Analysis of Written English: The Case of Female University Students in Saudi Arabia

Islam Ababneh

International Journal of Social Science Studies, 2017, vol. 5, issue 4, 1-5

Abstract: This research sheds some light on the difficulties faced by Saudi students when writing in the English language by examining specific writing errors committed by the students. Fifty female students in their fourth year of study at the University of Tabuk in the department of languages and translation who were enrolled in the subject of error analysis (a kind of linguistic analysis that emphasizes the errors learners make in a target language) were given a quiz to write approximately one page about each one of three topics: effects of social media on Saudi social life, Saudi marriage customs, and Saudi economy. The quiz was graded and the writing errors were classified into four main categories: grammatical, syntactic, substance, and lexical types following Hubbard et al. (1996) classifications of errors. Then, the number of errors in each category was counted and the corresponding frequency was calculated. The findings of this study show that most frequent types of errors made by the students were in the categories of grammar (tenses, singular/plural, articles), syntax (subject-verb agreement), and substance (spelling).

Keywords: error analysis; writing; Saudi students; essays (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://redfame.com/journal/index.php/ijsss/article/view/2264/2380 (application/pdf)
http://redfame.com/journal/index.php/ijsss/article/view/2264 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:rfa:journl:v:5:y:2017:i:4:p:1-5

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Social Science Studies from Redfame publishing Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Redfame publishing ().