Action Research Project

Name: Eduardo Mansilla Contreras

How many hours I have been there: 12 hours
Hours of English: 3 a week
Level: 7th Grade
Level of English: A1

Title:

Use of auxiliaries does and does in subject questions because of generalization of rules.

Reasons for studying this:

This Action Research Project has been carried out because it is one part of the Course English
Language Methodology at Universidad Catolica de la Santisima Concepcion. This project is
extremely important for me because there are some consequences as a result of this research
that are necessary for teachers. One consequence is that teachers who permanently examine and
think about the teaching-learning process carefully are more aware their strengths and
weaknesses. This is absolutely necessary for teachers to improve their English and teaching
skills. Another consequence is that a teacher that knows how to analyse a problem and solve it
becomes a person that is capable to suggest ideas, methods and answers in the field of education
in order to change the educational system positively. Because there is no doubt that teachers’
influence on students is immense, this project is also significant for our society.

Introduction:

This research was conducted at Colegio Gabriela Mistral. It is a subsidiary school in Yobilo,
Coronel. This research was done on June 26th, 2008 to taste students on grammar. Five students
participated in the research. They were given a sheet with 12 exercises and the time limit for the
test was one hour. I used the computer laboratory to take the test. The students had to answer 8
subject wh-questions.

Problem of investigation:

The problem is centred on the process of forming wh-questions in present tense.

In written, students use auxiliary verbs in the wrong way because there is an over-generalisation
of the rule. They use do or does with subject wh-questions.
Results:

After considering all the information provided by the tests, I can state some conclusions:
According to the answers that the students gave in the test, one hundred per cent of the students
committed the same error when they were asked to transform a statement into a question.
None of the students did all the exercises correctly.
None of the students completed the 8 subject wh-questions well.
Most of the students have serious problems of over-generalization. It is clear that the students
think that they have to use do or does whenever they are asked to make questions in English.

Discussion:

Conclusion: After analysing the grammatical problems that the students have and the
information provided by different authors in relation to those problems, I have reflected on the
reasons that caused this situation. Obviously, teachers have an important role in the teaching –
learning process and a great responsibility at the same time. So, whenever the majority of the
students commit the same errors, teachers have to accept part of the blame and conduct an
analysis of his way of teaching. In this case, the teacher did not try to find particular rules or
exceptions of the construction of questions in present tense. The teacher was not aware of the
problem because the teacher has never realized of the exception to the rules. The teacher has
just taught the students the rules of grammar and he does all the talking during the class. Only
about four students participate when the teacher asked questions and the other students remain
in silence.

Proposal: these students have to be taught again because the majority of them haven’t
assimilated what the teacher has been trying to teach them for about five months. The students
have to learn grammar in context. They need to learn that they can use grammar in order to
communicate with other people.
Also, the learners have to participate in the lesson. All the students have to participate because
they are the main characters of the teaching-learning process. This is going to accelerate the
assimilation of the information because what students discover is more significant for them than
what they are said.
Because these are students with a basic level of English, they have to be taught firstly questions
that maintain the same order used in statements (subject + verb + rest of the sentence). The
intention of this is to familiarise students with wh-questions and make a bridge between
statements and questions in which the students have to use auxiliary verbs.
After that, students have to be taught in which cases they have use do and does.
The process of acquiring language 1 and language 2 are similar because overgeneralization is a
natural part of the learning process in both cases. So, teachers don’t have to feel that the lesson
is a disaster if students make mistakes. In fact, it means that the students are prepared for the
next step. Here, the teacher has to correct the students’ errors in order make aware the students
of their mistake and correct it.

Theoretical framework:

According to Celce-Murcia and Hilles the question of what, when, and how to correct is often
problematic. Experience will quickly reveal that it is impossible to correct every error a student
makes. Clearly, the ESL/EFL teacher needs to set priorities.

For Burt and Kiparsky, global errors are higher in the hierarchy than local ones. This suggest
that errors involving word order, missing obligatory constituents such as subjects, and misuse of
semantically full connectors of those that confuse the relationship of clauses or sentential
constituents are more important than an omitted article or inflectional morpheme in the third
person singular.

The fist step in preparing a grammar lesson is to consult a variety of grammar reference books
and texts in order to establish how a structure is formed, when it is used, and whether there are
any particular rules or exceptions governing its use.

If grammar instruction is deemed appropriate for a class, the teacher’s next step is to integrate
grammar principles into a communicative framework, since the fundamental purpose of
language is communication. Unfortunately, grammar is often taught in isolated, unconnected
sentences that give a fragmented, unrealistic picture of English and make it difficult for students
to apply what they have learned in actual situations. Realistic and effective.

Harmer said that students who learn English as a second language already have a deep
knowledge of at least one other language, and where L1 and English come into contact with
each other there are often confusions which provoke errors in a learner’s use of English. It can
be at the level of grammar where a student’s first language has a subtly different system: French
students often have trouble with the present perfect because there is a similar form in French but
the same time concept is expressed slightly differently.

For a long time now researchers in child language development have been aware of the
phenomenon of “over-generalization”. This is the best described as a situation where a child
who starts by saying Daddy went, they came, etc. perfectly correctly suddenly starts saying
*Daddy goed and *They comed. What seems to be happening is that the child starts to “over-
generalise” a new rule that has been (subconsciously) learnt, and as a result even makes mistake
with things that he or she knew before. Later, however, it all gets sorted out, has the child
begins to have a more sophisticated understanding, and he or she goes back to saying went and
came whilst, at the same time, handling regular past tense endings.
Foreign language students make the same kind of “developmental” errors as well. This accounts
for mistakes like *She is more nicer than him where the acquisition of more for comparatives is
over-generalised and then mixed up with the ruler that the student has learnt – that comparative
adjectives are formed of an adjective + er. Errors of this kind are part of a natural acquisition
process. When second language learners make errors, they are demonstrating part of the natural
process of language learning.

Celce-Murcia and Larsen-Freeman stated that When working with beginning students, it is
advisable to do some early work with subject NP focus in wh-questions so that they can become
familiar with some common wh-words without worrying about subject/auxiliary inversion at
the same time.
e.g. Who is writing on the board - What happened

References:
Celce-Murcia, M. & Hilles, S. (1988). Techniques and resources in teaching grammar. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.

The Practice of English Language Teaching J. Harmer First Edition Longman, Second Edition
Longman, Third Edition Pearson.

Stromswold, K. (1995). The acquisition of subject and object Wh-questions. Language

Acquisition: A Journal of Developmental Linguistics, Vol. 4(1-2). Special issue: The acquisition
of -i Wh-n-questions, 5-48.

Celce-Murcia, Marianne and Diane Larsen-Freeman. (1999). The Grammar Book: An ESL/EFL
Teacher's Course. Boston, MA: Heinle and Heinle Publishing Company