Luận Văn A study on the logical errors made by third-years english majors at haiphong private university

Khóa luận tốt nghiệp
Đề tài: A study on errors made by third-year English major at HPU in writing argumentative essays


TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Abstracts
List of figures, tables and abbreviations
PART ONE : INTRODUCTION . 1
I. Rationale 1
II. Ams and objectives . 1
III. Scope of the study . 2
IV. Method of the study 2
V. Design of the study . 3
PART TWO : DEVELOPMENT 4
CHAPTER 1 : LITERATURE REVIEW 4
I. Argument . 4
I.1. Definition of argument . 4
I.2. Components of an argument . 5
I.3. Types of argument 7
I.4. A good argument 9
II. Logical errors . 11
II.1. Definitions . 11
II.2. Classification . 12
III. Argumentative essays 14
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III.1. Thesis statement . 14
III.2. Argumentation . 15
IV. Summary . 17
CHAPTER 2 : METHODOLOGY . 18
I. Participants . 18
II. Data collection instruments 18
III. Procedures of data collection 19
IV. Procedures of data analysis . 21
V. Summary 22
CHAPTER 3 : RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 23
I. Statistics of errors 23
II. Error identification and the suggested solutions 25
II.1. Irrelevant reasons 25
II.2. Hasty generalization 27
II.3. Wrong inference 32
II.4. Circular reasoning . 34
II.5. Wrong premise 37
II.6. Wrong conclusion . 41
III. Summary . 43
PART THREE : CONCLUSION 45
I. Summary of the findings 45
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II. Limitations 45
III. Suggestions for further research . 46
REFERENCES 47
APPENDIXES 49


ABSTRACT
Arguing is a valuable competence that reveals a man’s intellectuality;
therefore, argumentative writing has been effectively applied into the syllabus
of many language universities. However, in fact, how to make a good
argumentative essay is really not easy to students. As a result, an investigation
into errors seems to be extremely significant. This paper, conducted to partly
improve the situation, is specificially aimed at figuring out the mistakes which
third year English Majors at Hai Phong Private University often commit and
their reasoning errors; thereby, the further step of proposing some ways to
decrease students’ errors can be done. To lay the theoretical foundation for
the paper, I did exhaustive research into literature with a range of relevant
works to provide readers with basics definitions of argument, logical errors
and argumentative essay respectively. Moreover, the main methodology
exploited by researcher is qualitative with the collection and in -depth analysis
of argumentative writing pieces of 83 students, interviews conducted among
10 participants and questionnaires given to 33 students. Besides, the
quantitative method was taken advantage of in a rational way to produce
detailed statistics for the concrete demonstration of the findings. Results from
this research showed that the student made 6 informal mistakes. With the
findings, some suggestions were made; in particular, the facilitation of
activities to develop logical thinking and arguing ability; the increased
frequency of practice on argument in general and persuasive writing in
particular; more assignments to enhance students’ language competence .


PART ONE : INTRODUCTION
I. Rationale
Since the early age, arguing competence was treasure by humans with the
development of rhetoric into an art and has retained people’s high
appreciation esspecially in academic fields. For this reason, the ability to
argue has always been regarded as invaluable reasoning tool (Barnwell &
Dees, 1996) and argumentative writings have been integrated into the syllabus
of educational institutions in general and institutions of language in particular
as a way to practice and enhance students’ language skill. The quality of such
works can be identified through the absence of “errors” students make.
With personal experience, observation and discussion with some
teachers as well as students from English Major – Hai Phong Private
University (EM – HPU), the researcher has realized that logical errors are
very common among learners and account for one of the leading factors
weakening their arguments and hence decreasing the effectiveness of their
writings. Moreover, there has been a big number of research papers on
students’ mistakes in writing skill; however, almost those papers have just
focused on grammatical, collocation or wording mi stakes. There have been
few studies directly digging the topic of logical errors. For these reasons, the
researcher decided to make an investigation into errors made by third- year
English Majors at Hai Phong Private University in argumentative writings”.
II. Aims and objectives
Carrying out this research, the researcher aims at :
 Providing the background knowledge of essay writing competences,
especially in argumentative essays for all students in general and
English Major students in particular.
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 Figuring out the most common errors students often make in their
writings; concurently, preliminarily analyzing the causes of those
errors, which play an active role in helping students avoid reasoning
errors making.
 Reinforcing and enhancing the students’ argumentative competence
seem to be a more far-reaching goal of the researcher.
Hopefully, this study can provide readers with overall comprehension
about argumentative essay. The research results would be really helpful to
different groups so they can base on the findings and suggestions to choose as
well as design activities for the writing program in a direction.
III. Scope of the study
Regarding to the the researching scope, essay writing is rather huge and
complicated. Consequently, it requires to be taken into consideration carefully
in a very long time by the researchers. However, due to my limitation of time
and knowledge, the researcher could not cover all the aspect of this theme.
This study only concentrates on the analysis of errors made by third-year
English Majors and the reasoning errors are just restricted to the ones within
an argument.
IV. Method of the study
This paper is carried out with the significant support from some tools
including the questionnaires, interviews and students’ writing papers; and
each of them is conducted with its own direction.
First of all, the interviews is going to be done among 1 0 third-year
English Majors at Hai Phong Private University with the questions
surrounding the thesis. Next, the researcher distributes questionnaires to 33
students belong to class namely NA1001 for their answers. The last study
method is to analyze students’ writing papers coming from 4 groups NA1001,
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NA1002, NA1003, NA1004 with the aim of recognizing as well as classifying
the errors exactly. From which, the third method is considered as the most
effective ones.
V. Design of the study
The study is divided into three main parts; in which the second,
naturally, is the most important part.
 Part I is the introduction in which rationales, aims and objectives,
scope of the study, method of the study and design of the study are
presented respectively.
 Part II is the development that includes three small chapters:
Firstly is literature review chapter which focuses on presenting the
argument with its definition, components and classification;
concurrently, giving the theoretical background of an argumentative
essay through the thesis statement and argumentation as well as the
lofical errors in essay writing.
Seconly is chapter of methodology. In which, the researcher is going
to draw up very clearly procedures for a study starting from
participants, data collection instrument to procedures of data collection
and data analysis.
Lastly, in the results and discussion chapter, a list of errors and
reasoning errors is identified by the researcher. From then, there will be
suggested solutions to minimize these errors.
 Part III is the conclusion which include main findings, the limitations
of the thesis and suggestions for further research.