Morphological and syntactic errors in the spoken English of form two students in two schools in Gucha district, Nyanza Province

Abstract

This study looks at the morphological and syntactic errors in the spoken English of two groups of students herein coded as school A and school B respectively. The study was guided by three objectives. First, it was to identify and describe the morphological and syntactic errors in the spoken English of form two students. Secondly, we sought to determine the difference in performance in elicitation tasks between students who use English exclusively in school and those who do not. Our final objective was to infer thecause of errors in the students' spoken English. The study employed the interlanguage theory which focuses on the transitional competence of second language learners. Nemser 1971, Selinker 1972; assert that learners develop a set of approximate systems on their way to the target language. The learners possess a certain body of knowledge underlying the utterances they make. Data for this study was collected by use of a simple random sample of eight (8) students who were chosen from each of the schools A and B. They were subjected to a storytelling session on a topic (oral narrative) of their choice. On data analysis, the tape recorded data was transcribed. The various morphological and syntactic errors were identified. To determine the difference in performance in the elicitation tasks given, the transcribed data was scored out of20 for each of the students. We used chi-square test to find out if the two populations can be considered equal in performance. The study is divided into five chapters. The first chapter is the introduction. It tells us why and how this study will be carried out and what it intends to achieve. Chapter two is the literature review and theoretical framework. It helps to anchor the research firmly on its foundation. Chapter three is about the research methodology which gives details regarding the procedures used in conducting the study. Chapter four focuses on data analysis and interpretation. This is the raw data from the field is analyzed. Chapter five is a summary of the findings, conclusion and pedagogic implications of the study.