The frequency of errors in articles and prepositions in the writing skill of graduate ESL Learners of Pakistan
Loading...
Date
2015
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Management and Technology Lahore
Abstract
To investigate the nature of the writing skill problems of graduate learners, two fifty graduate male and female learners randomly selected from four colleges and one university were asked to complete three writing skill tasks: Rational deletion, fifth word deletion and open composition test. The English article system is considered very complicated for second language learners. The study is related to the research question: What is the frequency of errors of ESL graduate learners in their writing skills? (a) Articles (b) Prepositions. It is investigated that article overuse and article omission are the common problems for ESL. Besides, students deem prepositions quite tricky to use in their writing. So the findings show the wrong use of prepositions specifically ‘with, in, of’ and unnecessary insertion of prepositions. It is observed that errors are because of the interference of L1 in L2. Besides, the final results of the three tests showed that articles (definite, indefinite, zero article) and Prepositions (prepositional verbs, prepositional phrases, phrasal verbs, zero prepositions) are quite problematic for ESL learners. This study also explores the unnecessary insertion of zero article and zero prepositions. The learners usually overgeneralize the definite article and they try to put both functional words on the same patterns of L1 which ultimately leads them towards errors. The study suggests changes in the current pedagogical methods, curriculum and syllabus designing.
Description
Supervised by: Professor Rao Jalil Ahmed
Keywords
Rational deletion, ESL Graduate learners, M.Phil Thesis