A contrastive error analysis of English essays by Oshiwambo speaking 2nd year students in the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources Sciences at NUST

Abstract

The study sought to compare and contrast errors made by Oshiwambo speaking 2nd year students in the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources Sciences at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) in the process of writing English essays. Contrastive error analysis, adopted as the theoretical framework of this study, stresses on the influence of the mother tongue in learning a second language at lexical, morphological, syntactic and grammatical levels. A qualitative method was used to identify the students’ written errors from a sample size of 54 assessment based scripts. The study population was narrowed to cover a total population of 317 (three hundred and seventeen students) from the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources Sciences at NUST. The study used the homogeneous purposive sampling method. It then purposefully selected 54 Oshiwambo speaking students from the Department of Agriculture and Natural Recourses Sciences at NUST to respond to a standardised assessment script. The assessment scripts were evaluated in line with the research objectives. To begin with, the researcher focused on word formation processes which include prefixation, suffixation, insertion, reduplication and verb structure. The second objective of the thesis dealt with the identification and analysis of syntactic errors with a specific examination at noun tense errors, verb tense errors and errors in subject-verb agreement. The third objective targets grammatical competence focused on comparatively analysing Oshiwambo and English basic language structures, syntactic differences between English and Oshiwambo as well as sentence constructions. The major conclusion drawn from the study is that EA and CA are indispensable for improving the teaching and learning process of a second language adding that second Language (L2) students are more prone to making errors due to the influence/interference of their L1. The study recommends that educators should differentiate English (L2) and Oshiwambo (L1) grammar, to avoid language interference as well as to promote a more effective impact in the learning of English as a second language. The study further recommends education officials to improve libraries and equip them with learning materials necessary for teaching and learning and facilitators to frequently organise various academic writing competitions.