Use of Concord and its Associated Effects on Semantics in English Essays

A Case of Grade 10 First Additional Language Learners in South Africa

Abstract

Concord is a fundamental aspect of English grammar that ensures the smooth flow and clarity of communication. The explicit purpose of this study was to explore the common concord errors committed by the Grade 10 First Additional Language learners in South African secondary school in essay writing. A qualitative design was used to conduct the study since it studies human behaviour within the context in which it would occur naturally without the researcher’s interference. Learners’ essay scripts were collected and analysed using thematic analysis.  Ten (10) Grade 10 First Additional Language learners in the Malamulele Northeast circuit were used as the participants. Stratified random and purposive sampling techniques were both used to select the sample for this paper. This paper was underpinned by the Communicative Competence Theory by Swain and Canale (1980). The findings of this study showed that the grade 10 first additional language learners in South Africa have challenges in subject-verb concord or grammatical concord, subject-complement concord, pronoun-antecedent concord, subject-object concord, concord by proximity and notional concord. Some of the challenges were necessitated by mother tongue interference. The understanding and application of the principles of concord may improve learners’ language skills and enhance their overall linguistic proficiency.  This study recommends that learners should be equipped with sentence construction skills and grammatical rules to ensure that essay is error free and well-articulated.