Grammatical Errors Analysis in English Writing of Ton Duc Thang First-Year Students

GRAMMATICAL ERRORS ANALYSIS IN ENGLISH WRITING OF TON DUC THANG FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS

Nguyen Quoc Tuan

Open University, HCMC, Vietnam

Email: tuannguyen26391@gmail.com

Abstract: Having students to produce an organized and error-free piece of writing has always been the life-long ambition of all EFL teachers. This study was conducted as an attempt to explore the common types of grammatical errors in English writings committed by first-year students who study in Ton Duc Thang University. These students were required to write an essay in English. The participants were 26 students, eight males and eighteen females. The findings of the study reveal that the participants committed four types of errors included: grammatical errors, lexical errors, semantic errors and mechanic errors. The most frequent error type is ‘grammatical errors’. This type of errors include verb tense and form, sentence structure, coordination, relative clause, singular/plural,  verb omission, subject omission, S-V agreement and passive voice. The causes of these errors hold responsible for interlingual factors, that is to say negative transfer of interference and overgeneralization, especially in cases of differences between English and Vietnamese (negative interference). Under some circumstances of similarities between L1 and L2 (positive transfer), errors are less frequent. Lastly the researcher recommended conducting another study to investigate the types of errors in speaking skill committed by students studying in TDT University.

Index Terms – errors, interligual errors, intraligual errors, language interference, interlanguage, overgeneralization, EFL, ELT.

1. INTRODUCTION

Writing is a problematic process even in the first language. It is even more complicated to write in a foreign language. Many studies point out that there tends to be interference from their first language in the process of writing in English (Cedar, 2004; Chen & Huang, 2003; Collins, 2007; Jarvis, 2000) for the beginning English Foreign Language (EFL) students. Al Buainain (2007) stated that writing is a dynamic and involves various processes. Writing in a foreign language often shows the greatest challenge to the students, particularly essay writing because in this activity, writing is usually lengthy and therefore it becomes more challenging than writing a short paragraph. Therefore, it is apparent that not everyone can be a good writer especially in L2. However, they can learn to write better. Students should be offered a way of understanding of their capacity to write with motivation and courage.

This research is an attempt to provide an overview of most common grammatical errors committed by TĐT University students (ESL learners) whose major is not English, and they are from different departures. ESL learners are taught grammar much more than any other language aspects, particularly in classroom setting. However, there is the need for learners to be informed of the common errors they make. This study, although in a small scale is hoped to be useful for teachers to identify the grammatical errors which are commonly committed by the students so that teachers could figure out some ways to minimize them, to enhance their grammar as well as language competency.