Impact of Errors on the College of Education Students’ Written Communication (Published)
Composition writing is a crucial component in assessing students’ mastery and proficiency of English language across all levels of the Ghanaian educational system. In this study, we sought to identify the impact of errors on the student-teachers’ written communication in Colleges of Education in Ghana. The study purposed to determine how the errors affected the students’ written communication. A qualitative approach, with a case study design was used for the study. The study targeted second-year College of Education students in Jasikan and St. Teresa’s Colleges of Education, with a total of 100 students and 5 tutors randomly and purposively sampled respectively. Text analyses and a semi-structured interview were employed to collect data and the data were analyzed thematically. It was found that these errors have significant impact on students’ written communication. Student-teachers’ errors transcend onto pupils in class and students’ communication is often not clear.
Citation: Silas Afeadie and Samuel Bruce Kpeglo (2022) Impact of Errors on the College of Education Students’ Written Communication, International Journal of English Language Teaching, Vol.10, No.1, pp., 23-34
Keywords: Error Analysis, Students, error types, written communication
Lessons In Lexical Error Analysis. Revisiting Hemchua And Schmitt (2006); An Analysis Of The Lexical Errors In The Compositions Of Greek Learners (Published)
This paper replicates Hemchua and Schmitt’s (2006) study into types and frequency of lexical errors in Thai university students’ compositions. To investigate the usability, reliability and validity of their framework, 20 Greek learners’ compositions were analysed, following the original methodology. Results concerning the number, distribution and frequency of lexical errors were remarkably similar; approximately one third of all errors were formal, two thirds were semantic and less than 13% were attributable to transfer. Four of the five most common sub-categories of error in the replication were also found in the most common five sub-categories in the original study, suggesting that the framework, when applied to a different context and nationality, produces similar results and may reveal common problems between different English learners with different first languages. Difficulties in error identification and categorisation are discussed in detail, and suggestions for development of an improved framework for analysing lexical error are made.
Keywords: Error Analysis, Formal Errors, Lexical Error Analysis, Marking Written compositions, Semantic Errors, Transfer Errors
THE COMPREHENSION AND PRODUCTION OF ENGLISH GRAMMATICAL COLLOCATIONS BY KUWAITI EFL LEARNERS (Published)
This study aims to investigate Kuwaiti EFL learners’ ability to comprehend and produce grammatical collocations in English. It also examines whether their English proficiency level and the type of grammatical collocation influence their comprehension and production of such collocations. The results show that the difference in performance between the advanced learners and intermediate learners was enough to differ statistically on both comprehension and production tests. Furthermore, the most frequent types of errors that may occur as well as some possible reasons for their occurrence have been identified. Noun + preposition and adjective + preposition were the most problematic types in comparison with other types in both groups. It has been suggested that L1 interference plays a central role in the comprehension and production of grammatical collocations by Kuwaiti EFL learners. Particularly, literal translation from Arabic has been found to be the main reason for grammatical collocation errors. The prepositions in Arabic do not usually correspond to their English counterparts e.g., at in angry at, which is literally translated to *angry from in Arabic. Finally, lack of knowledge of grammatical collocations is also an important reason behind such errors. It might be suggested that English language curricula taught in Kuwait do not pay enough attention to grammatical collocations. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications that may help teachers of English as a second/foreign language increase the awareness of grammatical collocations.
Keywords: Collocations, Error Analysis, Kuwaiti EFL learners, Kuwaiti Spoken Arabic, L1 interference, SLA, grammatical collocations
A Linguistic Analysis of Errors in Learners’ Compositions: The Case of Arba Minch University Students (Review Completed - Accepted)
This study reports the dominant linguistic errors that occur in the written productions of Arba Minch University (hereafter AMU) students. It examines the nature of the errors that AMU students commit in expressing their ideas in writing. A sample of paragraphs was collected for two years from students ranging from freshmen to graduating level. The sampled compositions were thencoded, described, and explained using error analysis method. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses showed that almost all components of the English language (such as orthography, morphology, syntax, mechanics, and semantics) in learners’ compositions have been affected by the errors. On the basis of surface structures affected by the errors, the following kinds of errors have been identified: addition of an auxiliary (*I was read by gass light), omission of a verb (Sex before marriage ^ many disadvantages), misformation in word class (riskable for risky) and misordering of major constituents in utterances (*I joined in 2003 Arba minch university). The study identified two causes which triggered learners’ errors: intralingual and interlingual. However, the majority of the errors attributed to intralingual causes which mainly resulted from the lack of full mastery on the basics of the English language
Keywords: Error, Error Analysis, Error Taxonomy, Interlingual, Intralingual, Linguistic Component