Linguistic Strategies for Expressing Simple Negative Sentences in English and Vietnamese

Abstract

This study investigates linguistic strategies for expressing simple negative sentences in English and Vietnamese, aiming to identify structural similarities and differences and the common errors made by Vietnamese EFL learners. Mixed–method was used in the form of corpus analysis, 30 high–school student questionnaires, and semi–structured interviews (n=6). The qualitative insights were used to understand the perception and challenges of learners whereby quantitative data were obtained through descriptive statistics, correlation, and t–tests. The results show that Vietnamese students tend to take over the L1 patterns and apply them to English, leaving out or inappropriately applying auxiliaries (do/does/did), changing position of not, and mixing different forms of no, not and none. There was a gap between understanding and proper use as recognition tasks were not as difficult as production. As both quantitative and qualitative findings indicate, the primary sources of difficulty are cross–linguistic interference and structural complexity. Pedagogically, the paper highlights the necessity of explicit contrastive teaching in order to decrease transfer error and acquire higher accuracy in the negation of English.