1.1 Introduction
Grammatical error is one of the problems faced by students in writing. Previous studies strongly recommend that the most beneficial approach of facilitating learners’ command of grammar in writing is to employ students’ writing as the starting point for discussing grammatical concepts (Hanganu et al., 2015). The teacher who sees that many students are writing sentences containing misplaced modifiers can present a mini-lesson on this concept, using examples from student writing. The teacher can instruct the students to exchange their drafts with their peers for editing purposes. Integrating grammar instruction into the revising and editing process assists students in making immediate applications (Chin, 2000).
As a prelude to other parts of this study, this chapter will discuss the background upon which this study was initiated, the statement of problems that led to this study, the Aim and Objectives of the study. Others are Significance of the study, Scope of work, Research hypothesis and questions, Limitations of the Study and Definition of technical terms.
1.2 Background of Study
In Nigeria, English language is the lingua - Franca (the official language) the language of Government, businesses, education, law, politics religion, mass media and international communication. This is the inevitable situation because Nigerian is a multilingual society with many different ethic groups such as Yoruba Edo, Igbo, Tiv, Hausa, and so on. Since it is only in English language that all these groups can communicate, we can realize the indispensable role which English plays in Nigeria.
The field of EA in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) was established in the 1970s by Corder and colleagues. A widely-available survey can be found in chapter eight of Brown (2000). A key finding of EA has been that many learner errors were produced by learners misunderstanding the rules of the new language. EA is a type of linguistic study that focuses on the errors learners make. It consists of a comparison between the errors made in TL and within that TL itself.
According to Corpuz (2011), the error correction technique in writing benefits teachers in creating awareness among learners. In instilling independent reading habits among students besides aiding revision, teachers can also gain benefits in designing or planning strategies and measures to help students overcome their problems and improve their language performance (Muhari & Mansor, 2008). Myles (2002) also mentions that feedback is the most significant part of writing and that improvement is impossible without it. Indirectly, these will be able to inculcate awareness among the students of the common types of errors to avoid (Naeini, 2008).
Considering those problems, this research focuses on analyzing students’ grammatical errors in writing a text. This study aims to reveal the grammatical errors in essays written by second year-students who enrolled essay writing examination. Furthermore, the writers would like to know various forms of errors in part of speech use there. Finally, this study intends to find out the pedagogical implication of errors made by the students in their writings.
Therefore, in Nigeria where the research was carried out, the activities that was conducted is to know the Grammatical Errors in Secondary School Students' English Essay.
1.3 Statement of Problems
Investigation revealed that second language learners of English face some difficulties while learning the language. This is because most second language learners find it difficult to speak or write good English. With the above in mind, this research work focuses on Tense Errors in English Essays of Secondary Schools Students This is to find out the tense errors the students make, the causes and possible suggestion of how to reduce the problems.
1.4 Aim and Objectives of Study
The aim of the study is to scrutinize the Grammatical Errors in Secondary School Students' English Essay. In achieving this aim, the following specific objectives were laid out as follows:
- To identify the errors in the essays of the students.
- To classify the errors identified into types
- To find out and explain the possible causes of the errors.
- To provide solutions to the causes of the errors.
1.5 Research Questions
The study came up with research questions so as to be able to ascertain the above stated objectives. The specific research questions for the study are stated below as follows:
- What are the errors students made?
- What are the types of errors?
- What are the causes of the errors?
- What are the possible solutions to these errors?
1.6 Significance of Study
This study is important as, it attempts to highlight the major tense errors committed by the students in their speaking and writing, and to provide the lasting solution on how to correct the errors. The falling standard of education generally could be attributed to poor comprehension of the English language lessons by students.
This is due to the fact that, English language serves as a bed rock for understanding other disciplines of learning S.S.C.E holders cannot fully communicate in the national language (English) and it is on this basis that this work focuses on the tenses in the students written essays.
This study will be of immense benefit to other researchers who intend to know more on this study and can also be used by non-researchers to build more on their research work. This study contributes to knowledge and could serve as a guide for other study.
1.7 Scope of Study
The scope of the research is focused on the Grammatical Errors in Secondary School Students' English Essay. This study is limited to the analysis of fifty scripts of S.S II Students of Maimuna Gwarzo in Kaduna South local government. The research is limited to found out tense errors made by students in the schools so as to provide the lasting solutions to aid teachers and students on how to guard against such problems.
1.8 Limitations of the Study
During the course of this study, many things militated against its completion, some of which are:
- Time Constraint: The time frame given to accomplish this project was very short due to school academic calendar and it was carried out under pressure which made the researcher not to implement some necessary features.
- Research material: availability of research material is a major setback to the scope of the study.
- Frequent power failure: This made the researcher append more money on fuel to ensure sustainable power.
- Financial Constraint: Insufficient fund tends to impede the efficiency of the researcher in sourcing for the relevant materials, literature or information and in the process of data collection.
1.9 Methodology
This section deals with how data is collected for the research work. The study covers the use of tense errors in English essays of secondary school students of some selected secondary schools in Kaduna South Local Government. The data for this work is the essay papers of thirty students of the schools.
