GRAMMATICAL ERRORS IN ACADEMIC WRITING OF ENGLISH SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS

Nguyen Huynh Minh Anh, Nguyen Hai Yen, Nguyen Thi Y Tho, Luong Minh Nhut

Abstract


The study aimed to analyze the common grammatical errors of students in academic writing. Mixed-method research was implemented for this study. The study team gathered 110 essays from learners in the Writing Course 4 – Social Texts classroom. Then, the researchers conducted interviews with 23 learners in order to ascertain the reasons behind their grammatical errors in writing and provide suitable remedies. Participants in this research were second-year students majoring in English Studies in the Department of English Language and Culture's High-Quality Program at a Vietnamese university. The findings revealed that the errors that made up the biggest percentage of all errors were those involving the articles (25,5 %), prepositions (14,2%), and plural/singular forms (13,7 %). On the other hand, tenses (7%), passive voice (3,8%), and subject-verb agreement (1,7%) errors had the respective lowest percentages. The results of the interviews with 23 randomly selected students in this course showed that students struggled with academic writing on a number of different levels, with the root causes being a lack of vocabulary knowledge, carelessness, and uncertainty about basic grammatical structure.

 

Article visualizations:

Hit counter


Keywords


academic writing, causes, grammatical difficulty, grammatical errors, grammatical error analysis

Full Text:

PDF

References


Alanazi, M. S. (2017). Assessment of learning difficulties (LD) in writings of Arab learners: A perspective. International Journal of Education and Literacy Studies, 5(3), 73-81.

Al Fadda, H. (2012). Difficulties in academic writing: From the perspective of King Saud University postgraduate students. English Language Teaching, 5(3),123-130.

Atashian, S., & Al-Bahri, K. (2018). Towards Arab students’ grammatical errors in academic writing & their perceptions. Arab World English Journal (AWEJ), 140-145.

Brown, H. D. (2000). Principles of language learning and teaching (4th ed.). New York, NY: Longman.

Brown, H. (2007). Principles of language learning and teaching. New York: Pearson Education Inc.

Budiarta, L. G. R., Suputra, P. E. D., & Widiasmara, I. K. (2018). An analysis of grammatical errors in narrative writing committed by the nineth-grade students of junior high school. International Journal of Language and Literature, 2(3), 98-107.

Cambria, J., & Guthrie, J. T. (2010). Motivating and engaging students in reading. New England Reading Association Journal, 46(1), 16-29.

Christiansen, T. W. (2015). The rise of English as the global lingua franca. Is the world heading towards greater monolingualism or new forms of plurilingualism? Lingue e Linguaggi, 129-154.

Ellis, Rod (2014). Second Language Acquisition Oxford: Oxford University Press

Ellis, R. (1994). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. New York: Oxford University Press.

Farooq, M. S., Uzair-Ul-Hassan, M., & Wahid, S. (2020). Opinion of second language learners about writing difficulties in English language. South Asian Studies, 27(1).

Fithriani, R. (2018). Communicative game-based learning in EFL grammar class: suggested activities and students’ perception. JEELS (Journal of English Education and Linguistics Studies), 5(2), 171-188.

Gass, S. M., Behney, J., & Plonsky, L. (2013). Second language acquisition: An introductory course. (4th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.

Garner, B. A., & Greene, R. L. (2012). Which language rules to flout. Or flaunt. The New York Times, 27. classroom: An experiment. ERIC: Centre for Applied Linguistics, Arlington, Virginia. EDRS: ED 135 260.

Hernandez, M. S. (2011). Raising students’ awareness about grammatical and lexical errors via email. Revista de Lenguas Modernas, 4, 263-281.

Heryanti, R. Sucipto, M.H, and Makmur (2017). The analysis of common grammatical errors in writing narrative essay of English Study program students at Jambi University. Jurnal Pendidikan dan Pengajaran, 4(2), 83-92.

Heydari, P. & Bagheri, M. S. (2012). Error analysis: Sources of L2 learners’ errors. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2(8), 1583-1589.

Indrilla, N., & Ciptaningrum, D. S. (2018). An approach in teaching writing skills: Does it offer a new insight in enhancing students’ writing ability. Journal: A Journal on Language and Language Teaching, 21(2), 124–133.

Ibrahim, M. M. M., & Ibrahim, A. I. (2020). An analysis of grammatical errors in academic writing of EFL students. Asian Journal of Social Science and Management Technology, 2(6), 81-90.

Jobeen, A., Kazemian, B., & Shahbaz, M. (2015). The role of error analysis in teaching and learning of second and foreign language. Education and Linguistics Research, 1(2), 52-62.

Karani, E. (2007). Area of problem in writing recount text. Master’s thesis, Universitas Palangka Raya, Palangka Raya.

Khansir, A.A. (2012). Study of the Syntactic Errors Committed by EFL And ESL Learners At Under Graduate Level. Indian Linguistics, 73 (1-4), 89-100.

Khansir, A. A. (2013). Error analysis and second language writing. Theory and Practice in Language Studies,3(2), 363-370.

Kharmilah, P., & Narius, D. (2019). Error analysis in writing discussion text made by students at English department of Universitas Negeri Padang. Journal of English Language Teaching, 8(3), 327–335.

Kusumawardhani, P. (2017). The analysis of errors of omission in English narrative composition made by EFL students. JELE (Journal of English Language and Education), 3(2), 84-96.

Ling, S. K., & Stapa, M. (2011). An error analysis of the English essays written by the Chinese undergraduates in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.

Megantari, N. W., & Budasi, I. G. (2018). The error analysis reflected in English recount writing. Lingua Scientia, 25(1), 37–52.

Mickan, P. (2001) Beyond grammar: Text as unit of analysis. In James, J. E. (2003). Grammar in the Language Classroom. (pp. 220-227). Singapore: SEAMEO. Regional Language Centre.

Na-ngam, S. (2005) Common grammatical errors in foundation English in written assignments of Prince of Songkhla University students with high and low English entrance examination Scores. Research paper: Prince of Songkla University.

Nuruzzaman, M., Islam, A. S., & Shuchi, I. J. (2018). An analysis of errors committed by Saudi non-English major students in the English paragraph writing: A study of comparisons. Advances in language and literary studies, 9(1), 31-39.

Owu-Ewie, C., & Williams, M. R. (2017). Grammatical and lexical errors in students’ English composition writing: The case of three senior high schools (SHS) in the central region of Ghana. Sino-us English teaching, 14(8), 463-482.

Pham, T. T. T. (2018). Teaching practice collaborative learning in English for Academic Purposes writing classes at Vietnam National Economics University. Can Tho University Journal of Science, 54(2), 84-89.

Phuket, P. R. N., & Othman, N. B. (2015). Understanding EFL students' errors in writing. Journal of Education and Practice, 6(32), 99-106.

Pongsukvajchakul, P. (2019). Error analysis in English paragraph writings of Thai university students. Udon Thani Rajabhat University Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 8(2), 141-155.

Promsupa, P., Varasarin, P., & Brudhiprabha, P. (2017). An analysis of grammatical errors in English writing of Thai university students. HRD Journal, 8(1), 93-104.

Rattanadilok Na Phuket, P., & Bidin, S. J. (2016). Native language interference in writing: A case study of Thai EFL learners. International Journal of Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 4(16), 25-36.

Sari, R. M. (2019). The causes of grammatical errors made by EFL students in writing essay. Linguists: Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching, 5(2), 86-93.

Singh, C. K. S., Singh, A. K. J., Razak, N. Q. A., & Ravinthar, T. (2017). Grammar errors made by ESL Tertiary students in writing. English Language Teaching, 10(5), 16-27.

Suwastini, N. K. A., & Yukti, W. G. S. (2017). Errors analysis in short biography text written by the 11th grade students of a vocational high school in Singaraja. International journal of language and literature, 1(1), 1-10.

Tarigan, N. W. P., Siregar, Y. S. P., Mawarni, C. I., Simanjuntak, C. W. B., & Tanjaya, A. (2019). Grammatical errors on students’ writing of recount text. Linguistic, English Education and Art (LEEA) Journal, 3(1), 189–200.

Tuan, L. T. (2010). Enhancing EFL learners' writing skill via Journal Writing. English Language Teaching, 3(3), 81-88.

Walsh, K. (2010). The importance of writing skills: Online tools to encourage success. Retrieved December, 27, 2012.

Wulandari, R. S., & Harida, R. (2021). Grammatical error analysis in essay writing. Deiksis, 13(1), 73–81.

Yahya, A., Ishak, H., Zainal, Z., Faghat, L. J., & Yahaya, N. (2012). Error analysis of L2 learners’ writings, a case study. In Proceedings from: 2012 International Conference on Language, Medias and Culture. IPEDR (33, 114-118).

Zafar, A. (2016). Error analysis: A tool to improve English skills of undergraduate students. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Science, 217, 697-705.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejel.v7i6.4547

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright © 2015 - 2023. European Journal of English Language Teaching (ISSN 2501-7136) is a registered trademark of Open Access Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library (Biblioteca Nationala a Romaniei). All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms.

All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).