Abstract
The current study aimed at investigating the salient syntactic and semantic errors made by Jordanian English foreign language learners as writing in English. Writing poses a great challenge for both native and non-native speakers of English, since writing involves employing most language sub-systems such as grammar, vocabulary, spelling and punctuation. A total of 30 Jordanian English foreign language learners participated in the study. The participants were instructed to write a composition of no more than one hundred and fifty words on a selected topic. Essays were collected and analyzed statistically to obtain the needed results. The results of the study displayed that syntactic errors produced by the participants were varied, in that eleven types of syntactic errors were committed as follows; verb-tense, agreement, auxiliary, conjunctions, word order, resumptive pronouns, null-subject, double-subject, superlative, comparative and possessive pronouns. Amongst syntactic errors, verb tense errors were the most frequent with 33%. The results additionally revealed that two types of semantic errors were made; errors at sentence level and errors at word level. Errors at word level outstripped by far errors at sentence level, scoring respectively 82% and 18%. It can be concluded that the syntactic and semantic knowledge of Jordanian learners of English is still insufficient.
Highlights
Writing is a productive skill in a written manner, where a writer generates ideas and thoughts in an organized and constructed way
This review of findings starts with syntactic errors made by the respondents in order to answer research question one " What are the salient syntactic errors encountered by Jordanian EFL learners in composition writing?"
One could say that Jordanian EFL learners committed numerous syntactic and semantic errors
Summary
Writing is a productive skill in a written manner, where a writer generates ideas and thoughts in an organized and constructed way. Writing is deemed by many language experts as the most complicated skill for both foreign language learners and native speakers (Harris and Cunningham, 1994, Rababah, 2003, Alkhresheh, 2010). As it was described by Llach, (2011) writing is a troublesome skill for any language speakers, for non-native speakers. As foreign language learners, Jordanian learners of English encounter various difficulties in English writing (Rababah, 2001, 2003; Zughoul,1991). Thereby, collective efforts need to be made by language instructors, curriculum designers and officials at education sector in order to improve students' writing in the first language L1 and the second language L2 as well
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