Asian Research Thesis Index

Abstract

Cognitive Problems of Urdu-Medium College Students in Learning English Syntax The present study describes the learners' confusions caused by Grammar Translation Method. The researcher has tried to explain the reasons for the grammatical errors which the learners commit. Though the list of reasons is not intended to be exhaustive, yet its contents can be used inductively to understand learner's confusion. The study was conducted in two steps: First, the Pilot Study was conducted on 5 male undergraduates. A test was designed which consisted of 6 questions: Translation questions in both directions, fill in the blank questions to test the learner's competence of Auxiliaries and Main Verb forms. They were motivated to tell the reasons for their answers. In the light of contrastive analysis, and learners' answers, the reasons for the Errors were collected and organized into 10 main groups, and around 50 sub-groups. This classification of Errors provided us with the basic understanding of the reasons behind them. In the light of the results of the Pilot study, the Test was modified and reduced to one Main and one supporting part, questions 7 and 8. The main part consisted of 48 sentences, 4 for every tense: 1 Affirmative, 1 Negative, 1 Polarity question, 1 Wh question. 25 male students of BA class were selected for the test and interview. Of 728 Errors 342 were Tense-related. 131 Errors could not be classified because of lack of evidence. 339 answers were correct, and 184 were not attempted. The main reasons discovered were faulty Inter-lingual Correlations, and faulty combinations (termed in this work as Mental Associations). The present study reviews the concept of Overgeneralization describes it. It explains the reasons for such frequent errors as *`did not going', *`are go' and so on. Sometimes, the combination 'did not' sticks too fast to the learner's mind, and he extends it to the negative sentences of every tense. So is the case with * 'are come'. Similar confusions arise in Polarity Interrogatives where learners associate the process of question making with a particular Auxiliary and extend it to all the tenses. In this way, various reasons of learners' confusion were collected and classified. The study also suggests remedies of the problems.

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