A Study of English Language Syntactical Errors Committed by Pakistani Higher Secondary Science Students

Abstract

This study aimed to identify syntactical errors, find out the frequency of these errors and identify the causes of these syntactical errors in the writing of intermediate science students. Data was collected in the form of 12 written samples from intermediate students from two public sector colleges. The findings revealed that the most frequently committed error was punctuation error. On the other hand, the lowest committed errors were run-on sentences, object missing, and fragments errors. It was also found that the students committed a total of 232 errors. The syntactical errors identified in the corpus were: subject-verb agreement errors, word form errors, word order errors, object missing, run-on sentences, orthographic errors, fragments, punctuation errors, article errors, preposition errors and conjunction errors. Although both interlanguage and intralanguage influences were found to be causing syntactical errors, intralanguage errors were more prevalent compared to interlanguage errors in participants' writings.