Lexical and Syntactic Errors in the Written English Texts Uploads and Comments of Nigerian Facebook Users

Abstract

Errors are part of learning as they could be precursors to a full mastery but they become bad when they are left uncorrected. This also applies to language learning and using a second language like the English language. If errors in the process of learning and using the English language are left uncorrected, they could lead to a breakdown in communication. It is on this basis therefor that this study pays attention to the lexical and syntactic errors of Nigerian Facebook text uploads. This study is done in order to unravel these common errors and proffer solutions by correcting them through re-writing them. The study due to space available for the research, extracted ten (10) Facebook posts of Nigerians and marked the lexical and syntactic errors in them for analysis and correction. At the end, the study presents amongst other findings that most Nigerian Facebook users do not care so much about applying punctuation marks especially the full stop in their posts and that there is a high level of spelling errors emerging from two causes; the first being the auto correct feature in most mobile devices and the hastiness, laziness or laxity on the part of the users to edit before posting.

Keywords: errors, lexical, syntactic, ESL, Facebook posts.