Pronominal Errors in written English of Students of Tertiary Institutions in Ekiti State: A case of Yoruba and English Bilinguals

Abstract

English has a predominant status as a second language in Nigeria where it is learned and used in conjunction with the mother tongue. This paper assessed the pronominal errors in written English of tertiary institution. The aims of the study were to examine the kinds of pronominal errors in the written English of the L2 learners and ascertain the extent to which the errors are made. To this end, a descriptive survey research design was employed. Three hundred (300) Yoruba-English bilingual respondents were randomly selected from three tertiary institutions in Ekiti State. They wrote essays in English which were analyzed for the occurrence of pronominal errors using the Binding Principles. One hundred and sixty sentences were discovered in which the errors occurred. The analysis revealed the errors committed by respondents to include: lack of pronoun agreement; wrong insertion of pronouns; the use of pronouns without antecedents; and others. The study also advanced possible remediation to include, among others, assisting learners to internalize the systems of the language they are learning; understand those syntactic features which do not exist in, or, differ in some respects from those of their mother tongue; and so on.