An analysis of written concord errors among Grade 12 First Additional Language learners in Vhembe District of Limpopo Province, South Africa

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