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An Analysis of the Common Grammatical Errors in the English Writing made by 3rd Secondary Male Students in the Eastern Coast of the UAE

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An Analysis of the Common Grammatical Errors in the English Writing made by 3rd Secondary Male Students in the Eastern Coast of the UAE
An Analysis of the Common Grammatical Errors in the English Writing made by 3rd Secondary Male Students in the Eastern Coast of the UAE

By
Taiseer Mohammed Y. Hourani

A Dissertation Submitted to the Institute of Education of the British University in Dubai in part fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Education in
English Language Teaching

Supervisor:
Dr. Mick Randall

Institute of Education British University in Dubai Dubai - UAE June, 2008

Abstract

Having students to produce an organized, neat and error-free piece of writing has always been the life long dream and the ambition of all EFL teachers.
The purpose of this study is to explore the common types of grammatical errors made by Emirati secondary male students in their English essay writing. The study was conducted in five leading schools on the Eastern Coast of the UAE. The most common and salient grammatical errors which were found in the students essays included: passivization, verb tense and form, subject-verb agreement, word order, prepositions, articles, plurality and auxiliaries. These errors were classified and tabulated according to their number of frequency in the students essays. 105 students and 20 teachers participated in completing two separate questionnaires reflecting their attitudes and opinion towards the English writing skill. Follow up interviews with 5 supervisors were conducted to deepen understanding and interpretation of the results. The data revealed that the UAE students make different types of grammatical errors, and most of these errors were due to intralingual transfer. In this study, intralingual transfer errors were more frequent than interlingual ones. Furthermore, the findings and the results of this study also showed that the English writing skill of
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