A study on inflectional morpheme errors made by arts undergraduates at the South Eastern University of Sri Lanka

Abstract

This paper investigates the inflectional morpheme errors made by the students in the Faculty of Arts & Culture (FAC) of the South Eastern University of Sri Lanka. Writing has been a difficult skill to master for the undergraduates irrespective of their faculties. Since, writing is being regularly tested as part of the end-semester examinations for English as a Second Language (ESL) courses, it is important for students to master the skill. It is believed that writing skills can be improved by identifying and analyzing the more prominent errors the learners make. Forty five first year students of the FAC were given different writing tasks that included free writing compositions and grammar-based activities. At the end, the errors in their writings were identified, categorized and analyzed. Special attention was paid to inflectional errors. The study revealed that the most prominent errors in free writing were the use of third person singular inflections. The students made considerable errors in writing past tense form too. The majority of the students added the past tense ‘be’ form along with the past tense verb. In addition, the students made other errors like noun-verb (past tense ‘be’ form) agreement or missing ‘be’ form completely. The study also revealed that the students’ grammatical knowledge of noun and adjective/adverb inflection was weaker, mainly in using possessives for irregular plural forms and abstract nouns as well as using comparative and superlative forms. A post-test follow-up focus group discussion was held with the students to find the reasons for making such errors. However, they were unable to give a satisfactory explanation. In this study, attempts were also made to analyze the cause of the errors as intra-lingual and inter-lingual errors. 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.