The Difficulties Learners of French at The S H S Level Have With The Transformation of Active Sentences into Passive Sentences

ABSTRACT

This work seeks to analyse the difficulties learners of French at the S H S level have with the transformation of active sentences into passive sentences. We collected data from two Senior High Schools, namely: Accra Academy and St Mary’s Girls’ Senior High, both in the capital city of Ghana. In this study, we used twenty (20) learners from each school, making up a total of forty (40) learners, to enable us get data for the analyses. We used questionnaires and exercises to collect data from the learners. We also used questionnaires and interactions with the French teachers in the schools where we collected data. We used these schools because these students form part of the learners of the French language at the S H S level. For our theoretical framework, we used the constructivism of Jean Piaget, the contrastive analysis of Robert Lado and the error analysis of Stephen Pit Corder. Our analysis was done by looking at how the learners transformed some active sentences into passive sentences. The learners at S H S had difficulties in transforming active sentences into passive sentences. For example, through the use of the theory of error analysis we realized that most of the learners transformed verbs that could not be transformed into passive in French. Some learners used inappropriate prepositions while others also constructed wrong past participles, to mention but a few. This shows that there is an inadequate knowledge of the passive voice. It was also detected that the way they are taught may have led to the difficulty. We also came to the conclusion through the contrastive analysis that their mother tongues might have some influence on the way they have learned the passive voice. This is due to the fact that most Ghanaian languages have no passive structures. This contributed to the problem. The analysis of data collected through questionnaires and exercises eventually confirmed that most learners have difficulties in the construction of the passive sentences. The analysis revealed that little exposure to this concept led to their inability to construct passive sentences correctly. The study therefore, highlights some pedagogical exploitations and suggested ways vi which can be used to help both teachers and learners in the area of transforming active sentences into passive sentences.