Morphosyntactic errors in the written english of the form one students of the Lang’ata Boys’ High School
Abstract
The main focus of this study was to examine the common morpho-syntactic errors on the
aspect of number agreement in the written English of form one students of the Lang’ata
Boys’ high school. A sample of forty students’ written scripts was drawn from all the one
hundred and sixty students of form one through purposive sampling from the single
written composition. The study covered the following categories for identifying errors;
singular verb for plural subject, plural verb for a singular subject and lack of agreement in
the noun phrase.
The errors were determined through a consideration of the deviations of the students
grammar from the norms of the target language (British English). The data was first
presented in tables showing the occurrence of each of the predicted errors, then errors per
subject, and finally tabulations of frequency percentages. The study results showed that
lack of agreement in the NP errors were the most common and those of the plural subject
versus singular verb type were the least common. Lastly, based on the available literature
on error analysis, the study discussed the possible causes of the errors observed. It
emerged that overgeneralization was the main cause of the morpho-syntactic errors found
in the written English of these form one students of the Lang’ata Boys’ high school.
Citation
A Research Project Submitted In Partial Fulfilment Of The Requirements For The Degree Of Master Of Arts, Department Of Linguistics And Languages, University Of NairobiPublisher
University of Nairobi Department of Linguistics and Languages