An Investigation into Lexical, Grammatical, and Semantic Errors in English Compositions of College Students in Taiwan

To discover learning deficiencies in student's writing abilities, some research findings indicate that the results through the analysis of errors found in written compositions can lead to a better understanding of problem areas EFL students are facing. In addition, the results will be conducive to the formulation of teaching strategies and syllabus design for the improvement of writing instruction both in ESL ad EFL situations Since the analysis of errors is widely used as one of the effective ways to diagnose the types of learning difficulties in English syntax, lexicon, morphology, and sentence construction reflected in compositions written by EFL students, this study is designed to examine the most common errors committed by college students in both Soochow University and Fu Hsing Kang College. Data were collected from the 169 compositions written by 53 English major students in the academic year of 1998. The errors were classified into three categories: lexical, grammatical, and semantic A total of 152 (16%) lexical errors are found. It indicates the lexical problems are not serious for the subjects. However, the result shows that 608 (66%) errors fall into the category of grammatical errors Among them, verb errors enjoy 30 percent, indicating verb is the most difficult part of English grammar for students. As for the semantic category, 165 (or 18%) errors are identified. Based on the findings, suggestions for writing teachers, and students are provided. Besides, for interested researchers, the writer of this study offered a comprehensive list of annotated bibliography of research and pedagogy on writing in English as a second and foreign language, especially on errors, error gravity, error treatment, evaluation, and feedback.

並列關鍵字

error analysis ； English writing ； English composition ； English grammar teaching

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