Abstract:
As a follow-up of a previous study that investigated the inflectional errors made by the
students in the Faculty of Arts & Culture (FAC) of the South Eastern University of Sri
Lanka (Navaz and Sama, 2016), this paper examines further as to how the students use
irregular inflectional morphemes in writing, especially plural nouns and verbs. Writing
has been a difficult skill and many errors are noted in the irregular forms. In the previous
study students made a large number of errors in forming past tenses and plurals which
have been noted as two of the frequent used grammar items in student writing.
Hundred (100) third year students from the Faculties of Arts & Culture and Islamic &
Arabic Studies participated in the study. This study was conducted in two stages with an
intervention in-between. Regular and irregular nouns and verbs were used to test
students’ knowledge on making plural and past tense forms at the pre-intervention
stage. Irregular nouns and verbs were used at the post-intervention stage. Students
made less errors in regular forms of plural nouns and past tense, while many errors
occurred in irregular forms of nouns and verbs. Most of the errors belong to misformation type. Through an intervention it was identified that even though students could
improve their knowledge of making plurals, their knowledge in forming irregular forms of
past tense did not improve. A study of this nature, it is envisaged, will shed light for
future research and help make changes in the instructional methodology, especially in
teaching writing skills.
