analysisof verb to be errors among third year students in govermment model secondary schools

Abstract

Abstract This study aims at evaluating the competence of the Sudanese third year model secondary school male and female students in using the verb to be in a written composition. This is undertaken by analyzing the written compositions of fifty model students and investigating the possibility of the interference of Arabic, their mother tongue. The investigation is realized by contrastive comparison of the verb to be in both Standard English and Modern Standard Arabic and when needed the effect of Sudanese Khartoum Slang Arabic is considered. Theoretical background shows the nature and the areas of both English verb to be and Arabic verb to be which are investigated with the purpose of identifying the areas of similarities and differences in both languages in order to use them as the base for the analysis and synthesis of the outcome of the usage of the verb to be among the students. This is done by comparing the students’ usage of the verb to be with the theoretical base of both languages and carrying out a contrastive analysis to find the possible interlingual interference in the areas tried by the students. To the best knowledge of the writer there are no totally dedicated researches conducted in the area of the verb to be problems among the learners of English. However, two researches which deal with the verb to be as part of their research problems are reviewed and discussed. The methods fol/owed to realize the overall aims of the study are contrastive and error analysis of the data. There are 8 types of errors classified into three classifications: 1- type of incorrect verb to be sentence structure 2- type of incorrect verb to be omission 3- type of incorrect verb to be addition. The first has the highest rate of errors and the second occupies the second rate. Some of them are included in all the 6 categories of the verb to be used by the students. These categories are.' 1- be + noun, 2- be + adjective, 3- be + adjective + noun, 4- be + adverb/ or adverb + adjective, 5- be + present participle (progressive form), 6- be + past participle (passive voice). The findings of the study have partially met the first hypothesis which supposes the possibility of the interference of Arabic their L1 into English their second. The study reveals that intralingual causes exceed the interlingual ones by the ratio 6 to 3. The study also proves that the categories with simple structure like the first and the second generate minimum errors and those with complicated steps like the passive voice generates the maximum errors and those with medium complicated structures have medium errors. The second hypothesis is not met because the model students did not commit few mistakes as it supposes. The details of the conclusions and recommendations are included in chapter six.