Investigating Linguistic Errors in English Composition: A Case Study of Non-English Department EFL Undergraduate Students

Sabar Manik, Normina Purba and Rostina

International Journal of Education and Practice, 2017, vol. 5, issue 9, 146-154

Abstract: This study aimed at investigating linguistic errors committed by students majoring in Non-English Department in writing English composition. A total of 20 first year students at Economic College IBBI Medan who have taken an English subject course were involved in this study. Their compositions were analyzed for the purpose of scrutinizing linguistic errors they made. In analyzing the data, this study adopted Hubbard (1996) classification of errors including grammatical, syntactic, substance, and lexical errors. The results of data analysis discovered that students committed 352 errors in their compositions with the following frequencies: 82 errors in propositions, 32 errors in tenses, 29 errors in articles, 48 errors in subject verb agreements, 37 errors in word order, 17 errors in capitalization, 21 errors in punctuation, 28 errors in spelling, and 58 errors in word choice. Hence, it is concluded that the most difficult linguistic error that students face is prepositions, while the easiest part of linguistic error that poses difficulty for students is capitalization.

Keywords: Error analysis; English composition; Student’s errors; Linguistic error; EFL learners; Writing difficulty; EFL undergraduate students; Investigating linguistic errors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://archive.conscientiabeam.com/index.php/61/article/view/550/787 (application/pdf)
https://archive.conscientiabeam.com/index.php/61/article/view/550/3588 (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:pkp:ijoeap:v:5:y:2017:i:9:p:146-154:id:550

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in International Journal of Education and Practice from Conscientia Beam
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dim Michael ().