A COMPARISON OF ERRORS OF THAI STUDENTS IN THE FORMATION OF ENGLISH WORDS

Abstract

This article reports an experimental study that aimed at investigating compound of Thai students with different English language experiences in the formation of English compound words equivalent to Thai compounds. The data were collected from 60 students, selected from 330 first-year university students by their English language experience levels determined by the scores acquired from a language exposure questionnaire. There were 30 students in each group that had the highest and lowest English language experiences. The sample groups were required to construct 80 English compound words equivalent to Thai compounds which are borrowed loans. Reaction time was not investigated. The test results from the 2 sample groups demonstrated that the proficiency of L2 lexical access was related to learners L2 experiences. They also exhibited a continuum of English word formation strategies. The result from the low L2 group revealed that they had limited English lexical items in their lexicon. In addition, an avoidance strategy was used frequently in the low group. It was also found that L1 transfer was salient in the English formation patterns of the low L2 group, both in the conceptual and orthographical aspect. However, in bilinguals with high L2 experience, there was a large diversity of L2 compound word formation strategies with a high level of grammatical accuracy. The high group also used a semantic network, and no avoidance strategy was used, in contrast to the low L2 learners.