A Study of Errors Committed by Grade Twelve Students in Reported Speech

Abstract

This study was mainly concerned with the errors committed by Grade twelve students in Kirtipur. The main purpose of this study was to identify errors in the use of reportedspeech.One hundredand fifty sevenstudents of four different schools of Kirtipurwereselected randomly for the study. Then the researcher preparedthree sets of test items as atoolconsisting of questions.Shevisited the selected schools and administered the test.She examined the students' responses and identified theerrors. The study found out thatmost ofstudents wereweak in using correct aspect of tense in reported speech. Theycommitted37errors in tense.They committed 45 errors in persons and 51 errors inadverbials.The students committed more errors in conversion in direct speech. Theymade 133total errors in this type of problem.Similarly, lack of practice and two wayscommunication between teacher and students were the main problem of the schools.Similarly, there were lack of teaching materials and it was found onlytheoretical methodapplied in grammar class. This thesis has been organizedinto four distinct chapters. The first chapter is theintroduction in which general background, reported speech, error analysis,literaturereview including significance and objectives of the study have been incorporated. Thesecond chapter shows the methodologicalaspects by dealing with sources, process andtools for datacollection. The third chapter deals withanalysis and interpretation of theerrors which were categorized interms of wrong use of tenses, wrong use of persons andthe use of wrong adverbials. They were analyzed and interpreted byusing simplestatistical tools of average and percentage. The fourth chapter presents the findings andrecommendations based on the analysis and interpretation of the errors.