Thai EFL Students’ Writing Errors in Different Text Types: The Interference of the First Language

Somchai Watcharapunyawong,Siriluck Usaha

doi:10.5539/elt.v6n1p67

Abstract

This study aimed at analyzing writing errors caused by the interference of the Thai language, regarded as the first language (L1), in three writing genres, namely narration, description, and comparison/contrast. 120 English paragraphs written by 40 second year English major students were analyzed by using Error Analysis (EA).The results revealed that the first language interference errors fell into 16 categories: verb tense, word choice, sentence structure, article, preposition, modal/auxiliary, singular/plural form, fragment, verb form, pronoun, run-on sentence, infinitive/gerund, transition, subject-verb agreement, parallel structure, and comparison structure, respectively, and the number of frequent errors made in each type of written tasks was apparently different. In narration, the five most frequent errors found were verb tense, word choice, sentence structure, preposition, and modal/auxiliary, respectively, while the five most frequent errors in description and comparison/contrast were article, sentence structure, word choice, singular/plural form, and subject-verb agreement, respectively. Interestingly, in the narrative and descriptive paragraphs, comparison structure was found to be the least frequent error, whereas it became the 10th frequent error in comparison/contrast writing. It was apparent that a genre did affect writing errors as different text types required different structural features. It could be concluded that to enhance students’ grammatical and lexical accuracy, a second language (L2) writing teacher should take into consideration L1 interference categories in different genres.

Highlights

1.1 Background of the StudyOf the four English skills, writing has been found to be the most difficult for EFL learners to master, especially in Thai universities where English is mainly taught as a compulsory subject, since writing in a second language requires both syntactic and semantic knowledge. Weigle (2002) points out, “The process of text generation, or encoding internal representations into written texts, may be disrupted by the need for lengthy searches for appropriate lexical and syntactic choices” (p. 36)
120 English paragraphs written by 40 second year English major students were analyzed by using Error Analysis (EA).The results revealed that the first language interference errors fell into 16 categories: verb tense, word choice, sentence structure, article, preposition, modal/auxiliary, singular/plural form, fragment, verb form, pronoun, run-on sentence, infinitive/gerund, transition, subject-verb agreement, parallel structure, and comparison structure, respectively, and the number of frequent errors made in each type of written tasks was apparently different
All the three genres shared the same characteristics in terms of error categories, obviously, there was a difference in the frequency of errors made as claimed

Summary

Introduction

1.1 Background of the StudyOf the four English skills, writing has been found to be the most difficult for EFL learners to master, especially in Thai universities where English is mainly taught as a compulsory subject, since writing in a second language requires both syntactic and semantic knowledge. Weigle (2002) points out, “The process of text generation, or encoding internal representations (ideas) into written texts, may be disrupted by the need for lengthy searches for appropriate lexical and syntactic choices” (p. 36). Of the four English skills, writing has been found to be the most difficult for EFL learners to master, especially in Thai universities where English is mainly taught as a compulsory subject, since writing in a second language requires both syntactic and semantic knowledge. Chen (2007) states that owing to the age of globalization, the world seems to be smaller because of the perception of unlimited communication For this reason, all members of global institutions, for their own benefits in terms of education and business cooperation, have to stay connected with one another. Silva (2000) notes that a number of second language writing specialists are very much required due to the increasing demands of English writing courses. From Silva’s notion, a question like “Why are so many L2 writing specialists www.ccsenet.org/elt

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Conclusion