Paper Details

Background: Subject-verb agreement (SVA) is a common problem in regional English-as-a-second-language (ESL) classrooms. Learners must use English inflectional morphology, sentence syntax, and spoken forms while thinking through the grammar of their first languages. The objective of the study was to investigate how far phonological and grammatical interference predict SVA errors of multilingual regional learners. This study employed a quantitative-dominant descriptive-analytical design that utilized a simulated academic dataset of 180 ESL learners. Data were modelled from a grammar diagnostic test, short writing task, oral reading/speaking task, classroom observation checklist, and teacher feedback schedule. The main factors were mother tongue, gender, class level, area of residence, exposure to English, phonological interference, grammatical interference, SVA diagnosis score, frequency of oral and written error SVA and overall performance on ESL. Derivation: Was carried out through frequency analysis, mean, and standard deviation, cross-tabulation, independent samples t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation, chi-square test, reliability analysis and multiple regression. The most frequent types of SVA errors were omission of third person singular -s and omission of auxiliary be. The frequency of total SVA error was positively correlated with phonological interference (r = 0.33) and grammatical interference (r = 0.46) whereas their diagnostic test score and ESL performance were negatively correlated with the frequency of their errors. In comparison to the error types exhibited by other classes of learners, urban learners exhibited the lowest number of errors. The total SVA errors explained 81.5% of the variance of the model. In conclusion, the results show that SVA errors observed in regional ESL classrooms are more than just a failure to learn the rules. Instead, these errors result from systematic interlanguage, L1 transfer, limited exposure and weak integration between grammar spoken and written grammar. It is advisable to implement grammar teaching that is sensitive to regional languages, conduct agreement drills related to pronunciation, and provide evidence-based corrective feedback.

subject-verb agreement; ESL classrooms; phonological interference; grammatical interference; error analysis; interlanguage; regional language transfer