Grammatical errors among L2 learners of Kiswahili

Abstract

This study investigates grammatical errors among L2 learners of Kiswahili. Specifically, it investigates the manifestation of grammatical errors in essays of secondary school learners. The study considered Senior Four1 students whose L1 is Runyankore and were learning Kiswahili as their L2. The grammatical errors in the learners' written texts were analyzed at both morphosyntactic and morphophonological levels. UNEB as one the examining bodies in Uganda has many times raised the issue of candidates' poor performance in grammar in Senior Four national examinations. I employed methods of questionnaire and task-based criteria in data collection. A narrative essay enabled this study to determine the written grammatical competence among learners of Kiswahili. A total of sixty (60) students selected from four schools participated in the study. The four schools were selected from Mbarara District specifically Mbarara City. The students who participated in essay writing generated a corpus of 18,903 words in total. A total of 1,324 grammatical errors were found in the learners' essays. I used Lado's (1957) Contrastive Analysis (CA) theory, Corder's (1967) Error Analysis (EA) theory and Cummins (1981) Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) model to interpret the research findings. The research findings indicated that the L2 learners of Kiswahili who acquire CALP skills and apply them in their academic writing make fewer grammatical errors compared to those who have not yet acquired CALP skills. Furthermore, the study found out that the learner whose L1 is Runyankore uses its grammatical structure to learn L2 (Kiswahili). It was further revealed that learners use L1 (Runyankore) different noun class prefixes in L2 (Kiswahili) grammar. I, therefore, recommend that better methods of teaching grammar for example inductive method be used by teachers of Kiswahili since such a method has a positive impact on the cognitive development of the learner. Finally, an effort should be made by teachers of Kiswahili to explain clearly the different noun classes in Kiswahili as well as demonstrating different grammatical categories and prefixes they take.