A Study on Errors in the Use of Relative Clauses Committed by the 10th Graders

Abstract

This thesis entitled 'A study on the Errors in the Use of Relative ClausesCommitted by the 10 th Graders' has been prepared to identify and analyze theerrors in the use of English relative clauses committed by grade 10 students ofgovernment aided schools. For the study, the researcher collected data from grade 10 students,studying in the five different government schools of Salyan district. The samplepopulation consisted of 100 students,boys and girls, both equal in number whowas selected using simple random sampling procedure. On the basis of the datacollected, errors in the use of relative clauses were analyzed and interpretedusing simple statistical tools such as average and percentage. The main findings of the study are as follows:a. In totality most of the errors were found in making independent sentences out of the sentences with relative clauses. b. In making sentences with relative clauses, most of the errors were found due to theuse of wrong relative pronouns and superfluous pronouns. c. Girls committed more errors than boys. d. Students were found to commit errors in the use of relativised possessive determiner and interrogative sentences with embedded relative clauses. e. Students failed to recognize the relative clause with deleted relative pronouns/adverbs. The study consisted of four chapters. Chapter one consists of generalback ground, fundamental of error analysis, literature review, objectives of thestudy, significance of the study and limitations of the study. Chapter two deals with methodology. It encompasses sources of data, population of the study,sampling procedure and process of data collection. Chapter three consists of analysis and interpretation of the data. Thischapterhas two main parts. Part one deals with the total proficiency in terms oftest items, gender, and school. In this part the proficiency of the students havebeen tabulated. Part two deals with the analysis of total errors in terms of errortypes, gender, schools and individual students and remediation of errors. Chapter four presents the summary of the findings and recommendations. Findings are derived form the analysis and interpretation of data carried out in chapter three and recommendations and suggestions are made on the basis of findings.