RELATIVE STUDY OF WRITTEN ENGLISH LANGUAGE ERRORS AT HSSC LEVEL IN GOVERNMENT COLLEGES IN SINDH: COMPARISONOF RURAL AND URBAN SINDH

Abstract

Teaching English as a second language has always been a big challenge for teachers who offer their services at non-native settings. Moreover, it has not been less than a challenging for a teacher to teach error-free writing techniques to his or her students. It demands an extensive and untiring efforts to serve this purpose in terms of writing. The teachers in Pakistan always put their extra efforts to address the common grammar mistakes and errors committed by L2 learners in a target language.  The study was set to investigate common English language errors made by public and private college students belonging to both urban and rural parts of Sindh, Pakistan. The study found out the most common and apparent grammatical errors in students’ essays including passive voice, verb, tense, subject-verb agreement, prepositions, articles, plurals and auxiliaries.  Besides, errors were identified categorically according to their classification. The study involved 60 students and 20 teachers who were free to express their attitudes and opinions towards L2 English writing skills.    The findings revealed that there were various grammatical errors between the HSSC students of both urban and rural Sindh. All those errors were due to intra-lingual transfer. The study found out that intra-lingual transfer of errors were more rampant than the inter-lingual ones. In addition, the findings of study showed that the English writing skills of public colleges in Sindh need constant practice and drill.  Based on the findings, it is recommended that educators, policymakers as well as ESL teachers can get an invaluable language benefit. Moreover; this study will give teachers an insight to be well prepared before their learners for the target language. Finally, it is hoped that findings of this study would be a greater assistance in developing English writing skills among secondary students in Sindh, Pakistan.

Keywords: Error analysis, Assessment, language learning, Language acquisition, English Second language, prepositions, grammatical errors, articles, passives, tenses, frequency of occurrence.

DOI: 10.7176/RHSS/11-14-08

Publication date:July 31^st 2021