Grammar exercises as a help in diminishing the errors in Spanish structure due to the influence of the Maltese language

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on errors produced by students who sat for the Secondary Education Certificate of Spanish in May/June 1996. This analysis is backed up by literature review stating the three principal analyses - Contrastive Analysis, Interlanguage and Error Analysis. These theories are scientific studies aimed to analyse the learning process of a foreign language. We then proceeded by analysing the actual errors found in the papers we examined. The next chapter is a follow-up, dealing with correction since continouos correction can discourage the student, whereas no correction at all can provoke insecurity in certainty students. In the chapter which follows we state the existing situation of Spanish in Malta together with our proposals for future work. In the last part of our dissertation there are exercises, games and activities which seive as a guideline to eliminate some of the difficulties which students may encounter in their learning process.