Analysis of EFL Students’ Mistakes Towards Negation Structures in English

Abstract

In the field of linguistics, negative structures seem to be a universal topic of research. There have been numerous studies conducted on the grammatical mistakes associated with negative constructions. Nonetheless, researchers discovered that there are just a few research that has looked at mistakes from semantic and pragmatic perspectives. Explicitly, the goal of this research was to identify and analyze the mistakes that EFL students often make while interpreting negative English structures, as well as the factors that contribute to these errors. Notably, 220 students from four universities in Ho Chi Minh City took part in the survey research. The data was gathered via online questionnaires, which were then evaluated using both quantitative and qualitative techniques. The findings revealed that EFL students made a variety of errors when it came to recognizing and using negative structures in semantic and pragmatic contexts, depending on their level of proficiency. As a result, several recommendations are made regarding the teaching and learning of these structures in EFL classrooms.