Philippine E-Journals

Syntactic Error Analysis on Oral Classroom Discourse

Jemimah S. Zanoria

 

Abstract:

This qualitative research aimed to investigate syntactic errors in the classroom discourse of Grade 11 general academic strand students. Twelve participants were observed during classroom discourses. Observation and focus group discussion were also used in the data gathering. The data were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed employing error analysis method. Results showed that among the syntactic errors committed by the participants in classroom discourse were omission, addition, selection, and ordering. Specifically, the students committed errors in the omission of auxiliaries, prepositions, pronouns, and determiners; errors in the selection of verbs, pronouns, prepositions, determiners, and adverbs; errors in addition which were double marking, regularization, and simple addition; and errors in ordering of prepositional phrases and adverbs. Results further revealed that the causes of syntactic errors were intralingual, as the common cause of error, and interlingual. Furthermore, the FGD results showed that there were other reasons for committing errors like fear to commit errors and lack of confidence which impeded the students in their speaking performance.