Writing difficulties: an investigation of irregular morpheme errors among the students in the South Eastern University of Sri Lanka

Abstract

As a follow-up of a previous study that investigated the inflectional errors made by the students in the Faculty of Arts & Culture (FAC) of the South Eastern University of Sri Lanka (Navaz and Sama, 2016), this paper examines further as to how the students use irregular inflectional morphemes in writing, especially plural nouns and verbs. Writing has been a difficult skill and many errors are noted in the irregular forms. In the previous study students made a large number of errors in forming past tenses and plurals which have been noted as two of the frequent used grammar items in student writing. Hundred (100) third year students from the Faculties of Arts & Culture and Islamic & Arabic Studies participated in the study. This study was conducted in two stages with an intervention in-between. Regular and irregular nouns and verbs were used to test students’ knowledge on making plural and past tense forms at the pre-intervention stage. Irregular nouns and verbs were used at the post-intervention stage. Students made less errors in regular forms of plural nouns and past tense, while many errors occurred in irregular forms of nouns and verbs. Most of the errors belong to misformation type. Through an intervention it was identified that even though students could improve their knowledge of making plurals, their knowledge in forming irregular forms of past tense did not improve. A study of this nature, it is envisaged, will shed light for future research and help make changes in the instructional methodology, especially in teaching writing skills.