Writing Errors Research Articles

Cohesion and Errors in Essay Writing by Libyan EFL Students: A Study in the English Department, Omar Al-Mukhtar University

This study examines the misuse of the cohesion features in persuasive essays written by second-year students in the Department of English Language at Omar Al-Mukhtar University for the academic year 2022-2023. The study is guided by Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) cohesion theory. It utilized a qualitative descriptive method to study the cohesion and errors in essay writing by Libyan EFL students. The data is obtained from the participants by writing a persuasive essay that discusses one of the two topics provided. The findings of this study are three types of errors in the use of cohesion features, namely: reference features, lexical cohesion and conjunctions. The analysis also found several errors related to the structure and content of the essay, namely: the absence of thesis statement, the use of inappropriate punctuation marks, the absence of appropriate transition signals, the inconsistency of ideas, errors using parts of speech and diction that are inappropriate.

Syntactic Errors In English Technical Writing By ESL Learners: A Cognitive Analysis

Syntactic Errors In English Technical Writing By ESL Learners: A Cognitive Analysis

Analysis of Second Language Learners’ Errors in Composition Writing: Basis for the Proposed English Remedial Program in Higher Institution

Purpose: This study aimed to examine the students’ errors in composition writing.
 
 Theoretical Framework: This study is anchored to Corder’s (1974) model of error analysis in order to identify errors of the learners in their composition writing. The errors were discussed in five stages: collection of data containing errors, classification of errors, identification of errors, disclosure and evaluation of errors.
 
 Design/Methodology/Approach: The descriptive approach was used using qualitative and quantitative data since the study analyzed the errors committed by the students in composition writing. Moreover, descriptive design was used since the profile of the respondents in terms of sex was described. Lastly, error analysis was used in identifying the errors committed by the students in the writing of their autobiography.
 
 Findings: The study found that the Second Language Learners have committed numerous errors under mechanical, grammatical and structural categories such as: misspelling, lack of punctuation marks, errors in capitalization, wrong tense of verb, wrong subject and verb agreement, missing prepositions, fragments, faulty parallelism and comma splice.
 
 Research, Practical & Social Implications: This study has implications to language teaching and learning. Language professors should always incorporate lessons in grammar in all language courses. Further, the language learners should be more exposed to multiple writing tasks to enhance their writing skills. 
 
 Originality/ Value: Development of an evidence-based English remedial program to improve the English proficiency and academic writing skills of second language learners in higher institutions.

A Comparison between EFL Writing Errors in Computer-Based and Paper-Based Assignments

Advances in writing technologies have fostered the gradual move from Paper-Based (PB) to Computer-Based (CB) writing assessment in foreign language (FL) education. The trend was further boosted by the outburst of the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to drastic changes in teaching and assessment practices. In higher education (HE) contexts, writing assessment in English as a foreign language (EFL) is more and more often managed by means of online learning platforms, where students create and submit written assignments on the computer. This paper examines a sample of 100 EFL exam essays completed by 100 Italian university students. Half of the essays were computer-typed on Moodle from home during the Covid-19 lockdown, whereas the other half were handwritten on paper during a face-to-face exam session after the Covid-19 emergency. The study presented herein compares the amount and types of formal errors in the CB and PB written assignments respectively. The results of the comparison may be useful to suggest hypotheses on the impact that both writing modality and environment can have on the quality of EFL writing in assessment contexts.

ChatGPT’s Capabilities in Spotting and Analyzing Writing Errors Experienced by EFL Learners

The recent Large Language Models (LLMs) use advanced algorithms to identify areas where sentence structure and word choice can be improved and to detect grammar, syntax, and spelling mistakes in sentences. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of the Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) in detecting English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ writing errors compared to human instructors. This study examines the ChatGPT as a recent and advanced LLM in analyzing and processing EFL learners’ writing issues. This paper provides valuable insights into the potential benefits and challenges of integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into EFL writing education. Our results revealed that ChatGPT successfully identified most surface-level errors but could not detect writing errors related to deep structure and pragmatics. Conversely, human teachers could spot most of these issues. These findings suggest that while ChatGPT can be a valuable tool in identifying surface-level errors, it cannot replace human instructors’ expertise and nuanced understanding in detecting errors related to the more complex aspects of writing. The writing error types (data) are statistically analyzed. The descriptive analysis displays valuable insights into the reliability of the data and its potential implications, where the F-score, which measures the statistical model accuracy, is found to be 1.5. In the meantime, the p-value score, which shows the probability of obtaining results as extreme as the detected data, is calculated to be 0.23. The results suggest that the collected data is statistically significant, and further analysis may yield valuable insights.

An Analysis of English Writing Errors of Freshmen Students’ Essays: The Case of ‘Aleksandër Moisiu’ University

One of the most important elements of English language is the writing skill. It is a competence which human beings are not born with; on the contrary, it is learnt with practice and experience. In this respect, the focus must be on the hard work of English instructors, who deal painstakingly with the four skills, emphasizing writing, by means of comments, advice, explanations etc. In Albanian Educational system, foreign languages are given a considerable space. In high school students study up to two foreign languages. In ‘Aleksandër Moisiu’ University, apart from the courses that are related to the students’ profile of study, a specific importance is given to English Language as well, which helps to enhance their English Language competences. This leads us to believe that students’ progress in English is satisfactory; however, this is not always the case with all the skills. Even though students are very good at listening and speaking, when it comes to writing, many of them have serious problems, which are noticed while analyzing their written work. In this respect, this study aims to explore and analyze students’ errors through the procedure of error analysis. More specifically, a sample of 100 short essays of our freshmen students from different branches of study have been analyzed with this purpose in mind. This article analyses the types of errors and their frequency of occurrence in English language writing. Based on the research analysis, it was concluded that the mechanical errors, verb tense errors, preposition errors and to some degree article errors, resulted to be more problematic than the other categories. The importance of identifying and analyzing errors is to give English lecturers feedback on the effectiveness of their teaching techniques, information on what is to be reviewed and further notice on what parts of the syllabus need modification. Making errors is an essential part of learning and English teachers should view them from the perspective of improving their teaching approaches and techniques. Keywords: error, error analysis, grammatical mistakes, language learning

Comparative Analysis of Syntactical Errors in the Writings of ESL Students at Secondary Level in Pakistan

In this comparative study, the researchers analyzed the syntactical errors in English writings of secondary-level Pakistani ESL students; though syntactical errors are commonly found in each language, it is mostly committed by ESL students in English language writings. The present study was formed on the quantitative method. The population of the study was one government and one private secondary school in the district of Lahore. Due to ethical considerations, the schools' names were not mentioned. The researchers selected 60 students’ sample from both schools; the G-group 30 students represent government schools and P-group 30 students represent private schools; the questionnaire was divided among these students as a research instrument for data collection. The data was analyzed in statistical charts, and mentioned in numbers and percentages. The findings of this comparative study disclosed that private school students committed fewer syntactical errors than government school students justifying the role of medium of instruction.

Lexical Collocation Errors in Essay Writing: A Study into Vietnamese EFL Students and Their Perceptions

Writing requires practicing language by combining words, not using them separately. Accordingly, EFL learners commit errors in lexical usage or lexical collocations. Previous studies have highlighted the significance of collocations in writing and identifying lexical collocation errors, but few researchers have looked into this field in the Vietnamese context. Therefore, this paper investigates lexical collocation errors of Vietnamese EFL learners in their writing essays and their perceptions. 104 English majors at a private university in Vietnam participated in the study. Quantitative and qualitative data were collected, and essays and semi-structured interviews were research tools. The results show that Verb + Noun and Adjective + Noun are the two most common lexical collocation errors, which are attributed to learners’ lack of competence, negative transfer, synonym strategy, and approximation. The interview results suggest EFL learners do not understand collocations adequately, so there should be guidelines and instructions from teachers for better collocation practice.

Essay auto-scoring using N-Gram and Jaro Winkler based Indonesian Typos

Writing errors on e-essay exams reduce scores. Thus, detecting and correcting errors automatically in writing answers is necessary. The implementation of Levenshtein Distance and N-Gram can detect writing errors. However, this process needed a long time because of the distance method used. Therefore, this research aims to hybrid Jaro Winker and N-Gram methods to detect and correct writing errors automatically. This process required preprocessing and finding the best word recommendations by the Jaro Winkler method, which refers to Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia (KBBI). The N-Gram method refers to the corpus. The final scoring used the Vector Space Model (VSM) method based on the similarity of words between the answer keys and the respondent’s answers. Datasets used 115 answers from 23 respondents with some writing errors. The results of Jaro Winkler and N-Gram methods are good in detecting and correcting Indonesian words with the accuracy of detection averages of 83.64% (minimum of 57.14% and maximum of 100.00%). In contrast, the error correction accuracy averages 78.44% (minimum of 40.00% and maximum of 100.00%). However, Natural Language Processing (NLP) needs to improve these results for word recommendations.

A Study of Senior High Schools in Palembang: Students’ Errors in Writing

This research was intended to find out an error analysis of students' writing of eleventh grade of students of three senior high schools in Palembang. Quantitative content analysis research is conducted in this research as the methodology research. This research was conducted in three senior high schools in Palembang, namely, (1)SMA Muhammadiyah 6 Palembang which is accredited A, (2) SMA Nurul Amal Palembang which is accredited B, (3), SMA Muhammadiyah 8 Palembang which is accredited C. The total of participant of this research is 30 students. In collecting data, the researcher used writing sheet test and error checklist as the instrument of this research. The data was analyzed by using method of analyzing error by Ellis. The results of this research showed the errors of writing aspects on students writings of eleventh grade students of three high senior high schools in Palembang, namely, first is content errors, second is paragraph organizations errors, third is vocabulary error, forth is mechanic error, and fifth is grammar error. From the findings of this research could be conclude that some of eleventh-grade students in senior high schools in Palembang have less knowledge or lack information about five writing aspects as the essential knowledge to write text.

Portraying Students’ Grammatical Errors in Essay Writing: A Study at English Education Study Program Pattimura University

This research was conducted to find out types of grammatical errors made by students when writing expository essay. Data were collected from expository essay samples from 39 students of English Education Study Program Pattimura University. Document study method was used in this study by identifying, classifying and analyzing students’ grammatical errors based on Dulay, Burt, and Krashen theory that consist of omission, addition, misformation, and misordering. The analysis was focused on the part of speech such as noun, verb, pronoun, adjective, adverb, and preposition. It was found that the highest error done by the students was misformation which is 42,27%, the second was omission which is 42,11%, the third was addition which is 15,32%, and the last was misordering which is 0,30%. Based on this result, It is obvious that students should focus more on grammar mastery in order to minimize grammatical errors in their essay writing.

Analysis of Types and Solutions of Errors in High School English Writing

Analysis of Types and Solutions of Errors in High School English Writing

Sources of Students’ Errors in EFL Writing in Indonesia

The purpose of this review paper is to compile studies related to the sources of errors made by Indonesian students in a writing skill, to summarize some prior findings in order to provide updated literature on error analysis, to identify difficulties that Indonesian students face in an EFL writing context, and to investigate the factors that influence writing success and failure. The results showed that three major factors contribute to students' errors in EFL writing in Indonesia: the influence of the first language on writing, large class sizes, and a lack of writing practice. This is reasonable, as studies have demonstrated that despite years spent in school learning English, a significant number of errors can still be found in writing products composed by university students. Therefore, the teacher can use several strategies, including implementing a specific learning strategy that affects the target language, reducing the number of students in the class so that they have enough time to practice writing based on the writing process, and providing better instruction in the structure and grammar sections. Furthermore, teachers should spend more time and effort outside of the classroom to help students receive feedback, particularly through conferencing.

GRAMMATICAL ERROR ANALYSIS IN ENGLISH WRITING A CASE STUDY AT REKTOR PRIVATE INSTITUTE ENGLISH COURSE

This research aimed to investigate and reveal the grammatical error in English Writing made by the students in one of English Course in Makassar and how those errors appeared in a sentence. The writer also focused on the most frequent type of grammatical error and some other possible errors in English Writing. The writer used descriptive quantitative method to analyze the data which were found in the sentences. The writer used random sampling technique to choose which samples were to be analyzed. The data were determined according to the needs and purposes of this research. The writer found thirty-five samples. In this case, the writer used two methods of collecting data, library research and field research. After doing the analysis, the research result indicates that the most frequent error made by the students in English Writing in case of four types which occurs in this study. Omission, addition, malformation, and disordering are in the use of simple present tense. This thesis reveals that nearly 50% students of all subjects make many errors in it.

Types and Sources of Moroccan EFL Students’ Errors in Writing: A Study of Error Analysis

Language teachers and researchers argue that the process of learning a language is better understood if the errors that language learners make in constructing the new language system are carefully analyzed. Hence, analyzing errors has become essential for facing and overcoming problems and suggesting solutions regarding different aspects of language teaching and learning. Accordingly, this study seeks to examine the errors that Moroccan high school students of English make in writing, and investigate the reasons behind the occurrence of such errors. The sample of the study consists of students’ essays collected from different classes. The data collected were analyzed using Corder’s (1967) model, which includes three stages; data collection, description, and explanation. The study’s findings showed that Moroccan EFL students make different types of errors in writing. The most significant number of the errors found in the students’ essays are grammatical errors, and most of these errors are due to intralingual factors.

Concord Errors in Postgraduate Theses in Ghana: A Descriptive Analysis

The average postgraduate student in Ghana has about 20 years exposure in English language, having been taught and instructed in English from primary to tertiary level. It is, therefore, not far-fetched to expect the postgraduate student to commit minimal to no errors in their L2 writings. The seeming consequential minimal scholarly attention on errors in postgraduate writings regardless of the many studies on students’ errors is therefore not surprising. This study is an attempt to identify, categorise and describe the errors in postgraduate dissertations in Ghana and highlight their implications for language teaching. This exploratory qualitative study carries out a content analysis of 20 randomly selected MA, MPhil and PhD dissertations published between 2020 and 2021. The data are analysed using the theory of Error Analysis. After critically assessing the dissertations, seven (7) categories of concord errors were identified and recorded. These are; subject-verb concord errors, inverted subject concord errors, concord errors associated with ‘has’ and ‘have’, determiner-noun errors, concord errors on numbers, noun-pronoun antecedent errors and compound subject concord errors. This implies that postgraduate students are prone to errors, hence, the need to introduce or intensify the teaching of English at the postgraduate level.

Lexical Semantic Errors in Undergraduate Students' Academic Writing

In language teaching and learning, the correct use of vocabulary in the target language is as important as the language's grammar. This study investigates lexical semantic errors in the academic writing of 4th-year undergraduate students at the National University of Lesotho. Using the random sampling method, ten Action Research reports were selected. Errors were identified and analyzed using Hemchua and Schmitt's (2006) classification. Findings in the study indicate that errors resulting from the confusion of sense relations were most frequent, followed by errors in collocation and translation errors. The study recommends that teaching communication skills courses offered at the year 1 level should include explicit vocabulary teaching to minimize semantic errors, which, as is argued, result in incomprehensible texts.

A Study on Word Choice Errors in EFL Writing at the Tertiary Level : The Impact of L1 and Cultural Background

A Study on Word Choice Errors in EFL Writing at the Tertiary Level : The Impact of L1 and Cultural Background

A Study on Word Choice Errors in EFL Writing at the Tertiary Level : The Impact of L1 and Cultural Background

A Study on Word Choice Errors in EFL Writing at the Tertiary Level : The Impact of L1 and Cultural Background

A Comparative Analysis of Intralingual Errors in English Writing

This paper purposes to examine the ‘intralingual errors’ committed by undergraduate and graduate students in English writing in view of major grammatical categories. To this end, this paper takes a close look at the ill-formed patterns and causes that lie beneath in common in their writing errors. This study also aims to reveal whether the error continuum takes place from undergraduate students through graduate students in a typical grammatical category. Though lots of the validity and verifiability on the hypotheses of errors are put forward to account for intralingual errors, many questions have been still left unanswered and remain to be further recounted. To show as many pieces of empirical evidence as possible, I collected and examined, in a comparative manner, the 43 English compositions made by undergraduate students and by graduate students.