| Summary: | 碩士 === 淡江大學 === 英文學系碩士班 === 102 === This study is aimed at investigating the difficulties relating to English plural usages whether affected by L1 transfer (inter-lingual) or intra-lingual interference, or perhaps, other factors. Approximately, 110 participants, attending low-intermediate classes at a technical university in northern Taiwan, participated in this study. Data was collected in the form of writing samples over a five month period, that is, half an academic year. A standardised GEPT style test was developed and used to assess the participants’ English proficiency. A questionnaire was also used to assess the participant’s linguistic backgrounds.
The writing samples were collected together into a corpus. The corpus was entered into Wordsmith Tools 6.0., software for analysis. Patterns in EFL learners’ noun plural formation usages with number words and quantifiers were searched for and examined.
The results obtained from the search were examined according to the use and form of the noun-phrase in each of the sample sentences. The errors found were compared to Mandarin as that is the mother tongue of the respondents. The errors were also examined to note whether they were due to syntactic or morphological factors.
The results obtained in this study suggest that although many EFL learners omit or overuse plural forms, many others form their plurals correctly.
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