Tiếng Việt, văn Việt, người Việt by Cao Xuân Hạo

The passive sentences, an important part of every English language teaching grammar syllabus, present difficulty to many Vietnamese learners. Thus, he added that “through the grammatical system of language, then communication can become increasingly independent of its setting.” Littlewood (1994) mentioned that communication through correct grammar could help learners make a wider and more creative range of meaning choices. Grammar affects students’ performance in all four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Language teachers and specialists are of the view that grammar can help first, second and foreign language learners develop linguistic competence. Grammar has always played a crucial role in language teaching and learning. Keywords: topic-prominent languages, syntactic constructions, interlingual transfer. This paper also provides implications for improving the teaching and learning of English passive voice. In the light of finding out solutions to these problems, this article aims at the literature review of the Vietnamese passive voice in view of syntactic constructions and the English passive voice. Therefore, Vietnamese students often misuse the voice, transfer the sentences containing the words “bị” or “được” in Vietnamese active sentences into English passive sentences or tend to use the active voice in some contexts that passive voice should be used.

Passive voice is commonly used in English but it is usually absent or rarely present in topic-prominent languages like Vietnamese.

Tiếng Việt, văn Việt, người Việt by Cao Xuân Hạo