Action Research

Morphological Problems: the lack of the use of the

third person singular in writing.



2014
Milton Orlando Martinez
Herson Asmel Castro Rivas
5/6/2014
INTRODUCTION
There are a lot of grammatical problems or difficulties for learning a
determined or a specific area or topic in the process of teaching English language
when we are a non-native English speaker, therefore, there are some problems to
be faced, one of them is to be able to clarify the use of the third person of singular
to the students, because there are some students who do not understand its uses
and how it works, so that, this is an action research oriented to explain why and
how these problems occur, and how they can be solved. This is a very common
problem that has to be faced and solved by teachers, but we as teachers, have to be
prepared for that.

It is important to know and analyze these kinds of problems, because they
are very common and some teachers do not care about that, or maybe they do not
know how to deal with these kinds of issues. Nevertheless, there are some teachers
that care about the issues presented by their students, and that is the way that it
has to be, because if teachers do not engaged with the process of teaching, what
they would be doing is a confusing class for the students, and there will not be any
worry for the students needs.

Larsen-Freeman (Celce-Murcia & Larsen-Freeman, 1999; Larsen-Freeman,
2003a, 2003b) Discusses grammatical difficulty in terms of linguistic form as a
concern of the accurate use of the (morpho) syntactic aspect of a grammar feature.
(tspace.library.utoronto.ca, 2011). That means that there has to be a real concern
about the uses of rules when we speak or write, because it part of the linguistic
area development, the more rules we apply, the better expression we will have and
our ideas will be easier to understand for those who are listen to us.

In order to clarify as much as it is possible, we will be working on solving
three common questions about the problems that involves the use of the third
person singular, these are the following:

What are the rules for the third person singular?
What are the most common reasons for the lack of the use of the third person
rules?
How should a teacher solve this problem?

It is important to know and analyze these kinds of problems, because they are very
common and some teachers do not care about that, or maybe they do not know
how to deal with these kinds of issues. Nevertheless, there are some teachers that
care about the issues presented by their students, and that is the way that it has to
be, because if teachers do not engaged with the process of teaching, what they
would be doing is a confusing class for the students, and there will not be any
worry for the students needs.

Method
In order to develop this action research, we decided to use both observation
and interview as strategies which will lead us to find up the reasons of why the
misspelling problem of the third person singular in the writing form. First of all,
observation is an important tool in practice because this tool is the one which lead
to teachers to identify an issue by observing students persistence, making the
same mistake over and over again, but through observation we can see what
works well and vice versa. In fact, observation in an action research it could be the
most important because teacher based his action plan in lived experiences;
something learned through the pass of time in practice, because of that lived thing
most influence the action research. Secondly, the interview because the practice has
to bear in mind the background of the issue, if necessary take in to account
different point of view which have experienced the same issue within the
classroom, because of that the interview help the practice to gathering extra
information about the issue and its basis. The action research just include 30
participants selected from Instituto Nacional Usulutn The participants involved
in this research were student from the third year of their carrier in that institution
and also they were selected from different areas of study, so that, they were
selected because they are interested in the English language.

Instrument
Collected data: During the practice, while I was observing the lesson in action, I
realized that many of the students there in the classroom omitted the rule of the
third person singular formation and also other grammatical aspects but the lack of
the third person singular most persisted in my students writing mistake.
Notes: One of my students omitted the s after singular person he, she, and it
Example 1: She eat pupusas everyday He sing very well My office it look
messy
Correct form: She eats pupusas everyday He sings very well
The student omitted the rule of ies after a consonant followed by y
Example 2: She study for the job he cry every morning
Correct form: She studies for the job he cries every morning
The students do not understand how to use have, go, do and be
Example 3: She go early to work he have a big office he do the interview
Correct form: She goes early to work he has a big office He does the
interview
The student gets confused with the use of -y- ies and y-s
Example 4: she studys every morning He crys for you He buyies a formal
cloth
Correct form: She studies every morning He buys formal clothes
At least the 30 percent of the student who take this course suffer the same
problem with the third person singular. In the first example one of the students
omitted the s ending after the third person singular when the rule specify that
Most of the verb take the letter s to form the third person singular, live= lives,
work= works, eat=eats (Slideshare, 2010). In addition to this problem, it is
important to know what the rules of the third person singular are in order to
understand the issue.
Rules of third person singular
1-Most of the verb take the letter s to form the third person singular, live= lives,
work= works, eat=eats
2-Verbs ending in sh/ch/ o/sx/ss add es to form the third person singular:
examples Watch=watches, go=goes, wash= washes
3-Verbs ending in consonant + letter Y change y- to ies examples Fly= flies,
cry= cries
4-Verbs ending in vowels + letter Y- add s examples: Play= plays, say= says
(Slideshare, 2010)
5- Verb Go-goes, have-has, do- does, be- is have to be memorized in order to form
the third person singular
It is noticeable how the student misunderstand the rule of third person
singular because they have done the opposite of the rule, and also in the example
number fourth the student get confused with the rule y -ies- and ys- he wrote s-
ending instead of ies- ending according to the rule because when there is a
consonant + Y we have to change y for ies- Study= studies, on the other hand
verbs ending with vowel + y we just add s at the end buy= buys. That notes
detonated the lack of awareness of students with the rules of the third person
singular in the writing form, and that is mean they make the same mistake in the
speaking form too.

Interviewer questions:
Interviewer: why high school students find difficult to learn or applied third
person singular? What do you think the problem could be? How do you solve this
problem?
Interviewed answers:
According to Monterosa a professor from Instituto Nacional Usulutn, he
said that it is so hard for them because the student there have to take into account
that they are going to add an s at the main verb in order to form the third person
singular, it means that they have to manage the rules of the third person in order to
know when to add ies-es-s in the third person. And also he said that The main
problem of that issue it is that student does not like English, the student reject to
speak in English and they do not like to learn the rule by hard, and also they take
English because it is on the curriculum, they take the language as a subject not as a
second language. Finally Monterosa suggested that The best way to solve this
issue could be by the practice of the rule, and also by making oral and written
exercise in that way the student manage the rules by interacting with the third
person singular (Monterosa, 2014)
In addition to Monterosa and his teaching experienced, the issue comes
from the students motivation to learn the language, in fact, they know the rules
but they omitted because they reject to speak in English and even in written form
because they do not like to memorize the rules that seems to be hard for them, and
also Monterosa mentioned one things that catch my attention because the best way
to solve this problem it is practice, practice the rule of the third person will help
student to improve and make them perceptible to this misspelling problem in
writing, as well as speaking form. Besides this, in my observation during the
practice I realized that the student background of the language influenced the way
they learn the language because some of them feel alike with the language, and
also they improve what they did in a wrong way by practicing.
What are the rules for the third person singular?
There are four rules for using the third person singular in English, these are
the following:
1. Most of the verbs take the letter S to form the third person singular.
Examples:

Live - Lives
Work - Works
Eat - Eats
Read Reads

2. Verbs ending in sh/ch/o/x/ss ad ES to form the third person singular.
Examples:

Teach Teaches
Wash Washes
Go Goes
Fix Fixes
Kiss Kisses

3. Verbs ending in consonant + letter Y, change the Y to IES.
Examples:

Fly Flies
Cry Cries
Study Studies
4. Verbs ending in vowels + letter Y add S at the end of the word.
Examples:

Play Plays
Stay Stays
Say Says
(Slideshare, 2010)

What are the most common reasons for the lack of the use of the third person
rules?
There are some common reason for the lack of the use of the third person
rules, according to the two instruments used for developing this action research
(observation and interview), while the process of observation the class and an
interview made to Mr. Monterosa who is an English teacher at the INU, we could
realize about the following reasons:
1. Students are not interested enough in learning English.
2. Students do not memorize the rules because they are boring for them.
3. Students are taking English as a subject instead of taking it as a language.
4. Students do not like grammar.
5. Students think it is not worthy to learn English.
6. Teachers are not engaged in the process.

1. Students are not interested enough in learning English. This is a very
common reason of why students do not use the rules of the third person.
Students are more interested on playing or talking to the classmate next to
them, and distract the ones who are trying to pay attention; therefore, they
do not learn and blame the teacher. English is not a piece of easy work.
Especially, many students are losing their interest and showing negative
attitude towards English learning. Teachers are always complaining that it
is hard to improve students scores, and the students are too lazy to learn
the words, recite the dialogues and finish the exercises.(wenku.baidu.com)

2. Students do not memorize the rules because they are boring for them. When
students get bored in class, it is very dangerous, because it means that the
teacher is not doing a good teaching practice performing, so that, obviously,
students will not pay attention to the teacher and they will be doing other
things in the class time.

3. Students are taking English as a subject instead of taking it as a
language.English is not a subject, it is a language that is supposed to be
taught in schools, but teachers have fossilized it as a subject that has to be
attended, instead of showing it as it is, a language.If they view English as a
language, however, the perspective changes for the better, the paradigm
shifts, and the sun shines bright after hiding behind the clouds. Instead of
thinking about terms like subject-verb agreement, they begin to internalize
the parts of language needed to become a successful speaker / writer /
listener of the language. (oneweirdglobe.com, 2009).

4. Students do not like grammar. Everybody says I dont like grammar, but
it is essential for learning any language in the world, you can create loony
phrases without grammar, they can be even understandable, but they will
not be 100% clear, therefore, we need to learn grammar when we are
learning other language. Grammar is important because it is the language
that makes it possible for us to talk about language. Grammar names the
types of words and word groups that make up sentences not only
in Englishbut in any language. As human beings, we can put sentences
together even as children we can all dogrammar. But to be able to talk about
how sentences are built, about the types of words and word groups that
make up sentences that isknowing about grammar. And knowing
about grammar offers a window into the human mind and into our
amazingly complex mental capacity.(grammar.about.com)

5. Students think is not worthy to learn English. They think they will not use it
in their real life when they get a job; it could be truth in a way, but what
would happen if they learn English and add that information to their CV?
They would have better job opportunities, even in other country.
Nowadays English is used almost in all spheres of international
communication: business, politics, science, culture, etc. Speaking English is
one of the main conditions to get a good job. For this reason one may think
that English is the only foreign language worth learning to feel confident in
the society. (Schonny, 2010).

6. Teachers are not engaged in the process. The most common excuses for
saying that a student is having bad results in a subject is to blame the
teacher, and maybe the student are right in a way, because after ten years
working with teenagers and standing their noise and misbehave actions,
some teachers get tired and forget their mission and what they are supposed
to do, teach, guide, inspire; but some teachers get use to do a routine of their
job, instead of be aware of what they do, what they teach and how they
teach, that is one of the main reasons of why students do not understand
some parts of a class, or even the whole class. Teacher engagement is the
key of student engagement. (Beairsto, 2012).

All the reasons above have been reasons given for a teacher from the INU
through an interview, the reasons have been compared with our own thoughts
and information found on the web in order to make it clear and show different
points of view in the same problem. The most common of those six reasons, are
two, blame the student and blame your teacher, as we have read above, it
is important to think before blaming someone, because it might be teachers
fault or students fault, it can be even both of them fault. The thing is that the
one who has to solve all those problems and whichever problem that emerges
into the classroom, is always the teacher.
Besides the reasons above, we have to think on other reasons for the
misunderstanding third person problem, in this case we have found the following:
1) L1 influence: possibility of structural interference
2) Overgeneralization: the learner creates a generalized structure on the basis of
a single rule of the target language.
3) Erroneous input: the teacher makes similar mistakes and feeds wrong input
to the learners
4) Lack of enough comprehension of the rules of subject + verb agreement.
Subject verb agreement: Subject-verb agreement means the verb will change its
form depending on its subject.
(Shrestha, 2013)

How should a teacher solve this problem?
Action Plan
Teachers have to be aware about the possible solutions for any problem that
emerges into the classroom, so that if what an action is for. Solving a problem is
much easier if there is a plan to follow and in this case what the teacher should do
is to expose the students to the problem, how come? By making them to practice
the language, according to Mr. Monterosa, if teacher exposes the students to the
problem, and guide them by the correct path of learning, they will improve and
will get over that situation. The same idea is set up by Shrestha, who says that the
teacher has to give authentic opportunities for practicing what they find difficult.
(Shrestha, 2013).

Another way for reinforcing the suggestion above is to raise the students
awareness about common errors. In the present case, letting them know that
present tense singular is a very common error and even professors at the
university level commit this mistake occasionally might boost the morale of the
students. It is very useful too if teachers could most importantly,
CONTEXTUALIZE. If students can relate to what they are learning, their retention
will probably very high. (Shrestha, 2013)It is as simple as that, the main point is to
have the commitment to do it and the passions for make things clearer for those
who do not have them clear enough.















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