The Effect of Electronic Teaching on Students' Learning and Using of Auxiliaries

تأثير التعليم الإلكتروني على تعلم واستخدام الطلبة للأفعال المساعدة

فرح وائل سليمان          

المديرية العامة لتربية نينوى، ثانوية زها حديد للمتفوقات، الموصل، العراق

 الخلاصة

         تعلم الأفعال المساعدة لمادة اللغة الإنجليزية يعتبر غامض لدى بعض متعلمي اللغة الثانية أو الأجنبية. في الواقع، يواجه معظمهم صعوبات في التمييز بين الأفعال المساعدة والأفعال الرئيسية؛ وخاصةً عند استخدام الفعل المساعد كفعل رئيسي في الجملة. تفترض الدراسة الحالية أن متعلمي اللغة الثانية سيواجهون صعوبات في تفسير الأفعال بسبب التدريس الإلكتروني ونقص المشاركة المباشرة في عملية التدريس. في ضوء ذلك، تم اختيار مجموعتين كعينة: المجموعة التجريبية والأخرى الضابطة. تتكون المجموعة من 50 طالبًا، وتضم كل مجموعة 25 طالبًا في المستوى المتوسط. يتمتع المشاركون في المجموعة التجريبية بخلفيات تعليمية مختلفة. أحد أهداف البحث هو تسليط الضوء على حقيقة التعلم المتعلقة بالأفعال المساعدة وإتقان الطلاب للأفعال المساعدة

الكلمات المفتاحية: الافعال المساعدة، اللغة الثانية، اللغة الأجنبية، التدريس الإلكتروني

1. Introduction

    The speed of knowledge is more than any ever time before, students’ need for learning has increased, and the individualized learning needs make the negative side of the traditional education model clear. In order to face the growing needs of students’ learning, many educational facilities and training institutions have begun to use Internet and the electronic means to support traditional teaching content and take advantages of the transferable, and maintainable features of these electronic means or software to speed up teaching and to improve the quality of learning and teaching. Such as classroom PPT and the online   videos of, but these teaching methods nevertheless have some drawbacks, like insufficient teaching interact and teaching methods insufficiency of flexibility, insufficient systems, and many other problems.

This is why   the industry of education   needs a more flexible comprehensive teaching model to meet the needs of students. The multimedia technology and the Internet is used excessively in English   teaching systems. The English teaching   of our school is given online through a variety of online   methods like text, pictures, charts, audio, and videos. Teachers and students can use these programs and means equally. The online teaching   to create different teaching plans for the different students in the same class.

The online teaching exploits    the facilitations of networked learning and breaks through original traditions in classroom teaching, the geographical obstacles, and knowledge requirements. Also, the electronic platform permits students and teachers to download curriculums and resources of curriculum management and many online tests’ task the English educational teaching systems, permitting students to learn and acquire knowledge online. Checking the misconceptions of one’s own knowledge   and understanding in a targeted way can   improve the efficiency of English language teaching and learning. The global education industry continues to develop with the development of the Internet. The blended learning and the blended methods can help to develop teaching. Modern online teaching methods can enrich teaching and learning.

1.1. The Problem and Its Significance

The problem can be mentioned in the following lines. Most students have difficulty interpreting and identifying the type of verb they're supposed to use. Also, students struggle with the overlap among the different types of verbs. They tend to use the verbs in an Arabic use. There is a theory, according to the Shallow Structure Hypothesis, that L2 learners are unable to achieve full production when parsing. (Clahsen and Felser 2006) (1). There has been a theory that L2 learners may have problems acquiring syntactic and grammatical knowledge in discourse, according to the Interface Hypothesis. (Sorace and Filiaci 2006; (1) Belletti et al. 2007). There have been proposals that morphological obstacles experienced by L2 learners reflect problems in accessing forms present in interlanguage lexical morphology under pronunciation pressure when speaking, according to the Missing Surface Inflection Hypothesis. (Haznedar and Schwartz 1997; Lardiere, 2000; see also Prévost and White 2000) (2-4).

In the study, two terms are represented as measurements of auxiliaries’ interpretation namely, recognition and production. Following that, the problem of the study can be summarized in the following questions:

1. Are male and female intermediate Iraqi students able to recognize auxiliary verbs in?
2. Are male and female intermediate Iraqi students able to produce auxiliary verbs?
3. Are there any differences between males and females in the recognition and production of auxiliary verbs?.

1.2. Aims of the Study

The research aims at investigating the Iraqi learners’ ability in respect of using the appropriate auxiliary verbs at the recognition and production levels. It also aims to find the problematic auxiliary verbs for Iraqi students at intermediate levels.

1.3. Hypotheses

1. It is hypothesized that some students have difficulties in learning on the internet. Therefore, the current study hypothesizes that:
2. Male and female intermediate Iraqi students are thought to have difficulties in recognizing auxiliary verbs.
3. Male and female intermediate Iraqi students find difficulties and obstacles in producing auxiliary verbs.
4. There are differences between females and males in the production and recognition of   auxiliary verbs.

1.4 Limits of the Study

The current study is limited to EFL intermediate third stage students’ mastery of auxiliary verbs, namely (to be, to have and to do) in Mosul. It is also limited to a sample of 25 males and 25 females in two randomly chosen schools in Mosul.

1.5 Procedures

The procedures conducted can be summarized in the following lines:

1-       A theoretical framework of auxiliary verbs is dealt with.

2-       Constructing two tests to investigate learners’ ability of recognition and production of auxiliary verbs.

3-       Analysis of the collected data

1.6 Auxiliary Verbs

An auxiliary verb (or an operator) is used with a lexical verb to assist in expressing the lexical verb's mood, tense, or voice. The most used auxiliary verbs are to have, to be or to do. They are used in the following shapes: To Be: is, am, are, was, were, been, being and will be.

Those  Verbs, be, do, have, and will, are considered auxiliaries when they are followed by another main verb  in order to form a negative sentence or a question . (Quirk et al.,1985 5)

The verb "be"    

The verb be is used as  both an auxiliary and a main verb. An  auxiliary in compound tenses or with the passive . Not to forget that be is an irregular verb:

Be with Simple Present:

I am sick

He /she/it is nice

I /we/you/they are here

Be with Simple Past:

I/he/she/it was sick

We/you/they were sad

Be with Past Participle: They have been studying

Using Be as a main verb

The verb be can be a main verb. In this situation, it is not to be followed by another main verb. If we use be as a main verb, we do not use an auxiliary in negative forms or questions. (Quirk et al. 1985 and Payne, 2011) (5,6).

Positive form:   They are sixteen years old.

negative form:   They are not sixteen years old.

Interrogative:   Are they sixteen years old?

The verb " to have"

Like the verb “be,” the verb “have” can be used both as a main verb and as an auxiliary verb. When used as an auxiliary, this verb forms the perfect tenses in the active and passive voices.

Compound (perfect)  Tenses - Active Voice

Simple Present Perfect:

She has played chess.

Simple Past Perfect:

She had played chess.

Progressive Present Perfect:

She has been playing chess.

Progressive Past  Perfect:

She had been playing chess.

"Have" as a main verb

As a main verb have gives the meaning of possession.  We can also use have got (have as the auxiliary, got the main verb). , Quirk et al. (1985) (5)

I have a house.

As an auxiliary verb:

We have got a house.

"have" in negation interrogation

When using have as a main verb, we use the auxiliary verb do in negation and interrogation. But when using have got, we can use have as an auxiliary. Examples  

We do not have a blue house.

Do you have a blue house?

We have not got a blue house.

Have you got a blue house?

The modal verb (will)

This modal can only be used as an auxiliary. It is used to show future time.

They   will not play  volleyball nextweek.

they will have  played volleyball.

The abbreviated  form of the  negative form of  (will not ) is (won't).

they will not = they won't

The verb (do)

This verb can be an auxiliary or a full verb. An  auxiliary in negation and interrogation for most verbs (except for will, have got, be, and modals) in the Simple Present tense and the Simple Past tense.

The auxiliary "do" in negation; Quirk et al. (1985) (5)

Present Simple tense: It does not jump that high.

Past Simple tense: They did not play well.

"Do" in interrogation

Present Simple: Does she cook well?

Simple Past: Did she cook well last Friday?

DO as a main verb

As a main verb do is used in a certain way. ‘Do’ in this situation, the main verb, needs another do to be the auxiliary in the sentence to form negation or interrogation.  

They do their job nicely every time.

negation:. They don’t do  their job nicely everytime.

question: Do they do their job nicely everytime?

The auxiliary verbs, in short, are of two sorts:

1. Modal auxiliaries

2.. Primary auxiliaries

And we do not need ‘do’ with sentences containing modal verbs or auxiliary verbs

2. Methodology

In this part of the study. Two tests were conducted: a multiple-choice test and a placement test (to place auxiliaries in brackets in their correct positions). The former was used to measure students' recognition of auxiliaries, while the second is used to measure their ability to use them.

2.1 Features of the Test

The main features of a test are reliability, validity, and practicality (Al-Juboury, 2000: 21-22). (7)

A valid test: It indicates how well a mean, test, measure, or technique is easily used (Al-Juboury, 2000: 21-22; 7 Broughton et al. 2003: 160 8; Corbett, 2003: 192) (9). It is measured by assessing how well the results are used to develop theories and how they align with other measures of those concepts. A valid test is generally reliable: if a test yields accurate results, those results are usually reproducible. There are four main kinds of validity:

Construction validity: to what degree did the test measure the concepts that it is intended to measure?

Content or core validity: Is the test able to represent what the aims meant to measure?

Face, content, and construct validity: the test's appearance should be suitable for its aims.

Criterion validity:  the correspondence of the results to different tests of the same subject.

2.2 Sample Selection

  Samples for the study were randomly selected from students at third-stage intermediate schools. Two schools were chosen for the tests. The sample from the first school contains 50 students, 25 males and 25 females, while the sample from the second school contains 50 students, 25 males and 25 females. Third-year students are supposed to be acquainted with auxiliaries.

2.3 Administration of the Tests

There were two types of tests in the present study. The students who took the tests accounted for nearly 80% of the total number of students in the two schools. Nearly all the students who took the test have Arabic as their first language. The first test was conducted at their schools, while the second was conducted by using Google Forms. It should be mentioned that the students were informed that the test results would be analyzed for research purposes. This was done to motivate them to answer freely and effectively.

          Data were collected from pre-test and post-test and were analyzed and variation was built on the basis of it.

2.4 Data Analysis

The data collected were obtained from a pre-test and a post-test, then tabulated, analyzed, and interpreted in light of the objectives stated at the beginning of the study. The statistical analysis with the interpretation. Were built on:

1. For pre-test = pre-test x 100 / Total respondents

2. For post-test = post-test x 100 /Total respondents

2.5 Time of the Tests

The two tests were administered in April, 2022. Each test took about an hour. This period was considered sufficient since all the students submitted their papers within the time limits.  The time span between the two tests was about two weeks.

2.6 Variables of the Tests

There were two:

2.6.1 Gender

Gender has been the most variable that linguists focused on. One of the earliest theories concerning gender is that of Lakoff (1975:53-56) (11) in which he concentrated on the language of females with that of males.

2.6.2 Schools

Schools represent the variable of the educational background, which is regarded as an important factor that affects the students' command of auxiliary verbs.

3. Results and Discussion

The collected data have been analyzed and statistically manipulated by using statistical programs. Accordingly, the results are shown in the following:

The total percentage of the males’ mastery, in the pretest, of the auxiliary verbs is 39% while females’ is 37.7 % of the first school.  The percentages of the posttest 70.125 % for the males and 72.1 % for the females.

This indicates that male and female Iraqi intermediate students have difficulties in recognizing English auxiliary verbs since the total percentage is lower than 50 %. Based on these results, the first hypothesis which reads: “Male and female intermediate Iraqi students are expected to find difficulties in recognizing auxiliary verbs” is accepted.

It also reveals that there is a great improvement when using the electronic teaching since the percentage is higher than 50 % in the post test.

In summary, the results of the two tests have shown that male and female students of both schools have had difficulties in recognizing and producing English auxiliary verbs and the use of electronic means helped them to improve their level of using auxiliary verbs.

4. Conclusions

This study has come up with the conclusions that are based on the analysis of the collected data of the two tests.

1.       Many students suffer from difficulties in controlling auxiliary verbs either because of their lack of knowledge or because of  the interference of their first language as well as the misconception of the type of the verb whether it is  a main one or not

2.       Different educational backgrounds affect their misuse of auxiliary verbs.

3.       The types of verbs are regarded as a complicated issue for them.

4.       There is insufficient awareness about auxiliary verbs.

The lack of communication with the teacher in an electronic test and the lack of the students’ knowledge about using the internet for their benefit

References

1.Clahsen  and Felser. Grammatical processing in language  

  learners.  Psycholinguist. 2006

2.Sorace, and Filiaci.  Anaphora resolution in near-native

 speakers of Italian. 2006;22

, issue 3, pages 339-368. 

3.Haznedar and Schwartz (1997). Are there Optional Infinitives  

  in child L2 acquisition?” Boston University, Somerville, MA:

  Cascadilla Press),

4.Lardiere (2000). “Mapping features to forms in second

  language acquisition,” in Second Language Acquisition and

 Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

5.Prévost and White (2000). Missing surface inflection or impairment in second language? Evidence from Tense and Agreement. 

6.Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik (1985). A

  Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London:

  Longman.

7.Payne (2011). Understanding English grammar: A linguistic  

  introduction. Cambridge University Press.

8.Al-Juboury, Najat (2002). A language teacher's guide to

   Assessment Mosul: Mosul University Press.

9.Broughton, Geoffrey. Roger Flavell, Christopher Brum fit,  

  Anita Pincas and Peter Hill (2003), Teaching English as a

  Foreign Language Taylor & Francis e- library. The University

  of London, Institute of Education.

10.Corbett (2003). An Intercultural Approach to English

  Language Teaching.  Florida: John Corbett publishing.

11.Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and Woman's place. New York.

   NY: Harper and Row.