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Description
In the EFL context, developing English argumentative writing skills remains a significantly challenge among high school students in Vietnam. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the types of lexical transfer errors among Vietnamese EFL high school students. Therefore, this qualitative research was conducted by a group of English Teacher Education students. The objectives of the study are exploring Vietnamese high school EFL learners' common patterns of lexical errors and their perceived causes of lexical transfer in English argumentative writing as well as suggesting implications for more effective lexical choices. The research utilized selective sampling to choose 13 high school students from an English center with similar English proficiency. Using Lado’s (1957) Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis (CAH) and Corder’s (1967) Error Analysis Hypothesis (EAH), the research team performed text analysis and thematic analysis. The researchers used text analysis, which was conducted after the team had used Lado’s (1957) CAH to predict lexical errors, to identify students’ lexical transfer errors in their essays based on James’ (1998) framework. Thematic analysis was applied to participants’ interviews to explore their perceived causes of lexical transfer errors. Consistent with the CAH prediction, the research found that students make the most semantic errors in their essays, while distortion is the least common error. Four major themes emerged from the thematic analysis: linguistic related causes, cognitive related causes, language control related causes and L1’s cultural factors. These findings may inform instructional practices aimed at improving lexical accuracy and argumentative writing among Vietnamese EFL learners.
Keywords: lexical transfer, lexical errors, argumentative writing, EFL learners, Vietnamese high school students