the current

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stage. The processability hierarchy is based on a concept of grammatical transfer

within the structure or between one structure and another structure.

Processability hierarchy is shown as follows (Pienemann, 1998):

1. No procedure (a simple word e.g. ‘Hi’)

2. Category procedure (verb with attached past-tense morpheme)

3. Noun phrase procedure (matching plurality e.g. “four cats”)

4. Verb phrase procedure (adverb present at the beginning of a

sentence e.g. “I went yesterday/yesterday I went.”)

5. Sentence procedure (subject-verb agreement e.g. These children go

to school. , He rides a bicycle.)

6. Subordinate clause procedure (use of subjunctive in subordinate

clauses produced by information in a main clause e.g. I know where

she is./ They do what they love).

(Pienemann, 2005) as cited in Doman (2012) introduced four stages of

sequence development in English morphological acquisition:

1. Lemma access (a single word without morphological variation such

as home, paper, think);

2. The category procedure (the attachment of some inflections to the

noun or verb bases such as eats, fruits);

3. The phrasal procedure (the use of inflections in noun or verb phrases

such as these girls, she is running);

4. The S-procedure (the use of inflections in sentences to show

relationship with other words in sentences such as ‘He loves

Thailand’).

Each stage is acquired in a specific order and cannot be skipped because they

relate to different levels of morphology and forms (Pienemann, 2005).

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2.5 ERROR ANALYSIS (EA)

Error Analysis was defined as the systematic investigation of errors which are

made by second language learners; it is concerned with the study and analysis of

errors made by those learners (Corder, 1967). Many researchers say that error analysis

could help to predict what errors a learner may produce, and the reason why these

errors were produced, by identifying, describing and explaining learners’ errors. The

aims of error analysis are to identify types and patterns of errors and to establish a

taxonomy of grammar errors. In addition, it is believed that first language and

interlangauge influence on second language acquisition would be negative transfer

which causes the errors among second language learners.

Corder (1974) offered five steps in error analysis as following: Collection of a

sample, Identification of errors, Description of errors, Explanation of errors and

Evaluation of errors. Ellis (1994) offered error analysis that was applied to analyze

learner’s errors in four steps: collect data, classify errors, explain cause of error and

evaluate the errors.

2.5.1 Causes of Error

Richards (1971) classified causes of error that are usually found in the

research of second language acquisition field as following:

1) Overgeneralization

Overgeneralization refers to the errors where learners apply one language

rule to another; these learners apply what they have acquired in their native language

to the target language. White (2003) stated beginner level learners and intermediate

level learners would be influenced by their first language; they tended to conduct or

combine two languages together when they faced a difficult grammatical form. The

learners whose first language features are too different from the second language

features seemed to acquire second language by applying similar patterns from their

native language or other languages they have acquired before the target language to

the present target language (Jürgen Meisel (1987) as cited in Lightbown, P. M., &

Spada, N. (2006)).

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Bergvall (2006) indicated in her research on grammatical morphemes of

young Swedish students that students apply overgeneralization of plural –s on

irregular plural forms of noun such as ‘foots’ (plural noun is ‘feet’).

Overgeneralization of plural –s might occur among learners whose first language has

no similar feature to the target language. Thai language does not have plural forms of

noun as ‘children (plural form of child), people (plural form of person), men (plural

form of man)’; there is no plural marker added after noun as in ‘ants (-s), boxes (-es)’

and there is no irregular noun as in ‘leaves (leaf)’ in Thai language, but it is necessary

for a target language such as English. The learner unconcern of plural form may make

redundant of plural –s or omit plural –s.

Feike (2011) believed second language learners could be confused with

the English morpheme –s which can represent both plural –s and 3rd person singular –

s. This, lead them to produce some errors when they were asked to identify which one

will be used in the sentence. For example, in the sentence ‘The dogs bites him’,

morpheme -s was used in two positions: morpheme -s in ‘the dogs’ refers to plural –s

and morpheme -s in ‘bites’ refer to 3rd person singular –s.

2) Ignorance of rule restriction

Ignorance of rule restriction refers to learners’ unconcern about

restrictions of the language rule; it is sometimes produced by learners who cannot

catch the rules of target language and often occur with English tense created by L2

learners (Ratnah (2013), Kulsirisawad (n.d.)).

3) Incomplete application of rules

Incomplete application of rules is indicated as an incomplete structure

that second learners produced while their language proficiency is not fully developed

to produce correct grammatical sentences or complex sentences. This cause of error

usually occurs in question forms.

4) False Concepts Hypothesized

False Concepts Hypothesized is a wrong hypothesis formed by learners

about the target language (Hanna Y. Touchie, 1986). False Concepts Hypothesized

implied to false learning of a language rule at various stages in target language

acquisition (Ratnah, 2013). Grammatical structure difficulty among learners might

occur when learners acquired second language where there are many different

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structures or features between their first language and second language (Lado (1957)

as cited in Martinez (1989)). Moreover, learners might be confused from the teaching

process so they cannot perceive the difference in or between some features of target

language.

The learners who fall into false concepts hypothesized will be assigned as

‘false beginners’, language learners who acquired prior knowledge of target language

but need to start again from the beginning since they have insufficient command of

target language.

Another topic that may involve false beginners is the phenomenon of

fossilization. Lightbown, P. M., & Spada, N. (2006) commented on the term

fossilization in Larry Selinker (1972), where some learners may stop acquiring some

features in their second language because they are satisfied with their present

language proficiency for communication, or because they did not investigate further

instruction or feedback which would help them to develop their language proficiency.

2.5.2 Categories of Errors

Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982) introduced four categories of errors in

the Surface Structure Taxonomy as following:

1. Addition Error: Addition mentions a grammatical item that appears in

the sentence where it has no need to appear. It occurs when the learners ‘overuse or

overapply’ one grammatical rule to other features in the structure of sentence (Dulay,

Burt and Krashen, 1982). For example, ‘She did not cooks dinner last night.’

(Correction: ‘She did not cook dinner last night.’), the morpheme 3rd person singular

–s in ‘cooks’ is implied as addition.

2. Omission Error: Omission involves a grammatical item that must show

in the structure of a sentence, but it is absent. For example, ‘A girl give two pen to her

friends’ (Correction: ‘A girl gives two pens to her friends’), the morpheme plural –s

was not attached with ‘pen’ in ‘two pen’ where it must appear. This phenomenon is

called omission of plural –s. Omissions usually occur when learners are learning a

second language in the early stage.

3. Misformation Error: Misformation means the use of an incorrect form

of grammatical morpheme or sentence structure. For example, ‘He is sings a song.’

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(Correction: ‘He is singing a song.’). In this case learner did not use the morpheme

–ing which contains the meaning of present progressive in the sentence but uses the

morpheme 3rd person singular –s instead. Another example is ‘I love mine parents.’

(Correction: ‘I love my parents.’). The correct form of ‘my parent’ must be possessive

determiner ‘my’ not the possessive pronoun ‘mine’ that has been used to modify a

noun.

4. Misordering Error: Misordering mentions wrong placement of a

grammatical morpheme in the sentence structure. For example, ‘There are flowers

beautiful in the garden back.’ (Correction: ‘There are beautiful flowers in the back

garden.’). In English structure, an adjective is put in front of a noun and modifies the

noun which come after it. In this example of error, ‘beautiful’ was put after ‘flowers’

and ‘back’ was put after ‘garden’; these are regarded as misordering error.

2.6 GRAMMATICALITY JUDGMENT TEST (GJT)

Mackey and Gass (2005) indicated in their book Second Language Research:

Methodology and Design that influence judgment is a task which requires participants

to identify and correct any incorrect sentences, otherwise it becomes an unacceptable

language.

“Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT) is one of the many ways to measure

language proficiency and knowledge of grammar. It was introduced to second

language research from the mid-70s”, Rimmer (2006).

Behjat and Sadighi (2011) used a grammaticality judgment task, which

contained 40 sentences including grammatical and ungrammatical sentences to

examine three English grammatical morphemes: present progressive –ing, plural –s

and 3rd person singular –s, in their study on English grammatical morphemes

acquisition.

Sridhanyarat (2013) investigate four grammatical morphemes: plural –s ,

present progressive –ing, 3rd person singular –s and possessive –’s among Thai

undergraduate learners by applying two instruments: a Thai-to-English translation

task and a grammaticality judgment task. Then the data obtained from both tasks were

analyzed to find out more about acquisition order of grammatical morphemes.

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Bee Hoon Tan (2014) conducted empirical evidence collection to check

reliability of a grammaticality judgment test by applying the grammaticality judgment

tests (GJT), Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia English or the Malaysian Certificate of Education

(SPM English) and the Mehran University of Engineering and Technology Test

(MUET) to 100 ESL undergraduates to explore the correlationship between three

measurements. The comparison results showed a positive relationship among the

three types of English proficiency measurements. It could be inferred that a

grammaticality judgment test has strong reliability as a measure of English language

competence.

To examine the present research question “To what extent are four

grammatical morphemes: present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd

person singular –s used by L1-Thai learners?”, a grammaticality judgment task

focused on four grammatical morphemes: plural –s, present progressive –ing, 3rd

person singular –s and possessive –’s was created.

2.7 DATA SCORING

Scoring depends on how the task is constructed (Mackey and Gass, 2005),

validity and reliability of the measurement, and how the task is appropriate to the aims

of the study.

Dulay and Burt employed a three-point scale to count participants’ production

accuracy; this was similar to the Brown’s concept of obligatory context (Úrsula

fontana ibáñez, 2013). To evaluate each obligatory context, scoring was considered as

follows:

No grammatical morpheme supplied = 0 point (He go_ to school),

Misformed grammatical morpheme supplied = 0.5 point (He going to school)

Correct grammatical morpheme supplied = 1 point (He goes to school)

Dulay and Burt counted participants’ production accuracy as follows:

1. Ungrammatical sentences judged with providing the incorrect form : 0

point

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For example: He is talk to his English teacher now.

He is talks to his English teacher now.

2. Ungrammatical sentences judged with providing misformed grammatical

morphemes: 0.5 point

For example: He is talk to his English teacher.

He is talkin to his English teacher now.

He are talking to his English teacher now.

3. Ungrammatical sentences judged with providing correct grammatical


For example: He is talk to his English teacher now.

He is talking to his English teacher now.

Bailey, Madden, and Krashen’s (1974) study applied the judgment task to

count participants’ production accuracy as follows:

1. Misplace sentences judged : 0 point

For example:

√ 1. He is talk to his English teacher now. (The answer is X mark,

then write the correct sentence)

2. Ungrammatical sentences judged with providing the incorrect form : 0

point

For example:

× 1. He is talk to his English teacher now.

He is talks to his English teacher now.

3. Ungrammatical sentences judged with providing misformed grammatical


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For example:


He is talkin/talkng to his English teacher now.

He are talking to his English teacher now.

4. Ungrammatical sentences judged with providing correct grammatical


For example:


He is talking to his English teacher now.

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CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents details of participants in this research, research

materials, procedure, data collection, and data analyses.

3.1 PARTICIPANTS

The participants were Thai native speaking students who had been studying at

secondary school in Phetburi province. Almost all the students had been studying

English for ten years; their average age was 16-17 years old. The total number of

participants was 60 persons and they were divided into two groups based on their

English Ordinary National Education Test scores (O-NET scores): one was a high

level group and the other a low level group. The high level group consisted of 30

students whose O-NET scores were 60 or higher. The low level group consisted of 30

students whose O-NET scores were 30 or lower.

The National Institute of Educational Testing Service (NIETS) arranges the

Ordinary National Education Test (O-NET), a test of the English proficiency level of

Thai students in secondary school grade 9 (M.3) and grade 12 (M.6).

According to obtained scores from O-NET tests, it is suggested that the

average O-NET score at the national level is quite low, especially in rural areas. In

this research, as participants lived in the countryside, participants whose O-NET

scores were higher than 60 scores were assigned to the high level group and

participants whose O-NET scores were lower than 30 scores were assigned to the low

level group.

3.2 RESEARCH MATERIALS

With a limitation of time constraint, the grammaticality judgment task

contained only 25 English sentences, adapted from Azar and Hagen’s (2006) study

and Sridhanyarat’s (2013) test. The grammaticality judgment task in this research

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consisted of five grammatical sentences and twenty ungrammatical sentences where

each sentence had only one incorrect point. For ungrammatical sentences, participants

were asked to identify an incorrect point and write down a new correct sentence on

the provided space.

The Grammaticality Judgment Task items were categorized as follows:

Five grammatical correct sentences:

1. He watched two movies last night.

2. She forgot to turn off the lights.

3. When the phone rang, I answered it.

4. I sent an E-mail to him yesterday.

5. She went to Phuket with her friends last night.

Five ungrammatical sentences of plural –s:

1. There are sixty minute in an hour.

2. Mr. Bean bought a new house three year ago.

3. Daddy gives some gift to us.

4. I have been in New York five time.

5. The students learned several word in the English class.

Five ungrammatical sentences of present progressive –ing:

1. I am try to contact my classmates now.

2. I am in the park now. I am look for my dog.

3. Lee is in the kitchen. He is now cook Chinese foods.

4. Someone is sing a song right now.

5. Please wait a minute. Now, she is wash her hair.

Five ungrammatical sentences of possessive –’s:

1. There are many problems in today world.

2. The children toys are on the table.

3. He borrowed the secretary pen.

4. People voices always get lower as they age.

5. When I was in Thailand, I stayed at a friend house.

Five ungrammatical sentences of 3 rd person singular –s:

1. Harry usually bring his son an ice cream.

2. Rebecca always wear a uniform to work.

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3. Adam sometimes sit in the first row during class.

4. He is a taxi driver. He drive a taxi.

5. Mark work as a teacher at a local high school.

Table 7. Item Specification in the Grammaticality Judgment Task

Item Specification in the Grammaticality Judgment

Task

Test Types Test Items

The plural –s 5, 10, 19, 21, 23

The present progressive –ing 1, 9, 14, 18, 25

The possessive –’s 3, 6, 8, 12, 24

The 3 rd person singular –s 2, 11, 15, 17, 22

Grammatically correct 4, 7, 13, 16, 20

3.3 THREATS TO VALIDITY AND RELIABILITY

3.3.1 Validity

The research is believed to have internal validity, researcher must control

every different thing that will appear in different contexts and might have affected

the result of the study. To make content valid, the sentences in the grammaticality

judgment task were applied from Azar and Hagen’s (2006) textbooks and

Sridhanyarat’s (2013) grammaticality judgment task. Some content in the sentences

were adapted to meet appropriate English language proficiency of the participants,

then let two language professors considered the content validity.

The two language professors were one American English teacher who has

been teaching as an English teacher in Thailand more than ten years and the other

was a Thai English teacher who has been teaching English in secondary school more

than twenty years and who was selected by the Thai government to join a teaching

exchange program in USA for one year.

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3.3.2 Reliability

Mackey and Gass (2005, P.44) demonstrated a pilot test "can help avoid

costly and time-consuming problems during the data collection procedure ... [as well

as] the loss of valuable, potentially useful, and often irreplaceable data" (p.57). Some

researchers believed that pilot tests or pilot studies could bring useful data for the

main research study.

Some researchers tried to seek if there is no problem with pilot testing and

the data were collected in exactly the same way, then the data will be used in their

study. However, almost all researchers against this opinion because “not all

institutions will give permission for this, and many do not have a process for the

retroactive use of data.” Mackey and Gass (2005)

Bee Hoon Tan (2014) pointed out there is an argument that some formats

of grammaticality judgment task are more reliable than other formats.

To review the effectiveness of the grammaticality judgment task in the

present research, the grammaticality judgment task was piloted with 20 Thai native

students in a secondary school, the same school where the participants were studying.

Students who joined the pilot test were asked to keep the test as a secret.

3.4 DATA COLLECTION

Data collection or data elicitation has played an important role in effective

measurement in second language research for many decades (Mackey and Gass,

2005). A key factor is whether collected data can respond accurately to the research

questions, both in right and wrong cases. Juffs (2001) as cited in Mackey and Gass

(2005) illustrated that it is impossible to compare a study’ results in the right way if

researchers lacked the standardized measurement and scoring.

The sixty participants were divided into two groups based on their English

Ordinary National Education Test scores (O-NET scores): one group was a high level

group which consisted of 30 students, whose O-NET scores equalled 60 or higher; the

other group was a low level group and consisted of 30 students whose O-NET scores

equalled 30 or lower.

Participants were assigned the grammaticality judgment task which contained

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five grammatical sentences and twenty ungrammatical sentences. Each sentence in the

ungrammatical group had only one incorrect point which related to one of four

grammatical morphemes: present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd

person singular –s. Participants had 25 minutes to identify any incorrect points in each

sentence, then write down a new correct sentence on the provided space of each one.

3.5 DATA SCORING

In this study, the scoring method on the grammaticality judgment task was

adapted from Sridhanyarat’s (2013) research, which applied the scoring method from

Bailey, Madden, and Krashen’s (1974) study.

1. Misplace sentences judged : 0 points

For example:

√ 1. He is draw a picture now.

(This sentence is an ungrammatical sentence. The correct answer is to

mark an X in front of the sentence)

2. Correctly judged with producing the incorrect form : 0 point

For example:

× 1. He is draw a picture now.

He is draws a picture now.

3. Correctly judged with producing misformed grammatical morphemes: 0.5

points

For example:


He is drawin/drawng a picture now.

He are drawing a picture now.

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4. Correctly judged with producing correct grammatical morphemes: 1.0

points

For example:


He is drawing a picture now.

3.6 DATA ANALYSIS

Data Analysis requires clear identification of statistical tests and procedures

(Mackey and Gass, 2005).

To explore “To what extent are four grammatical morphemes: present

progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3 rd person singular –s used by L1-

Thai learners?” a grammaticality judgment task was selected.

The scoring method on the grammaticality judgment task in this study was

adapted from Sridhanyarat’s (2013) research, which applied the scoring method from

Bailey, Madden, and Krashen’s (1974) study.

A percentage calculation formula was applied to present the scores obtained

from grammaticality judgment task as follows:

N x 100

T

N = Number of correct answers of each type of morpheme in the

grammaticality judgment task

T = Total number of each type of morpheme in the grammaticality judgment

task

For example : There are total of 150 items of present progressive –ing in the

grammaticality judgment task; if the number of correct answers from 30 participants

are 121 items, the result will be 80.6666%. The percentage calculation formula would

show as:

N x 100 =

121 x 100

T 150

= 80.6666

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The result of the grammaticality judgment task shows the grammatical errors

made by participants for each type of grammatical morpheme. To find out why

participants made some errors in their tests, the plausible explanations of each error

will be provided in the next chapter which clarifies results and discussion.

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CHAPTER 4

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter presents the results from the grammaticality judgment task set for

L1-Thai learners and focusing on the usage of four grammatical morphemes which

were present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s.

The chapter presents discussion about errors which may have occurred during the test

and plausible explanations of each error by error analysis.

To respond to the research question “To what extent are four grammatical


singular –s used by L1-Thai learners?”, a Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) was

assigned to L1-Thai participants, a total of 60 high school students. In this research

the grammaticality judgment task was created base on previous studies, and it

consisted of five grammatical sentences and twenty ungrammatical sentences. Each

ungrammatical sentence had only one incorrect point. For ungrammatical sentences,

participants were asked to identify the incorrect point and write down a new correct

sentence on the provided space. After collecting the data, the data was analyzed by a

percentage calculation formula to show statistical data and a descriptive process

analysis to show descriptive information.

4.1 RESULTS

4.1.1 The Use of Grammatical Morphemes

The scores were collected from the grammaticality judgment task, which

was completed by two groups of participants: a high level group and a low level

group.

The high level group showed correct answers of present progressive –ing

as 121 points out of 150, correct answers of plural –s as 135 points out of 150, correct

answers of possessive –’s as 87 points out of 150 and correct answers of 3rd person

singular –s as 128 points out of 150. When we placed the obtained scores of each

grammatical morpheme in rank, it may be assumed that participants in the high level

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group were likely to acquire plural –s earliest, then 3rd person singular –s, present

progressive –ing and lastly possessive –’s.

The low level group showed correct answers of present progressive –ing

as 86 points out of 150, correct answers of plural –s as 91 points out of 150, correct

answers of possessive –’s as 31 points out of 150 and correct answers of 3rd person

singular –s as 64 points out of 150. From this data, it might be assumed that

participants in the low level group were likely to acquire plural –s earliest, then

present progressive –ing, 3rd person singular –s and lastly possessive –’s.

Figure 4.1 The scores of each morpheme in the grammaticality judgment task

121135

87

128

86 91

31

64

020406080

100120140160

present progressive

–ing

plural –s possessive –’s 3 rd person singular

–s

Score

Morpheme

Score of grammaticality judgment task

High Low

The scores collected from the grammaticality judgment task can be shown

in percentage, a ratio that is explicitly expressed as a fraction of 100, by applying the

percentage calculation formula. The scores from the high level group presented

present progressive –ing as 80.67%, plural –s as 90 %, the possessive –’s as 58 % and

3rd person singular –s as 85.33 %. The scores from the low level group presented

present progressive –ing as 57.33 %, plural –s as 60.67 %, possessive –’s as 20.67 %

and 3rd person singular –s as 42.67 %.

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Figure 4.2 The percentages of each morpheme in the grammaticality judgment

task

80.6790

58

85.33

57.33 60.67

20.67

42.67

0

20

40

60

80

100

present progressive –ing plural –s possessive –’s 3 rd person singular –s

percentage

Morpheme

Percentage of the result

High Low

Comparing the above data from the high level group and the low level

group, it indicated that both the high level group and the low level group seem to

acquire plural –s earliest and acquired possessive –’s last. The high level group

acquired 3rd person singular –s at the second rank and present progressive –ing at the

third rank, while the low level group acquired present progressive –ing at the second

rank and 3rd person singular –s at the third rank.

4.1.2 Consistency of The Result

Item Specification in the Grammaticality Judgment

Task

Test Types Test Items

The present progressive –ing 1, 9, 14, 18, 25

The plural –s 5, 10, 19, 21, 23

The possessive –’s 3, 6, 8, 12, 24

The 3rd person singular –s 2, 11, 15, 17, 22

Grammatically correct 4, 7, 13, 16, 20

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The Grammaticality Judgment Task (GJT) included 25 grammatical

sentences, five sentences were grammatically correct sentences and twenty sentences

were ungrammatical sentences. The twenty ungrammatical sentences contained five

ungrammatical sentences per one target morpheme, and there are totally four


singular –s.

Table 8. The score of the present progressive –ing in High Level Proficiency

Group

High Group

No./Item 1 9 14 18 25 x̄

Total 26 24 28 21 22 24.2

% 86.67 80 93.33 70 73.33 80.6667

Table 9. The score of the present progressive –ing in Low Level Proficiency

Group

Low group

No./Item 1 9 14 18 25 x̄

Total 8 22 25.5 8 22.5 17.2

% 26.67 73.33 85 26.67 75 57.33

Starting with the first morpheme ‘present progressive –ing’, the average

score ( x̄ ) of the correct result in the high level group was 24.2 (80.67%) out of 30.

The average score ( x̄ ) of the correct result in the low level group was 17.2 (57.33%)

out of 30. The low level group showed scores from item no.1 and no.18 as eight

points (26.67%) out of 30 points which is quite low. It can be concluded that the low

proficiency students faced difficulty in attempting to identify item no.1 ‘I am try to

contact my classmates now.’ and item no.18 ‘Someone is sing a song right now.’

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Table 10. The score of the plural –s in High Level Proficiency Group

Table 11. The score of the plural –s in Low Level Proficiency Group

Regarding the second morpheme, plural –s, participants in both high and

low proficiency groups scored the best results for the plural –s with the highest score

of the four morphemes. The average score ( x̄ ) of the correct result in the high level

group was 27 (80.67%) out of 30. The average score ( x̄ ) of the correct result in the

low level group was 18.2 (60.67%) out of 30.

Table 12. The score of the possessive –’s in High Level Proficiency Group

High Group

No./Item 3 6 8 12 24 x̄

Total 26 15 24 7 15 17.4

% 86.67 50 80 23.33 50 58

Table 13. The score of the possessive –’s in Low Level Proficiency Group

Low Group

No./Item 3 6 8 12 24 x̄

High Group

No./Item 5 10 19 21 23 x̄

Total 30 24 24 29 28 27

% 100 80 80 96.67 93.33 90

Low Group

No./Item 5 10 19 21 23 x̄

Total 23 15 14 23 16 18.2

% 76.67 50 46.67 76.67 53.33 60.67

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Total 9 5 7 4 6 6.2

% 30 16.67 23.33 13.33 20 20.67

For the third morpheme possessive –’s, the average score ( x̄ ) of the

correct result in the high level group was 17.4 (58%) out of 30. The average score ( x̄

) of the correct result in the low level group was 6.2 (20.67%) out of 30. The scores of

the possessive –’s in both high and low proficiency groups was recorded as the lowest

score of the four morphemes. The high level group showed scores from item no.12 as

seven points (23.33%) out of 30 points which means students faced difficulty in

attempting to identify item no.12 ‘People voices always get lower as they age.’ This

relates to the score from the low level group in which the score showed as four points

(13.33%) out of 30 points. When looking back to the errors on item no.12 in the

grammaticality judgment task, it was found that some of the students did not correct

‘People voices’ to ‘People’s voices’ but concentrated on ‘they age’ instead. Some of

participants in the low level group changed ‘they age’ to ‘they’s age’ and there was

changing from ‘they age’ to ‘their age’ in the high level group. These addition errors

and misformation errors might be caused from the lack of knowledge and

overgeneralization.

Table 14. The score of the 3rd person singular –s in High Level Proficiency

Group

High Group

No./Item 2 11 15 17 22 x̄

Total 30 28 18 26 26 25.6

% 100 93.33 60 86.67 86.67 85.33

Table 15. The score of the 3rd person singular –s in Low Level Proficiency

Group

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Low Group

No./Item 2 11 15 17 22 x̄

Total 20 12 8 9 15 12.8

% 66.67 40 26.67 30 50 42.67

The fourth morpheme was 3rd person singular –s. The average score ( x̄ )

of the correct result in the high level group was 25.6 (85.33%) out of 30. The average

score ( x̄ ) of the correct result in the low level group was 12.8 (42.67%) out of 30.

In the low level group, the scores from item no.15 were recorded as eight

points (26.67%) out of 30 points, so it can be inferred that the low proficiency

students faced difficulty when trying to identify item no.15 ‘He is a taxi driver. He

drive a taxi’. Some of them applied overuse of possessive –’s; for example, ‘a taxi’s

driver’ and ‘he’s drive a taxi’. These two phrases would occur from lack of English

knowledge. Another cause of the phrases ‘he’s drive a taxi’ might come out from

misunderstanding the short pattern of copula BE ‘is’ and ‘possessive –’s’, plus lack of

English knowledge.

4.1.3 The Errors in Grammaticality Judgment Task

In the grammaticality judgment task, participants were asked to identify

incorrect points and write down new correct sentences in the provided space. There

were some errors exhibited in the answers.

In the high level group, there were errors of addition, omission and

misformation.

1. Addition of plural –s: childrens

2. Omission of possessive –’s: children toys, people voice, friend

house

3. Misformation of present progressive –ing: I am try to contacting my

classmates now.

4. Addition of present progressive –ing: Please waiting

5. Addition of copula BE: He is drive a taxi. , Mark’s work as a

teacher.

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In the low level group, there were errors of addition, omission and

misformation.

1. Addition of present progressive –ing: borroweding, stayeding, the

lightsing (the lights), I senting

2. Addition of –s: wents, forgots, stayeds, children toys, the phone

rangs, answereds, to turns, the first rows

3. Addition of possessive –’s: A taxi’s driver, He’s drive a taxi

4. Omission of possessive –’s: people voice, children toys

5. Omission of present progressive –ing: I am look, I am try

6. Addition of “to” before a verb: He is now to cook Chinese foods. ,

He is now to cooking Chinese foods. , She is to washing her hair.

7. Omission of plural –s: some gift

8. Addition of copula BE: She is forgot to turn off the lights. , He is

borrowed the secretary pen. , When the phone is rang, I answered it. , I have was (I

have been), she is sings

9. Addition of present progressive –ing: lowing, lowering, gifting,

classmating, to turning off

10. Misformation: lowing (in ‘People voices always get lower as they

age’), lowering (in ‘People voices always get lower as they age’), to contacts, wash

(in ‘she is wash her hair’), Mark working as a teacher, Daddy giving, He driving a

taxi, he usually brings

4.2 DISCUSSION

To clarify the reasons why these errors occurred, previous research and related

research were studied. Many researches studies on writing tests, English-Thai

translation and error analysis supported the idea that low proficiency learners

probably cannot acquire appropriated English proficiency level as they need to, thus

they cannot achieve the tasks involved in linguistic features like grammatical

morphemes. As this study applied the grammaticality judgment task to examine the

existence of four grammatical morphemes: present progressive –ing, plural –s,

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possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s, the analysis concentrated on grammatical-

lexical errors.

Error analysis refers to the study which analyzes errors made by learners. It is

used as a procedure to collect learner errors, identify the errors, describe the errors,

explain the errors and evaluate the errors (Corder, 1967). Error analysis can be used

for inspecting children’s language acquisition process, it can also predict the errors

that will be produced by language learners, especially adult learners, and used to

study their learning strategies (Dulay, Burt and Krashen (1982) and Ellis (2002) cited

in Hinnon (2014)). Error analysis would prefer to identify student’s language

proficiency and performance.

4.2.1 Addition Error

From the results of the grammaticality judgment task, learners showed the

addition of plural –s as ‘childrens’, 3rd person singular –s as ‘they wents’, present

progressive –ing as ‘he drivesing’, possessive –’s as ‘taxi’s driver’, copula be as ‘she

is forgot’ and addition of “to” before a verb as ‘She is to washing her hair.’ These

errors are called addition errors and it is implied that addition errors occur from

learner’s overgeneralization.

Addition of 3rd person singular –s may relates to understanding of

English tense aspect and subject-verb agreement. Dulay et al. (1982) as cited in

Kulsirisawad (n.d.) argued that grammatical morpheme 3rd person singular –s

problem are quite particular to L2 learners whose first language does not present this

feature; it may bring about redundancy using the morpheme as a marker. The learner

unconcern of plural forms may make for a redundant of plural –s or omission of plural

–s. As there is no plural marker or plural form of the noun in Thai language, plural –s

errors show it may be difficult for low proficiency participants to classify English

inflection or aspect marker. Low proficiency L1-Thai learners may misunderstand

about tense aspect and subject-verb agreement, so they produced addition of 3rd

person singular –s.

For addition of present progressive –ing, Pojprasat (2007) illustrated

English tense contained both lexical and syntactic elements, while Thai marked only

some lexical items and there is no need to express tense aspect. For example, English

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expresses adverbs of time and verb forms in the sentence, while Thai marks only

adverbs of time. The participants made errors because they were not familiar with

verb forms of the present progressive –ing and might not distinguish meanings of the

tense.

4.2.2 Omission Error

While participants in the high level group made more addition errors than

participants in the low level group, participants in low level group seemed to make

more omission errors than participants in the high level group.

Omission of plural –s as ‘some gift’, omission of present progressive –ing

as ‘I am look’ and omission of possessive –’s as ‘children toys’ were shown in the

papers of the low English proficiency participants, whereas some papers from the

high English proficiency participants showed omission of possessive –’s as in ‘people

voice’.

For the demonstration of these errors in the provided task, interlanguage

theory may help to explain why L2 learners made the errors in these cases.

The cause of omission of plural –s, omission of present progressive –ing,

and omission of possessive –’s by Thai learners may involve L1 and L2 language

features difference. Thai language does not have a possessive aspect like -’s, but there

are some features similar to possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives in English.

The word ‘ kŏrng’ such as in ‘kŏrng chán’ in Thai refers to ‘mine’ and the possessive

adjective ‘my’ in English.

Another reason why Thai learners tend to make omissions of grammatical

morphemes when they produce English sentences is student lack of language

knowledge. Low English proficiency learners may not had enough knowledge to

accomplish the grammaticality judgment task correctly.

Moreover, the errors might be the result of first language influence or

negative transfer from Thai to English. As Thai language has no morphological

system and no inflection, it might obstruct the learners’ performance on grammatical

morpheme acquisition.

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4.2.3 Misformation Error

In this research, there were some errors related to misformation, for

example,

1. Misformation of present progressive –ing as ‘She is wash her hair

now.’

* The correct sentence is ‘She is washing her hair now’.

2. Misformation of present progressive –ing as ‘I am try to contacting my

classmates now.’

* The correct sentence is I am trying to contact my classmates now’.

When a learner uses present progressive –ing in the wrong context, it can

imply that they do not observe or are not concerned enough about the

target language’s rule restrictions to build the correct form and correct

structure in the context.

Moreover, some learners understood -’s as the short pattern of copula BE

‘is’, the marker of the present tense, but they did not consider it as possessive –’s, so

they then produced ‘He’s drive a taxi’ because he or she misunderstood between the

short form of ‘is’ and ‘possessive –’s’. For this topic of ‘-s’’, learners not only

misunderstood the form, but also presented overgeneralization, the error in which

learners apply a grammatical rule where there is no need to apply it.

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CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

5.1 CONCLUSIONS

Thai children have been acquiring English since they were young; however,

they still have difficulty identifying English grammatical errors. Acquiring English

language, especially grammatical morphemes, is still a major obstacle in their

learning. Previous research study involving error analysis has indicated that second

language learners seem to produce common errors in grammatical morphemes, for

example, 3rd person present simple among Thai and Chinese learners (Yordchim and

Gibbs (2014), Hsieh (2008)), possessive –’s among Thai learners (Sridhanyarat, 2013)

and present progressive –ing.

To examine the use of English grammatical morphemes among L1-Thai

learners, this study aimed to investigate the use of four grammatical morphemes:

present progressive –ing, plural –s, possessive –’s and 3rd person singular –s by

applying a grammaticality judgment task. There is a significance of the study because

the findings about students’ difficulties with grammatical morphemes would help

teachers to understand students’ difficulties in learning English and help teachers to

make effective teaching plans.

Before designing the methodology, literature reviews of related studies were

observed. Related theories and studies on Second Language Acquisition (SLA),

Grammatical Morpheme Acquisition, criticism research, similarities and differences

in L2 Grammatical Morpheme study, Interlanguage (IL), Processability Theory (PT),

Error Analysis, Grammaticality Judgment Test (GJT), effective materials, validity and

reliability, data collection, data scoring methods and data analysis were studied.

The participants in this research were 60 Thai native speaking students who

had been studying English for 10 years. They studied at a secondary school in

Phetburi province. Participants were divided into two groups based on their English

Ordinary National Education Test scores (O-NET scores), with a high level group

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consisted of 30 students whose scores were 60 or higher and a low level group

consisting of 30 students whose scores were 30 or lower. They were assigned a

grammaticality judgment task which was adapted from Azar and Hagen’s (2006) task,

as cited in Sridhanyarat (2013), and Sridhanyarat’s (2013) test. Participants had to

identify grammatical errors among grammatical sentences and ungrammatical

sentences, then correct what point they thought was an error. This task was applied to

see the distribution of grammatical morpheme errors among L1-Thai learners and to

see their ability to correct errors.

After collecting the data, data analysis and error analysis processes were

carried out. Percentage calculation formula was applied to the scores obtained from

the grammaticality judgment task, then plausible explanations were reported in

discussion.

According to the result of the grammaticality judgment task, the high level

group showed 80 percent up in the marks from three grammatical morphemes, which

are present progressive –ing, plural –s and 3rd person singular –s, and showed lower

than 60 percent in possessive –’s, while the low level group showed above 60 percent

in plural –s and lower than 60 percent in the other three morphemes.

Brown (1973) and de Villiers and de Villiers (1973)’s study’s showed that

children who acquire English as a native language acquired progressive –ing and

plural –s before possessive -’s and 3rd person singular –s

Regarding the results in this research, participants in the low level group

showed a similar order of acquisition as Brown’s (1973) study. Learners acquired

plural –s and present progressive –ing with little different scores and acquired them

earlier than 3rd person singular –s and possessive -’s. However, the results were

opposite in the high level group whose scores showed plural –s was require earliest,

followed by 3rd person singular –s, present progressive –ing and lastly possessive –’s.

For grammatical errors in the use of English grammatical morphemes among

L1-Thai learners, participants showed errors as following:

1. Addition of plural –s

2. Omission of possessive –’s

3. Addition of present progressive –ing

4. Addition of copula be

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5. Addition of morpheme –s

6. Addition of possessive –’s

7. Omission of present progressive –ing

8. Addition of “to” before a verb

9. Omission of plural –s

10. Addition of copula BE

11. Misformation

There were the same errors occurred in both high proficiency learners and low

proficiency learners in the total four categories of errors:

1. Addition of plural –s

2. Omission of possessive –’s

3. Addition of present progressive –ing

4. Addition of copula be

To summarize these errors, high English proficiency students made fewer

errors than low English proficiency students. However, some learners in the high

English proficiency group still made mistakes in the plural –s morpheme which was

indicated from the result of the two groups as the easiest morpheme among the four

grammatical morphemes in the grammaticality judgment task. Analyzing the results

of the grammaticality judgment task, many participants in the low proficiency group

were defined as weak learners. Although they have studied English for 10 years, they

still have very limited knowledge of English. The problems may occur from learner’s

problems in language acquisition with such errors as overgeneralization, incomplete

application of rules, ignorance of rule restriction and L1- interference.

5.2 RECOMMENDATIONS

Referring to research methodology, the role of the task is very important and it

can impact on the results of the study. As there were limitations because of time

constraint, a grammaticality judgment task was chosen to apply in this research. This

may not be enough to completely explore all the grammatical morpheme problems

which may occur among L1-Thai learners.

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The results regarding grammatical morpheme errors in this research could be a

guide to investigate of Thai students’ weakness in English language and it could be a

benefit for teachers to find methods to improve learners’ grammatical errors,

especially those related to English morpheme usage.

According to needs for further investigating the use of English grammatical

morphemes among second language learners, in term of the writing task and the

translation task, it would better to combine a variety of tasks in further research.

Moreover, further research should try to administer any task with a larger group of

participants, and participants in various L1-languages could make for better

confidence in the result.

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APPENDICES

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APPENDIX A

แบบทดสอบ Grammatical Judgment Task

ค ำส ัง่

1. แบบทดสอบมทัีง้หมด 25 ขอ้ ใชเ้วลา 25 นาท ี

2. แบบทดสอบประกอบดว้ยประโยคทีถ่กูและผดิหลักไวยากรณ์ ใหนั้กเรยีนกา

เครือ่งหมาย √ บนชอ่งวา่งหนา้ประโยคทีถ่กู และกาเครือ่งหมาย X บนชอ่งวา่งหนา้

ประโยคทีผ่ดิ

3. ส าหรับขอ้ทีนั่กเรยีนคดิวา่ผดิหลักไวยากรณ์ ใหแ้กไ้ขโดยเขยีนประโยคทีถ่กูลงบน

บรรทดัวำ่งใตป้ระโยคทีผ่ดิ

4. ขอ้ทีผ่ดิหลกัไวยากรณ์ จะมปีระเด็นผดิพลาดทีเ่ดยีว

ตวัอยำ่ง

X 1. He wrote two letter yesterday.

He wrote two letters yesterday.

*********************************************************************

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Grammaticality Judgment Task

Instructions

1. This task consists of 25 sentences. You have 25 minutes to finish it.

2. The task consists of both grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. Read each

sentence carefully and decide if it is grammatically correct. Put a check (√) next to

each grammatical sentence, and put an (X) next to each ungrammatical sentence.

3. If the sentence is ungrammatical for you, write down a new correct sentence on

the line provided.

4. In each ungrammatical item, there is only one incorrect point.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

_____ 1. I am try to contact my classmates now.

______________________________________________

_____ 2. Harry usually bring his son an ice cream.

______________________________________________

_____ 3. There are many problems in today world.

______________________________________________

_____ 4. He watched two movies last night.

______________________________________________

_____ 5. Mr. Bean bought a new house three year ago.

______________________________________________

_____ 6. The children toys are on the table.

______________________________________________

_____ 7. She forgot to turn off the lights.

______________________________________________

_____ 8. He borrowed the secretary pen.

______________________________________________

_____ 9. I am in the park now. I am look for my dog.

______________________________________________

_____ 10. Daddy gives some gift to us.

______________________________________________

_____ 11. Adam sometimes sit in the first row during class.

______________________________________________

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_____ 12. People voices always get lower as they age.

______________________________________________

_____ 13. When the phone rang, I answered it.

______________________________________________

_____ 14. Lee is in the kitchen. He is now cook Chinese foods.

_______________________________________________

_____ 15. He is a taxi driver. He drive a taxi.

_______________________________________________

_____ 16. I sent an E-mail to him yesterday.

_______________________________________________

_____ 17. Mark work as a teacher at a local high school.

_______________________________________________

_____ 18. Someone is sing a song right now.

_______________________________________________

_____ 19. The students learned several word in the English class.

_______________________________________________

_____ 20. She went to Phuket with her friends last night.

_______________________________________________

_____ 21. There are sixty minute in an hour.

_______________________________________________

_____ 22. Rebecca always wear a uniform to work.

_______________________________________________

_____ 23. I have been in New York five time.

_______________________________________________

_____ 24. When I was in Thailand, I stayed at a friend house.

_______________________________________________

_____ 25. Please wait a minute. Now, she is wash her hair.

_______________________________________________

End of Task

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BIOGRAPHY

Name Miss Suwaporn Chumkamon

Date of Birth April 17, 1986

Educational Attainment

2009: Bachelor of Arts, Chinese Major

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

Work Position Government Teacher

Thayang Wittaya School

Work Experiences 2016 - Present: Chinese Teacher

Thayang Wittaya School

2015 : Chinese Teacher

Amphawan Wittayalai School

2010 : Sale Executive

Panasonic Management (Thailand) Co.,Ltd

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