An Error Analysis of Students' Use of Passive Voice: Comparison between English and Non-English Majors
Abstract
This study empirically analyzes students' ability to identify various types of passive voice (PV) errors through a grammaticality judgment multiple-choice test and examines grammatical errors in constructing the PV in a Chinese-to-English translation (C-E translation) task. The study was conducted among English majors (EM) and non-English majors (NEM) from different universities. The research aims to identify and compare the common error types made by EM and NEM when constructing PV sentences and explore their potential causes. For this purpose, data was collected from a large sample of university students. The findings reveal that errors in passive construction manifest in various forms. The five most common issues are errors in tense, participles, word choice, by-transposition, and the insertion, omission, or misuse of the auxiliary "be". Another significant finding is that, in general, EM performed better than NEM. However, in some specific areas, NEM performed better than EM, which are, the wrong choice of patient-agent and incomplete translation aspects. Based on these results, this study offers pedagogical suggestions for teaching PV to EM and NEM, respectively.
Downloads
References
Batubara, M. H., & Mahardhika, M. G. S. (2020). An analysis on students’ difficulties in changing active to passive voice. Jurnal As-Salam, 4(1), 61–78. DOI: 10.37249/as-salam.v4i1.175
Biber, D., Johansson, S., Finegan, E., Conrad, S., & Leech, G. N. (2021). Grammar of spoken and written English. John Benjamins.
Brown, H. D. (2014). Principles of language learning and teaching: A course in second language acquisition (6th ed.). Pearson.
Burt, M., & Kiparsky, C. (1974). Global and local mistakes. In J. H. Schumann & N. Stenson (Eds.), New frontiers in second language learning (pp. 71–80). Newbury House.
Chomphooyod, P., Suchato, A., Tuaycharoen, N., & Punyabukkana, P. (2023). English grammar multiple-choice question generation using Text-to-Text Transfer Transformer. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 5, 100158.
Chu, C. C. (1973). The passive construction: Chinese and English. Journal of Chinese Linguistics, 1(3), 437–470.
Corder, S. P. (1967). The significance of learner's errors. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 5(1–4), 161–170.
Diaz, J., Rifqi, M., Bouchon-Meunier, B., Jhean-Larose, S., & Denhiére, G. (2008). Imperfect answers in multiple choice questionnaires. In P. P. Wolfling & W. K. Schmidt (Eds.), Times of convergence. Technologies across learning contexts: Third European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning, EC-TEL 2008, Maastricht, The Netherlands, September 16–19, 2008, Proceedings (pp. 144–154). Springer.
Diyata, F. (2022). Teaching passive voice by using task-based learning with integrated steps in a procedural form. JEPAL (Journal of English Pedagogy and Applied Linguistics), 3(1), 45–55. DOI: 10.32627/jepal.v3i1.542
Duan, M. (2011). A corpus-based study of the misuse of tenses in the English composition of Chinese college students. English Language Teaching, 4(4), 173–180.
Dulay, H. (1982). Language two. Oxford University Press.
Jung, W. H. (2006). Error analysis: What problems do learners face in the production of the English passive voice? English Language & Literature Teaching, 12(2), 19–40.
Keenan, E. L., & Dryer, M. S. (2007). Passive in the world's languages. In T. Shopen (Ed.), Language typology and syntactic description: Vol. 1. Clause structure (pp. 325–361). Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511619427.006
Krashen, S. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Pergamon Press.
Lamunpandh, N., & Chaengchenkit, R. (2020). An error analysis of Thai EFL students’ use of passive voice [Unpublished master’s thesis]. Thammasat University.
Li, F., Ren, J., & Zhao, H. (2016). Grammatical mistakes in college English writing: Problem analysis, reasons and solutions. International Journal of Applied Linguistics and Translation, 2(3), 20–28. DOI: 10.11648/j.ijalt.20160203.11
McEnery, T., & Xiao, R. (2006). Passive constructions in English and Chinese: A corpus-based contrastive study. Languages in Contrast, 6(1), 109–149.
Ni, H. (2013). An empirical research on negative transfer in college non-English majors’ Chinese-English sentence translation. Theory & Practice in Language Studies, 3(6), 1032–1037.
Polat, M. (2017). Teachers’ attitudes towards teaching English grammar: A scale development study. International Journal of Instruction, 10(4), 379–398. DOI: 10.12973/iji.2017.10422a
Presada, D. (2014). The effectiveness of error analysis in translation classes: A pilot study. Porta Linguarum Revista Interuniversitaria de Didáctica de las Lenguas Extranjeras, 22, 91–100. DOI: 10.30827/Digibug.53695
Pullum, G. K. (2014). Fear and loathing of the English passive. Language & Communication, 37, 60–74.
Rustipa, K. (2011). Contrastive analysis, error analysis, interlanguage and the implication to language teaching. Ragam Jurnal Pengembangan Humaniora, 11(1), 16–22.
Schachter, J. (1974). An error in error analysis. Language Learning, 24(2), 205–214.
Sideeg, A. I. A. (2002). Error analysis: A theoretical framework. Available from nasirx72@yahoo.com
Somphong, M. (2013). An analysis of errors in passive sentence structures by Thai EFL university students. The Asian Conference on Education 2013: Official Conference Proceedings, 662–675.
Touchie, H. Y. (1986). Second language learning errors: Their types, causes, and treatment. JALT Journal, 8(1), 75–80.
Wang, Y. (2011). A case study of passive constructions in first year English majors’ learning. The Guide of Science & Education, 3, 105–107.
Wang, Y. (2020). Avoidance of the English passive construction by L1 Chinese learners. Language Learning, 70(S2), 83–103.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright for this article is retained by the author(s), with first publication rights granted to the journal.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
1.png)
1.png){kind=logo}
