Investigating the secondary school students’ mastery in using the English inflectional suffixes plural and possessive (s)

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the acquisition and mastery of  the plural and possessive (s) suffixes with a view to the examination of the occurrences as well as the misuse of such suffixes in the English compositions of  third intermediate  class students in Iraq, Mosul . Those who participated in this study are sixty secondary school students at Al Areej town in Hamam Al Aleel locality. The data used for the study was written English compositions and grammar exercises. The written tasks of the subjects were analyzed for various occurrences and misuse of plural and possessive (s) in particular.

     On the other hand, the researcher wants to find out whether  their first language interact with  their second language or what are the problems that they have in pluralization and possessing of  nouns. Further, sixty  students  are composed to a number of multiple choice exercises and write a composition  in order to know whether they are good  in adding the possessive (s) and plural (s) suffixes. Furthermore, they were from the same class, nearly the same ages and gender, they were all girls. In fact, the researcher has got some other tests to know whether the participants are using the words correctly or not . As a result, the findings indicate that participants were more successful in the use of regular plural nouns than irregular ones.