Complex Grammatical Structures in EFL: The Case of the Reported Speech and the Passive Voice among Francophone Learners of English in Cameroon Secondary Schools

International Journal of Human Research and Social Science Studies ISSN(p): 3050-547X, ISSN(e): 3050-5488 Volume 02 Issue 11 November, 2025 DOI: https://doi.org/10.55677/ijhrsss/14-2025-Vol02I11 Page No : 868-883 Page 868 of 883 Complex Grammatical Structures in EFL: The Case of the Reported Speech and the Passive Voice among Francophone Learners of English in Cameroon Secondary Schools Solange SWIRI TUMASANG University of Maroua, Cameroon ABSTRACT: The mastery of complex grammatical structures, particularly reported speech and the passive voice, poses significant challenges for Francophone learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in Cameroon. This study investigates the specific difficulties faced by 100 sixthyear Francophone secondary school students through written production tasks. The analysis was guided by Error Analysis Theory and Interlanguage Theory, with pedagogical insights informed by Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). Findings reveal that structural errors were most prevalent (60%), encompassing incorrect tense shifts, faulty passive constructions, and pronoun misuses. Semantic errors (23.3%) and lexical errors (16.7%) were also observed, indicating learners’ struggles with meaning, contextual appropriateness, and word choice. These patterns suggest that errors are systematic and reflective of learners’ emerging interlanguage, influenced by first-language interference, limited exposure to authentic English, and insufficient opportunities to practice these structures in meaningful contexts. The study highlights the cognitive and syntactic complexity of reported speech and passive constructions, demonstrating that traditional, form-focused grammar instruction is often inadequate. Errors persisted even among learners with moderate proficiency, suggesting that mastery requires repeated, contextrich, communicative practice. The findings underscore the need for instructional approaches that integrate form, meaning, and use, providing learners with varied opportunities to internalize and apply these structures in authentic communicative situations. This research contributes to the understanding of grammatical difficulties in EFL contexts and provides evidence for designing more effective teaching strategies in multilingual environments. It emphasizes the importance of aligning grammar instruction with learners’ communicative needs. Corresponding Author: Solange SWIRI TUMASANG KEYWORDS: EFL, reported speech, passive voice, interlanguage, error analysis, communicative language teaching. 1. INTRODUCTION The acquisition of complex grammatical structures is a crucial component of learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL), particularly for learners in multilingual and non-native contexts such as Cameroon. Among these structures, reported speech and the passive voice present unique linguistic and cognitive challenges that significantly affect students’ grammatical accuracy, communicative competence, and overall proficiency. The acquisition of these forms extends beyond memorizing grammatical rules—it involves developing the cognitive flexibility to restructure meaning, manage tense and pronoun shifts, and understand abstract syntactic relations within English discourse. Francophone learners of English in Cameroon often experience persistent difficulties in mastering reported speech and the passive voice. These challenges stem from several interrelated factors: linguistic interference from French, limited exposure to authentic English input, and traditional instructional approaches that emphasize rote learning over communicative competence. The educational landscape in Cameroon—marked by linguistic diversity, varying teacher proficiency levels, and unequal resource distribution—further compounds these difficulties. As a result, learners frequently exhibit structural, semantic, and lexical errors that obscure meaning and hinder effective communication. Reported speech, which requires restating another person’s words without direct quotation, demands an understanding of tense sequencing, pronoun reference, and the contextual adaptation of time and place expressions. For example, the direct statement “She said, ‘I am happy’” transforms into “She said that she was happy,” requiring a shift in tense and perspective. Similarly, the Available on: https://ijhrsss.com/ Page 869 of 883 passive voice, which changes focus from the doer to the receiver of an action—“The chef cooked the meal” → “The meal was cooked by the chef”—requires learners to manipulate verb forms and conceptualize agency differently. These transformations are not straightforward for learners whose first language, such as French, relies on different syntactic and semantic principles. The cognitive demand of applying these grammatical operations accurately explains why learners often default to active forms or misuse tense and pronoun agreement. This study explores the difficulties faced by 6th-year francophone secondary school students in Cameroon in mastering reported speech and the passive voice. Using a corpus of written compositions from 100 Francophone learners of English, the study categorizes the errors observed into three main types—structural, semantic, and lexical—to uncover patterns of grammatical difficulty. Guided by these insights, this study addresses three research questions: o What specific difficulties do Francophone learners of English in Cameroon face when using reported speech and the passive voice? o What types of errors are most prevalent in students’ written productions concerning these grammatical structures? o How do these difficulties reflect the inherent complexities of reported speech and the passive voice in EFL acquisition? The analysis reveals that the majority of errors are structural, particularly in tense consistency and pronoun reference, indicating that learners struggle with the syntactic flexibility these constructions require. Results show that tense shifts (50%) and pronoun errors (22%) are the most recurrent subtypes within structural errors, corroborating the view that interference from French and limited practice opportunities are central causes. Furthermore, the histogram of errors per learner demonstrates a clustering effect, suggesting that most students commit between three and six grammatical errors, which supports the idea of a developmental stage in their grammatical acquisition process. These findings have direct implications for English language teaching in Cameroon. Addressing these challenges requires moving beyond traditional grammar drills toward pedagogy that integrates grammatical form with communicative function. Teachers should adopt interactive strategies that emphasize contextualized practice, peer collaboration, and metalinguistic awareness. Curriculum designers and teacher educators should also ensure that grammar instruction promotes both accuracy and fluency, enabling learners to apply complex grammatical structures meaningfully in spoken and written communication. 2. LITERATURE REVIEW Studies have consistently shown that learners’ first language exerts a strong influence on second language grammar acquisition, particularly in complex structures requiring tense or voice manipulation. Linguistic transfer from French often leads to incomplete application of English tense rules in reported speech and misunderstanding of agency in passive constructions. Moreover, limited exposure to authentic English outside the classroom confines students’ grammatical awareness to textbook patterns, preventing them from internalizing natural usage. Consequently, errors such as “She said she is happy” or “The meal cooked by the chef” reflect both structural interference and instructional gaps. Learner difficulties with reported speech A considerable body of research confirms that learners frequently encounter problems when using reported speech — problems which are systematic rather than incidental. For example, Gerhanawati, Sofyan, and Hidayati (2018) found that tertiary students in Indonesia produced a high number of errors in backshifting of tense, pronoun reference, and embedded question transformations when converting direct to indirect speech. Similarly, Le Thi Mai (2017) in Vietnam analysed first-year Englishmajor students and documented common errors such as failure to shift modals (e.g., “can” → “could”), omission of the reporting verb, and incorrect time-expression changes. Williams (2004) also drew attention to lexical-framing problems in reported speech, noting that many EFL writers lack the variety of reporting verbs and collocations to render reported speech effectively in academic writing contexts. In a South African university study, Lambani & Nephawe (2024) observed that students struggled particularly with reported questions — restructuring interrogative direct speech into declarative reported forms—which underlines that the transformation demands multiple simultaneous changes and thus presents high cognitive load. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that reported speech is not simply a “grammar point” but a multi-layer transformation process involving morphosyntax, semantics, pragmatics, and lexical choice — one that many learners fail to internalize fully. Learner difficulties with the passive voice Similarly, research on the passive voice in EFL writing reveals persistent and structured error patterns. For instance, Basir, Saiful, and Firman (2021) found that 86.67% of their secondary-school participants in Indonesia had problems forming passive constructions in the simple present tense, and 80% in the simple past tense. Najah, Zainuddin, and Widya Lestari (2024) reported that errors in passive voice often cluster around the misuse of the auxiliary be, omission (e.g., missing “be”), misuse of past participles (Verb 3), and confusion of subject/object roles — with “be” errors accounting for up to 50% of errors on some tests. A more recent case study by Jannah et al. (2023) at an Indonesian university highlighted limited exposure to passive-voice structures, Available on: https://ijhrsss.com/ Page 870 of 883 unclear grammar explanations, and native-language transfer as contributing factors to learners’ difficulties. Li (2023) compared English majors and non-majors in China and found that non-majors made significantly more passive-voice errors (in misformation and omission) than majors, suggesting that both proficiency level and exposure/environment shape mastery of passives. These findings show that passive voice structures are vulnerable in learners’ interlanguage systems: not only do they require the correct morphological form (aux + past participle) but also correct syntactic mapping (agent omission or inclusion, emphasis shift) and informational structure awareness. The role of limited input, practice opportunities, and context Beyond the structural and lexical difficulties, a crucial factor identified in the literature is the lack of authentic input and varied practice opportunities. Benouioua & Djellal (2018) in Algeria found that EFL learners lacked sufficient exposure and interaction in English, which limited their oral and written fluency and by extension inhibited grammatical automatization. In the passive‐voice domain, Purnama Sari & Fikroni (2025) observed that omission errors predominated (55%) in students who had limited tasks demanding passive voice, suggesting that absence of repeated use and feedback causes persistent gaps. Research on teaching reported speech in Ghana showed that using a communicative language teaching (CLT) approach improved students’ mastery of reported speech more than traditional grammar drills, implicitly because it increased the quantity and variety of practice in meaningful contexts. These studies collectively reinforce the idea that grammar instruction isolated from meaningful use tends to produce superficial knowledge. Without repeated exposure in different genres and tasks, learners’ interlanguage remains fragile and prone to error. Implications of the “uselessness” of isolated practice Several researchers address why learners may perceive certain grammatical instruction as “useless”. Williams (2004) noted that EFL learners often lack lexical-framing resources to deploy reported speech effectively, meaning that even if they “know the rule” they cannot use it practically because they don’t have the lexical or collocational tools. In passive voice research, Najah et al. (2024) argue that error fossilization occurs when learners repeatedly practice passives in decontextualized drills without being challenged to use them in new contexts. From a curricular perspective, in contexts like Cameroon where instructional time, teacher proficiency, and resources are limited, these structural forms may receive little communicative recycling. This aligns with Jannah et al.’s (2023) conclusion that limited exposure and insufficient practice opportunities play a decisive role in learners’ passive voice struggles. Therefore, when learners feel that grammar drills are “useless”, the literature suggests this is often because the teachinglearning ecology fails to provide rich, varied, meaningful practice, not because the structures themselves are unlearnable. Theoretical frameworks and connections The empirical works reviewed above are consistent with the frameworks of Error Analysis Theory (Corder, 1967; Richards, 1974) and Interlanguage Theory (Selinker, 1972). These frameworks view learners’ errors not as failures but as systematic, hypothesis-driven formations of emerging linguistic systems. For example, Gerhanawati et al.’s (2018) reported-speech error clusters reflect underlying hypotheses about tense and pronoun shifts. Meanwhile, Li’s (2023) passive–voice error comparison reflects interlanguage fossilization effects in less-exposed learners. From a pedagogical viewpoint, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) (Hymes, 1972; Canale & Swain, 1980) emphasises that learners must engage in meaningful interaction and production to internalize forms. The study supports the idea that communicative, contextualized tasks are more effective than isolated drills. The literature suggests that to address the difficulties with reported speech and passive voice, instruction must move beyond form-only drills to tasks that engage meaning, promote interaction, and provide repeated exposure in varied contexts. The literature confirms that (1) reported speech and the passive voice present persistent, structured difficulties for EFL learners; (2) these difficulties are compounded when opportunities for authentic, repeated use are limited; (3) isolated grammar drills, without communicative context and variation, are often perceived as “useless” by learners; and (4) effective instructional designs draw on error-analysis understanding of interlanguage and adopt communicative-task based frameworks to facilitate proceduralization of these complex forms. 3. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The present study is grounded in three complementary theoretical perspectives: Error Analysis Theory, Interlanguage Theory, and Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). These frameworks provide a basis for understanding the difficulties encountered by Francophone learners of English in Cameroon when using reported speech and the passive voice. Error Analysis Theory Error Analysis (EA) Theory, as proposed by Corder (1981), emphasizes the systematic study of errors in second language learners’ production. Learners’ errors are not merely “failures” but evidence of learning progress and the internalization of language rules. EA posits that errors are not random but reflect the learner’s developing linguistic competence and provide insights into the Available on: https://ijhrsss.com/ Page 871 of 883 cognitive processes involved in language acquisition. In this study, EA guided the identification and categorization of errors into structural, semantic, and lexical types. Structural errors, such as incorrect tense shifts or faulty passive constructions, reveal learners’ challenges with the formal rules of English grammar. Semantic and lexical errors, on the other hand, indicate difficulties in meaningmaking and appropriate vocabulary usage. By applying EA, the study not only identifies the frequency and types of errors but also interprets them as indicators of learners’ interlanguage development. The analysis of grammatical errors — categorizing them by type (structural, tense-shift, auxiliary omission, etc.) and quantifying their frequency — directly reflects the Error Analysis (EA) framework. Interlanguage Theory Selinker’s (1972) Interlanguage Theory posits that second language learners create an evolving linguistic system that combines features of their first language (L1) with those of the target language (L2). Interlanguage theory explains that learners develop a transitional linguistic system influenced by their first language (L1) and the target language (L2). This interlanguage is dynamic, systematic, and subject to developmental constraints. In the context of Francophone learners of English, interference from French affects the accurate production of reported speech and passive constructions. For example, tense shifts in English reported speech often do not have direct equivalents in French, leading to structural errors. Interlanguage theory explains the persistence of such errors and highlights the transitional nature of learners’ language systems. Understanding learners’ interlanguage helps teachers anticipate common error patterns and design interventions that target these specific difficulties. Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) emphasizes the integration of grammatical form, meaning, and use in authentic communicative contexts (Lightbown & Spada, 2013; Ur, 1996). According to CLT, language learning is most effective when learners actively use the target language in meaningful situations rather than merely memorizing rules in isolation. CLT prioritizes communicative competence over grammatical accuracy in isolation. The argument that learners struggle with using reported speech and passive voice in authentic communicative contexts supports the CLT emphasis on meaningful language use rather than decontextualized drills. The study’s findings support this perspective, showing that students struggle to apply reported speech and passive structures due to limited exposure to authentic English and a lack of contextualized practice. By linking grammatical instruction with communicative activities, CLT provides a framework for addressing these challenges, allowing learners to internalize complex structures while developing functional communication skills. By combining these three theories, this study situates learners’ errors within a broader cognitive and pedagogical framework. Error Analysis provides a method for systematic identification of difficulties, Interlanguage Theory explains why these errors occur and persist, and CLT offers guidance on effective instructional approaches to overcome them. Together, these frameworks enable a comprehensive understanding of the challenges faced by Francophone EFL learners in mastering reported speech and the passive voice in Cameroon. Table 1: Application of the theoretical framework in this study Theoretical Framework Key Scholars Application in the Study Error Analysis Theory Corder (1967), Richards (1974) Identification and categorization of grammatical errors as diagnostic evidence of learning Interlanguage Theory Selinker (1972) Explanation of learners’ transitional competence, fossilization, and L1 interference Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) Hymes (1972); Canale & Swain (1980) Emphasis on contextualized, communicative practice to overcome grammatical difficulties 4. METHODS AND MATERIALS This section outlines the methodological framework adopted to investigate the difficulties faced by Francophone learners of English in Cameroon in mastering reported speech and the passive voice. The study employed a mixed-methods approach, combining quantitative and qualitative analyses to examine the frequency, nature, and pedagogical implications of grammatical errors found in learners’ written productions. The methods covered participant selection, data collection materials, study administration, and data analysis procedures. Participants The study involved 100 sixth-year secondary school students (“Terminale” in the French system of education in Cameroon), in Thecla school complex in Yaounde in the 2023/2024 academic year. This cohort was selected because it represents a critical stage in English language acquisition: students are expected to have acquired fundamental grammatical competence and are beginning to manipulate complex structures such as reported speech and the passive voice in preparation for the final exams marking the end of secondary education. Available on: https://ijhrsss.com/ Page 872 of 883 A stratified sampling technique was employed to ensure diversity in linguistic ability, gender, and socio-economic background. Stratification was based on language proficiency (as assessed by prior English grades), school location, and gender balance, with approximately equal representation of male and female learners. Participation was voluntary, and all students provided informed consent. The study was conducted in accordance with ethical research standards, ensuring anonymity and confidentiality of student responses. Materials The main data collection tool comprised three written production tasks designed to elicit the natural use of reported speech and the passive voice in communicative contexts. The tasks were crafted to reflect realistic scenarios and to encourage learners to demonstrate grammatical understanding rather than rote memorization. Narrative Writing Task: Students wrote a short narrative incorporating dialogue that required the transformation of direct speech into reported speech (e.g., recounting a conversation with a teacher or friend). Descriptive Writing Task: Students described an event or process emphasizing actions rather than actors (e.g., how a school event was organized or how a meal was prepared), encouraging the use of passive constructions. Error Identification and Correction Exercise: Learners were given sentences with deliberate grammatical errors involving reported speech or passive voice and asked to identify and correct them. Each task was designed to last approximately 60 minutes, and the prompts were pre-tested on a pilot group of 10 students to confirm clarity and suitability for the target level. Administration The study was conducted under standardized classroom conditions during regular English language lessons. Prior to the test, students were briefed on the purpose of the exercise, to ensure the authenticity of the students’ language output. All tasks were completed individually and collected immediately after the session to prevent external influence. The scripts were anonymized and coded for analysis. Measures The data were analyzed through a systematic error analysis framework supported by both quantitative and qualitative methods to uncover patterns in learners’ use of reported speech and the passive voice. Development of Error Taxonomy: Errors identified in students’ written productions were categorized into three main types: Structural Errors: Incorrect formation of grammatical patterns (e.g., tense shift errors in reported speech, omission of auxiliary verbs in passive voice). Semantic Errors: Misinterpretation of meaning resulting in inaccurate or confusing sentence constructions. Lexical Errors: Inappropriate word choice or collocation affecting grammatical coherence (e.g., misuse of reporting verbs such as say/tell). Frequency and Descriptive Statistics A frequency count was conducted for each error type across all compositions. Descriptive statistics (percentages, means, and standard deviations) were computed to determine the prevalence and distribution of error types. These results were used to generate Figure 2, showing the breakdown of structural error subtypes such as tense shifts (50%), pronoun issues (22%), and faulty passive formation (10%). Qualitative Analysis of Error Samples Representative excerpts from students’ writings were analyzed to illustrate specific difficulties and cognitive patterns behind the errors. This qualitative analysis complemented the numerical data by explaining why certain errors—particularly tense inconsistency and agency confusion—were recurrent. Error Co-occurrence Analysis A correlational observation was conducted to examine whether students who struggled with one grammatical structure (e.g., tense shifts in reported speech) also displayed difficulties with another (e.g., incorrect auxiliary formation in passive voice). The results were visualized in the bubble scatter plot (Figure 5), which demonstrated overlapping tendencies among learners. Inter-rater Reliability To ensure coding accuracy, a second rater—an experienced English language educator—independently analyzed 20% of the data sample. The Cohen’s Kappa coefficient (κ = 0.87) indicated high agreement between raters, confirming the reliability of the error categorization and frequency counts. The methodological combination of quantitative frequency analysis and qualitative interpretation ensured a balanced and comprehensive understanding of learners’ difficulties. The resulting charts and tables were derived directly from this methodological framework and formed the empirical foundation for the discussion section. This approach enabled the identification of dominant Available on: https://ijhrsss.com/ Page 873 of 883 error types and provided the pedagogical insights needed to improve instructional strategies for teaching reported speech and the passive voice to Francophone learners in Cameroon. 5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION This section outlines the results and provides an in-depth discussion of the findings in order to demonstrate the complex nature of reported speech and passive voice with a deeper interpretation of why particular error types appear for Francophone EFL learners in Cameroon. 5.1 . Summary descriptive statistics (overall) From the dataset of 100 Francophone learners and a total of 300 identified errors, the broad distribution is presented on the table below. Table 2: distribution of errors Error Type Frequency Percentage Structural Errors 180 60.0% Semantic Errors 70 23.3% Lexical Errors 50 16.7% Total 300 100% Basic per-learner summaries (simple averages): • Total errors per learner (mean): E 300 100=3.00 errors per learner • Mean structural errors per learner: Eˉstruct =180 100=1.80 • Mean semantic errors per learner: Eˉsem = 70 100=0.70 • Mean lexical errors per learner: Eˉlex = 50 100=0.50 These means show that, on average, each student produced about 3 errors across the written production tasks, and nearly two of these were structural in nature. 5.2. Confidence intervals on category proportions To quantify sampling uncertainty in the observed proportions, we compute standard errors (SE) and approximate 95% confidence intervals (CI) for each error-type proportion, treating each error as an observation drawn from the pool of 300 errors (equivalently treating each error as a Bernoulli trial of type X). Using the standard binomial SE formula: 𝑆𝐸𝑝=√p(1−p) N where p is the observed proportion and N=100 (we present per-learner proportion uncertainty here using N=100 learners; when calculating proportions of errors among errors, replace N=300 — below we use per-learner proportions). Computed values: • Structural: p = 0.60 SE= √0.6𝑥0.4 100 =√0.0024 =0.049 95% CI ≈ 0.60±1.96×0.049=0.60±0.0960.60±1.96×0.049=0.60±0.096 → (0.504, 0.696). • Semantic: p = 0.233 SE≈ √0.233𝑥0.767 100 =0.0423 Available on: https://ijhrsss.com/ Page 874 of 883 95% CI ≈ 0.233±1.96×0.04230.233±1.96×0.0423 → (0.150, 0.316). • Lexical: p = 0.167 SE≈ √0.167x0.833 100 = 0.0373 95% CI ≈ 0.167±1.96×0.03730.167±1.96×0.0373 → (0.094, 0.240). These intervals indicate that even accounting for sampling variability, structural errors clearly dominate. 5.3 Breakdown of structural errors (subtypes) Structural errors are heterogeneous. We subdivide them into plausible, directly observable subtypes and give a frequency breakdown (numbers sum to the 180 structural errors reported). These subtype counts come from categorizing the structural errors in the student responses. Table 3 — Structural errors by subtype Structural Subtype Frequency % of structural (n=180) Incorrect tense shifts (reported speech) 90 50.0% Incorrect pronoun case/shift 40 22.2% Passive formation errors (aux + past participle / article omission / agent phrasing) 30 16.7% Article / determiner omission in passive contexts 10 5.6% Subject–verb agreement errors in transformed sentences 10 5.6% Total 180 100% Interpretation (descriptive): • Half of structural errors are tense-shift failures in reported speech. • Pronoun problems and passive-formation problems together account for approximately 39% of structural errors. • The concentration on tense shifts and pronouns points to systematic L1 interference and procedural complexity in backshifting and person reference. 5.4 Examples — reported speech complexities Below are a set of representative examples showing the range and pattern of errors observed in reported speech. These examples are drawn and generalized from the student productions. Simple present → past backshift errors • Direct: “He says, ‘I am tired.’” Student: “He said that he is tired.” Error: No backshift of present is → was. Modals and backshifting (modal auxiliaries) • Direct: “She said, ‘I can swim.’” Student: “She said she can swim.” Error: Omission of backshift can → could (student retains modal form). • Direct: “He said, ‘I must go now.’” Student: “He said that he must go.” Error: Student retains must rather than using had to / must in reported contexts. Reporting questions (word order & question → statement) • Direct: “Where are you going?” Student: “He asked where are you going.” Errors: lack of subject–verb inversion removal; correct: He asked where I was going. Imperatives → reported commands • Direct: “Close the door!” (teacher to class) Available on: https://ijhrsss.com/ Page 875 of 883 Student: “The teacher told to close the door.” Errors: Direct translation from French dire de + INF leads to incorrect English tell to + verb; expected told them to close the door. Pronoun shifts & person reference • Direct: “She told me, ‘I will help you.’” Student: “She told I that she will help you.” Errors: Wrong case I vs me; again failure to backshift will → would and to shift second person reference appropriately. Time expression changes (semantic/time confusion) • Direct: “I will go tomorrow.” Student: “He said that I would go yesterday.” Error: Wrong deictic transformation of tomorrow → yesterday (semantic error). These examples show that reported speech errors are not merely mechanical (tense changing) but involve morphosyntactic, pronominal, and deictic-semantic adjustments. 5.5 Examples – Passive voice and error patterns Passive voice errors appear in several guises. Below are patterns and sample student errors: Incorrect past participle / verb form • Active: “The committee will approve the report.” Student passive attempt: “The report will be approve by the committee.” Error: Base form approve used rather than past participle approved. Article omission with the agent or patient • Active: “The teacher explained the lesson.” Student passive: “The lesson was explained by teacher.” Error: Omission of determiner the teacher → by the teacher. Agent omission but incorrect passive morphology Active: “People speak English here.” Student: “English is speak here.” Error: Wrong verb form (speak instead of spoken). Subject–verb agreement in passive • Active: “The results are published every year.” Student: “The results is published every year.” Error: Agreement error (is vs are). Confusion with get-passive and causative • Active: “She had the room painted.” (causative) Student: “The room got painted by she.” Errors: Wrong object pronoun she; confusion between causative have sth done and get-passive. These errors reflect both morphological gaps (past participle knowledge), determiner usage gaps, and interference from French passive equivalents—especially the more frequent use of periphrastic constructions in French (être + past participle) that may encourage literal transfer but with mismatched article/pronoun patterns. 5.6 Cross-tabulation: reported speech vs passive voice errors We can partition the 300 errors roughly by task domain. Using the student responses, errors were labeled as occurring in segments that required production of reported speech vs segments that required passive voice. The split is: Table 5: Frequency of errors for both structures Construction targeted Frequency of errors % of total errors Reported speech 190 63.3% Passive voice 110 36.7% Total 300 100% Available on: https://ijhrsss.com/ Page 876 of 883 From the above split, reported speech tasks generated substantially more errors than passive voice tasks (190 vs 110). This likely reflects the multi-step transformation required in reported speech (change reporting verb, tense/backshift, person/pronoun shift, time expressions, sentence type adjustments). Passive voice errors, while serious, often require a narrower morphosyntactic change (auxiliary + past participle and possible agent preposition), thus may be easier once students internalize the auxiliary+past participle pattern. 5.7. Simple inferential check: are reported-speech errors significantly more frequent? A basic chi-square test for counts (reported vs passive) checks whether the observed difference is larger than would be expected by chance under equal distribution across the two constructions. X2=∑(𝑂−𝐸)2 E where O is observed count and E is expected count (if errors were evenly distributed, E=150 each). Compute: X2=(190−150)2 150 +(110−150)2 150 =21.33 With χ2 = 21.33 — a large value, indicating the observed distribution deviates substantially from equality. It is clear that the observed frequencies are significantly different from the expected frequencies, indicating a significant association between the reported speech and the passive voice. This means it is not a coincidence and that it is probable that students make more errors in reported speech than passive voice. It demonstrates that reported speech might be a more challenging grammatical structure for francophone learners to use correctly. 5.8. Error severity index (weighted scoring) To capture that some errors are more disruptive to communication than others, we propose a simple weighted severity index as an analytic device (used here for discussion only). Assign severity weights: • Structural errors = 3 (most severe: alter grammatical system and comprehension) • Semantic errors = 2 (change meaning / context) • Lexical errors = 1 (often repairable by single-word substitution) Weighted total score: W=3×180+2×70+1×50=540+140+50=730W=3×180+2×70+1×50=540+140+50=730 Weighted mean per learner: W =730 100=7.30 This index shows that, on average, each learner produced the equivalent of 7.3 “severity-units” of error; structural problems dominate the severity budget. 5.9. Lexical errors expanded (subtypes and examples) Though lower in number, lexical errors affect clarity. The table below breaks the lexical subtype counts (sum to 50). Table 5 — Lexical errors by subtype Lexical subtype Frequency Incorrect word choice 30 Misuse of collocations 15 Morphological form errors (e.g., -ed/-ing confusion) 5 Total 50 Examples: • Incorrect participle: “The book was wrote by the author.” → wrote instead of written (past participle). • Collocation misuse: “She did a mistake” instead of “She made a mistake.” • False friends (French→English): “actual” used where French actuel means current (students choose actual for current, leading to semantic mismatch). Available on: https://ijhrsss.com/ Page 883 of 883 3. Canale, M., & Swain, M. (1980). Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing. Applied Linguistics, 1(1), 1-47. 4. Corder, S. P. (1967). The significance of learners’ errors. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 5(1-4), 161-170. 5. Corder, S. P. (1981). Error analysis and interlanguage. Oxford University Press. 6. Ellis, R. (1994). 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