Abstract:
Learning English as a second language by the South African learners of English First
Additional Language (FAL) causes many challenges, such as committing errors in
concord as there are differences between the learners’ mother tongue and the target
language. Even at Grade 12 level, which is the exit point to institutions of higher learning
or to the workplace, learners still display some deficiencies in the mastery of the English
concord. This happens despite the fact that, in many South African schools, English is
used as a medium of instruction and learnt as a First Additional Language (FAL)
especially at high schools.
Through the analysis of the written concord errors committed by the 72 of the 720
sampled Grade 12 English FAL learners in Vhembe District, the study answered to two
questions which formed its cornerstone which are: what are the most common types of
written concord/ subject-verb agreement errors which are committed by Grade 12 FAL
learners and what are the causes thereof? The study employed both the quantitative and
the qualitative methods to pursue the primary question. Learners responded to the
questionnaires and the researcher also analysed their teacher-marked English FAL
composition scripts with the focus on concord/subject-verb agreement usage.
The findings were that concord/subject-verb agreement was a challenge to the majority
of the participants. There was not even a single question which recorded a 100% correct
entry. The question on collective nouns was found to be the hardest to the participants
while comparatively, the singular indefinite pronoun question recorded the best results.
The learners’ written compositions were also found to have been marred by
concord/subject-verb agreement errors. In most instances, the learners had resorted to
simple sentences avoiding the complex sentence construction as those would have
required complicated application of concord/ subject-verb agreement usage.
Based on the findings, the following recommendations were made: teaching of grammar
should be intensified, and that teachers of English should be retrained even if it will be
through the in-service programmes
