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The Premature Use of English Grammar by EFL Learners

Paper · 2015 · Nur Mukminatien

Summary

Mukminatien asks why EFL learners in Indonesia write ungrammatical English even after semesters of explicit grammar instruction. The paper calls this the "premature use" of English grammar. It is a descriptive, qualitative study with no statistics. It collects writing samples from three groups at an English Education department: vocational teachers in an intensive pre-departure course, in-service high school teachers in an advanced grammar class, and regular undergraduates from an earlier study by the author. The errors cover agreement, articles, plural marking, tense, missing copulas and prepositions, and clause structure. Many look like Indonesian sentence patterns filled with English words. The author interprets them through SLA theory, chiefly Krashen's split between acquisition and learning and his Monitor Model. On that view, consciously learned rules only serve to edit output, while spontaneous production depends on acquired rules. Because Indonesian classrooms offer far more formal learning than natural exposure, learners lack acquired rules, fall back on L1 structure, and produce sentences before they are ready. The practical message for teachers is to expect less accuracy than the hours of grammar study might suggest.

Key points

  • Three learner groups supplied the data:
    • Pre Departure English Training Program: vocational teachers on a seven-week intensive course, who wrote an apology note about a borrowed book.
    • S1-Equivalent Program: high school teachers from outside Java in English Grammar III, who wrote an opinion paragraph on the monetary crisis.
    • Regular S1 students: data from Mukminatien (1991).
  • The department teaches grammar over three semesters: Grammar I and II at four credit hours each, Grammar III at two.
  • The 1991 study focused on four dominant error types: subject-verb agreement, articles, pluralization, and syntax. Most sentences contained more than one error type.
  • The theoretical framework draws on:
    • communicative competence (Canale and Swain 1980; Savignon 1983)
    • transitional competence (Corder 1967) and interlanguage (Selinker 1972)
    • the Monitor Model (Krashen 1981), as extended by Stevick
    • "premature use" reflecting L1 structure (Dulay et al. 1982)
    • the claim that the LAD ceases operating in adults (Gass and Schachter 1990)
  • The extracted page header gives the issue as Volume X Number 1, August 1999, which differs from the cited 2015 date.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. The paper groups learner errors into recurring categories: agreement, articles, plurals, tense, missing copula, dropped prepositions, and broken clause structure. This gives a ready checklist for non-native English input.
  • I2. Many errors are explained as L1 transfer, meaning Indonesian patterns realized with English words, as in copula-less clauses like "their income still low".
  • I3. The author reconstructs what writers meant from their faulty sentences, for example reading "overcome" as "solve" and reading the apology note against its prompt.
  • I4. The Monitor Model separates fluent production from a later rule-based editing pass.
  • I5. The paper stresses the gap between understanding rules and applying them. Recognizing a structure does not mean you can produce it correctly.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (learn): Use these categories as seeds for self-induced repair rules, and add negative controls so repairs never fire on well-formed native text.
  • I2 (tree): Add copula-drop and preposition-drop sentences to parser stress tests, and check that the parser still yields a sensible UD tree, for example with a nominal-predicate analysis.
  • I3 (frames): When the surface form is ungrammatical, rank candidate frames by how well they fit the discourse situation, and record the chosen reading as an explainable inference.
  • I4 (back): Structure generation as realization first, then an explicit checker for agreement, articles, and number that reports each correction it makes.
  • I5 (learn): Evaluate both directions, with a text → graph → text round trip alongside parse accuracy, so comprehension ability is not mistaken for production ability.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

📚 Shelves 4The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Arts and Humanities · 9,296 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 9,206 worksPsychology · 798 worksDevelopmental and Educational Psychology · 260 works

🧭 Topics 2Research subjects and languages the work is about.English · 1,373 worksGrammatical error correction & learner language · 80 works

Cite

Cite as Nur Mukminatien. 2015. The Premature Use of English Grammar by EFL Learners. TEFLIN Journal 10.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.15639/teflinjournal.v10i1/103-114

@article{mukminatien2015premature,
  title = {{The Premature Use of English Grammar by EFL Learners}},
  author = {Nur Mukminatien},
  journal = {TEFLIN Journal 10},
  year = {2015},
  doi = {10.15639/teflinjournal.v10i1/103-114},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.15639/teflinjournal.v10i1/103-114}
}

References

7 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet.

  1. from the senior high-schools. unfortunately, after a six-year learning experience, Allwright, Dick and Bailey. Kathleen M. i991, Fouts on the Language classroom. they are stillin the premature level. Even the students of the Engiish Department who have taken a three-semester Grammar classes find difficurties applying the L2 ruie systems. If the goai of a gramrnar class in the English Department is to produce optimal monitor users, it seems that all the requirements to use a monitor is Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. canale, Michael and swain, Meril. 1980. Approache.s to communicative competettce. Singapore: SEAMEO Regional Language Center. find
  2. Corder, S.P. 1967. The Signiticance of Leamers' Errors. In Richards, Jack. find
  3. C. 1930 (Ed.). fulfiued (they have enough time, focus on the form in editing, and know the rules). Error Analysis. Perspective on Second Language Acquisition. (pp. 19-30) Dulav, Heidi; Burt. find
  4. Marina; and Krashen, Stephen D. 1982. Language lwo. Oxforrl: Oxford Apparently, they had enough time to write and to focus on forms, and they arso might have thought about corectness when they reviewed and edited their sen-Ellis, Rod. 1986. understanding seconr) Language Acquisition. oxford: oxford Universily tences. In this case, however, it is quite possible that even when they had time, they might not be concerned with whether they had written the sentences corectly, rather, with what to write and how to write it. The third requirement is that the learner should have the knowledge of the rules. This is really a big question. "Did the students know the rules?" Based on the assumption that they did know the rules in the grammar class, the answer should be "Yes" because they had Iearned grammar for three consecutive semesters, Did they forget the rules when they wrote the University Press, Pt css. Gass, Susan M. and Schachter, Jacquelyn. 199A, Linguistic Perspective on Second kmgtnge Ac quis ition. Cambridge: Cambridge Universi ty Press. find
  5. Huda, Nuril, 1984. orders of Acquisition of Monitored and unmonitured English Morphemes hy In"donesian-Speaking Studenls. Unpublished dissertation. Austin: Thc University of Texas at Austin. Krashen, Stephen D. I 98 1. Second Language Acquisition and Second Language lcarning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. essay? The answer may be "Yes". or, they did not forget the rules, but they had not Krashen, Stephen D. and Terrel, Tracy D. I 983. The Natural Approach. Language Acquisition yet internalized the rules while learning in the Grammar class. in the CLassroon. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mukminatien, Nur. 1997.The Dffirences of Students'WritingAchievements Across DiJferent UONCLUSION Course Levels. Unpublished Dissertation. Malang: IKIP MALANG. find
  6. Nababan, P.W.J. 1991. Language Acquisition in an EFL Classroom. Possibilitics and l.imitations. TEFLIN Iournal, 4(2): 45-62. The cliscussion has led to the conclusion that grammar has a very limited role in the learner's performance. what is learned is not always available for use in a Nunan, Davicl. 1991. Language Teaching Metlrcdology. A Textbookfor Teaclters. New York: Prentrcc-Hlll 114 TEFLIN Journal, Volwne X Number I, Augusr l9t)t) savignon. find
  7. Sandra J, 1983. communicative competence; Theon' aul classroom practice. Texts and contexts in second Lattguage Leaning. Reading: Addison-westley Publishing Company. selinker, Larry. 1972, Interlanguage. In Richards, Jack c. (Ed.) 1980. Error AnuLysis. Perspective on Second ktnguage Acquisition (pp. 3 I - 5a). find

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