10.13.2006

Your First Hypothesis on Language Acquisition

Hi Everybody,

The first homework of this term is about making a hypothesis on the following data from your book(p.18). After examining the following data write your own hypothesis about the acquisition of "plural in English". Remember the 4 hypotheses we studied on the acquisition of "continuous" in English. (You might click on the title to read more on acquisition)

1) I bought a couple of towel.
2) There is many kind of way you make baklava.
3) Just a few month he will finish from his studies.
4) There is a lot of mosquito.
5) How many hour?

Good luck,

tuncer can

131 comments:

Anonymous said...

A POSSİBLE HYPOTHESİS CAN BE SOMETHİNG LİKE THİS: DON'T USE THE SUFFİX 'S'WİTH THE PLURAL NOUNS İF THEY ARE PRECEDED BY A QUANTİFİER

Anonymous said...

I think we as learners english as a second language can better judge and analyse such dilemmas one can fall into better than a native speaker of english itself.Starting from this point of view the first possible reason why they didn't use any "s" to indicate the plurality is because they think in arabic or whatever their native language is and translate it into english. The term"translation" is maybe not the proper word in this case, because I don't mean that they find the direct english word for each content they want to describe, but they figure out the logical reference for the content of what they want to express. For example: in the meaning of the words"couple,many, few, lot,many" there is already a plurality, so they don't need to make the meaning double plural by putting an "s" to the following noun.Same as in turkish: if we think the whole sentence in turkish, we would say "bir cift mendil" not "bir cift mendiller", because "cift" points out that there are already 2 of them.
Another possibility is that they learn english through listening to native speakers without getting the written forms to follow. And if the speaker talks to fast that s/he doesn't pronounce the last endings clearly it is possible that they don't hear the "s" at the end.Additionaly, there is also no numerical sign before the nouns, so they use such phrases during their interlanguage period without putting "s" at the end.And if the teacher doesn't correct them, the wrong will remain fossiliased.But my first hypothesis sounds more believable to me, because they are almost advanced level learners so it is unlikely to think about they learn the language just by listening.Pelin K. Akcura

Anonymous said...

When we are learning second language,we often make this kind of wrongs because we always think by using our first language.If the first language doesn't include a rule about plural like the plural in English or the second language,we try to use first language's rule for indicating plurality.We do not use plural in Turkish when there is a word which has the plural meaning so in english, we try to make the same but I think also if the student which makes such wrong is not turkish for examle, she or he is french, they may not make the same wrong because their first language may effect positively the acquisition of the second because the two languages have similar rules so I can say my offer suitable this hypothesis now during the acquisition of the second language,we should try to be free from the domination of grammatical rules.
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Anonymous said...

emrullah kocataş
when people learn a foreign languauge they are affected by foreign culture.In same time the language is a part of the foreign culture.In life,objects and info are the same but people define them in different codes according to their cultures.so when we start to learn a foreign language actually,we try to define life with a different system.so when we cant understand,learn,accept a rule of foreign language completely,we make clear that ambiguity by our own language's rules.by the way we compose an interlanguage grammar.sometimes,that interlanguage grammar can be much personal.we can change the rules of foreign languages due to many reasons.Pronounciation,similarity between rules,not knowing the rules can be reasons for interlanguage grammar.As in any grammar rule,the acquisition of 'plural in english'is required to be busy with foreign language's materials.Namely you have to be busy with foreign culture,language in each moment of life.By the way that system defining life wont be foreign to you because after all it will be a part of yours.But that process is impossible to get success for everyone so actually the interlanguge grammar or data is inevitable.
3231040022 Emrullah Kocataş

Anonymous said...

3231050073 said...
in this case the learners arent aware of the fact that quantifiying phrases or nonnumerical quantifying words can also make the nouns plural.So they must think that there is no need to use -s with the nouns that are preceded by the quantifying phrases or nonnumerical quantifying words and my hypothesis about this topic is Dont use -s with the nouns that are preceded by quantifying phrases or nonmumerical quantifying words to make them plural

Sezen said...

I suppose a hypothesis like the following:This learner of English as a second language makes an assumption that he/she doesnt use 's suffix that makes plural nouns with 'objects or animals'.He/she might assume that the suffix 's is used with only 'humans'.
I do not know whether I am wrong or not.I want to illuminate one point on this question.These are only 5 examples that are presented to us,it may be wrong to make a ganeralization,anyway...

Anonymous said...

CANAN GÜLBEY 3231040135
These people probably know Englısh in pre_intermediate level.They make sentences correctly but forget to add "s" to the end of the nouns.Most probably,they are using the rules of their native language.For instance,in Turkish we say "birkaç elma" not "birkaç elmalar".If we think in Turkİsh while using English it's normal to do the same mistake.They think the words;couple,many,few,a lot of have already the plural meaning,so there is no need to add "s".
One of the rules of negative sentences may be misunderstood.When we see the words having negative meanings in a sentence such as nothing,never,noone etc we do not make the sentence negative again.These two situations are very similar so these people can make generalization.
To correct these mistakes,these people can be told that in English there are words which make the word after them plural.As it is a rule,it will be a bit difficult for them to understand.They should be told that it will be very useful for them to forget the rules of their native language.

Anonymous said...

3231050127 I think there are 2 possible reasons for this problem.First,there aren't any numbers quantifying the nouns.There are quantifying phrases.I mean,it doesn't say "there are 2 ways you make baklava"It says"there is many kind of ..."These quantifying phrases might have caused the problem.Secondly,it may have been caused by differences between the grammar rules of mother tongue and english.

Anonymous said...

the sentences have been taken from the conversatıons of native speakers arabic learning english.as we can see there is a static mistake in the usage of pulurals with quantifiers.my hypothesis on this subjest is about the effect of environment on language learning.because people learn by hearing at first.oral language comes before written language.so someone who starts to learn a language begins with hearing the words.because that person doesn't know how the words are written he begins to say them as he heard.and this leads to the wrong usage of the words in case of a misunderstanding.in our examples ,the arabic speakers most probably couldn't understand the /s/ at the end of the words;because the native speakers swallowed the /s/probably.so they accepted it as the right form and used it as thet heard.as you see ,firstly we learn by means of our environment and this shows the great impact of it on language learning.

Anonymous said...

I think, it is about the usage in society.Even in turkish,we delete some rules and add something while speaking.We don't use the words fully.For instance, in turkish we use "gelicem" instead of "geleceğim". It can be related to mother tongue.Also it can be related to quantifiers.I think these sentences' rule is this,I mean quantifiers.According to this rule,in these sentences there is no need to use "s" in words preceeded by quantifiers.My hypothesis is this.

Anonymous said...

3231050083 said...If they preceded by a quantifier we don't use 's'with the plural nouns.When we start to learn a foreign language sometimes we can use and evaluate its grammatical rules according to our native language rules.The cutures can affected by foreign language too.Finally,ı can say that the missing 's' is a result of spaker's first language rues and affects.Thereby,ı think that such their errors should be welcomed.

Anonymous said...

3231050102 the sentences have been taken from the conversations of native speakers of arabic learning english .as we can see there is a static mistake in the usage of plural form with quantifiers.my hypothesis on this subject is about the effect of environment on language learning.because people learn by hearing at first.oral language comes before written language.so someone who starts to learn a language begins with hearing the words of that language.because that person doesn't know how the words are written he begins to say them as he heard.and this leads to the wrong usage of words in case of a misunderstanding.as in our examples ,the arabic speakers most probably couldn't understand the /s/at the end of the words,because the native speakers of english swallowed/s/ probably.so the arabic accepted this as true and used the structure as he heard.as you see,firstly we learn by means of our environment and this shows the great impact of our environment on our language learning.because ı forgot to write my number on my first comment at 12.13p.m ı rewrote so they both belong to me.

Anonymous said...

3231050019

While lots of people are learning second language, they often make this kind of wrongs.The reason can be his/her mother tongue. In his/her mother tongue if '-s' isn't used, he/she easily make errors about second language. For example, in Turkish we say 'birçok insan', we do not use plural 'insanlar'. So he/she may think '-s' is unnecessary.

Anonymous said...

when we look at the use of plurals in these five sentencesve we can setup a hypotesis initially;ın each of the sentences there is a quantifying phrase before the noun and there isn't any plural marking on the noun,so we can say that whenever a quantifier is used before the noun the plural marking isn't put on the noun.In addition,regarding the role of native languages of learners we can say that plural forms in their own language aren't like that so they transfer their prior experience to the new one negativly(especially while using the complex quantifier structures such as 'many kinds of ways')3231050056

Anonymous said...

As far as ı understood;there are two explanation for this usage:firstly if the user is native, he/she dont use "s"" cause as we all know speaking languange is always diffrent from written languange.so the speaker don't use "s"".but in other case ı mean if the user is a turkish person this mistake comes from the our languange.she/he must have thought it as in turkish.yeah that is all...

Anonymous said...

3231050001 said...
it is clearly seen that the mistake of this student is that he/she uses the nouns with their singular forms when they are used after quantifying and nunnumerical words.the reason of this mistake is probably cross-cultural,in other words the native language rules of this student must have affected him/her.this student must have thought in his/her language and write in second languge

Anonymous said...

i think that this matter is about the usage of second language with mother tongue's gramatical rules.its seen that in the examples showed in question part the main mistake is: the student doesnt use nouns in their plural forms when the nouns are used after quantifiers and nunnumerical words.the student uses his own language's rules same as second language's rules.
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Anonymous said...

3231050126
a person who solely speaks one language heavily depends on that language,his mother tongue, to communicate with other people and venture his opinions and for that person, who is oblivious to every thing about a second language, the starting point to learn a second language is his mother tongue. to understand and learn the second language he need to think in the mentality of his native language; therefore, it is irreversible that he make literal translations and apply the mentality of the rules of his native language to the second one, which leads him to make mistakes. in addition, during the learning process he makes some generalizations concerned with rules of second language. it causes him to make mistakes as well.HE IS UNAWARE THAT EVERY LANGUAGE DOES NOT WORK OUT IN THE SAME WAY.the problem of these sentences is a consequence of these two things,namely literal translation and generalization(generalization of plural forms).

Anonymous said...

3231050069 said The first step of teaching plural usage in English is that when there is a numerical quantifying word preceding the noun,put 's'at the and of the noun.Firstly,the learner learn this rule.The following step is to teach quantifying phrases or nonnumerical quantifying words.As a result it takes time to understand the difference between the two usagesand such mistakes occur for atime.But,we shouldn't forget the role of the native language when learning a foreign language.The learners of the foreign language try to compare the target language with their native language.So,they transfer the forms andthe meanings of their native language to foreign language.Take for example our native language,Turkish.We don't say'bir çift havlular' or'birkaç aylar'.So when a Turk learns English ,it is normal to say'a couple of towel'.Because he doesn't have such a usage in his native language.

Anonymous said...

I think, usage of the "s" indicating the plurality changes according to way of the thought in the sentence and to whom it is said.If it is understandable that the word is plural, it isn't much necessary to use the suffix "s".Let's look the example: "There are a lot of book(s)." If the person to whom we say the sentence can understand plurality of the 'book', the usage of "s" does not matter.In clear situations
Some learnes think this according to their mother tounge.In Turkish we don't say "çok fazla kitaplar" we say " cok fazla kitap".So, the usage of the plural 's' usually changes according to differences between the grammar of the mother tounge and second language.


These are my own ideas, whether true or not...

Anonymous said...

3231050036 said..... the usage of plural is uncertain here.Because lots of the sentences are wrong and the data's are ambigious.So ı can infer that in arabia using english in daily life and some grammatic rules aren't important for their education system.Because in turkey lots of foreign language learners are learning grammatical rules and this can be said easily that,our grammar is better than native speakers grammer..And this can be thought that, why don't they use any 's' can be the result of not adaptating a foreign language as grammatical..These wrong sentences can be corrected but this would only be in the countries where learners have to use second language more than their mother language.And ı want to talk about why don't they use 's' can be because of thinking that,some words such as a couple,two,three,many kind of etc. have plural meanings and they wouldn't need to use 's' here...
If their teachers didn't correct their wrongs,they would learn using english like this...
I think this error can only be corrected with this idea :
I'm learning a new language and this language does't have any similarity with my native language..

Anonymous said...

I think, here, the learners are not aware of the fact that they must use the plural -s with quantifiers.

Anonymous said...

3231050009 said
I think the most important thing while learning second language is mother tonque.Because when you learn any rule about the second language you can compare it with your own language and if there are differences you can mix the rules especially while you are speaking.because I think that it is easier to realize mistakes while you are writing than speaking.The speakers of these sentences are not native speakers of english so they can make some mistakes while they are speaking or writting a foreign language.I don't know anything about language of Cairene Arabic but maybe their languge can have diffrent rules from english.The mistakes which done by there adults are about nouns' plural forms.They didn't add -s for plural forms of names in spite of quantifiers.maybe they don't add anythihg for plural names if they used names with quantifier in their own language as we do in turkish.I think it is so naturel.Because if someone who knows english wants to learn turkish he/she can make some mistakes.For example when you say him/her to translate the sentence of"ben eve geleceğim"He/she can say "ben geleceğim eve".Because they use firstly verb and then the other elements of sentence.So if we want to learn a foreign language we shoul be careful about the diffrences between our mother tonque and the second language we are learning

Anonymous said...

The first language we acquire gains significance when we intend to learn a second one, for we insist on trying to apply the rules and logic of our mother tongue on the new language. This approach, naturally, produces lots of mistakes, so it should be abandoned. We must enter the new world of the second language and break off all the connections with the first. As it can be seen in the examples on the page 18, we don't face any problems with simple structures like "100 years and 200.000 telephone lines". That's easy because we can teach the students easily the rules about plurals with the numerical quantifiers ;however, when it comes to nunnumeracal quantifiers we are struggling as it is an entirely new thing to the students.

Anonymous said...

3231050021
This kind of grammatical errors generally seen in learners who learn English as a second language apart from their native tongue. And usually the "subject-verb agreement rules" of their native tongue contradict with English's. Namely, if the verb format of the native language of the learner doesn't change in plural subject usages as it happens in English, learner will quickly forget the rule and tends to obey his/her native language's rules automatically. As it is mentioned in the comments above, for instance any Turkish learner who doesn't know any other foreign language other than his/her native one may have such difficulties in the beginning because he/she memorizes the direct translations of words and translates the sentence "Burada bir sürü sivrisinek var" as "There is a lot of mosquito" naturally.

On the contrary, for example learners whose native tongue is English might err in other languages. They can translate the sentence "There is a lot of mosquitos" as "Burada bir çok sivrisinekler var".

In conclusion, my hypothesis is that "Learners' native language rules of subject-verb agreement may drag them into errors while practising the second language they study."

Anonymous said...

Albana Bici 321040107

İf we give a general look at the giving data,we notice that in these examples nouns that are preceded by quantifying phrases or words like a couple,many,a few,a lot of,do not take the plural marker's' in the end of the noun.This kind of hypothesis is proved with the given examples,even if it is wrong.İf we have to analyse the mistake;first of all a person learns a foreign language always by comparing it with its own native language;comparing grammer;vocabulary;sounds ecc.The try to impose the native language grammer rules to the second language.So in these examples native speakers of Arabic tried to 'speak'English by thinking in Arabic.As a conclusion İ think when learning a new language we have to think in that language,to get large information about culture,customs so that we can evitate mistakes.

Anonymous said...

according to data; there is a problem to fixed a foreign language in our minds:)Generally, when we learn a foreign language we make same mistakes like in data..I think it is related with our first language..We think in our language then we wanted to adapted it in second language in same way..But if we researched more details we can see cultural affects for example;native speaker use his language more completely because he grown up with it..In his mind his first language is formed and he can understand rules more clearly but for person who learn second language this rule is exchangeable he use his first language rules and make mistakes..
3231040115

Anonymous said...

3231050071 In my opinion,the students making such plural mistakes,namely confusing on the matter of choosing 's' or not with some modifiers and quantifiers, thinks via their mother tounge habituality.What's more,it can be pretty difficult and tiring to teach them that they ought not to translate sentences word by word;as they can argue that "why do we say 'kaç saat?'but should say 'how many hourS?'".For this question i admit that it would be extremely hard for me to answer:)So i'll pray that my students won't inspect the reasons and only recite the rules:))!!.. [BURCU İÇLİ_3231050071]

Anonymous said...

even we learn a second language, before or while speaking, we always think in our mother tongue first. and that most probably makes someone use a mingled grammar. thats why they can have some mistakes. in fact these are not grammatical mistakes because all the words of the statement are in their place, the mistake is in the english meaning of the words or phrases.

CAN YÜCEL
3231030056

Anonymous said...

while learning nonnative language in the environment where that language is spoken, people care on spoken language.In our life we do not care about grammar rules as everybody else so that person might think that singular forms are used with quantifying phrases by looking at people's speaking in that country.On the other hand if this usege is spread in his native language, he might use it with singular forms.for instancewe can count bread in turkish but this rule does not valid n english so while learning english I usually made a mistake.3231050008

Anonymous said...

3231050095
it can be because of the child's thinking of the quantifiers as already plural,thus not putting an extra 's'.
Tansu Ünal

Anonymous said...

3231050104 said... According to my understanding,there are numerous explanations for these mistakes.First of all,I want to insert five of these examples which have no exact number,but a quantifying phrase or nonnumerical quantifying into the same category.Secondly,when we examine examples in terms of their translations,we can easily realise that it is similar in turkish.we don't need to put 's as the quantifiers give the meaning properly.Apart from this,nouns that are preceded by a couple of,a lot of and a few don't take 's since the article a results in confusion.If we have written two couples of ...,the learners would have probably used 's with towel.In addition to this,I prevent myself from putting 's with a pair of glasses when I was at high school,because glasses meant lots of glasses to me.Lastly,I'd like to conclude my hypothesis by asking a straightforward question in order to denote Why 's was not used with how many hour .It is that why a teacher asks whole class Who likes doing ...? although there are many students in the class.

Anonymous said...

to me,a second language speaker can't leave thinking in his own language easily..this problem especially is seen in plural or nonplural nouns I think.
there is a big possibility that in their language,they don't need to use -s with the words which preceded by a quantifier.So they don't use..another little possibility is that:they CAN'T care grammar rules very much while speaking :)3231050020

Anonymous said...

3231050054
i think this person doesn't give important the usage of the gramatical rules or he learns second language and he haven't just learnt he must use plural form with quantifiers..........

Anonymous said...

3231050039 says;
Nouns after qualifying phrase(s) do not take "s".A person who newly learn this,confuses numerical words with qualifying phrases.Qualifying phrases consist of at least two words/parts (a couple o,a few...) when the newly learner see some numeical words before noun,he supposes that it is a qualifying phrase,because it consist of 3 parts.So he/she doesn't add "s" to the end of the noun. And, second language learnes compare their mother tongue with the learning one.this can lead to mistakes.

Anonymous said...

Before i wrote my own hypothesis, i had searched what "interlanguage" means from this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlanguage. According to wikipedia, it is a linguistic system that has been developed by a learner of a SL who hasn't become fully proficient yet. This learner can preserve some features of their first language in speaking and writing the target language and creating innovations. As a result, as far as i can judge, they didn't use plural forms of words which came after quantifiers. I think in their first language the rule is like that. So they transfered this information to the second language they learnt and didn't use "s" after the words that came after quantifiers.
3231050002

Anonymous said...

3231050063

I think most of us learn a second lanugage wıth the help of our natıve language l mean when we are learnıng L2 always we compare rules of these two language at the result of thıs we make many mistake for example when we start to learnıng English we construct the sentence like turkish we use the verb at the end of the sentence but thıs rules ıs dıfferent from the other language so my hypothesıs is ıf the plural nouns are preceed by quantıfierwe don't use 's' wıth them(plural nonuns).

Anonymous said...

when we first start to learn a second language of course we can make lots of mistakes.and they may be plurals,becausewe compare the language we learn and our native language.so my hypothesis is that don't use the plurals with the nouns that are preceed by quantfying phrases...3231040059

Anonymous said...

3231050094.said...
Of course,second language acquisition needs much more proficiency than native language.Our native language contains certain gramatical rules,structures like other languages have.But these rules differ from language to language.There are other reasons of these differences.We can mention about these differences in one way.For example,we can learn our native language according to its gramatical rules.Namely if we think of that in turkish ,in plural usage,we say 'birçok kalem' instead of 'birçok kalemler'.And we think of as if this rule has the same principles when we want to learn second language.Because people think of every gramatical rule according to their native language,in general.So in english,we want to put into practise these rules.We think that'many pencil'is true according to our native language but it must be'many pencils'in english.That can be the first reason why we think like that.And also it can be interlanguage variation,individual differences.Whether our native language is turkish or arabic or not,we must think of and put into practise gramatical rules of second language.

Anonymous said...

I think´learner evaluates the subject´plural in english according to some criterions.for instance; when learner encounters certain quantity{i.e.number},he doesn`t forget to put `s` at the end of the noun.however,learner pays insufficient attention to quantifying phrases{many,a couple}. I suppose that it is related to the form of learning.because, the information which was learned the form of streotyped isn`t generalized other points. so, when we come across diffirent usages,we make gramatical errors.in these cases,learners usually try to set relevance to their mother language.so,these errors appear.

Anonymous said...

there is no doubt that all of us have the same problems like mentioned before. ı think this is totally related to learners' mother tongue. ıf the learner don't know such a rule in his native language,he has some problems with using that. this situation is just a mistake not an error. so ı think it has not a big problem on learner.

Anonymous said...

3231050041
There is no doubt that all of us have the same problems like mentioned before. I think this is totally related to learners' mother tongue. If the learner don't know such a rule in his native language,he has some problems with using that. This situation is just a mistake not an error. So i think it has not a big problem on learner.

Anonymous said...

the person who learns second language can make mistake sometimes like this
beacuse there are many differences between mother tounge and second language.
in these sentences we can see that the usage of the plural 's' changes according to the rules of these two
languages.the person thinks in turkish but speaks in english so he makes mistake.
missing 's' is a result of spaker's first language rues and affects.my hypothesis this.
thanks, 3231050031

Anonymous said...

when we start to learn a new language we can't avoid of thinking in our mother language.its because of the situation the learner in.and i think this manner will change in time
3231050017

Anonymous said...

i think the person who said these sentences effected bye his mother tongue.because he thinks in his mother language but speaks in english and as there are differences between mother language and second language he makes mistake. he is still under his mother tongue. my thesis is this whether it is true or not.
3231050048

Anonymous said...

I think we can better analyze such dilemmas since we aren't native speakers of English.And we can make similar mistakes.The most important reason of such mistakes is thinking in our mother tongue instead of our new language.So it becomes normal for us not to use "s" at the end of the nouns.As understood;the way of thinking is important.In the quantifiers like " a couple,many,few,a lot of,how many" there is already a meaning of plurarity.For example, in Turkish we don't say "bir çift havlular"; we say "bir çift havlu"."A couple"gives the meaning of two,two is plural so we don't use "s".
As a conclusion;we should be careful about the differences between our mother tongue and new language.While learning a new language we must think in that language.
3231050068

Anonymous said...

ı think the first reason why he or she dıd not use any 's'which indicates the plurality is because of the gramatical rules of their language,for example, we can not use's'to the following noun for making noun plural because according to our language rules noun phrases which indicates numbers can not be used with's' so whwn we are learning second language we always think like this and we often do lıke these wrongs ESRA ASLAN 3231050132

Anonymous said...

THE ACQUISITION OF PLURALITY IN ENGLISH

Initially, I want to say that all the languages in the world have their own grammar rules or sound systems. Also, in every language, each word is used to express various meanings, thereby obstructing the SLA process as it is a bit hard to perceive some significant details. One of the mistakes done by the learners of a second language is the usage of the plural form of some complex phrases.
First of all, when a learner uses such phrases as “ a lot of mosquito, a few month, many kind of way” , they must probably think that the plural forms of these phrases are determined by the words “ a lot of, a few or many” , thus they don’t add “ (e)s “ at the end of the words that need “(e)s” to be English-like.
What’s more, there is another mistake done by the learners. While they use the phrase “a couple of towel” without using “(e)s” at the end of the word “towel”, they are probably confused as “a” and “couple” are used together because of “a” being available.
Another error the learners make is that they conceive the translations of the phrases in a different way. In Turkish, for example, we provide the plurality of a phrase using such words as many, a few, alot of or the numbers (four, five) etc. and not an extra plural form of the words is obligatory as the words “ many, a few etc.” are sufficient to express the plurality.
To finish up with, there is also one more mistake done by the learners in the usage of uncountable nouns such as “three or four kind of bread” . Most probably, the speaker thinks that the words “bread” is an uncountable noun and hence doesn’t use “(e)s” not to make an error in his perception.

3231050088

Anonymous said...

When we examine the given sentences written or said by native Arabic speakers of English we can see that there is no problem with sentences including numerals because the nouns that come after these numerals are ended with the plural marker"s

Anonymous said...

In this example the learners are Arabs. They have learnt English as a foreign language in their country and now they are in the United States. To be able to find out the reason of this false usage of plurals we should look over the Arabic grammar.
They transfer the features of Arabic grammar concerning the plural forms of nouns to English language when they want to pluralize a noun. In Arabic language some nouns include plural meaning although they don’t get any additionally letter. In English it is vice verse. This grammatical transfer from mother language to target language shows that the learners of a target language profit by language learning from their L1.But this kind of transfer can lead the learners to mistakes by language usage. This kind of transfer is called negative transfer or Interference [which means: the effect of a speaker or writer's first language (L1) on the production of his or her second language (L2)].

Anonymous said...

Meryem Yeltekin 3231050064 No matter how difficult a person's mother tongue is,it's learned easily as she/he is exposed to it from the moment she opens her eyes to the world!As it is the first means for her communication ability,it mostly affects the ability to think.And when it comes to learning a foreign language,she/he does jolly well change some expressions of that language according to her/his comprehension style since she/he is under the constraint/yoke of her native language.
In the examples that have been given in the book,in some compound words of adjectives(numeral,qualitative or interrogative),qualified words(plural nouns) are not marked with 's'.As the sayers of these expressions aren't native ones(as they are Arabians and foreign learners of English),we can conclude that because of interlanguage variations,the utterences people make by thinking in their native language may not grammatically be correct.These learners haven't used 's' with plurals in compound words of adjectives just because they don't use them in their mother tongue.

Anonymous said...

When we examine the given sentences written or said by native Arabic speakers of English we can see that there is no problem with the sentences including numerals because the nouns that follow these numerals are ended wiyh the plural marker"s".However, when it comes to form plural structures with quantifiers or nonnumeral quantifying words some problems appear.For example,the Arabic English speakers don't add a plural marker to the end of the nouns with quantifiers such as "a couple of","a few" and "a lot of."A sligth possibility but I think this may stem from Arabic English speakers'not taking these phrases as complete units but rather focusing on "a",which makes them think the noun used with these quantifiers should be singular.Another point that drew my attention is the use of "many". In the sentences to be analyzed we can see that when used as single( many+noun),there is no mistake in theusage(eg:many tents/goats/ideas)but when it is used in quantifying phrases or the qw "how" the learners tend to make a mistake by not using the plural marker "s".Knowing Arabic out of the knowledge I have I can say that in Arabic when asking amount even if the noun is plural it is not ended with a plural marker.Eg."How many book-not books- do you have?"In my opinion,Arabic speakers of English tend to transfer this habit of their native language to the language they are learning by applying the same rule on the SL.As a result,they make a mistake by not using the plural marker"s". Neşe BÜYÜKAŞIK 3231050065.

Anonymous said...

When learning a second language,learners often have a tendency to use the rules of their mother language.In these particular sentences arabic learners of english do the same.I asked an arabic friend of mine whether the noun is singular or plural after a quantifying phrase or nonnumerical quantifying word in their native language.The answer reveals the reasons of arabic learners having problems with plurals after quantifiers.In arabic language,the same as in Turkish ,after quantifying phrase or nonnumerical quantify the word is singular.The problem is that learners try to apply this rule of their language to the target language.3231050090

Anonymous said...

Obviously, the learner has lack of information about the plurality in English. S/he probably applies the rules of plurality that are in his/her native language, because every language can have different plurality rules. On the other hand, the learner that makes such a mistake may not know some exceptions about the issue, even though s/he is native in English
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Anonymous said...

3231050079 said...
I think all problem in here is about native language's role on learning second language.When we examined the data we can see that all errors are the same.While making nouns plural by using "s"there is no problem.The problem occurs when they used quantifiers.They use quantifiers before nouns but they don't add "s" to nouns.This problem stems from native language's role on learning second language.Ithink in Cairene Arabic they don't make nouns plural when they used quantifiers whith nouns.Just as we did in Turkish.For example,plural form of noun "ay"is "aylar"in Turkish.But when we used it whith a quantifier we say "birkaç ay".We don't make the noun itself plural at the same time.I think if we were native English speakers and learning Turkish as a second language we would just do the same error whith Cairene Arabics: "birkaç aylar".

Anonymous said...

For me , the first reason why people who learn English as their second language use such phrases as " a couple of towel , many kind of way , a few month , a lot of mosquito " and "many hour " is hidden in their mother tongue . In fact , I do not know Arabic . Yet , I found a few people who know Arabic and asked them how nouns are made plural . Then , I got the answer : "In Arabic , when nouns are made plural , the word itself changes and nothing is added to the end of the word like " -s " in English . I believe that this rule has always its place somewhere in the brains of these people . The second reason why people use such kinds of phrases is seeing quantifying words like " a couple , many , a few " and " a lot of " before the nouns . As all these quantifying words mean " more than one " , the peole were confused and they did not need to use " -s " to make the nouns plural at the end of them . My last word about this topic is : " When there are quantifying words like " many " and "a few " before the nouns , there is nothing to do with the nouns - different from Arabic - as the quantifying words give the meaning of being " plural " .


3231050074 Meryem Simge ÇENGEL

Anonymous said...

In my opinion , such kinds of usages in English result from foreign speakers because of the language system they use . For example , in Turkish , while we say " three pens " , we do not use "-s" (üç kalem). I do not know much about Arabic language system , but according to my research , people who learn a new language may create an interlanguage rule such as "how many month ?". They use singular nouns as for them , "many" indicates a pluralism .

3231050012 Ayşe BURUK

Anonymous said...

I think the problem in the usage of plurals stems from the speaker's mother tongue.When we think of Turkish we can easily understand why arabic speakers made such mistakes.Thinking in your own language is alwasy a disadvantage while learning a new language.On the other hand we notice that there are some correct sentences too.This shows that they know or at least they learnt the usage of plurals, but forgot the rule when they think in their native language and remembered it when they think it in English.
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Anonymous said...

3231050058
when I examine the mistakes made in the usages of the plurals,one point is cathching my cautıon.the student is in a dilemma whether to use suffix "s"or not.I thınk thıs stems from the structure of student's natıve language.I have a bıt of ınformatıon about Arabıc.whıle makıng a noun plural in Arabıc,you dont use a suffıx.ınstead,you make a changement in the stem of the word.
I see an obvıous relatıonshıp between these two cases.the student fınds ıt unnecessary to use a suffıx.

Anonymous said...

I think there are lots of reasons of making these mistakes first of all they may not know usage of quantifiers , because they dont use plural nouns after the quantifiers while they are using plural nouns after the numbers.For example :many kınd of way 100years .An other thing may be their way of thinking.For instance they don't need to use plural nouns after the quantifiers if they don't use plural after quantifiers in their native language. The other reason may be article'a'.When they see 'a'that always comes before a singular noun they may not use plural even if it comes before 'lot of','few' for example a lot of mosquıto , a few month . 3231050006

Anonymous said...

Up to me ,by means of examples students can think unneccesary to use 's'because of being used quantifiers in these sentences.Students may think quantifiers are enough for being plural thus they ignore using 's' . Mr.can i'm sorry i can't understand how to do this question hence i can't reply satisfactorily. 3231050100

Anonymous said...

In my opinion there is not only one reason why these Arabic people make errors in making plural.Firstly,they don't have plural "s" in their own language.When making plural instead of adding "s",they change the wovels in the word.So they are not acquinted with "s".Another reason is that they are newcomers.So they don't have enough practice.But this is a low possibility.

3231050025

Anonymous said...

In my opinion,mother tongue of child and grammatical differences are two main reasons why the students made such errors.It just explains what is happening in our side.But there is one more important point we should examine; "Mental world of student"Errors are made unconsciously or on the base of wrong knowledge.While the student is writing, he\she just thinks that "teachers know everythig and will certainly understand what I want to say" That is, you are expected to be instead of students.Briefly, you are model and leader of them.So most of errors originate from their own logical assumptions about great perception of teachers. And solution is to analyse and understand their mental improvement.

Anonymous said...

In my opinion,mother tongue of child and grammatical differences are two main reasons why the students made such errors.It just explains what is happening in our side.But there is one more important point we should examine; "Mental world of student"Errors are made unconsciously or on the base of wrong knowledge.While the student is writing, he\she just thinks that "teachers know everythig and will certainly understand what I want to say" That is, you are expected to be instead of students.Briefly, you are model and leader of them.So most of errors originate from their own logical assumptions about great perception of teachers. And solution is to analyse and understand their mental improvement.

3231050013

Anonymous said...

I think the main problem here is related with the understanding of the "quantifiers" by children or the students.While teaching the topic we say nouns preceded by a quantifier is not single but plural,so they see no need to add "s"to a noun already made plural by a quantifier,for this reason I think it should be added that quantifier tells an amount and because a single thing won't have amounts in it, quantifiers must be used with plural nouns..

Anonymous said...

We have some utterances taken from adult native speakers of Arabic here.When we examine the sentences,we see that the plural form of words is non English-like and there are some quantifying phrases(a couple of,many, a few,a lot of) in this non English data.One possible hypothesis is; when there is a quantifying phrase or a nonnumerical quantifying word before the noun,there is no marking on the plural form of that noun.People learning SL may think that it is unnecessary to use 's',because they suppose that that quantifier is plural.The other reason of this can be IL.While people are learning English,they form some new systems and rules depending on their native language.Also I know that in Arabic there is not any add to make plural.In this process people can make a mistake easily,I think.

Anonymous said...

3231050085 said...
We have some utterances taken from adult native speakers of Arabic here.When we examine the sentences,we see that the plural form of words is non English-like and there are some quantifying phrases(a couple of,many, a few,a lot of) in this non English data.One possible hypothesis is; when there is a quantifying phrase or a nonnumerical quantifying word before the noun,there is no marking on the plural form of that noun.People learning SL may think that it is unnecessary to use 's',because they suppose that that quantifier is plural.The other reason of this can be IL.While people are learning English,they form some new systems and rules depending on their native language.Also I know that in Arabic there is not any add to make plural.In this process people can make a mistake easily,I think.

Anonymous said...

my hypothesis is like that: people who said these sentences are not native speakers so they may have said these sentences acording to what they heard..Also, ıf there is a modifying phrase 'of' there is no 's' suffix exception of some sentences. ı think this exception is because of their pronounciations' being diffucult!

Anonymous said...

everybody made a comment on the subject but mine will not be different from them.mother tongue's effect can not be denied here!!for example, in Turkish we say 'birçok insan', we do not use plural 'insanlar'. So he/she may think '-s' is unnecessary.
3232050067

Anonymous said...

because the one who says these sentences is not the native speaker of that language he may mistake when speaking.because he still thinks in his mother language but speaks in second language so the mistake is born.i think so

Anonymous said...

Because the one who says these sentences is not the native speaker of that language he may mistake when speaking.because he still thinks in his mother language but speaks in second language so the mistake is born.i think so
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Anonymous said...

It is normal that the speaker does not use a plural marker specially with some determiners that add plurality to the meaning.Of course nobody deny the effect of the usage in mother tongue.On the other hand it is a logical cause that some determiners provide the plural meaning and no need of a plural marker separately.There are some kind of grammar rules which we could not explain the reason of usage but understand and acquire with time and practise in Turkish,too.İ think it is temporary and similar to this matter. 3231050024

Anonymous said...

When people are learning a second languge, they sometimes make many mistakes which are resulted from different reasons. When I see the given five sentences and the wrong uses of "s" plural maker, two reasons come into my mind. The first hypothesis for me why such mistakes are made is the use of quantifiers. Perhaps the Arabic learners think that they don't need to use "s" plural maker, when they use quantifiers such as 'a couple of' or ' a lot of' which also give the words plurality. That is, putting "s" iss unnecessary, when quantifiers are used. The other one is the effect of the learners' native language.Actually I don't know whether the words are made plural by adding any suffixes in their mother tongue, but if they don't use any suffixes like "s" for this,it can mean that they maintain their pervious knowledge of native language . That is, they use the rule's their native language in the second language learning.
3231050060

Anonymous said...

I think that grammar consists of different kinds of rules and there is no logical explanation of these rules' causes.On the other hand, there is a fact that grammar rules change in almost every language.So,'plural' is a kind of grammar subject which has various forms in different languages.At the beginning,the people in the world learn their own primitive language which is spoken around them.As a result of this,they are accustomed to using this language's rules and when they try to learn a second language,it is really very normal to make the structures same with their own language,of course as a mistake not consciously!!!

Anonymous said...

most probably someone who has a lot to do with quantifiers. it is obvious that omebody has to tell them that the noun folowing a quantifier has to be plural if it is countable

Anonymous said...

ı think the person who said these hasn't been informed about plural forms of words.ı tell you man(ı mean the one who made this mistake) all you have to do is to add the letter 's' after the words you want to make plural.

Anonymous said...

GÜLESER AKSOY
İn Englısh for plural meanıng,some words are expressed wıth quantıfıers.sınce ıt ıs thought that the plural meanıng ıs referred wıth quantıfıers people dont need to use "s" wıth quqntıfıers for the same words.

Anonymous said...

3231050050
Not having had the chance to acquire the book and so to learn the context in which these sentences are uttered, I will go on to relate what comes to my mind. English gives much importance to plurality. Though it's enough just to use a numeric word and show that the noun has a plural meaning, they put a plural suffix to the noun as well. This is kind of emphasising the plurality. This can be explained on a social and economical basis. So we see culture in grammer. Maybe the person who made these statements come from a different culture in which the need to 'shout the importance of plurality' weighs less. - I wish everyone a happy festival-

Anonymous said...

3231050052 Plurals are one of the subjects most second language learners have difficulties.Because of differences in their native language and second lanuage they often make mistakes.I don`t know arabic; but in our language ,Turkish, we don`t use plural suffix "s" saying e.g. iki elma. And when we use a quantfying phrase or a nonnumerical quantfying word before the noun, we don`t put "s" on the plural of that noun. I think that this difference causes to make mistakes.In other words this differecy is the reason of not overt marking on the plural of the noun.

Anonymous said...

The speakers make the words plural when numbers are used before nouns. However,the word "month" is never made plural;even when it is used with a number before, as in the example, nine month. The reason behind this could be its pronounciation. As they don't hear the "s" at the end of the word,they may think that's the right form of it. But they don't put the plural ending when there is a quantifier instead of a number. They may consider it as the quantifier is enough to make the word plural.

Anonymous said...

To my mind,why they have made such mistakes in plural it is adhered to their structure of grammar.İ esteemed comments of my friends where they have written that Arabics don't use 's' in plural,and İ join their opinion that the made mistakes for this reason.İf to take on an example other languages,Russian necessarily would use 's'.Because in Russian plural is almost close to English.İ too shall often make mistakes in such cases as in my native language don't put a root in 'a few month','how many ticket',etc as Arabics do.Therefore İ think that students have made mistakes using plural as they do in their native language.3231050121

Anonymous said...

3231050027
ı think the most important reason why people do this mistake is they think english as their native language.İn their language it is possible like this usage.The other reason,however not strong like first,is when the plurality and singularity are tought the teachers are focused on plural noun examples.After grammar learning the learner is tended to use 'there is'instead of 'there are'mostly.İn fact she/he knows the rules but when using it she/he are not aware of this.İf one says mistaked she/he says 'oh yes you are right'.Sometimes even English and Americans use like this usage.Because for them when speaking it is not important use plural instead of singular or singular instead of plural.
GOOD HOLİDAYS 4 EVERY1
DETERMİNİST

Anonymous said...

According to me,it is unnecessary to mark all plural nouns with "s"when we use a quantifying pharese like many,a few...Because as a matter of fact quantifying phareses contain the meaning of plural,using "s" is meaningless.On the other hand;with the other plural nouns except those quantying phareses and nonnumerical quantfing words,we can use "s".Also in this way acquisition of plural in english can be easier and fast than now. 3231050070

Anonymous said...

language is a piece of culture. people talk what they live. because of this reason they can use their own experiences or cultural specialities. depending on this we can say maybe they don't use plural 's' if there is a quantifier before the noun which should be plural. this shows they don't know english or they can not think in english, they only translete their language into english.this is my hypothesis:language is a culture and people think everything according to their culture.
3231050098:veysel

Anonymous said...

ıf we take care of this mistakes,we can see that learning a foreign language,a person always compares it with his native language.For instance,in turkish we don't use plural with plural nouns.But in english,some words stating the quantifiers are used with plural nouns.And this can be confusing for students.The thing we must do is to be considered a foreign language's rules can be different. 050057

Anonymous said...

Our learning English can account for these mistakes.So far, all of us have made mistakes in any subject of English.Sometimes mistakes seemed funny to us. In fact they are the signs of mother tongue's importance,effects on second language acquisition.For this reason,these mistakes about plural nouns are not much confusing.Probably,the person making these mistakes thinks that when a quantifier is used it is unnecessary to make nouns plural.3231050103

Anonymous said...

such gramatical errors are most likely because of the fact that people who make them learn english as a second language. moreover these people probably dont have such gramatical forms about plurals as in english 3231050089

Anonymous said...

carelesness can be said to be general reason but there may be many more reasons. Some of te are;(1) the student may have deleted some words or may have forgetten to comlete the sentence. I really do this mistake on the behalf of being in a hurry in an exam.(2)she/he may have done a word error. For example he/she may write an uncountable word instead of a countable word. (3) he /she may think the real meaning of the sentence and say what the thought is on his head exactly she may say "English are spoken all over the world.". Because she believes that all people speak this language and may say in those words.(4)one reason of this can be people as they do not use sth like "s" in their language can not get the use of it as the arabics did and we,i also do. (5)and people may think that quantifiers already give the meaning so what else to do? then they do not need to put a "s" to the end of the word. still there are examples of them among us. some of us still could not get the idea. this may be there forever if it is not learned gotten into the head.

Anonymous said...

32310007Anonymous said...
carelesness can be said to be general reason but there may be many more reasons. Some of te are;(1) the student may have deleted some words or may have forgetten to comlete the sentence. I really do this mistake on the behalf of being in a hurry in an exam.(2)she/he may have done a word error. For example he/she may write an uncountable word instead of a countable word. (3) he /she may think the real meaning of the sentence and say what the thought is on his head exactly she may say "English are spoken all over the world.". Because she believes that all people speak this language and may say in those words.(4)one reason of this can be people as they do not use sth like "s" in their language can not get the use of it as the arabics did and we,i also do. (5)and people may think that quantifiers already give the meaning so what else to do? then they do not need to put a "s" to the end of the word. still there are examples of them among us. some of us still could not get the idea. this may be there forever if it is not learned gotten into the head.

Anonymous said...

The first language we acquire gains significance when we intend to learn a second one, for we insist on trying to apply the rules and logic of our mother tongue on the new language. This approach, naturally, produces lots of mistakes, so it should be abandoned. We must enter the new world of the second language and break off all the connections with the first. As it can be seen in the examples on the page 18, we don't face any problems with simple structures like "100 years and 200.000 telephone lines". That's easy because we can teach the students easily the rules about plurals with the numerical quantifiers ;however, when it comes to nunnumeracal quantifiers we are struggling as it is an entirely new thing to the students.

Anonymous said...

I think the most important reason of such mistakes is tendency to use the rules of L1. These Arab learners do the same. Because in Arabic after quantifying phrase or nonnumerical quantifying the word is singular. I think that this rule has always its place somewhere in the minds of these people.They confuse the rules of their L1 with L2(English).
3231050115

Anonymous said...

We have an IL hypothesis that is mark all plural nouns with (s) except those that are preceded by a quantifying phrase or a nonnumerical quantifying word.
The analysis of these sentences are not specific about the meaning which include quantifying phrases.But here is a misunderstood with this hypothesis that is after “a couple of”,”many kind of”,”a few”,”a lot of”,”many” must be used nouns with plural marking.
According to our rule these should be a couple of towels,many kinds of ways,a few months,a lot of mosquitos,many hours.
Perhaps learner of this language supposes that there is no need to use plural marking because “a few”,”a lot of” refer to plural meaning in the sentences.
In addition to this the meanings in these sentences are indefinite.Maybe speaker of English simplify this cluster by writing nouns without ıts plural shapes.
Also pronouncing of these patterns without (s) plural marking is easy.For example uttering many kinds of ways is more difficult than uttering many kind of way.
Because of these reasons the mistake must be happened.
3265050009

Anonymous said...

We can see similar mistakes not only about quantifiers but also about other rules in newlearner's sentences because when we start to learn a second language we can try to take help of our first language and try to make relation between two of them.If there aren't any such rules in our native language we can make mistakes in second language.my hhypothesis is that L1 effect our learning L2 and as in the contrastive analysis hypothesis the greater the differences,the more errors occur.on the other hand if the two language have more similarity learner make less mistakes.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said...
We can see similar mistakes not only about quantifiers but also about other rules in newlearner's sentences because when we start to learn a second language we can try to take help of our first language and try to make relation between two of them.If there aren't any such rules in our native language we can make mistakes in second language.my hhypothesis is that L1 effect our learning L2 and as in the contrastive analysis hypothesis the greater the differences,the more errors occur.on the other hand if the two language have more similarity learner make less mistakes.

I forgot my number excuse me

3231050047

Anonymous said...

a

Anonymous said...

3231050081 hilal kayıkcı saıd:
we can all admıt that whıle we are learnıng a language we can not do wıthout beıng affected by our natıve language.so the ımpressıons of rules of the learners' natıve language are seen ın theır sentences of the 2th language they learned.thınkıng turkısh and wrıtıng so ın englısh ıs the way to problems.the mıstakes done there are about the plural forms of the nouns.we can conclude from here that the people who made them do not add -s for plural forms of nouns ın spıte of quantıfıers ın theır natıve languages.these mıstakes can be solved by the help of doıng many practıses.changıng the mınd of thınkıng turkısh and seeıng the grammatıcal rules of englısh ıs dıfferent from ours wıll be helpful for thıs.

Anonymous said...

In the examples taken from speeches of Arabians we see that "a couple of towel,many kind o way,a few month,alot of mosquito,how many hour" Arabians make mistaes related to usage of plural.Although there is no problem with the sentences including numerals(e.g.two deserts,four days), they don't add('s) after quantifiers and nunnumerical quantifying words.I think this problem comes from their mother tongue.We can also make such mistakes.For example;In Turkish we say"bir çift havlu,birkaç ay, birçok sinek or kaç saat" We don't make these complex expressions plural by adding ('s). While speaking English we apply the rules of our mother tongue instead of the rules of English.In addition "a couple of, many, a lot of, a few..."these expressions give plural meaning so that they don't need to use plural suffix.
To sum up, Arabians don't add ('s) at the end of the nouns coming after quantifiers and nunnumerical quantfying words because of giving plural meaning ang being the effect of mother tongue. Since we should remove this, we should get rid of the effects of our mother tongue, put the rules of second language grammar in our brains and pay attention to the grammar differences among the languages.

3212040013 YELİZ TOP

Anonymous said...

The statement “grammar teaching should be implicit, not explicit” could be argued both for and against. Whether to teach grammar as an extracted focus of ELT (English Language Teaching) or more passively as an inductive, integral topic has been the theme of countless debates on the part of institutions, professors, grammarians and language researchers for decades. Grammar is the branch of linguistics dealing with the form and structure of words or morphology, and their interrelation in sentences, called syntax. The study of grammar reveals how language works, an important aspect in both English acquisition and learning.
Noam Chomsky’s Transformational Generative Grammar.
Chomsky, who studied structural linguistics, sought to analyze the syntax of English in a structural grammar. This led him to view grammar as a theory of language structure rather than a description of actual sentences. His idea of grammar is that it is a device for producing the structure, not of a particular language, but of the ability to produce and understand sentences in any and all languages. Since grammar is the means by which we can understand how a language “works”, a definitive study of language grammar is essential to language study.
Strictly explicit grammar study however, and even grammar-focused lessons are often not communicatively based. They can therefore be boring, cumbersome and difficult for students to assimilate. The strict teaching of grammar / structure, except with students of the Logical – Mathematical or Verbal – Linguistic multiple intelligences, can be frustrating and highly ineffective.
Grammar teaching should be implicit
In the early 20th century, Jespersen, like Boas, thought grammar should be studied by examining living speech rather than by analyzing written documents. By providing grammar in context, in an implicit manner, we can expose students to substantial doses of grammar study without alienating them to the learning of English or other foreign language. I also agree with this implicit approach of teaching grammar. The principal manner in which I accomplish this is by teaching short grammar-based sessions immediately followed by additional function-based lessons in which the new grammar / structure is applied in context.
The hypothesis is that adult language students have two distinct ways of developing skills and knowledge in a second language, acquisition and learning. Acquiring a language is “picking it up”, i.e., developing ability in a language by using it in natural, communicative situations. Learning language differs in that it is “knowing the rules” and having a conscious knowledge of grammar / structure. Adults acquire language, although usually not as easily or as well as children. Acquisition, however, is the most important means for gaining linguistic skills. A person’s first language (L1) is primarily learned in this way. Based on my 15 years of EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teaching experience, the statement “grammar teaching should be implicit, not explicit” could be argued both for and against. Whether to teach grammar as an extracted focus of ELT (English Language Teaching) or more passively as an inductive, integral topic has been the theme of countless debates on the part of institutions, professors, grammarians and language researchers for decades. Grammar is the branch of linguistics dealing with the form and structure of words or morphology, and their interrelation in sentences, called syntax. The study of grammar reveals how language works, an important aspect in both English acquisition and learning.
In the early 20th century grammarians like the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas and the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen began to describe languages and Boas' work formed the basis of various types of American descriptive grammar study. Jespersen's work was the fore-runner of such current approaches to linguistic theory such as Noam Chomsky’s Transformational Generative Grammar.
Chomsky, who studied structural linguistics, sought to analyze the syntax of English in a structural grammar. This led him to view grammar as a theory of language structure rather than a description of actual sentences. His idea of grammar is that it is a device for producing the structure, not of a particular language, but of the ability to produce and understand sentences in any and all languages. Since grammar is the means by which we can understand how a language “works”, a definitive study of language grammar is essential to language study.
Strictly explicit grammar study however, and even grammar-focused lessons are often not communicatively based. They can therefore be boring, cumbersome and difficult for students to assimilate. The strict teaching of grammar / structure, except with students of the Logical – Mathematical or Verbal – Linguistic multiple intelligences, can be frustrating and highly ineffective.
Grammar teaching should be implicit
In the early 20th century, Jespersen, like Boas, thought grammar should be studied by examining living speech rather than by analyzing written documents. By providing grammar in context, in an implicit manner, we can expose students to substantial doses of grammar study without alienating them to the learning of English or other foreign language. I also agree with this implicit approach of teaching grammar. The principal manner in which I accomplish this is by teaching short grammar-based sessions immediately followed by additional function-based lessons in which the new grammar / structure is applied in context.
The hypothesis is that adult language students have two distinct ways of developing skills and knowledge in a second language, acquisition and learning. Acquiring a language is “picking it up”, i.e., developing ability in a language by using it in natural, communicative situations. Learning language differs in that it is “knowing the rules” and having a conscious knowledge of grammar / structure. Adults acquire language, although usually not as easily or as well as children. Acquisition, however, is the most important means for gaining linguistic skills. A person’s first language (L1) is primarily learned in this way. 3231050054

Anonymous said...

This sentences are non-english like because there is no plural marker on the nouns.There are some possible interlanguage generalizations that might account for this particular pattern of IL plural marking.We can see that there are frequent quantifying phrases(a couple of,how many)in this non-english like examples.in turkish we don't say "birkaç odalar",we say "birkaç oda".so that can be an interlingual error.also that can be a phonological simplification.for ex."seven apple" can be a simplification.To not to repeat this mistakes,we must know that there must be a plural marker at the end of plural word.
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Anonymous said...

after reading the given ı decide thathis/her mother tongue belong to a different language group from english.maybe, there is not plurality in his/her own language. and this laeds him/her to make grammatical mistakes.these mistakes are natural ı think.the more he/she learns the more he/she pay attention to the quantifiers in english language.that is temporary ı mean.but, to quickly lear engkish he/she must not think in mother tongue
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Anonymous said...

After reading the data ı decide to that the learner's language belongs to a different language group from the group english belongs to. I think there is not plurality in his/her own language. Therefore,he/she is not aware of the importance of quantifiers in english.For such a person it is natural to make these mistakes and it is temporary.In the course of time the problem will be removed. But,to learn a language at the shortest time you shouldn't think in your mother tongue.
Have a good holiday
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Anonymous said...

First of all,I think,the differences between individuals in acquisiton of plurals are as a result of the learners' seperate way of interlanguage transfer-that is the way of thinking in one's native language.It is the main cause of the fallacy in plurals acquisition.For example,
iki dilim ekmek
two slices of bread
it's so normal that while acquiring this differentiation,student is likely to be confused until he got the usage of the word "bread" with number adjectives,he will use it by thinking in Turkish.Another important aspect is that students can learn regular rules easily while they find it hard to comprehend the irregular ones.For instance,book-books,child-children,tooth-teeth
In the acqusition of this irregularity,student can be confused.In my opinion,it is all about the way of thinking,and also the method of learning of student the language in itself-the ability of avoid thinking in native language interlanguage transfer because it sometimes has bad points as it has in this topic.Acquisition of plural in English is related with process and the habit of usage(reading-writing).The thing teacher should do is just make students aware of these basic differences,rules and try to make them think in English with its own features by exposing varied exercises and usages.

Anonymous said...

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ı think when someone want to learn second language,they are affected to their mother tongue.most people make mistake when they learn SL, because they learn it by thinking their mother tongue.it is the same when people learn plural forms of any language.for example;in english money is not countable word so english says 'much money'but in turkish of course money is countable so when turkish people make mistake when they learn it.they can say that 'many moneys',because it is countable in their language.And in english we add 's' to verb when subjects are singular.but in turkish it is diferent so it causes confusion for learner.

Anonymous said...

In my opinion;reason of arap people using -s and plural problem is interlanguage.There is not plural add in arabic language.when they use plural noun they hange root of the word.So they can make such mistakes.Also ;I can give this an example from turkish,when we say "ağaçlar" we use "-lar" but when we use "iki ağaç" we do not use "-lar".That is;we also can make such mistakes because of plurality different in our language.
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Anonymous said...

When people learn second language they are affected by their mother language so sometimes there can be some problems with the grammer of second language.I thınk the useage of 's' occurs from this.Also while people learn second language they thınk their native language and they learn second language according to native language.İn order not to make this mistake learners mustnt thınk their native language,they must thınk according to second language and learn second language.So mistakes are minimized by this.Also learners must be careful about grammer rules so native language cant affect second language much.
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Anonymous said...

3231050066 Abdurrahman Tanrıverdi

In Arabic,on one hand,there are suffixes for plural words.On the other hand,if you look at general structure of Arabic sentences,you probably see that plural appendix,personal pronoun’s appendix and if there any other appendix like tense are combined with only one word.For instance; ‘Zehebtü’ means ‘I went’ namely not only a verb,but a tense sign and personal determiner are present in one word as well.By the way of this,Arabic people compress the meaning for plural,tense,personal determiner.The mistakes that they did can be related to this information.For they use the words which have plural meaning on their own,they don’t feel that it needs a pre or suffix to show that it is plural for any other words. ‘Many,couple,lot,few’ these words are already enough to plurality of the word,so no need to add any more appendix to stress the plurality.

Anonymous said...

Fırat Kaya
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I think we should start with the sign languages. Sign languages are not based upon the spoken language and they have a different grammar than that of the spoken language ; and also like the spoken languages the sign languages also differ from region to region. Then ıf they havea different grammar they have a different language and that is the evidence of the fact that they learn their native language , this is too concrete, unarguable ! then how do they ‘acquire’? When we hear words deaf and blind , we immediately think that they cannot communicate with others. This is not true .Beacuse a soft touch or a hard one, feeling sth smooth etc can sometimes create many visual things in their mind. And also there is sth Choamsky arguing , it is that children innate a grammar module from birth , this makes their acquring process easier. With the help of this innation , the deaf and blind can give a shape to the input that flows to him in many different ways and with reinforcement coming from the community they can be directed oriented to the possible source of acqusition. For instance, instead of babbling, this action can be replaced with a movement , touch or a feeling .. The lack of their ability to see and hear doesnt make them unable to talk or learn, acquire or whatever , it just make them unable to see and hear ..that is all the problem ..The deaf and blind infant is not aware of his being in such a situation..he is not aware of these senses and because of that fact , he acquries the input with the rest of his senses, especially by touching...this is like the andectod , it says : the proffesor writes the hardest and unsolved two math. problems of thw world and the lesson finishes ..the late student enters the empty class and realizes the problems on the board and thinks that they are the homeworks for the next lesson and solves them and brings them to the classroom.. he was not aware of the real fact about the problems ..the blind and the deaf are the same with him , not aware of their lack of senses and fulfills the gap with others ..
And about the pattern they follow , yes ı think that they follow the same pattern because ıf they are , despite the lack of the senses, able to create a gramamar structure different that that of the spoken language , then ıf they built words with signs onto this structure ,then they follow the same path..they learn native language like the other children but in a different syle that is all..

Anonymous said...

3231050077


In all languages there are some wrıtıng and meanıng contradıctorıes.Some wrıtıngs don't gıve wanted meanıngs.on the other hand ın some cases meanıngs are sense but wrıtıngs ısn't true.for example ın turkısh you say:iki elma ver,you don't use plurality.And an amerıcan chıld can say,two hour,ıt s not normal but ı thınk those ages aren't suffıcıent to understand some cases.thıs chıld possıblly has heard thıs word from hıs envıroment and taken hıs memory.ıt takes tıme for hım to change as true

Anonymous said...

ya bu ödev 2005 yılında verilmiş görülüyor ama 2oo5 girşliler bu ödevi yapıyo bu hangi mantığa sığıyo cok merak ettim doğrusu

Anonymous said...

I think that this learner suppose that the quantifiers which are for plural names make the noun plural so he doesn't need to add a 'S' to end of the nouns. another hypothesis can be that if his native language is turkish this can makehim make such a mistake. as we know we don't add the suffixe of plural 'LER/LAR' to end of a noun when we use such quantifiers. perhaphs this causes this mistake.

Anonymous said...

it isnt possible that these sentences are used by a native speaker.because like a türk who laughs at those who say "üç kitaplar" an english would lough at those saying "three book" or "some waters".probably these mistakes results from thinking turkish style.for a learner making such mistakes is very normal.
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Anonymous said...

As we examine mistakes,we can see that they are result of strict grammatical rules.If we think our first years at language learning survey we also made such mistakes and we go on making them.their mistakes most probably must be because of their NL.In learning process when a learner comes across with a difficulty he/she thinks his/her Native Language's rules and uses the way of NL.the first thing we must do is reminding them that;they must learn that each language has it's own rules.They mustn't confuse grammatical rules.Their mistakes can be corrected with patience.We must gowem them study rules.We mustn't annoy them because of their mistakes instead;we can make them find their own mistakes then correct them. 3231050080

Anonymous said...

cultural and environmental factors in learning second language, as anyone know culture and language are associated to each other like an spider-web, they should not be thought as private and separated thing, and these kinds of error mostly stem from the environmental and cultural differences....


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Anonymous said...

3231040050
One possible reason why such grammatical mistakes were done is thinking of L1 rules for a moment before or while speaking ,like most of my friends stated above.This shows that the language havent been acquired effectively as the speaker thinks before he/she starts speaking.the grammer rules of L2 that do not exist in L1 or rules of L2 that does not appear exactly in L1 may be another possible reasons.In order to cope with this problems the learners should be supported with rich contextualized examples and activities.

Ondort said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Ondort said...

Hmm,, We have three Cairene Arabic who are intermediate to advance English speakers means, they have tolerable knowledge they have grammatical and vocabulary knowledge. So, they know something about grammar and speaking rules but in this condition they use their own languages grammar and speaking rules. I guess their language rules don’t have the plural form after quantity determiner adjectives like in Turkish that we don’t say “bir çift havlular” or “Ne kadar biletler” in Turkish. Isn't it. . .

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