THE USE OF DEFECTIVE VERBS IN ENGLISH ESSAYS BY THE STUDENTS OF LEVEL III OF ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF DOBA IN CHAD, ACADEMIC SESSION 2022-2023

Abstract

This paper investigated the use of defective verbs. The data were collected by the means of written continuous assessment administered to one hundred and fifty EFL learners of English Department of the University of Doba. They were analyzed through Corder’s (1967) Error Analysis (EA) approach. The results of this study revealed that those students encountered a lot of difficulties in using defective verbs in their essays. Five types of errors have been identified. These include the insertion of complete infinitive after defective verbs, the adding of ‘-ed’ at the end of defective verbs, the use of preterit after defective verbs, the adding of ‘s’ at the end of defective verbs and the use of ‘do’ with defective verbs in negative form and interrogative form. The analysis indicated that 37.81% of error regarded the insertion of complete infinitive after defective verbs, 18.48% concerned the adding of ‘-ed’ at the end of defective verbs, 17.64% concerned the use of preterit after defective verbs, 15.96% concerned the adding of ‘s’ at the end of defective verbs and 10.08% regarded the use of ‘do’ with defective verbs. These errors are influenced by the phenomenon of overgeneralization of English grammatical rules on the one hand and the lack of mastery of the use of defective verbs on the other hand.