Common grammartical errors in English writing - A case study with second-year students of information technology at HAUI

Abstract

This study is conducted to find out common grammatical errors in English writing paragraphs made by the second-year Information Technology students at Hanoi University of Industry (HaUI). Quantitative method was used with data collection instruments including survey questionnaires for seven teachers and 667 students, and 125 randomly chosen students’ weekly paragraph writings in the study. The findings revealed four most common grammatical errors, namely verb tense, sentence structure, verb form and subject-verb agreement. Besides, the data analysis results also indicated some causes and suitable error correction types to help students avoid these kinds of errors. This paper, hopefully, provides useful information for those who would like to find out effective ways to eliminate grammatical errors in writing in general and in writing paragraphs in particular.