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ABSTRACT
In our modern society, English is used as an international language and
communication tool, and it increasingly plays an important role in the world,
especially when the policy of economy has been opened and intergrated in the
global, English becomes more and more vital in every field in the life. The
undeniable fact that email has great importance in modern business communication.
There are millions of emails sent from boss to employees, emails to customers,
partners, coworkers...Considering the importance of grammatical errors in the email
writing process, this research aims at describing the grammatical errors in writing
emails that commited by the employees of Sen Vang Real Estate Joint – Stock
Company. The data have been gathered from 50 emails collected by Sen Vang ‘s
employees after one – month internship. The results of the study revealed that the
common and frequent errors made by Sen Vang’s employees when writing emails
were subject – verb agreement, subject omission, word order, pluralization,
pronuoun, conjuction, article and preposition. The causes of such errors that are aslo
indicated consist of the difference between English and Vietnamese, the mother
tough references, inadequate culture backgrounds, different English levels... The
study also provides the techniques, solutions and suggestions completely for both
employees and managers. Based on these findings, it is suggested that managers
should increase the employees and staff’s awareness on these errors and provide
sufficient remedies to prevent staff from meeting such errors.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all my
teachers of English faculty at Thuong Mai University for giving me permission to
commence this thesis.
I would like to acknowledge my thankfullness to my supervisor, Ms Duong
Thi Hong Tham, whose encouragement, guidance and support enabled me to

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accomplish the final version of the thesis as expected. Without her help, support and
guidance as well, this study would have been impossible to be done effectively and
on schedule. I really appreciate all her help and suggestion during my study.
Additionally, I would like to send sincere thanks to Sen Vang Real Estate Joint
– Stock Company, the director Ms Nguyen Thi Bich Ngoc and all staff of Sen Vang
Company for giving me much support during my one –internship and help me much
in my data collection to do this study.
Futhermore, I would say thanks to all my dear friends for their help and warm
encouragement throughout my hard times carrying out the study. Without them, I
couldn’t have covercome such times and focused on my study.
Especially, I owe my depest gratitude to my parents whose encouragement and
creates opportunities to help me concentrate on my study during this period.
Last but not least, I offer my regards to all of those who supported me in any
respect during the completion of the study
Hanoi, 8th March 2020
Student
Tran Thi Minh Ngoc

TABLES OF CONTENTS

XC MLIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
No
1
2

3
4
5

3

Abbreviated words

Full phrase
Sen Vang

SV

3
3


4

4
4


CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
1.1.Rationale
In the modern life, English is consisdered a global language which plays an
extremely important in industrialization and modernization of certain countries.
This language has rapidly become the operating system for the international
conversation. English is the dominant business language and it has almost become
a neccessity for people to speak English if they are to enter a global workforce.

Research from all over the world shows that cross – border business communication
is most often conducted in English and many international companies require
employees to be fluent in English.
One of the best way to use English effectively, especially in business English
is being fluent in intensive grammar. According to Jeffrey Gitomer ( American
author & business trainer) “ Your grammar is a reflection of your image. Good or
bad, you have made an impression. And like all impressions, you are in total
control”. If you want to make sure you come across the business proffessional you
are, give readers a good first impression, maintain business’s credibility and
reputation as a professinal, advoid miscommunication and misunderstanding, make
communications more effective, reduce the risk of costly lawsuits... The use of the
correct sentence structure and grammar will increase credibility and reliability of
English users.
In Sen Vang Real

Estate Joint – Stock Company, there are separate 2

departments supporting customers and partners. One supports Vietnamese
customers in consulting and buying or leasing properties. Another supports Foreign
customers and partners in getting to know the housing law, buying, selling and
hiring properties. I was an intern in department supporting foreign customers. My
department has 20 staff. Our daily tasks are translating documents, supporting
customers buying and selling properties, assist foreign partners in looking for
properties and customers, writing commercial correspondence, and so on. We often
write English emails every week and every month. Working as an intern at this
department for nearly two months, I found that English usage of staff here as well
as of myself still faces many grammatical errors, especially in writing skill.
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For these reasons, I made a decision to choose the topic” A study on various
grammatical errors in English writing of staff in Sen Vang real Estate JointStock Company”.

The purpose of this study is to address the common

grammatical errors of the staff of Sen Vang Real Estate Joint – Stock Company and
analyse to find the reasons why there are difficulties in mastering grammar and
finally try to look for solutions to help the staffs improve their writing ability.
1.2. Previous studies
There are several studies conducted to investigate learners’ writing errors in
general and grammatical errors in particular.
Firstly, the study of Hamzah (2012) with the topic: “ An analysis of the written
grammatical errors produced by freshment students in English writing”. This study
is aimed at providing explanation on the taxonomy of the grammatical errors made
by the unniversity students in written production of English. The data were obtained
from twenty English texts written by the students as a part of their task in writing
class. In this study, twenty Indonesia students studying Writing were chosen as the
subjects for the study. Data were collected from the writing assignment written by
students at home. The total language corpus collected is appropriately 10.000
words. There were 691 errors made by the students. The identified errors were
counted based on frequencies. Then, these errors were classified basd on the
procedures suggested by Etherton ( 1977). The result showed that there are 6 major
categories of errorsmade by Indonesian students their writing – word choice, verb
group, article, preposition, plurality and speeling. The author suggested that the
teacher should pay more attention to the occurence of those errors in the future and
provide relevent remedies.
EMMARYANA, FAJARIAN, 2010, Topic “ an analysis on the grammatical
errors in the students’ writing”. This study was conducted towards the first year
students of SMA Negeri 1 Cigudeg – Bogor. The error was done in Tense for the
highest errors by 19 students or 95% the second is errors in Spelling and

Punctuation by 18 students ỏ 90% the third is errors in Sentence Pattern by 17
students or 85% the forth is errors in Preposition by 7 students or 35%, and the last
errors in Pronoun with 6 errors or 30 %. This study indicated that the formulation
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of the problem is to find out the per 5 five aspects: sentence Pattern( subject and
verb), tense, pronoun, preposition, puntuation, and spelling made by the first year
students of SMA Negeri 1 Cigudeg in writing recount text.
In addition to the research of foreigner scholars such as Hamzah Hamzah
( 2012) and Emmaryana ( 2010), in Vietnam, there were also many studies related
to this issue.
The study of student Tran Thi Hanh ( 2015) at Thai Nguyen university with
the topic” Grammatical errors in paragraph writing of first year english major
students at school of foreign languages – Thai Nguyen University”. In this study,
the author indicated the common grammatical errors in writing skills of first year
students such as: Interlingual, cross – cultural, lexical, parralinguistic....
All the studies showed the reader a more multidimensional view and to
recognize the mistakes when practicing English writing skill. So users will be able
to take corrective measure and improve their writing skills. And this study,
researcher hope to contribute to the research treasure, clarify the subject as well as
extend the view to the staff of SV.
1.3. Aims of the study
The study is implemented to two main aims.
-

The first one is to figure out the common grammatical errors made by the staff of

-


SV
The second one is to provide techniques and strategies to help staffs of SV raise
awareness of grammatical problems and gradually improve their writing skills.
The researcher also addresses the effective and appropriate measures which
assist staff of SV in fulfilling their tasks in the best way and give some suggestions
to deal with it for staff.
1.4. Resarch subjects
In the study, the research subject is the common grammatical errors that made
by staff of SV in email writing skills at Sen Vang Real Estate Joint – Stock
Company. Particularly, below are the research problems to handle in the study.
1. The difficulties which staff of SV often faced when writing emails.
2. Various grammatical mistakes in writing emails of staff in SV

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3. Some solutions and suggestions to improve writing skill of staff as well as
devlope appropriate methods for managers.
1.5. Scope of the study
This study was conducted on 7 staff in department of supporting foreign
customers and partners of Sen Vang Real Estate Joint-Stock Company. Moreover,
this study only focused on writing skills to figure out the main reasons making the
staff of SV often have email grammatical errors. From that the author wants to
suppose the solutions to help staff of SV improve their writing skills and get rid of
their grammatical errors.
1.6. Research methodology
The main instruments used in the study to collect data were questionaire,
interview questions and writing.
Questionaire: The questionaire is considered as a research tool primarily used
to collect imformation and data in research. The aims of questionaire is gathering

the vital information which are typically analyzed or interpreted, allowing the
researchers to come up with the solution or conclusion to the research being
conducted. The questionaire of this study aims to find out common types of
grammtical errors and difficulties the staff often face in writing skills as well.
The questionaires of study are described as below:
•

What are the common types of grammatical errors which staffs of SV often make

when writing emails?
• Whar are techniques and solutions to improve English writing?
Interview: The interview is a form which can help researcher collect a richer
source

of

information

about:

Attributes,

behavior,

preferences,attitudes,

knowledge... Interviews are most effective for qualitive research such as: Better
understand, explore research subjects’opinions, behaviors....
In the interview of this study, the resarcher made interviews with 5 staff of SV
to answer the listed questions.

Emails: In Sen Vang, writing emails to customers and partners is one of the
tasks which was frequently made by the staff of department of supporting
foreigners. In this study, besides conducting the questionaire and interview, one of
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the effective instrument which the author decide to use is collecting emails. The
topic of this study is common grammatical errors in email writing skills of Sen
Vang’s staff. Therefore, emails can be the best and shortest way to find out the
problems and the author can collect the grammatical errors and analyze these errors.
The data were collected by using three kinds of instruments: questionaire,
interview and collecting emails. All these methods will be effective tools which can
help the author find out and analyse errors for finding the percentage.
1.7. Organization of the study.
The study was devided into four following chapters:
Chapter 1: Overview of the study includes rational of the study, related
previous studies, aims of the study, research subjects, scope of the study, research
methodology and organization of the study as well.
Chapter 2: Literature of the study, were reviewed the theoretical issues
concerning English. This chapter includes overview of writing, overview of
grammar and grammatical errors.
Chapter 3: Research findings are results from instruments: questionaires,
interviews and emails.
Chapter 4: Recommendations and suggestions. In this chapter, the author will
give solutions and suggestions of improving writing skills for staff of Sen Vang.
Give quick summary of the above chapters and some limitations in doing research
on.

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE OF STUDY
2.1. Definitions of writing

There are variety of wrriting definition which are stated by certain researchers.
According to Nunan, ( 2003) Writing are physical and mental act. It’s about
discovering ideas, thinking about how to: communicate – develope them into
statements and paragraphs that will be comprehensible to a reader.
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According to Meryers( 2005) writing is a way to product language, which you
do naturally when you speak. Writing is communication with other in a verbal way.
Writing is also a process of discovering and organizing your ideas, putting them on
paper and reshaping and revising them.
Rivers (1981) defines writing as conveying information or express of orgininal
ideas in a consecutive way in the new language.
With these definitions, writing is regarded as a process mad through two steps:
Firstly, transmitting and exploring perspectives, setting up plan about the
writting structure and form into. Secondly, conducting a number of revising process
to implement a grammatical texts. The writing productions are the texts which
might be meaningful to readers and convey the contents of text to audience. A good
writer could synthsize the skilss, knowledge and steps of writing process to achieve
the efficiency in transfering information.
2.1.1 Types of writing
There are four main types of writing: expository, descriptive, persuasive and
narrative.
Expository – Writing in which author’s purpose is to inform or explain the
subject to the reader. It is a subject – oriented writing style, in which authors focus
on tellig a given topic or subject without voicing their personal opinions. These
types of essays or articles provide readers with relevant facts and figures but do not
include their opinions. This is one of the most common types of writing which we
often see in textbooks, how – to articles....
Descriptive – A type of expository writing that uses the five senses to paint a

picture for the reader. This writing incorporates imagery and specific details.
Descriptive style focuses on describing a character, a place or an event in great
detail. It can be poetic when the author takes the time to be very specific in his or
her descriptions.
Persuasive – Writing that states the opinion of the writer and attempts to
influence the reader. The main aim of this style is to convince. Unlike expossitory
writing,persuasive writing contains the opinions and bases of the author. To
convince others to agree with the author’s point of view, persuasive writing contains
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justifications and reasons. We can often see this style in letters of complaint,
advertisements or commercials, affiliate marketing pitches, cover letters and
newspaper opinion and editorial pieces.
Narrative – Writing in which the author tells a story containing specific
elements that work togethr to create interest for not only the author but also the
reader. This type of writing makes the reader feel as if he or she were part of story,
as if it was being told directly to him or her.
Descriptive – A type of expository writing that uses the five senses to paint a
picture for the reader. This writing incorporates imagery and specific details. The
primary purpose of discriptive writing is discribe a person, place or thing in such a
way that a pictures is formed in the reader’s mind. Capturing an event through
descriptive writing involves paying close attention to the details by using all of our
five senses. Descriptiv writing is often found in fiction, though it can make an
apperance in nonfiction as well ( for instance, memories, first-hand accounts of
events, or travel guides).
In this study, we will research more on persuasive writing with the examples
of business correspondence – emails. In information era, email plays an important
role of communication especially in bussiness. Email is also known an elctronic
mail. It is a technique of sending written messags electronically from one computer

to another. Through emails, written messages can be sent quickly and also receive
the reply instantly. To have effective emails, it depends on a lot of factors such as:
situation, subjects... To write an email to friends or relatives, we don’t need focus
on grammar or lexical a lot. An informal email will suitable. However, workplace
environment is definitely different. Professionism will be very critical. Therefore,
it’s necesarry to pay attention to the accuracy of using grammar and spelling. These
are two main factors which can give emails a greater sense of professionalism. We
can identify the professionalism through outgoing communication such as business
cards, brochures and an email signature. Toward business emails, professionalism
and accuracy are very vital cause these emails are written to directors, managers,
collegues or customers. Therefore, in this corporate environment, formal mails is
neccessary and suitable. There are three common criteria
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to evaluate


professionalism in formal emails including: accurate gammar, punctuation, and
spelling. However, in some cases, staff can be flexible to use mix style to write a
quick mail to their partners.
2.1.2. Difficulties in English writing
In foreign language learning, the students are supposed to master the language
skills, either communicative competence in spoken or written compentence in
English texts. One of the objectives of English teaching to English learner is to
develope their communicative competence. Writing is one skill that must be
mastered by the students.
Writing has been perceived as a complex process for English as a foreign
language learners (EFL), therefore, it’s not suprising that errors in writing are found
as an unadvoidable part of EFL student writing. Almost international students or
english leaners encounter a lot of stress and obstacle when writing their assignment.

The reasons for this is that students come from other countries with the different
cultural background where they are fully dependent on teachers. They also have not
tranined to be critical thinkers and they might have lower expectations than those of
their teachers as they consider themselves second language learners. Other causes
that could lead to the difficulty in academic writing are L1 interference, inadequacy
of ideas, and unclear instructions of the task ( Chou, 2011)
Besides Chou ( 2011), Norish, John ( 1983) classified causes of error into
three types that is carelessness, first language interference and translation. The three
types of causes of error will be discussed brieftly below.
1, Carelessness.
This element is affected by both sites: teachers and students.

Towards

teacher’s site, it maybe due to wrong pedagogic approach selected by teachers.
Many teachers admit that it is not always the student’s fault if he/she loses interest,
perhaps the materials and/ or style of presentation or approach do not suit him/her.
This makes students gradually lose interest and motivation in learrning writing and
making their writing skills not improved.
2, First language.

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According to Richards’ research, when the learners study a new language and
say another language ( mother tongue), this will be easy to make interference errors.
These errors are results of element from one language while speaking another.
3, Translation
Besides two elements refered above, one of the reasons which also causes
errors is translation. There is a fact that many students or english learners

sometimes have difficulties in translating such as finding the words which have
equivalent meanings with the remain language. Therefore, many people translate
first language sentence or idiomatic expression into the target language word by
word. This is also common cause of error.
Besides Chou’s resarch of the source of errors. There are also many other
theorists having made the research on this topic. Richards ( 1974), for instance,
states that two major sources of errors are interlingual errors and intralingual errors.
Interlingual errors are those which are related to the native language”. That is to say
there are interlingual errors when the learner’s native language habits interfere or
prevent, to some degree, from acquiring the patterns and rules of second language (
Hourrani, 2008, p11). He asserts that interference ( negative transfer ) is the
negative influence of the mother tongue language ( MTL) on the performance of the
target language learner.
According to Richard ( as cited in Hourani, 2008), intralingual errors are those
organizing within the structure of English itself. In the process of second language
learning, the grammatical system of the students’ mother tongue may interfere the
process of second language. The deviation that reflects the grammatical system of
mother tongue is called inter lingua interference, while an interference which occur
between the role of a particular construction and the role of mother or other
construction within the language is called intralingua interferences, however, they
are resulted from the learning process.
To sum up, there are many research and opinions about the source of errors. In
general, according to Chou and Al Murshidi ( 2014) , the main source of making
errors in writing english are:
1. Different cultural backgrounds
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2. Different English levels but be supposed as a well – qualified
3. The first language interference

4. Unclear instruction of the task.
The current study contributes to the research in terms of offering valuable
insights into the most dificult aspects of writing faced by the staff of Sen Vang Real
Estate Joint Stock Company and how those challenges might relate to their writing
strategies.
2.2. Overview of grammar
2.2.1. Definitions of grammar
The definition of grammar is the study of the way words are used to make
sentences. The grammar is the part of the study of language which deals with the
forms and structure of words ( morphology), with their customary arrangement in
phrases and sentences ( syntax), and now often with language sounds ( phonology)
and word ( semantics)
Grammar is a body of rules imposed on a given language for speaking and
writing it, based on the study of its grammar ( sense) or on some adaption of
another, esp. Latin, grammar.
Thanks to gramamr structure in a writing task, the writer could control and
illustrate the meaning and its efficiency to advois ambiguity and misunderstanding
for readers.
2.2.2.Types of grammar
There are different varieties of grammar. Below is 5 types of common
grammar:
1. Prescriptive grammar: is a way to explain how someone should say
something, not explaining how someone says something.
2. Traditional grammar: a system of how sentence structures are used in
schools, based on the classical language grammar.
3. Structural grammar: a system for describing language sentence based on
the preparation of smaller structures into a larger structure.
4. Linguistic / grammatical competence: Grammar is the knowledge of a
person ( speaker) about the structure of a language that has regularity. The owner of
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a language knows how to use grammar without studying it
5. EFL grammar: The person who isn’t a native speaker. They need to learn to
know how to use grammar new words, and lexical rules to combine them into
sentence and text.
2.2.3. Roles of grammar
Grammar is the sound, structure, and meaning system of language. All
languages have grammar, and each language has its own grammar. In linguistics,
grammar is th set of structural rules which influences the composition of clauses,
phrases, and words in any given language. Grammar, regardless of the country or th
language, is the foundation for communication. Grammar rules can help learners
develope the habit of thinking logically and clearly. After studying grammar,
learners are able to become mor accurate when using a language. Without good
grammar, clear communication is impossible. Proper grammar keeps users from
being misunderstood while xxpressing their thoughts and ideas. A person with poor
grammar skill can form a negative impression on others. When a person has learned
grammar, it will be easier for that person to know how to organize and express the
ideas in their mind without difficulty. As a result, they will be able to speak, read
and write the language more fluently. Therefore, grammar has a very important role
in using any language. You cannot use any language skill without using gramamr
and vocabulary. Grammar is not an end in itself but it is a means to an end – to
improve learner’ profficiency in the four language skills. Grammar is the backbone
of language and without it, the produced text, whether it is spoken or written, will
be classified with many labels: broken, uneducated, incomprehensible or simply not
belonging to the English language.
A person can’t learn a forign language accurately only through a process of
unconscious assimilation. Grammar is a sure ground of rfernce when linguistics
habits fail us. Therefore, grammar is indispensible for learners to understand and
use it effectively.

2.3. Grammatical errors
2.3.1. Definition of grammatical errors.
Grammatical error is a term used in prescriptive grammar to describe an
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instance of faulty, unconventional, or controversial usage, such as a misplaced
modifier or an inappropriate verb tense. Also called a usage error. Compare
grammatical error with correctness.
According to Hornby (2000), grammatical is connected with the rules of
grammar or correctly following the rules of grammar. He also defined “ common”
as all or nearly all members of a group. Common grammatical errors mean that
errors that happen nearly all rules of grammar in a determined category or guidance.
2.3.2. Types of grammatical errors
2.3.3.1. Subject – verb agreement errors
The subject and verb of a sentence must agree with one another in number
whether they are singular or plural. If the subject of the sentence is singular or
plural, its verb must also be singular; and if the subject is plural, the verb must be
plural.
Incorrect: The two best things about him I like most is kindness and
generosity.
Correct : The two best things about him I like most are kindness and
generosity.
2.3.3.2. Word order
The order of words in an English sentence is very important. A change in word
order often results in a change of meaning. For example, adjective often stand
before noun. Therefore, if learners don’t know or forget this grammatical
knowledge, the sentence will not true about grammar.
For example:
Incorrect: That is a girl beautiful

Correct: That is a beautiful girl
2.2.3.3. Run-on sentence
A run-on sentence occurs when you connect two main clauses with no
punctuation.
Example:
Incorrect: Although he is very hard-working he still failed the past exam.
Correct: Although he is vpơery hard-working, he still failed the past exam
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2.3.3.4. Verb form
According to John Jay College( 2007), Notice in the sentences below how
changing the form of the word could change the word from a verb to an adjective or
adverb. Many English words need to change their form as using them as verbs,
nouns, adverbs and adjectives. There are three types of errors with word forms:
word form endings, missing word endings, confusion between-ed and -ing
adjectives endings.
Example:
Incorrect: They get used to use chopsticks when living in Vietnam
Correct: They get used to using chopsticks when living in Vietnam
2.3.3.5. Vague Pronoun Reference
A pronoun can replace a noun, and its antecedent should b the person, place,
or thing to which the pronoun refers. A vague pronoun reference ( including words
such as it, that, this, and which) can leave the reader confused about what or to
whom the pronoun refers.
Incorrect: Don’t felt a lot of anger and biterness as a result of Marie’s decision.
This is what ended everything. ( what ended everything? Don’t anger and biteness
or Marie’s decision?)
Correct: Don’t felt a lot of anger and biterness as a result of Marie’s decision.
Her choice ended everything.

2.3.3.6. Article
Yuan Yang Huaqing, He demostrated that there are three types misuse of
define article, which are omission of ‘the’, redundancy of ‘the’, confusion ‘the’
with’a/an’.
Omission of “the” occupies more than half percentage in the total errors of
definite article, and it appears in the following situations:
- Omission of the before adjective of comparative forms, superlative forms
and ordinal number
- Omission of the before fixed collations, and specific terms
- Omission of the in the case of anaphoric reference and fixed reference in the
context.
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In term of redundancy of “the”, it occupies a major percentage of the misuse
of definite article, thus it is more complicate and confusing. The writer classified the
following categories:
- Redundancy of “the” in the set expressions
- Redundancy of “the” before abstract nouns, and the nouns with modifiers.
- Redundancy of “the” before ordinal numerals
- Redundancy of “the” before three meals of a day, and ball games.
- Redundancy of “the” before a country, geographical names, position, and
official - title.
- Redundancy of “the”, when two nouns or more are used simultaneously
- Redundancy of “the” before seasons, months, festivals, dates, and days
For Confusion of “the”, there are two categories in this error such as: Misuse
definite article for indefinite article and misuse indefinite for definite article.
2.3.3.7. Preposition
There are several prepositions in English. Hooper(1980) in his book” A Quicl
English Reference” provided several prepositions including:

1) Preposition of time – (a) one point in time (at), (b) period of time (on, in),
and (c) extended time/duration (since, for, by);
2) Preposition of place – (a) the point itself (in, inside, on, at), (b) toward
the point (to, into), (c) neighboring the point (by, beside, next, between, near), and
(d) away from the point (away, off, across, out of) and some others.
According to Nonkukhetkong ( 2013), he stated that about 47.41% of
grammatical errors in the use of verbs, nouns, prepositions, adjectives, possesive
case and articles made by learners. Besides, Hamzah (2012) showed that errors on
the prepositional usage are 12.31%. The result of the study illustrates that
preposition is one of grammatical aspects that are often used by students
incorrectly.
Incorrect: We are going in Vietnam
Correct: We are going to Vietnam
2.3.3.8. Sentence Fragments
Sentence fragments are incomplete sentences that don’t have one independent
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clause. A fragment may lack a subject, a complete verb, or both. Sometimes
fragments depend on the proceeding sentence to give it meaning.
Example:
Incorrect: He stayed at home to do the homework today. In spite of hanging
out with his friends.
Correct: In spite of hanging out with his friends, he stayed at do the
homework
2.3.3.9 Errors in the use Conjunction
After an introductory word, phrase, or clause, a common should be used. This
gives the readers a slight pause after an introductory element and often can help
avoid confusion.
Example:

Incorrect: Lan, Mai, Ngoc go to market to buy some books
Correct: Lan, Mai and Ngoc go to market to buy some books
2.3.3.7. Vague pronoun reference
A pronoun can replace a noun, and its antecedent should b the person, place,
or thing to which the pronoun refers. A vague pronoun reference ( including words
such as it, that, this, and which) can leave the reader confused about what or to
whom the pronoun refers.
Incorrect: Everybody must bring their own lunch,
Correct: Everyone must bring his or her own lunch.
2.2.3.8. Wrong Word Usage
There are a variety of words and phrases that are commonly confused and
misused in sentences. Using them incorrectly can change th meaning of the
sentence. There are hundreds of these commonly confused words, so when in doubt,
always check the definition and correct spelling of the word.
Incorrect: Coming this place was a big error. We only wasted our time.
Correct: Coming this place was a big mistake. We only wasted our time.
2..2.3.9. Errors in Pluralization
Incorrect: Lan has two coffees
Correct: Lan has two cups of coffee
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2.3. Solutions of grammatical errors.
To advoid the grammatical errors, the learners and users should apply various
techniques:
Firstly, learners should spend a plenty of time practising and revising the
grammatical system by doing exercising frequently. This is the effective way for
learners to improve the grammar knowledge through doing excercise. This way
helps learners revise knowledge and gramamtical structures. From that, learners can
improve grammatical structures and master them as well through pratising

frequently.
Moreover, during practising the writing skills, the learners should prioritize
the simple sentence which just has one clause, limit complex sentences with many
clauses. This will make new learners easy to confuse and make errors. Making
effort to transfer the complex sentences or ideas into simply sentences and apply
simply grammatical structure when writing.
Towards staff in the company, they often write emails to partners and
customers, therefore the accuracy and professionism is very neccessary. The writer
need to have a solid grammartical foundation to be able to write efectively and
advoid basic errors. Furthermore, towards staffs who writes on computer frequently,
they should know tools on computer whch helps useful tool for users. Students,
satff and leraners can use this tool to limit the common mistakes when writing on
the computer.
Thirdly, reading is also the way which can help learners and users improve
writing skills. Reading helps learners get good ideas and see how to use words
appropriately.
To sum up, grammatical background plays an important part which affects
directly the writing quality. Students and people who use English as office workers
need to improve their basic grammar skills, improve their literacy skills, form habits
of regularly reading

english documents everyday such as: reading magazines,

newspaper, english articles about any fields you are interested in.

Let’s read

carefully and deeply, undrline interesting and spcecial structures, take examples
with these structures and apply it into your writing correctly and effectively.
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2.4. Discussion
Writing has become one of the popular topics in research. There are variety
definition of writing, classification of writing and grammatical errors. In order to
high efficiency, the research decides on limitation the study on figuring out the
common grammartical errors when writing made by the staffs of Sen Vang Real
Estate Joint- Stock Company. The research also focuses on conducting 8
grammatical errors in the study.

CHAPTEER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS
In this chapter, the author describes the analysis of data followed by research
findings. The findings related to the research questions that guided. The study were
analyzed to identify, describe, and explore the reasons often making grammaticle
errors of Sen Vang. The results analyzed and completed by over 15 staffs of foreign
support Department of Sen Vang Real Estate Joint-Stock Company.
3.1. General Introduction of Sen Vang Real Estate Company
Sen Vang Real Estate Services Joint Stock Company, formerly known as Ha
Noi Moi Company, was established in 2009 with the function of distributing real
estate projects in Hanoi. On August 7th, 2014, Ha Noi Moi Company changed its
name to Sen Vang Real Estate Service Joint Stock Company specializing in
distributing real estate products in Hanoi and Saigon. Distributed over 30 real estate
projects in Hanoi and Saigon. In Saigon, Sen Vang was the first unit opening to
officially sell Vinhomes Centre Park ( 2015), Diamond Island (2016).
Overcoming the most difficult period of the market, The Board of Directors
had the orientation to develop the company in the new period. In some recent years,
Sen Vang Real Estate Joint Stock Company has been focusing on developing and
distributing the high-end real estate projects at Tay Ho market. With the criteria “
Enthusiastic Devoted – Successful “, Sen Vang Real Estate Joint Stock Company
constantly brings customers high-end and high - qualified real estate products.


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Sen Vang Real Estate Joint Stock Company has been continuously upgrading
and perfecting itself in terms of material, technical and human resources since the
establishment, adhering to the principle of honesty in consulting, understanding
customers’ needs, providing products and the best service to meet the requirements
of customers and partners.
3.2. Settings
The data collection consists of 3 main instruments: Questionaire of survey,
question lists of interview and emails.
Questionaires were delivered at 16 o’clock in the Wednesday afternoon
(16/04/2020) via Google mail, and social media. Then, interview was implemented
for 4 staff in the Department of supporting foreigners in buying and selling
properties in Vietnam. Lastly, emails were collected from this department after onemonth internship.
3.3. Participants
The aims of this study is to figuring out the common grammatically errors
made by staff of Sen Vang real estate joint-stock company. Under the help of 15
staffs who works in the department of supporting foreign customers and partners of
Sen Vang company, I obtained the most realistic figure and data for this study. This
study was conducted with staff at the different ages, english levels and experience
but factors such as sex and religion could not be controlled in this study.
3.4. Data collection
A questionaire table of 6 questions was given to all staff of foreign support
department of Sen Vang Company. All answers were collected the most objectively.
The aim of questions are discribed as below:
Question 1 is to take time that staff have been using English
Question 2 is to know the styles of email that staff have been working in Sen
Vang

Question 3 is to dig out the possible troubles that staff have as writing mail
Question 4 is to find out the kinds of email in which staff have as a writing
email
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Question 5 is to find out the particular grammatical errors made by staff
Question 6 is to get the possible solutions to deal with these errors.
These were basic but very important questions which helped the researcher
find out the reasons and propose solutions. Moreover, during the internship at the
company, the author collected over 40 emails written by staff of foreign support
deparment of Sen Vang Real Estate Joint- Stock Company. With this number of
emails, the author analyzed and synthesized grammatical errors. From that, the
author offered possible solutions to deal with these errors.
3.5 Data analysis
3.5.1. Results from the survey questionaire
The chart 3.1 illustrates the difficulties of the staff of Sen Vang in writing
emails. As the diagram shows, there are four main factors making difficulties to
staff in writing. It is clear that the highest factor is th field of English levels (37%)
Sen Vang is company which specialises in consulting and selling high -value
properties in Tay Ho area. In the past, Sen Vang just focused on selling properties
to Vietnamese customers. However, as you know, Tay Ho district is one of the ideal
destination of forigners when arriving and having intention of living in Hanoi.
Seeing this great potential, Sen Vang has opened another department to supporting
foreign customers and partners buying and selling properties in Tay Ho area.
Therefore, almost staff in this new department are at the different ages, there are
many staff who have just graduated, therefore english levels is also different. There
are some staff who are very good at communicating. Their speaking is very good.
However, their grammar is not too good in writing and meet a lot of difficulties.
Toward many young staffs such as students for part-time job..., there are some staff

who have good grammar knowledge however the wrting skills is not really good...
And this is also one of the reason which makes this english levels become the
highest proportion factor of diffulties that staff in Sen Vang get as writing email.
The next factor which ranks the second in this diagram is “ First language
interference (28%)”. The first language has a great impact on the writing process.
There is the fact that the second language learners will be interfered with their first
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languge a little. For example, when we translating from english into Vietnamse and
in turn, we often try to find the words which has equivalent meaning to the meaning
of other language. This way is consisdered as translating word by word. This affects
to quality of writing a lot.
Accounting for 24% of the overall common difficulties of staff in Sen Vang
Company, “ different cultural backgrounds’ ranked the third compared to the others.
And fianally, unclear instructions of tasks account for 11%. This is also a big
reason for staff to make grammatical errors in writing emails. Therefore, not only
staff but managers also should have solutions to improve this problem.
Beside the above reasons, let’s consider the types of emails that the staff of
Sen Vang often have grammatical errors:
As refered above, there are three types of email which the staff of Sen Vang
often use: formal, informal and mix. Formal emails are written more than informal
and mix emails. The formal emails requires the professionalism so it is also a reason
of staff’s grammatical errors in English writing. Below is the chart of the quantity
of staff in Sen Vang reak estate joint-stock company. Below is the chart of the
quantity of staff in Sen Vang make these grammatical errors.
Chart 3.2. The staff’s frequency of writing the three styles of emails
After collecting and synthesizing more than 50 types of emails written by the
staff ogg Sen Vang company, the results are shown in the chart.
Formal email is the type of email which staff of Sen Vang often cause the most

errors.
Formal email requires professionalism cause this type of email is often written
to customers, partners or leaders.Therefore, the accuracy and professionalism are
very essential in this type of email. In Sen Vang, the department for supporting
foreign customers is definitely new. Therefore, almost staff in this department are
new, even students for part-time or interns. Towards the students or interns, they
haven’t been exposed much to the workplace environment. They have learned
correspondence, but do not have the pratical environment to practise much. That’s

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why when entering the working environment and practising writing emails, they
often encounter many difficulties in writing and cause many errors.

Chart 2.3 The quantity of staff in Sen Vang make these grammatical errors
The chart 2.3 shows that the quantity of staff in Sen Vang make grammtical
errors in the process of writing. With more than 50 emails collected from all staffs
in this department, the researcher aggregated data and the results as the above table
shows that the errors in the use of article ranked the first (account for 20%). Almost
the staff get difficulty in defining and using the article “ a, an, the”. “ the” is one of
the articles which is easy to misuse. They often use “the” in front of noun without
determining whether it is necassary to use or that noun was defined or not?
Errors in the use conjuction ranked the second with 25%. In english, there are
many conjuctions, each has the different ways to use. For example: “However”
1. Begin a contrasting statement with”however,”. To introduce a sentence that
contradicts or contrasts with the previous sentence, start it with” However,...”.
Always put a comma after the “however,”and follow it with a complete sentence.
“ I was very excited to be invited to lunch. However, I had already made
plans”

2. Join two contrasting sentences using”;however,” when there are two full
sentences that are in position or contrast to one another, but are clossely connected,
join them with a semicolon, the word “however,” and a comma
“I would love to join you for lunch; however, I am too busy”
In general, there are variety of conjuctions in English and each has differnt
ways of using. Users will be easy to make mistakes at the comma which go with
conjuction in each situation. Therefore, if users don’t have good grammatical
knowledge, they can cause errors. This is also one of the reasons why many staff of
Sen Vang make these errors in their emails.
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