In-depth analysis of difficulties in communication in english : a case study

Abstract

At Universiti Teknologi MARA, English is the main medium of instruction not only in its English courses but also in all courses offered by all faculties. This case study focuses on the difficulties that six third semester students of the Health Science Faculty of the Universiti Teknologi MARA, who have undergone three English courses, encounter in speaking in English as second language. Since making errors is considered imminent in language learning, this case study investigates the errors that are commonly produced by students in their spoken English, based on the surface structure taxonomy (Dulay, Burt & Krashen, 1982). Besides, this study also explores the difficulties that they encounter in their spoken English, and further examines the communication strategies that they employ to overcome these difficulties, based on the categories proposed by Tarone (1980), Domyei & Thurrell (1994) and Johnstone (1989). The language data were obtained from the oral interactions and interviews. The findings showed that the six common granunar errors made by the learners are in the areas of prepositions, questions, articles, plural form of nouns, subject-verb agreement and tenses. It was also found that the students use communication strategies such as paraphrase, transfer, appeal for assistance, mime, avoidance, fillers and code-switching to overcome their interaction difficulties.