ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDENTS`GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN SYNCHRONOUS ONLINE LEARNING PRESENTATION AND DISCUSSION: Do Postgraduate Students Speak Grammatically?

Abstract

In speaking, language learners were expected to have two very important communicative competencies: fluency and accuracy, particularly in educational contexts, including academic presentation and discussion. The present study examined English grammatical errors in English as a Foreign Language students in synchronous online learning presentations and discussions. The participants in this study were second-year students in the postgraduate program at the English study program of Bengkulu University. The data were obtained during their presentation and discussion about the predetermined material via the Zoom platform. The Zoom meetings were recorded and transcribed to identify grammatical errors. The surface structure taxonomy was adopted to examine utterance errors, categorized into four types: misformation, misordering, addition, and omission. The Linguistics classification approach was also utilized to display in-depth data about the grammatical errors. According to the findings, omission was the most common type of grammatical error indicated, followed by addition, misformation, and misordering. Interestingly, in linguistics categorizations, the errors were identified in word form and verb form as the most common errors students commit in their online presentations and discussions, followed by subject-verb agreement and plural forms. The study suggested that students' grammatical errors were likely due to carelessness, as they were expected to be familiar with these grammar concepts. Conversely, no grammatical mistakes were detected in the use of prepositions, articles, tenses, and questions during the presentation and discussion by postgraduate students. This indicates that the graduate students did not have problems with these aspects of English grammar.