VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES  NGUYỄN VĂN CƯƠNG A STUDY ON STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC PATTERNS OF WH-QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ MƠ HÌNH CẤU TRÚC VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA CÂU HỎI CÓ TỪ HỎI TRONG TIẾNG ANH M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 HANOI, 2011 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POSTGRADUATE STUDIES  NGUYỄN VĂN CƯƠNG A STUDY ON STRUCTURAL AND SEMANTIC PATTERNS OF WH-QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ MƠ HÌNH CẤU TRÚC VÀ NGỮ NGHĨA CỦA CÂU HỎI CÓ TỪ HỎI TRONG TIẾNG ANH M.A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr VÕ ĐẠI QUANG HANOI, 2011 iii ABSTRACT The thesis entitled “A Study on structural and semantic patterns of Whquestions in English” is to analyze and illustrate the types of wh-questions and their semantic features This one is also to investigate the students' categories of mistakes when using wh-questions, find out the causes, suggest some possible solutions to these matters, and propose several pedagogical implications for the teachers at the research site This study is divided into three major sections The first one sets out the rationale of the study as well as the aims, the methodology and the design of the study The second section contains three chapters Chapter offers the most relevant factors involving a wh-question such as notions of wh-questions, wh-rhetorical questions, operators, wh-words and their semantic features relating information structure, presupposition and theme and rheme Chapter is to describe the types of wh-questions based on structures and discourse and the types of presuppositions in wh-questions Chapter is the study about the mistakes that the students in Kinh Mon high school often make in using a wh-question The data were collected among 100 eleven grade students in Kinh Mon high school by means of questionnaires The findings highlighted students’ categories of mistakes including wrong use of whwords, wrong use of operators, non-inversion failure and some other subtypes Through the findings, the author also assumes some causes of the mistakes and suggests some possible solutions in order to help students avoid committing these types of mistakes iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Retention i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Table of contents iv List of tables vii Part 1: Introduction 1 Rationale Aims of the study Objectives of the study .2 Scope of the study .2 Methods of the study Design of the study Part 2: Development Chapter : Literature review 1.1 English questions 1.1.1 Definition of question .4 1.1.2 Definition of Wh-questions in English .5 1.1.2.1 Wh-information question 1.1.2.2 Wh-rhetorical questions 1.2 English operators 1.3 Question words 1.3.1 Wh-word functions 1.3.1.1 Wh-words as interrogative pronouns .7 1.3.1.2 Wh-words as determiners 10 1.3.1.3 Wh-words as adverbs .10 1.4 Given - New Information Structure .12 1.4.1 Given information 12 1.4.2 New information .12 1.4.3 Information structure 12 1.5 Theme -Rheme Structure 13 v 1.5 Theme- Rheme Structure in wh-questions 14 1.6 Presupposition 15 Chapter : The structural and semantic patterns of English wh-questions 16 2.1 STRUCTURAL PATTERNS OF ENGLISH WH-QUESTIONS 16 2.1.1 Wh-words as subjects of the wh-questions 16 2.1.2 Non-subject wh-questions .18 2.1.3 Verb-oriented questions 19 2.1.4 Wh-questions with prepositions 20 2.1.5 Emphatic wh-questions .21 2.1.6 Negative structures in Wh- questions 21 2.1.7 Response questions .21 2.1.7.1 Short response questions .21 2.1.7.2 Wh-echo questions 22 2.1.8 Multiple wh-element Questions 23 2.1.9 Wh-rhetorical questions .24 2.1.10 Formulaic wh-questions .26 2.2 SEMANTIC PATTERNS OF ENGLISH WH-QUESTIONS 28 Chapter 3: Errors made by eleventh grade students in using wh-questions 31 3.1 Introduction 31 3.2.Setting .31 3.2.1 Setting of the study 31 3.2.2 Participants 31 3.3 Research instrument - Questionnaire 32 3.2.1 Objectives of the survey questionaire .32 3.2.2 The Survey questionnaire 32 3.4 Procedures 33 3.5 Findings 33 3.5.1 Wrong use of wh-word 35 3.5.2 Wrong use of operator 37 vi 3.5.3 Non-inversion failure 39 3.5.4 Other types 40 3.6 The causes of Vietnamese students’ mistakes 41 3.7 Solutions to the problems 42 3.8 Summary of findings 43 PART 3: CONCLUSION 44 Conclusions 44 Implications of the study for teaching English wh-questions 45 Limitations of the study 45 Suggestions for further research 46 REFERENCES .47 APPENDIX I vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1: The number and percentage of each category of mistake Table 2: Number and percentage of mistakes concerning the use of wh-word Table 3: Number and percentage of misused operators Table 4: Number and percentage of inversion mistakes Table 5: Number and percentage of other types of mistakes Part 1: Introduction Rationale It is undeniable that English has been an essential means of communication and more and more Vietnamese students are aware of the importance of English to their study and their future The ability to communicate clearly and efficiently in English contributes to the success of the learners at school and later in every phase of life However, the sad fact is that students‟ English proficiency especially their ability to communicate in English orally does not really meet employers‟ demand At Kinh Mon High School, English is a compulsory subject in the curriculum and it is considered as a major subject for the high school examination It is taught with the purpose that students have some basic knowledge of English in order to communicate and to use it as a key to science and technology However, there still exist many difficulties facing the students They often keep quiet during speaking lessons; they mind speaking English There are many students who have good knowledge of grammar, can reading and writing exercises wonderfully but they cannot express themselves in English and find it hard to make questions to discuss during the speaking lessons They often make mistakes in using the correct question words and in giving the right form of a wh-question Besides making the discussion during a speaking lesson successful, questions also play an important role in our daily life We are not able to keep communicating going on well without asking questions We ask in order to exchange information, ideas, feeling and knowledge On the other hand, we sometimes ask questions not for the above purposes but for confirmation, refusal irony or reply avoidance It is undeniable that questions can not be missed in communication English wh-questions have long been the subject of the study of many researchers and linguists Each of them investigates some aspects of this type of questions Their study on English wh-questions have provided a great help for Vietnamese learners of English There are some MA thesis that pay attention to English Wh-questions Hoa N.T.X (1996) studies English questions in terms of S-P inversion Meanwhile, Ms Nguyet D.T.M (1996) pays her attention to the aspect of English questions concerning teachers' questions and politeness strategies And Tuyet L.T.A contrasts English wh-questions and their equivalents in Vietnamese in terms of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features Especially there is also a Ph.D dissertation investigating English Wh-questions Quang V.D (2000) looks at contrative analysis of questions in English and Vietnamese in terms of semantic and pragmatic features in his Ph.D project Generally, such researchers mentioned above studied English whquestions from different angles and mostly either focus on syntactic and semantic features of English Wh-questions or provide a theoretically general picture of wh-questions between the two languages, English and Vietnamese However, besides such certain contributions, there still exist some gaps that need dealing with There are a lot of aspects concerning English wh-questions, however, in this paper the author would like to devote all my interest in the structural and semantic patterns of Whquestions in English Then he would like to investigate the kinds of mistakes in using whquestions the students in Kinh Mon High School often make Basing on the findings, the author can make some suggestions in order to help the students to overcome these difficulties and make questions fluently Aims of the study The aims of the study are to: - help raise the students' awareness of structural and semantic features of English wh-questions - deepen the author's knowledge for the improvement of teaching English wh-questions to Vietnamese learners of English Objectives of the study The objectives of the study are to : - examine the structural and semantic patterns of English Wh-questions - identify some common errors and mistakes made by Vietnamese students and present some suggested solutions The objectives of the study can be realized through the research questions: What are the structural and semantic patterns of English wh-questions? What categories of mistakes the students in Kinh Mon High school often make in using English wh-questions? What should be done to improve the students' skill in using English wh-questions? It is hoped that the findings from this study will be of some benefits to teachers and students at Kinh Mon high school Scope of the study The study on structural and semantic patterns of Wh-questions in English focuses on English wh-questions from the perspectives of structural and semantic features There are two types of wh-questions will be focused: wh-information questions and wh-rhetorical questions The author also conducted a questionnaire to find out the mistakes made by Vietnamese students, and from these mistakes, some possible solutions to the problems identified Methods of the study A combination of different methods of analysis will be used in this study Firstly, the author applies the descriptive method to find out the structural and semantic patterns of the English wh-questions The study is conducted by carefully collecting materials from various sources to have full-blown information of English wh-questions Secondly, the author designs a questionaire in order to find out what categories of mistakes the studetnts often make when using wh-questions The students' errors and mistakes will be analized All comments, remarks, recommendations and conclusion are based on the data analysis The sheets of questionaire will be collected randomly so that this research will help to gain reliable data and a close investigation into the problems that the students are encountering Design of the study This study is divided into three main parts: - Part is the Introduction of the study It includes the rationale for choosing the topic, the aims, the objectives, the scope, the methods and design of the study - Part contains three chapters, in which Chapter provides readers some theoretical background on English questions in general, wh-words and their functions and the ... presuppositions ) are also discussed Chapter is also the main part of the study, provides the detailed analysis of English wh-questions in term of structural and semantic patterns of wh-questions in English. .. WH-QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ MƠ HÌNH CẤU TRÚC VÀ NGỮ NGH? ?A C? ?A CÂU HỎI CÓ TỪ HỎI TRONG TIẾNG ANH M .A MINOR THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 60 22 15 Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr VÕ... QUANG HANOI, 2011 iii ABSTRACT The thesis entitled ? ?A Study on structural and semantic patterns of Whquestions in English? ?? is to analyze and illustrate the types of wh-questions and their semantic