A Study of Yemeni Secondary School Students’ Article Errors in their English Writing

Bushra Thabit Ahmed Qasem, Sabri Thabit Saleh Ahmed, Sunil V. Pawar

Abstract


This study has investigated Yemeni secondary school students’ articles errors with a reference to Labooza secondary school and AL-Samood secondary school in Radfan district. Data were collected through a writing test that targeted 100 students. The results revealed that 53.6% of students’ uses of the articles were wrong. It also showed that these errors can be subdivided into article omission errors 41.79%, article addition errors 23.88%, and article substitution errors 34.32%. These errors can be attributed to two sources, namely a- interference with students’ mother tongue (interlingual interference), constituting 39.93% and b- students’ insufficient knowledge of English articles as well as poor English teaching (intralingual), constituting 60.07%. As per these findings, these study provides some recommendations to syllabi designers, teachers and students of the Yemeni secondary schools.


Keywords


article errors, error analysis, Yemeni secondary school students

Full Text:

PDF

References


Abu Jarad, A. H. A. (2018) An Analysis of Grammatical Errors in the Written Performance of Palestinian English Major Students at Al Azhar University Gaza. (A published Ph.D. thesis submitted to Aligarh Muslim University, India) https://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/handle/10603/249086

Ahmed, S. T. S. & Qasem, B. T. A. (2019). Problems of teaching and learning English as a foreign language in South Yemen: A case study of Lahj Governorate. ELS Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2(4), 485-492. DOI: 10.34050/els-jish.v2i4.7458

Alasfour, A. S. (2018). Grammatical errors by Arabic ESL students: an investigation of L1 transfer through error analysis (Doctoral dissertation, Portland State University). https://www.proquest.com/openview/4734e52d16449b2f3d45c39f4db2aab7/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750

Al-Qoafi, Y. A. Q. (2011). Analyzing students Inter-language in Grammar: a case study of Yemeni 1st and 4th levels of University Students, English Departments, Colleges of Education.

Alsahafi, N. A. (2017). An investigation of written errors made by Saudi EFL foundation year students. (A published doctoral dissertation submitted to The University of New South Wales, Sydney) Australia.

Brown, H. D. (2007). Principles of Language Learning and Teaching (5rd Edition). Pearson Education Limited.

Corder, S.P. (1967, 1972). The significance of learners’ errors. Reprinted in J.C.Richards (ed.) (1922) Error Analysis: Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition. (pp. 19 – 27) London: Longman

Dulay, H. C., & Burt, M. K. (1974). You Can't Learn without Goofing: An Analysis of Children's Second Language. In Richards, J.C. (ed.) Error analysis: perspectives on second language acquisition.( pp. 95 – 123). Essex: Longman Group Limited

Greenbaum, S. &. Nelson, G. (2002). An introduction to English grammar. (2nd ed.), Lonodon and New York: Longman Pearson Education.

Hasyim, S.(2002). Error Analysis in the Teaching of English. Jurusan Sastra Inggris, 4 (1), 42-50. DOI: 10.9744/kata.4.1.62-74

Hourani, T. M. Y. (2008). An analysis of the common grammatical errors in the English writing made by 3rd secondary male students in the Eastern Coast of the UAE. (master dissertation submitted to the British University in Dubai, UAE) https://bspace.buid.ac.ae/handle/1234/225

Keshavarz, M. (2011). Contrastive analysis & Error analysis. Tehran: Rahnama Press

Lado, R. (1957). Linguistics Across Cultures: Applied Linguistics for Language Teachers. University of Michigan Press.

Ridha, N. (2012). The Effect of EFL Learners' Mother Tongue on their Writings in English: An Error Analysis Study. Journal of the College of Arts. University of Basrah,60, 22-45.

Shuga’a, L. A. A. (2008). Grammatical Errors of Yemeni Learners of English in Governmental and Private Secondary Schools: A Comparative Study. (Master Thesis, Taiz University. Yemen)

VanPatten, B., & Benati, A. G. (2010). Key terms in second language acquisition. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21462/jeltl.v7i1.742

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.






JELTL (Journal of English Language Teaching and Linguistics); Web: www.jeltl.org; Email: journal.eltl@gmail.com


Creative Commons License
JELTL by http://www.jeltl.org is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License


Indexed and Abstracted BY: