scholarly journals Error Analysis in Academic Writing: A Case of International Postgraduate Students in Malaysia

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 141
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Amiri ◽  
Marlia Puteh

This paper examines the different types of writing errors performed by 16 international postgraduate students undertaking an intensive English course at a public university in Malaysia. It was mandatory for international postgraduate students who obtained less than IELTS Band 6 to undertake an Intensive English Course (IEC) offered by the University, prior to entering their respective faculties’ academic programs. The students were required to write a 3-5 page term paper assignment on a topic related to their field of study. Mixed methodology approach was employed to examine and analyze corpus of students’ term papers. The errors in the term papers were identified and classified accordingly. The results of the study revealed that four most common English language errors committed by the participants were sentence structure, articles, punctuation and capitalization. This study also shed light on the manner in which students assumed the rules of English to that of their native language. Such insight is useful for both instructors and students because it provides significant information on the building blocks experienced by English language learners in academic writing. 

2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (7) ◽  
pp. 105-116
Author(s):  
I. E. Abramova ◽  
A. V. Ananyina

The article describes the practical implementation of an experimental model for teaching academic writing to non-linguistic students of humanities at three levels of higher education. Improving the quality of domestic scientific publications submitted to high-ranking journals requires new effective pedagogical technologies. Theory and methodology analysis, as well as empirical observations show that the problems faced by Russian-speaking authors of academic texts can be divided into two categories: strong Russian accent that creates the language barrier and hinders understanding, and flawed academic style that leads to the cross-cultural academic barrier. The described ten-year study involved 25 students of Petrozavodsk State University, aged 17 to 28, who subsequently completed bachelor’s, master’s and postgraduate programs. At each of the three stages, the participants completed a set of tasks aimed at consistent and systematic formation of academic writing competence through writing abstracts (bachelors), conference proceedings (master’s students) and full-text academic articles (postgraduate students). To collect and process the data, the researchers used an open-ended questionnaire, the observation method, expert assessment, and descriptive statistics. The study results showed that the systematic approach helps to effectively eliminate structural and stylistic writing problems over the course of studies. However, the difficulties associated with the manifestation of the Russian accent in written English-language academic discourse are more resistant. The authors make the conclusion that the systematic development of academic writing skills in English will help to overcome obstacles for the internationalization of Russian science.


2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 33
Author(s):  
Humaira Humaira

Ambiguityis strictly speaking, used to describe aword, phrase, or sentence when it has more thanone interpretation.Sometimes we found many ambiguities sentences when we are reading or listen to the English sentences. Multiinterpretations not only happen from the English language learners, but also in native speakers themselves. Thisstudy investigated about is there any different interpretation of ambiguities sentences made by students of class c,second semester students of PPs Unnes?, and what types of ambiguous sentence majority missing in theirtranslating. The objectives of study were to know that the students of PPs Unnes have different interpretations whenthey are translating the ambiguities sentences and to identifying the types of ambiguities. This study used descriptivequalitative approach; ten postgraduate students from Class C PPs Unnes participated in this study as respondents.All were university students majoring in English. They were given 5 ambiguous sentences. Sentences includedifferent sources of ambiguity such as, structural ambiguity, and lexical ambiguity. The subjects were asked totranslate the sentences into Indonesian language. The result of study presented that participants who are not nativespeakers of English exhibited the different interpretations in translate both the given types of ambiguous sentences.Almost all of ten respondents have different interpretations in each ambiguous sentence. Most respondents showdifferent translating majority in lexical ambiguous sentences.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebaz Bahadeen Mohammed Nuri ◽  
Awder Raza Aziz ◽  
Kochar Ali Saeed ◽  
Shaiy Karwan Tofiq ◽  
Soma Soran Ahmed

English language learners use social media platforms for improving their language skills through exchanging ideas, sharing their thoughts, and getting exposed to authentic language. The use of social media by learners might yield positive or adverse effects. This study, therefore, explores the pedagogical consequences of some social media platforms on Iraqi Kurd EFL learners. It Highlights the significant impacts of social media on learning English, vocabulary, and spelling. It explicitly attempts to discover how social media affects English language learning, word choices, and spelling for Kurd EFL learners. A questionnaire is used to randomly collect the study data from 96 Kurdish students studying English at various academic institutions. The data was organized and analyzed by SPSS. It was found that Kurd EFL learners use social media platforms extensively for numerous purposes, improving their English language skills being one of them. The results suggest that social media assists learners in learning and practising new vocabulary; However, it has a negative impact on the students spelling and academic writing skills. Kurd EFL learners use abbreviated forms and unnecessarily shortened forms under the influence of social media.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 202-216
Author(s):  
Rebaz Bahadeen Mohammed Nuri ◽  
Awder Raza Aziz ◽  
Kochar Ali Saeed ◽  
Shaiy Karwan Tofiq ◽  
Soma Soran Ahmed

English language learners use social media platforms for improving their language skills through exchanging ideas, sharing their thoughts, and getting exposed to authentic language. The use of social media by learners might yield positive or adverse effects. This study, therefore, explores the pedagogical consequences of some social media platforms on Iraqi Kurd EFL learners. It Highlights the significant impacts of social media on learning English, vocabulary, and spelling. It explicitly attempts to discover how social media affects English language learning, word choices, and spelling for Kurd EFL learners. A questionnaire is used to randomly collect the study data from 96 Kurdish students studying English at various academic institutions. The data was organized and analyzed by SPSS. It was found that Kurd EFL learners use social media platforms extensively for numerous purposes, improving their English language skills being one of them. The results suggest that social media assists learners in learning and practising new vocabulary; However, it has a negative impact on the students spelling and academic writing skills. Kurd EFL learners use abbreviated forms and unnecessarily shortened forms under the influence of social media.


RELC Journal ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-52
Author(s):  
Liang Li ◽  
Margaret Franken ◽  
Shaoqun Wu

Lexical bundles, recurrent multiword combinations in a register, are extremely common and important discourse building blocks in academic writing. An increasing number of studies have investigated lexical bundles in academic writing in recent years, but few studies have explored L2 learners’ interpretations of their own bundle production, particularly sentence initial bundle production. Investigating the sources that have appeared to influence learners’ choices and knowledge of bundles is important as it complements what we know about the structural and functional features of lexical bundles and provides useful first-hand information for second language writing pedagogy. The present study interviewed five Chinese postgraduate students to probe possible reasons for their use of the typical sentence initial bundles identified in the self-built Chinese Masters and PhD thesis corpora. The interviews revealed diverse explanations including interlingual transfer, classroom learning, noticing in reading, a lack of rhetorical confidence, and misunderstanding of rhetorical conventions. The results suggest the need for raising students’ awareness of the common sentence starters in postgraduate academic writing, increasing their confidence as student writers, familiarizing them with rhetorical conventions, and incorporating effective corpus-based tools into pedagogical practices.


Lenguaje ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-478
Author(s):  
Nora Lucía Marulanda Ángel ◽  
Juan Manuel Martínez García

Despite recent efforts to improve college-level students’ academic writing, the ways this skill develops continues to be vastly unexplored. Students do not meet the current literacy demands posed by higher education. These demands become more strenuous when students have to write in English, a language they do not master. The current study reports on the implementation of a systematized assistance model for writing in English as a Foreign Language in a Colombian public university’s bilingual teacher education program. Weekly tutoring sessions were provided to 16 students from an academic writing course in one semester. Common error patterns in their writing samples were identified and categorized with an analytical rubric and students’ reactions to the systematized assistance model were collected through a questionnaire. Results revealed that students benefited significantly from tutor support and professor’s feedback especially in terms of metalinguistic awareness, knowledge of the Process Approach to writing and accuracy in language convention use.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
I Bakhov ◽  
◽  
L Lozynska ◽  
A Alyeva ◽  
◽  
...  

Abstract. Grammar is an important component of written academic discourse. Knowing the grammatical basis of a sentence avoids grammatical errors. The purpose of the study is to reveal the peculiarities of making grammatical errors in English-language written academic discourse. Results of research. As practice shows, most often in English-language written academic discourse the following grammatical errors occur: errors that occur in the process of matching the subject and predicate in a sentence; errors that occur when using the right time in verbs and / or adverbs; errors that occur in the use of articles. The reasons for non-compliance with the requirements for the use of articles are: the use of the noun "author (s)" without the specified article; use of the specified article "the" without grounds; frequent neglect of the inability to use a computable noun in the singular without an article. Regarding the incorrect use of prepositions, in the phrase "practical research is aimed at the system" the preposition "at" should be used instead of the preposition "to". A grammatical error, which consists in using the adjective "own" without a possessive pronoun, occurs in the following phrases: "the search for directions of own activity", "formation of own strategy of activity". Grammatical error related to non-compliance with the requirements for the use of specific and temporal forms of the verb: in today's conditions, in order to solve personal problems, some people use illegal acts. There are cases when in the translation of the English text instead of the noun complex definitions or a number of such definitions are used. An example of incorrect construction of a sentence structure is the expression of a predicate in a sentence in the passive form of a verb. A compound noun is not used in English. In English, the error is quite common when the infinitive is used after the verb "allow". Also a grammatical error is the frequent use of the noun "readiness" in articles of psychological and pedagogical direction. According to the results of the research, the peculiarities of grammatical errors in the English-language written academic discourse are revealed; features of English-language written academic discourse in the context of the analysis of the programs of educational disciplines developed by the leading institutions of higher education of Ukraine are considered; the parameters according to which the evaluation of academic written texts is carried out are revealed; features of English-language academic writing are analyzed. It is noted that as an option to avoid grammatical errors in English written academic discourse, you need to use modern information technology, including programs to check English academic writing for grammatical errors. Based on the results obtained during the study, the prospects for further research are seen in a comprehensive study of the features of English-language academic discourse.


2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bayan Ibrahim AlHashemi ◽  
Muneerah Shuraim AlSubaeie ◽  
Nadia Ahmad Shukri

Data from previous academic literature reveals that Saudi postgraduate students face a great deal of challenges in academic writing. Some of these challenges are related to the choice of terminology, planning skills, outlining and some other ones. Such data call for significant curriculum developments in postgraduate programs. However, at the heart of any curriculum design is the deliberate analysis of students’ lacks, needs and wants. Once these items are determined, curriculum designers and teachers are required to set clear and relevant learning objectives and chose appropriate teaching materials and means of assessment (Otilia, 2015). Using a five-point Likert scale, the current study aims at investigating postgraduate students’ academic writing needs at the English Language Institute (ELI) of King Abdul-Aziz University. This investigation involves the written tasks students are required to perform, the learning sources they use, and their overall writing needs as perceived by the students themselves as well as by their teachers. The results of the study reveal that among the various academic writing needs of postgraduate students, the use of correct punctuation, spelling, proper writing mechanics and plagiarism-free content should were given the highest priority as perceived by their teachers. Students, on the other hand, indicated that the overall academic writing ability, proper representation of ideas, use of proper mechanical conventions and choice of field-related words are among the skills they need the most in order to succeed. Based on these results, a group of recommendations and implications were drawn and directed to the Postgraduate Unit.


2019 ◽  
Vol IV (IV) ◽  
pp. 178-186
Author(s):  
Akbar Ali ◽  
Abdul Khaliq ◽  
Fazal Hanan

Text messaging language is taking the place of Standard English language which is applied as a source of communication via cell phone. It is emerging in the form of a new language. It is influencing the formal writing of the learners. Keeping in view the above-mentioned purpose, the current study was planned to find out the influence of it on academic writing.27 University English language teachers and 160 students were the Participants of the study. Data were collected through two questionnaires. Collected data was analyzed through the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The results revealed that students are inclined to the use of SMS language as it is easy to use. It is an easy, convenient and speedy way of communication. The findings also showed that teachers and students are fully aware of the negative influence of text messaging on their academic writing. It is spoiling the punctuation, spelling and sentence structure of the English language.


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