The acquisition of 'To Be' as an auxiliary verb and a linking verb in the written work of Malaysian ESL learners /
The study investigated the acquisition of the English verb ‘to be’ by second language learners of English at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). The subjects were one hundred and sixty-eight students of the Bachelor of Human Sciences in English as a Second Language (BENL) programme...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Gombak, Selangor :
Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences , International Islamic University Malaysia,
2007
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Click here to view 1st 24 pages of the thesis. Members can view fulltext at the specified PCs in the library. |
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| Summary: | The study investigated the acquisition of the English verb ‘to be’ by second language
learners of English at the International Islamic University Malaysia (IIUM). The
subjects were one hundred and sixty-eight students of the Bachelor of Human
Sciences in English as a Second Language (BENL) programme. The study advocates
a non-interventive as well as a non-experimental method of research, which applies
discourse, textual and error analysis. The instruments used to gather the data were the
subjects’ written essays and syntax tasks. The findings show that the subjects
uniformly demonstrate a high preference in using ‘to be’ as a linking verb as opposed
to the auxiliary verb. This means that sentences with auxiliary verb ‘to be’ do not
appear as many as those with copula, in fact less than one third. The findings also
reveal that the students’ proficiency level does affect the acquisition and use of ‘to
be’, as the more proficient subjects produce more correct forms of ‘to be’, and the
less proficient ones produce more incorrect ‘to be’ forms. The types of errors found to
be committed include errors of addition, inflection, marker, omission,
plurality/singularity, repetition, substitution, tense and word order. The most errors
produced were those of plurality/singularity and inflection. Further syntactic analyses
of the correct and incorrect production of ‘to be’ show that there are instances in
which the structure of the explicit modals influences the production of ‘to be’ in the
specific error types of addition and inflection namely. The research contributes to the
dearth in overall research in this particular subject and to the teaching of English to
ESL speakers. |
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| Item Description: | 'A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Human Sciences (Teaching of English as a Second Language)'--On t.p. |
| Physical Description: | xiv, 109 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. Also available on 4 3/4 in. computer optical disc. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 101 - 107). |