Abstract:
This is a descriptive and analytical study. It attempts to investigate the
syntactic errors in constructing English sentences made by many first
secondary grade students at government schools in the Ramallah area with
special reference to those errors pertaining to tense, word-order and
subject-verb agreement. As well, it is one of the very few studies that have
tackled this problem in the West Bank / Palestine. To the researcher’s best
knowledge, it might be the first study which handles the problem with
respect to students of the secondary stage at government schools rather more
widely.
For this purpose, a number of hypotheses were proposed. They
included the effect of providing information and necessary vocabulary on
the number and type of syntactic errors made in constructing English
sentences, the effect of sentence level of intricacy on that, the sources of the
errors students make in this field and the differences that might exist
between the literary stream students and their counterparts in the scientific
stream as for the number of errors made in this respect.
In order to test the study hypotheses and find answers to the questions
raised, the researcher prepared a diagnostic test to be applied to the random
and purposive sample which was selected to meet the objectives of the study.
Before the application of the test during the second term of the scholastic
year 2004/2005, it was e-mailed to a group of experts in English language
for evaluation. Moreover, to ensure the test reliability, the researcher first
applied it to a pilot sample twice with a week interval between the two
sessions. The results pointed to its reliability, and then it was applied to the
XIwhole sample in the schools selected. As for marking the students’ answers,
it was done by setting them against the model answers prepared for this
purpose.
After analyzing the data and testing the hypotheses, the researcher
arrived at the following conclusions. First, the occurrence of errors was not
due to the lack of information and necessary vocabulary, nor was it
connected to the level of sentence intricacy. Secondly, the largest number of
errors were found to pertain to linguistic and pedagogical reasons rather than
to the negative interference of Arabic. Lastly, it was found that students in
the literary stream committed a larger number of errors than their
counterparts in the scientific stream.
All in all, The large number of errors committed pointed to the
seriousness of the problem. As well, it was clear that students difficulties in
building well-formed sentences were mostly connected to the lack of
understanding how the system of sentence construction works in English.
This necessitates that some measures be taken to improve the situation, such
as enhancing teacher training programs and activating some classroom
applications. As well, it is suggested that further research be carried out on
other students at various educational levels within the same field.
