Language Deficiencies Of A Second English Language English Language Essay

Published: November 21, 2015 Words: 3085

When a language moves from one culture to another, we see many errors in both written language and also in spoken language because of the fact that every cultures injects its specific traits, its basic characteristics into the language as it is used by their natives. This is the reason why when we talk or hear to people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, we can tell who are they and what part of the world do they belong. Even if the grammatical structure of the language is correct, still, the way spoken English differs from core first language English speakers is quite obvious. Now the important thing is that apart from those students who are learn English when they are adult or get to speak English when they go to study abroad, even those students who have been taught English in early primary class, they also face difficulties related to morphological, phonological and syntactic errors.

Communication Process

Now, when we talk about communication, we see that in order to get our message across to the other person, our message must be crisp and clear. There is an entire process through which we actually communicate with others; however, there are some critical check points that need to be reviewed in order to communicate in the best possible manner. One of these checkpoints is the right use of language in order to keep the message simple and clear so that it can be easily understood by the receiver.

From aerial view, or in general terms, the communication process can be described as follows.

Now the information source is the sender, he transmits it through any medium of exchange, it can be electronic or live and the receiver is the one who hears the conversation and the destination is the brain where the right message in the right context should reach. In the middle, there is this noise source [1] .

This noise source is the basic purpose of our study that we are talking about. The problems faced by second language English speakers or the deficiencies that their communication process faces. These deficiencies not only make the messages difficult to understand, but, at the same time, these deficiencies also weaken the actual message and the impact it is supposed to have on the receiver of the message. Therefore, in the following discussion, we will see what sort of deficiencies cause what sort of negative impact on the communication model. The methodology of the discussion was through interviewing 3 people conversing in a controlled environment as they were exposed to similar random questions. These three people were assessed on the basis of phonological, morphological and syntax errors and their communication process were analyzed. Lastly, recommendations will be given in order to see what can be done to bring improvements to their communication process.

Although, there can be many sorts of communication types, but, over here we are specifically talking about interpersonal communication as it is relevant to the paper. The reason is the fact that phonology, morphology and syntax are all related to interpersonal spoken communication because they involve words and a complete process that goes in the mind of the receiver or the sender when a message is received or being conveyed.

Now as we have seen in the above diagram, interpersonal communication can only take place when there is at least more than one person in the communication process. There can be two or more than two people being addressed, but, if a person talks to oneself, then that is actually not a communication process. In a communication process the sender observes several things around him. He analyzes the information that he has either received from the other person or from the environment and gathers all the ideas that he has to deliver. In a matter of seconds, the sender of the message processes and plans what and he will say keeping in mind the nature of the person or the audience he has to deliver and at the same time safeguarding their interests in order to receive the desired response for which the whole communication process is being carried out. Now by planning we mean that whenever we deliver a message to the receiver, we actually have a certain motive behind it, a silent action that we expect from the receiver thus planning accordingly is the basic key to success to actually get the message across the receiver in the manner that it enters the mind smoothly, the receiver understands it correctly, his interests are safeguarded and the response is actually derived from the message with respect to the results that are expected [2] .

Now, the noise that we have talked about briefly early in the essay is the misunderstanding that can be caused by poor communication style. A misunderstanding tends to destroy the purpose of communication until and unless the message is formulated again to come up with the desired results. However, the point here is that it is not only on the part of the sender that there is noise in the communication process, but, a listener can also contribute to this noise by not paying attention to the speaker. The speaker might be distracted by some other information or message source nearby and he might miss out the important points. This is one of the reasons that speakers or senders are advised to keep the message short and simple and emphasizing more on the important points rather than the irrelevant information to sugarcoat the entire sentence. For example, in a class room, the students were presented the following example.

"Assume that you are a driver of the bus, you have to take the bus 4km right, 6km straight up, take a U-turn, come back 3 kilometers and then take a left" The question was "what is the age of the driver"? Many students were clueless; many students calculated by adding or subtracting the dimensions somehow and only a few students were able to give the correct answers, that is, there own age. This is what good listeners do. They hear the important things, and depending on the question, they discard all the irrelevant points that were given in the question. From the sender's point of view, we can also see that the message was so confusing and there were so many directions involved that the students got confused. Would it have asked straightforward what is the age of the driver without giving all the directions, most of the students would have had given the right answer.

Interview observation with respect to Phonology, Morphology and Syntax

In the interview, out of three students, two of them were students who spoke English as a foreign language and one of them was a native English language speaker. Although, second language English speakers were greater in number but the interview was able to come up with interesting results. These subjects were observed on the basis of phonological, morphological and syntax errors, all of which will be explained in the following discussion.

Phonological errors

First of all we need to see what actually Phonology is. Phonology is the study of sounds that are used in all the languages that are spoken all around the world. All the languages have syllables and do make use of vowels and consonants therefore the study of phonology actually become important when we have to identify universal and non-universal sound qualities. When we look at a yard stick, it has units of measure on it, wither centimeters or inches, but, every sort a unit has its own value and characteristic. One inch is different from one centimeter and 11 centimeters are different from 1 centimeter all there are the same two twos [3] . Therefore, in the case of English language or any other language as well, these syllables are the units of the language in which the language is used and spoken. Each syllable takes time to be spelled or spoken out. Although every syllable has its own characteristics and voice that it produces, but, when in relation to other syllables with it, the sounds tend to differ [4] . The way the set of unit syllables is read out is different than the sound for which these syllables are actually known for. Now it is these syllables and the phonology that can actually change the entire meaning of a sentence. For example, if we say that there stands a mad cow, then this will be different from there stands a mad cow. Now mad stands for insane and mod is a short for of modern. The difference of o changed the entire meaning of the word and the essence of the sentence. One of the sentences tends to make you feel afraid of the mad cow and the other one makes you curious and interested to see what makes the cow so mod. Therefore, relating the problem to the topic of our discussion which is issues faced by students pursuing English as a foreign language, we see that these foreign students tend to pronounce and speak the words with incorrect syllables or phonology which actually changes their meaning. This is due to the fact that the influence of some heavy syllables in their mother talking makes them emphasize on the same syllable in the English language as well.

In the interview setting, the two second language English speakers were seen to make phonological errors quite often. In simple words phonology is the way we use sound to come up with syllables and words that will actually hold a specific meaning. It is like encoding the sound to take a meaning. The native English speaker did not find any problems in doing so because of the fact that he has always used the language ever since he opened his eyes, everyone around him has always spoken English and he hardly listens to any foreign language. Whereas, the second language English speakers made mistakes such as:

Anticipation Errors: Sounds which were to be said later were used to early as is in the example: instead of saying a reading list, the boy said a leading list.

Preservation Errors: Repeating a sound that has already past and gone once again. For example, instead of saying annotated bibliography, the boy said annotated bibliography.

Phonemic exchange: A very interesting observation that was seen was that the interchange of the syllables which was as perfect as it could be in terms of placement. For example, the sentence, you have hissed all my mystery lectures was used instead of you have missed all my history lectures. It is easy to see the interchange.

Although, it is not necessary that only the second language English speakers come up with such a problem, but, the fact that they are more prone to mistakes such as these is the fact that they have two languages in mind, both the languages might be different, and the entire Symantec process that is going behind on their mind in their native language actually enables them to jumble up words or pronounce words the way they flow or come out in their native language. Most of the times Arabic speaking students face this problem because the nature of their mother tongue is so that syllables which have been pronounced have to be connected with the following word [5] .

Morphological errors

Now this is a branch of linguistics that is actually related to the formation of words in English language. When morphologists study morphological errors or the study of morphology as a whole, they actually make use of morphemes which are also knows as a units of the English language that are somewhat related to the grammaticism of the language. A morpheme can take many types. It can be a word or it can be a meaningful part as a part of word with or without which the entire meaning of the word might change. For example when we say I have a ball in my hand. Now hand specifies where the ball is [6] . But, if I say that I have a firsthand watch in my hand, then that means that it is a brand new watch in my hand. The point to be noted here is that by adding hand to first the meaning of the sentence changed. Without hand it would mean the first watch in my hand and with hand it means the new one. Moreover, a morpheme can also be a two letter word which adds a different meaning to a sentence. For example "ed". This morpheme can change the meaning of the sentence by either bringing it to the present or future sentence by not using it or to convert the sentence into past tense by adding. There is a difference between he changed the battery and please change the battery [7] .

Moreover, another thing about morphemes is that it is not always necessary that these morphemes add action to sentence. For example if we consider the two sentences she is so lovely and please walk here quickly, we see that both the sentences have one common morpheme that is changing their meaning. The morpheme we are talking about is "ly". However, when we add "ly" to quick, it serves as an adverb. And when we add "ly" to lovely it acts as an adjective.

The same students were also observed how they made mistakes that were related to this specific error. When structuring words, people using English as a second language often come across word structures in a way that they try to express an action on the wrong word through an inappropriate suffix or prefix. For example instead of saying easily enough, student was observed to say easy enoughly. Also, regardless of the relation with the previous sentence, new words also come into existence in the second language English just like the word enoughly or forgot abouten instead of forgotten about [8] .

Moreover, in the interview, it was seen that many students were not able to strike a balance between how to select a morpheme at the right place in the right manner. The reason is that they are not actually that much proficient in the English language that they can put them in the right order. They have heard lovely in movies and in their colleges and universities as well, but, when it come to speaking English which is their second language they might interchangeably try to use lovely instead of love at some places. As these students face difficulty in developing the common sense to place these morphemes at the right place, they tend to make these mistakes as most of the times, these students get to know more about the language by talking and listening to others,

If we take the example of most of the immigrants in US or England, we will see that most of the times they are heard of saying 'Yeah between sentences'. The reason behind this is the fact that when they initially settled here, they could not communicate properly and used to use yeah more frequently to conform to others. Also, as their English in the early stages is not that fluent, thus, others also used yeah more frequently when they did not fully understand them or felt confused to reply. Just the way they now use yeah, they are also prone towards other mistakes as well either by confusion in listening or by listening to an actual error either by another immigrant or the native English who might have made a mistake.

Syntax

Lastly, syntax errors was also seen in second language English students because of the way the structured their sentence seemed to be very different the way the native English speaking boy was doing. They later did not had to put extra effort to align the words with respect to subject object balance consciously and the other boys had to first translate from their native mind language to the second language and then make a quick to re-arrange words to separate the object and the subject of the sentence [9] .

Conclusion and Recommendations

Now the problems that were identified in the entire process of communication is due to the translation of language from the native language in which the second language student thinks and then the way he translates it into English language. The problem is the translation through proper English grammar rules and things that they need to keep in mind in order while translating their thoughts from their minds to spoken English language which has different rules. These students have been taught how to form a sentence but they must also be given exercises in which they try to translate their thoughts in the correct manner as well.

Moreover, as far as the problem of phonological errors is concerned; the most effective recommendation would be that these second language students must be taught English language by a teacher who actually has a command over spoken English. No matter how expert a person in English language is, but, unless he is able to deliver in proper spoken language, the person can be a good English writer but not necessarily a good teacher. Thus, the students do find mistakes and copy mistakes, unconsciously, the mistakes that the teacher might have made.

Another recommendation is that students must be taught English language from their early stages if they want to study in a foreign school in future. And yet again, the teachers for these children must also have the perfect phonology and morphology so that the students are clear about how to pronounce words and use them in different ways in different situations. A research shows that those students who learn English language at the earliest stages are more likely to make lesser mistakes then those who come to foreign countries and try to learn English either at the adult age or by talking to others. there are a lot of slangs and a lot of communication that is being carried out in a non grammatical manner which can spoil not only the accent of these second language students, but, it also weakens their basics of English language along with keeping them firm on these mistakes with time. this actually makes them different form the people they interact with and thus as they are easily identifiable, they will les confident and less equipped with the tool of language as compared to those who speak the language being the natives.