Narrative Report
Error in Writing English
Investigation into Errors Committed by the Secondary Students (grade VIII) in Writing English as a Foreign Language
MD. NAZIM MAHMUD
Freelance Researcher, E-mail: n_m_mud@yahoo.com
Cell No.: 01712 263855
1
Error in Writing English
Abstract In a foreign language situation “errors” explain the learner‟s inability to use appropriate grammatical structures, semantic categories and other linguistic units. This paper deals with “errors” in foreign language writing of the grade VIII students in order to explore why and what sort of errors they commit in writing. One hundred and twenty respondents from twelve nongovernment schools of Dhaka city were involved to render the errors with the association of writing composition test as well as focused group discussion. Congregated data is analyzed both in the quantitative and qualitative manner that reveals the respondents mostly undergo the errors of tense, spelling, article, subject-verb agreement, preposition and miscellaneous errors. The findings indicate the respondents‟ competence of writing English is quite low due to poor grammar knowledge of target language, interference from mother language and limited vocabulary size.
Introduction In Bangladesh, English is learnt as a foreign language institutionally. Foreign language is defined in the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (Richards, Platt, & Platt, 1992) as a language that is not a native language in a country. A foreign language is usually studied either for communication with foreigners who speak the language, or for reading printed materials in the language. Learning a different language is sometimes difficult since the target language has different elements compared to the native language. These differences sometimes cause students to make errors while using it. Among writing, reading, speaking and listening in English, writing is the most complex aspect but it is a crucial skill for
Investigation into Errors Committed by the Secondary Students (grade VIII) in Writing English as a Foreign Language
MD. NAZIM MAHMUD
Freelance Researcher, E-mail: n_m_mud@yahoo.com
Cell No.: 01712 263855
1
Error in Writing English
Abstract In a foreign language situation “errors” explain the learner‟s inability to use appropriate grammatical structures, semantic categories and other linguistic units. This paper deals with “errors” in foreign language writing of the grade VIII students in order to explore why and what sort of errors they commit in writing. One hundred and twenty respondents from twelve nongovernment schools of Dhaka city were involved to render the errors with the association of writing composition test as well as focused group discussion. Congregated data is analyzed both in the quantitative and qualitative manner that reveals the respondents mostly undergo the errors of tense, spelling, article, subject-verb agreement, preposition and miscellaneous errors. The findings indicate the respondents‟ competence of writing English is quite low due to poor grammar knowledge of target language, interference from mother language and limited vocabulary size.
Introduction In Bangladesh, English is learnt as a foreign language institutionally. Foreign language is defined in the Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (Richards, Platt, & Platt, 1992) as a language that is not a native language in a country. A foreign language is usually studied either for communication with foreigners who speak the language, or for reading printed materials in the language. Learning a different language is sometimes difficult since the target language has different elements compared to the native language. These differences sometimes cause students to make errors while using it. Among writing, reading, speaking and listening in English, writing is the most complex aspect but it is a crucial skill for
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