unmarked plural nouns in english and theis difficulties for the 1st year students at the faculty of tourism, honoi university of culture = danh từ số nhiều không có dấu hiệu nhận dạng trong tiếng anh tt

6 2.1. Definition Naturally, the concept of plural nouns is based on that of plural. That is ‘plural nouns refer to more than one person or thing or consist of different kinds of people or things.’ (English Language Dictionary) 2.2. Classification From the author’s point of view, plural nouns in English can be classified into 2 major groups: marked plural nouns and unmarked plural nouns. The first group consists of regular plural nouns (have –s ending) and irregular plural nouns which have markers to be realized, such as voicing, -en ending, vowel change, etc. The later consists of nouns which have no plural endings or have same forms with singular nouns or in other words, they are not realized as plural by their forms. 2.2.1. Marked plural nouns 2.2.1.1. Definition As aforementioned, marked plural nouns can be understood as nouns which have characteristics to be easily noticed, such as –s endings, -en endings, voicing, vowel changes or markers of foreign plural. In other words, people can notice marked plural nouns based on their forms. 2.2.1.2. Classification (a) Invariables (i) Summation plurals (ii) Pluralia tantums (b) Variables (i) Regular (ii) Irregular +voicing (/f//vz/) + mutation + en ending + foreign plural 2.2.2. Unmarked plural nouns 2.2.2.1. Definition Unmarked plural nouns can be understood as nouns that have no plural endings (-s ending,-en ending). They also have no voicing, no vowel changes or no rules to change into plural like foreign nouns. 7 In other words, unmarked plural nouns are nouns that cannot be realized as plural by their forms. 2.2.2.2. Classification (a) Unmarked plural nouns which are always used with plural verbs Cattle, people and police are plural words with no singular. They are invariable plural ones. (b) Unmarked plural nouns which refer to groups of people or things These nouns are variable ones (e.g: family, team, crew). They can be changed into plural by just adding ‘s’ to the end. (e.g: families, teams, crews). (c) Unmarked plural nouns which are formed by ‘the + adjective’ (i) the + adjective Adjectives like the following are used after ‘the’ to represent a group as a whole such as the blind, the deaf, the dead, the rich, the poor, the young, the old, the unemployed, etc. (ii) the + adjectives of nationality We use ‘the’ with adjectives of nationality to mean ‘the people of that country’. (d) Invariable nouns which can be singular or plural These nouns are names of certain creatures like fish, sheep, deer, etc. They have the same spoken and written form in both singular and plural. Thus, we can say ‘a fish’ or ‘those fish’. 8 CHAPTER 3- FINDINGS The issues mentioned in the previous chapters only belong to the theoretical category. To seek for an insight into the difficulties of unmarked plural nouns for the 1st year students at the Faculty of Tourism, HUC both theoretically and practically, this chapter presents the results derived from analyzing the data collected, thus findings are identified. 3.1. Presentation of data analysis results 3.1.1. Mid-term test 3.1.2. The students’ questionnaires 1. How do you think of the role of vocabulary in learning a foreign language? 2. What is the most difficult for you when you learn English plural nouns? As shown in the chart, what students find the most difficult in learning English plural nouns is unmarked plural nouns 3. How do you usually practice unmarked plural nouns at home? 4. Which way of presenting unmarked plural nouns do you like? 5. What difficulties unmarked plural nouns in English cause to you? 6. What kinds of vocabulary consolidation are you most interested in when learning unmarked plural nouns? 7. Which way of practicing unmarked plural nouns do you like most? 8. What kind of task do you find most difficult in you last examination? 3.1.3. Teachers’ interview 1. What difficulties do you find from your students in their learning unmarked plural nouns in English? 2. What techniques and activities do you often use to present unmarked plural nouns in English? 3. Specifically what kinds of exercises on unmarked plural nouns do you think interesting and effective for students to remember the taught words? 4. What techniques and activities do you often use to help students to consolidate and remember the taught words? 5. What recommendations should be made to improve your students’ learning unmarked plural nouns? 3.2. Findings 9 Having analyzed the data from the above mentioned sources, the researcher notices that there is a high level of agreement on the results from students’ responses and teachers’. That is, the difficulties which unmarked plural nouns cause to the 1st year students at the Faculty of Tourism, HUC belong to 2 main categories: 1. No inflectional distinction between singular and plural 2. Subject-Verb agreement 3.2.1. No inflectional distinction between singular and plural As mentioned in the Introduction part, according to Bache (1997), a noun is marked inflectionally as singular or plural by means of –s (and other markers such as voicing, -en endings, vowel changes or foreign plural) or Ø respectively. Unfortunately, a great number of nouns in English have no plural markers. To put it in another way, they have the same form as singular. This causes so many difficulties for students since students cannot realize these nouns as plural by their forms. Consequently, they make mistakes in word use and in communication. 3.2.2. Subject-Verb agreement Subject-Verb agreement and plurality making are complex phenomena and vary in different languages, depending on the morphological possibilities of these languages (Gazdar et al, 1983). To some extent, this second difficulty can be considered as a consequence of the first one. Since students do not know unmarked plural nouns as plural, they often make mistakes in making the subject and the verb of the sentence agree. It arises even more difficulties for students in the case of collective nouns which can be either singular or plural. Therefore, students have to consider whether the noun refers to singular undivided body or a collection of individuals to make the right concord between subject and verb. CHAPTER 4- SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS Based on the results obtained from the study, herein after are some solutions suggested by the researcher, with a hope to partly overcome the difficulties of unmarked plural nouns in 10 English for the 1st years at the Faculty of Tourism at her university in particular, and to improve the English learning and teaching at the university in general. 4.1. Toward students 4.1.1. Using dictionary 4.1.2. Self-access materials 4.1.3. Making a vocabulary notebook 4.1.4. Group work 4.2. Towards the teachers According to Dudley-Evans & John (1998), teachers are both good teachers and good designers of course materials. To be a good provider of materials, one of their roles is to modify activities to suit their learners’ need. In the case of HUC, the teachers should be encouraged to help students to reduce their difficulties by the following ways. 4.2.1. Presenting unmarked plural nouns by using effective teaching techniques 4.2.2. Using vocabulary consolidation as warm-up activities 4.2.3. Guiding students’ home revision and give them feedback 11 PART 3- CONCLUSION 1. Summary of the study To begin with, the study reviews theoretical issues related to concepts, classification, grammatical categories of nouns in English, and grammatical features of plural nouns in general and unmarked plural nouns in particular. Findings from the study urge the researcher to seek some suggested solutions to the discovered difficulties in order to reduce them, and to promote the effectiveness of vocabulary teaching and learning at the university. The statistics from the students’ tests and the questionnaires indicates that unmarked plural nouns in English cause some difficulties to a considerable number of the 1st year students at the Faculty of Tourism, HUC. The difficulties are identified in two categories: no inflectional distinction between singular and plural, and Subject-Verb agreement. For the first one, unmarked plural nouns have the same form as singular, which causes so many difficulties for students since students cannot realize these nouns as plural by their forms. As a consequence, they make mistakes in word use and in context. The second difficulty may be considered as a consequence of the first one. Students often make mistakes in making the right concord between the subject and the verb because they cannot realize the plural forms of unmarked plural nouns. It arises even more difficulties for students in dealing with collective nouns which can be either singular or plural. The results from the teachers’ interview backs up the above-mentioned difficulties found from students’ questionnaires. Moreover, the interview reveals that the GrammarTranslation method which is overused compared with other methods in vocabulary teaching is considered one of the reasons to cause difficulties in learning unmarked plural nouns, especially in word use and in communication. Also, some recommendations are made by the teachers which focus on diversifying the teachers’ presentation and consolidation of unmarked plural nouns, designing exercises, and regularly checking to increase effectiveness in students’ learning unmarked plural nouns. Finally, based on the study’s findings, and to the best understanding of the researcher, some solutions are suggested for both students and teachers at the Faculty of Tourism at HUC with a hope to partly improve the situation. To the students, it is necessary for them to be more aware of the importance of their self-learning combined with dictionary use, learning on Internet, vocabulary notebook, and group work. To the teachers, they are encouraged to look for more interesting and effective techniques and activities in