Morphosyntactic errors in learning English as a foreign language: The context of university students
Errores morfosintácticos en el aprendizaje del inglés como lengua extranjera: El contexto de estudiantes universitarios
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29394/Scientific.issn.2542-2987.2024.9.31.2.46-67Keywords:
morphosyntactic errors, written compositions, instruments, codes, error analysisAbstract
The objective of this research is to identify the most common morphosyntactic errors in the learning of English as a foreign language in the written production of 36 A1 level EFL students from a public university in Cotopaxi. Some authors agree that the most common morphosyntactic errors in texts written by students are word omission, spelling, article usage, double consonant usage, incorrect verb tense, incorrect word choice, punctuation, preposition, incorrect word form, agreement, pronouns, translated words, simple words, lexicon, style, number and order of adjectives (Suleman, Altayib and Muhammad, 2018); (Khatter, 2019); (Cordero and Martin, 2020); and (Soto, Vargas, Cajamarca and Escobar, 2020). To achieve the objective, the error analysis method was used. Two types of written compositions were used as data collection instruments, which were obtained in the last two weeks of July 2022. As results, the most common errors were Punctuation, Spelling, Capitalization and Sentence Structure, which belong to mechanical and grammatical errors. It is concluded that writing in English is quite challenging for students, as they need to be in constant contact with the English language. In this sense, if written errors are corrected early, students will have better written communication.
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