COMMON GRAMMATICAL & STRUCTURE ERROR IN LANGUAGE USE IN

MALAYSIA

English is still a language that has yet to be mastered by Malaysian learners as their
language is full of errors (Stapa & Izahar, 2010). However, it is crucial to master this
language in the field of education, for both educators and students since English is
looked upon as a global language as it is widely used around the world. It was
claimed that using the correct form of English grammar is the main problem with
Malaysian students' writing due to the first language interference which is Malay
language (Ghabool, Mariadass & Kashef, 2012). Besides, structures error also
became a problem in language use in Malaysia.

Preposition has been found to be one of the most problematic linguistic

categories in Malaysian ESL learners' writings (Darus & Subramaniam, 2009), which
is a type of collocational errors. The mistake made include unnecessary preposition-
involved overuse of to and for, followed by the wrong choice of the preposition-
learners confused by the usage of in, to and into and lastly missing preposition
(Hong, Rahim, Hua & Salehuddin, 2011). Research made also shows learners'
confusion for correct usage of the preposition- around and at (Darus &
Subramaniam, 2009).

Apart from that, the problem occurs when determiner is dismissed. Unlike the
Malay language, when mentioning a place or location, English language, requires a
determiner. Besides, some determiner of the English language has to agree with the
noun that comes after it which does not apply in the Malay language.

Upon reading, I have noticed that grammatical error in the subject-verb

agreement is often mentioned. This is due to Malay grammar that doesn't have
subject-verb agreement rule, whereas English grammar requires the subject and
verb to agree in number. The problem reinforces in the present tense. One must add
an -s or -es at the end of the verb when the subjects performing the action is a
singular third person which causes confusion among Malaysian learners due to the
interference from learners' first language (Maros, Hua, & Salehuddin, 2007). For
instance, in Malay, the verb word remains the same no matter what. Moreover, some
people tend to omit the singular -s in the verb when using a singular noun (Saad &
Sawalmeh, 2014) and they are also confused by the use of is or are (Darus &
Subramaniam, 2009).

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 Next is an error in the singular and plural form. Some of the participants in
research did not know that the plural form using the suffix 's' must be applied to the
countable plural noun (Darus & Subramaniam, 2009; Saad & Sawalmeh, 2014). This
is probably because, in Malay, there is no plural marker for a noun. However, for
some participants, they have already known that English nouns have plural and
singular forms but still not sure when they should apply the plural form. For example,
when the subject was in a singular form, they used the plural form to the noun- e.g.
"They eats and drinks."

In descriptive writing, besides making grammatical errors, it is followed by

structural errors. Among the errors made by students in sentence structures are-
sentence formation, incomplete sentences, lack of proper instruction style and failure
in the proper utilization of compound and complex sentences (Nair & Hui, 2018;
Darus & Subramaniam, 2009). In a surface structure taxonomy, learners' have a
problem in the category of omission where they omit the word to and do. For
example, instead of saying I want to hang out with my friend, the speaker often says I
want hang out with my friend. Same goes with do. Speaker frequently omits auxiliary
verb do. The addition also becomes the most common surface structure error. In
Malaysia, it is not rare to hear the word la. For example, 'so lucky la you' where la is
used to give emphasis; however, it is not required as the word so has given the same
value as la. 

 By reading six different articles, I noticed some of the common grammatical
mistakes I made and realizes that Malaysia needs more improvement in English
language proficiency and language use. This is said because, although we can use
accurate grammatical structures, we may still struggle to use appropriate language.
In research, report of error in language use is significant (Ghabool, Mariadass &
Kashef, 2012), which means learners' need language support with basic vocabulary
items and grammatical structures. By identifying the common error in the language
used in Malaysia, it can help educators to provide the best remedy to improve
language acquisition and performance. Moreover, educators will know what they
need to focus on more.

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REFERENCES

Darus, S., and Subramaniam, K. (2009). Error analysis of the written English essays
of secondary school students in Malaysia: A case study. European Journal of
Social Sciences, 8(3), 483-495.

Ghabool, N., Mariadass, M., & Kashef, S. (2012). Investigating Malaysian ESL
Students' Writing Problems on Conventions, Punctuation, and Language Use at
Secondary School Level. Journal Of Studies In Education, 2(3). doi:
10.5296/jse.v2i3.1892

Hong, A. L., Rahim, H. A., Hua, T. K., & Salehuddin, K. (2011). Collocations in
Malaysian English learners’ writing: A corpus-based error analysis. 3L: language,
linguistics, literature®, 17.

Maros, M., Hua, T. K., & Salehuddin, K. (2007). Interference in learning English:
Grammatical errors in English essay writing among rural Malay secondary
school students in Malaysia. Journal e-Bangi, 2(2), 1-15.

Nair, S. M., & Hui, L. L. (2018). An Analysis of Common Errors in ESL Descriptive
Writing among Chinese Private School Students in Malaysia. International
Journal of Education and Practice, 6(1), 28-42.
https://doi.org/10.18488/journal.61.2017.61.28.42

Saad, M. A. H., & Sawalmeh, M. H. M. (2014). Error analysis in role-play

presentations among less proficient L2 Malaysian learners. International Journal
of English and Education, 3(3), 346-355.

Stapa, S. H., & Izahar, M. M. (2010). Analysis of errors in subject-verb agreement

among Malaysian ESL learners. 3L; Language, Linguistics and Literature, The
Southeast Asian Journal of English Language Studies., 16 (1), 56-73.