Abstract
This research reviews the grammatical errors written by sixty-eight, 3rd-year, Thai, Business English undergraduates when spontaneously writing narrative and descriptive paragraphs. The data was analysed using percentages, mean scores, standard deviation scores, and t-test p-values. The research results show that the students wrote 837 sentences with a mean score of 6.154 sentences per paragraph. 86 were written correctly and 751 were written incorrectly with 2131 grammar errors. The grammatically correct written sentences were all simple sentences. The most frequent errors identified were 227 verb (V) errors (10.652% of identified errors). There is a mean of 31.338 errors per participant (SD 9.957), a mean of 15.669 errors per paragraph, and a mean of 2.837 errors for each incorrectly written sentence. The female participants wrote a mean score of 12.685 sentences, which is 16.84% more than the males who wrote a mean of 10.857 sentences. Three error types by gender showed a high level of significance. These were noun errors with a t-test p-value of 0.012, punctuation errors with a t-test p-value of 0.037, and conjunction errors with a t-test p-value of 0.081. The female students made a significantly higher number of errors in these three error groups.
Highlights
English has developed into the most internationally spoken language (Foley [1], 2006)
The Scope And Aim of The Study: The aim of the study is the development of a clear understanding of the type and extent of writing errors made in order to provide contemporary information that can be used to enable English writing and grammar teachers to focus their time and attention where it is needed in a pragmatic way
There were 760 omission and addition errors identified. 646 (85%) were omission errors, which equates to a mean of 9.5 omission errors per participant (SD 5.64), a mean of 4.75 omission errors per paragraph, and a mean of 0.86 omission errors per incorrectly written sentence. 114 (15%) were addition errors, which equates to a mean of 1.67 addition errors per participant (SD 1.41), a mean of 0.84 addition errors per paragraph, and a mean of 0.15 omission errors per incorrectly written sentence
Summary
English has developed into the most internationally spoken language (Foley [1], 2006). An ever-increasing number of people are learning English as a second (ESL) or foreign language (EFL) (Block [2], 2002; Crystal [3], 2003; Holliday [4], 2005; Nunan [5], 2001). The growing demand for English language education and the growing need for well-qualified English language teachers have become increasingly important in Thailand where people often find it difficult to write in their native language and this is made worse when people attempt to write in a foreign language. The interference of their native language over their attempts to acquire and use a foreign language is well documented.
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