A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University

A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University A study on common errors in writing skills by freshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University

Nowadays, English is a popular language in international transactions I is alsothe most foreign language taught in universities in Vietnam Many students haverecognized the importance of learning English to meet the needs of a modernsociety However, mastering English is not an easy In the four basic skills ofEnglish: Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing, students have difficulties inWriting Therefore, it is often difficult for students to avoid making mistakes whenwriting, even when they are very attentive to their writing

The purpose of this study is to study common errors of Thuong MaiUniversity students often make in the writing process as well as some suitablesolutions to solve those problems Data collection tools such as questionnaires andinterviews were used to conduct this study The results of the research topic willcreate conditions for the students of Thuong Mai University to recognize theirmistakes and have a corrective direction to perfect their writing skills I have made

an effort to do this research with my knowledge I hope this study will bring abouteffective methods to improve writing skills of students in general and students in theBusiness English Faculty of Thuong Mai University in particular

During the process of doing this study, I have received a lot of necessaryassistance, previous ideas, and timely encouragement from my teacher and friends.This research could not have been finished without the help, encouragement, andsupport from them

First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude towards mysupervisor – Ms Nguyen Thi Thuy Hanh, the teacher of, who has always beenwilling to instruct me carefully and enthusiastically in each step, give me helpfuladvice and suggestions as well as support me every time I need so that I canaccomplish this study

I also wish to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to theFaculty of English at Thuong Mai University, who have created this chance for me

to work this study, learn and gain many valuable experiences

I would like to acknowledge my thanks to all the authors of the books,magazines, documents, and the other materials listed in the reference part for theirideas that have been reflected and developed in the study

Once again, thank you so much!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF STUDY

English is the most effective international communitive language It is also theofficial language in a large number of countries According to Wikipedia, there aremore than 400 million people in the world using English as a mother tongue, andmore than 1 billion people using English as the second language English is thethird language that is widely used only after Chinese and Spanish Once again, wecannot deny the advantages of English bringing to us, especially in the booming era

of technology and information Proficiency in English and computer skills are jobrequirements if you want to get a dream job in any international company

In Vietnam, English is a compulsory subject and it is a necessary condition forapplying for a job in the future When learning English, students are taught fourskills: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing In those four skills above, writingbrings them a lot of obstacles because it requires a broad knowledge and the learnerhas a clear understanding of grammar as well as structures

The forms of communication in writing in English are quite diverse, includingmany types such as: email, inquiry, feedback, reports,… Each type of document has

a different style Therefore, it is difficult for students to avoid making mistakes inwriting, even when they are very attentive to their writing If students don’t correctthe mistakes, they have difficulty in writing This can affect to their score andreduce job opportunities after graduating Moreover, if you use the wrong grammar

fact that writing in English will make these errors appear clear Furthermore,according to a study, English learners in the world often spend very little time onwriting skill This makes them hard to write in English.

To discover student’s writing mistakes as well as help them improve theirwriting skills, I choose the topic: “A study on common errors in writing skills byfreshmen of English faculty, Thuong Mai University”

1.2: Previous studies

In 2009, Brent Sampson wrote the study "Top 10 Business Writing MistakesThat Cost You Money" In business, every word counts This holds true for writing,too, particularly now when so much of business takes place through the Internet ande-mail Not to mention, money is tight and every message needs to have maximumimpact Small mistakes in your business writing can leave a negative impression onpotential customers This study provided the top 10 common errors in businesswriting and tips for how you can avoid them

Another research named “Grammatical errors in writing task: male andfemale” was written by Dewi Furtina, Ika Apriani Fata and Dohra Fitrisia and firstpublished in 2016 This study focused on the grammatical errors when writingbetween male and female The issues that the study showed including subject-verbagreement, verb form, singular/ plural form, preposition, conjunction, pronoun,article and total The results showed that the most dominant in male students waserrors of article and in female students was errors of subject-verb agreement.Derived from the results, this study had some implications for language teachers aswell as consideration for further research

Huynh Minh Hien and Trinh Quoc Lap with the study “Danh gia truc tuyentheo ban cung lop: mot so bien phap tang cuong dong co hoc va kha nang viet tienganh” (2010) also had assessments of the writing ability of students Manyresearches about the effects of online classmate assessments in English writingclasses had been conducted in a variety of educational contexts This article showedthe results of an empirical study done at Can Tho University The study aimed at theimpacts of online peer-based assessments on student’s motivation in learning towrite in English and their writing ability and the correlation between learner’s

motivation and their writing ability The result of research showed that there was asignificant difference in the writing motivation and the writing ability of students inthe experimental and control groups.

Pham Thi Anh Dao (2015) studied the writing errors that the first-yearstudents in English Faculty, University of Industry, often make and the meaning ofcorrecting mistakes in teaching writing skills To achieve the goal of the study, theauthor used two methods: qualitative and quantitative analysis, with two main tools:survey questionnaires and analysis the student’s writing The research resultsshowed that the writing errors of them were due to lack of vocabulary and lack ofcommon grammar rules in English The main reasons are the influence of mothertongue, teaching methods, carelessness and student’s psychology, of which theinfluence of mother tongue was considered the biggest cause

1.3: Aims of the study

- Discover the errors in writing English of freshmen of English Faculty,

Thuong Mai University

- Find out the causes of English writing errors of freshmen in English Faculty,Thuong Mai University

- Propose some solutions to avoid making mistakes when writing

1.4: Research Subjects

The research subject is common errors in writing skills of freshmen of EnglishFaculty, Thuong Mai University

1.5: Scope of the study

This research is restricted to study about the common errors in writing skills Iwill investigate the common mistakes as well as the causes of them in the process ofwriting Furthermore, because of the large number of students at Thuong MaiUniversity and the timing limitation, resources, and my knowledge, this study couldonly explore the common errors of freshmen the Business English Faculty atThuong Mai University

1.6: Research methodology

1.6.1 Participants

Selection of the participants

The participants in this study were 100 first-year students of English Faculty atThuong Mai university They were willing to participate in this study

1.6.2 Instruments

The study was conducted with the assistance of questionnaires, interviews,documentary studies, and observation notes which are summarized from mylearning experience The main instrument in this research was a surveyquestionnaire which was designed by the researcher The participants were askedabout their obstacles in writing skills and their common mistakes in the process ofpracticing writing

1.6.3 Data analysis

The data which is gained from the questionnaire were analyzed to clarify theresearch questions After that, the results were also calculated into statistical values

as below:

The data gained from the general background was presented as the percentage

To study effectively, the strategies used in this study are:

Material collection from reliable sources and books

Questionnaires: the study investigated 100 first-year students of Thuong MaiUniversity in the English Faculty by giving them questionnaires

Conclusion

This chapter has presented several research tools I have applied to handle theproblems related to the topic of the recent study Besides, the chapter also reportsand explains the rationale of selections, as well as the purposes of questionnairesand interviews which are conducted by the researcher

1.7 Organization of the study

My graduation thesis is divided into four main chapters

Chapter 1: Overview about the thesis

The first chapter will give readers an overview of the study includingrationale, previous studies, aims, scope, methods, and organization of the study

Chapter 2: Literature review

It focuses on knowledge theories related to writing, such as: the definition ofwriting, the importance of writing skills and overview of error.

Chapter 3: Research finding

In this chapter, I will show the research methodology and the results ofanalyzing the problem The research method is clearly described with specificprocedures for data collection and analysis The statistical results show the commonerrors in the student’s writing and the frequency of them In addition, the survey,interview and observation results also indicate the cause of the student’s writingerrors

Chapter 4: Suggested solution

This chapter will focus on giving solutions

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Definition of writing

Writing is an important area in in both native and foreign languagedevelopment Therefore, there are lots of definitions of writing Writing is theprocess in which the writer expresses his or her thoughts or ideas in the form ofhandwriting

Leki (1976), “writing is communicating Good writing gets your ideas out ofyour head and into the reader’s head without losing or distorting those ideas” Byrne(1988) gave a long and complex definition which might be summarized as follows:writing is the act of forming graphic symbols (letters or combinations of letters)which were arranged to form sentences, and we produced a sequence of sentencesarranged in a particular order and linked together in certain way, on a flat surface ofsome kind Writing, in Davies’s point of view, involved two kinds of skills The firstones were low – level skills such as handwriting or typing, spelling, constructinggrammatical sentences, organizing and sequencing, structuring, drafting and editing.Nunan (2003) described “Writing is physical and mental act It’s aboutdiscovering ideas, thinking about how to communicate, develop them intostatements and paragraphs that will be comprehensible to a reader Writing has dualpurpose to express and impress Writers must select the most advantageous mediumfor their writing Each types has a different level of difficulty which determined byits objectives.” Nunan also said that “writing is a process and also a product Thewriter creates, plans, writes various drafts, revises, edits and publishes.”

According to “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary” (1989), writing is “theactivity or skill of making coherent words on paper and composing text” and it is to

“make letters or other symbols on a surface (usually paper), especially with a pen orpencil”

From another point of view, Weigle (2007) recognized that the complex ofwriting process The author stated that writing is a process of creating ideas,opinions, relationships among linguistic formats, and structure The author furtherindicated that when writing, writers must combine and apply a lot of knowledge and

skills categories He added that this process will often be interrupted and affectedwhen the writers seek for appreciate structures and vocabulary Apparently, writingrequires more time and effort of learners (Liu and Braine, 2005).

2.2 Importance of writing skills

First of all, writing helps to convey feelings, thoughts and personal opinions aswell as develop the written presentation skills When you write, your products willexpress your emotions clearly and words will help you express your mood Forexample, writers and poets often choose to express their feelings and emotions bywriting on paper When reading books, poems or novels, readers can clearly feel theauthor’s thoughts and feelings

The next importance of writing skills is to improve focus and connect withyourself as well as improve communication skills Writing abilities channelize yourknowledge and brain to the point of value Whether it is a post, an article, essay,quotes or whatever you write, one cannot write effectively without connecting yourbrain to the heart This is the way you become focused, more conscious andintelligent It also reflects the personality of an individual

Furthermore, writing skills also help increase your knowledge, creativity andimagination While writing anything, a human brain uses every part of the brain andcells If a person is writing his or her life experiences, article for a blog, editorial oranything else, all his knowledge related to that, including memories, incidents,success and failures, present situation and future possibilities This ultimatelyincreases awareness improve memory, make you sharp and increase your creativityand imagination

Last but not least, writing is the most demanding skill that will help in getting

a job In the evolution of information technology, if you have a good writing skill,you will have more opportunities to get a job with high salary For instance, digitalmarketing companies need a content writer News websites need writers and manyother IT- related or non-IT companies need a writer to help them through writing fordigital marketing channels such as brand quotes, advertisements, social medialposts Another example, in case you want to be a freelancer, you need to market

your writing skill You can use freelance websites to build your profile and bid onyour projects Besides, you also need a website to promote and showcase yourwriting skills It can be a personal website or business.

2.3 Error

2.3.1 Definition of error

Until now, many experts have introduced the concept of error In the book(Language Learners and their errors, 1983, p.7), John Norrish called “an error” assystematic divergence that happens when a learner has not learnt something andconsistently “get it wrong”

According to Brown (2007), errors are the “noticeable derivation fromgrammar of a native speaker, reflect the competence of the learner” and reveal “aportion of learners’ competence in the target language” (p.285)

James (1998, p.1) defined error as “an unsuccessful bit of language” In astudy of Richards (1989) errors are identified as the faulty use of linguistic itemsthat express incomplete learning

2.3.2 Definition of error analysis

Analysis off writing errors is a way of analyzing the writing results of foreignlanguage learners Many researchers have discussed error analysis from differentperspectives Both Corder (1967) and Brown (2000) emphasized that it wasnecessary to study the mistakes of foreign language learners to know the foreignlanguage knowledge of the learners

Besides, Corder (1967) as well as Dai and Shu (1994) pointed that erroranalysis was extremely important in acquiring foreign languages for many differentsubjects: teachers could understand the actual learning level of students; researcherscould understand learner’s learning styles and language structures; students couldavoid these errors to improve their language skills

2.3.3 Causes of errors in writing skills

There are many causes for errors when learning the writing skill of students,especially first-year majors The following are some of the reasons why studentsoften make these types of errors while writing

According to Norrish (1983, p.21-42) described the causes of languagelearners” errors as arising from carelessness, interference from the learners firstlanguage, translation from the first language, contrastive analysis, general order ofdifficulty, overgeneralization, incomplete application of rules, material-inducederrors and a part of language creativity

On the other hand, Richards (1974) pointed out that there were two causes ofwriting errors: the interference of learners’ mother tongue and the characteristics ofthe learning In a recent study, Brown (2007) cited four causes of errors: interlingualtransfer, intralingual transfer, learning context and communication strategies Theauthor explained that interlingual transfer refers to the negative influence of thelearner’s mother tongue In the other words, interlingual transfer error occurs whenthe learners make error by transfer their native language system into the targetlanguage system, but they are not aware of the differences between the twolanguages For intralingual transfer, it refers to the negative items within the targetlanguage Intralingual errors are “items produced by the learner which reflect notthe structure of the mother tongue, but generalizations based on partial exposure tothe target language”

Briefly, errors can be arising from many different factors The causes of errorsare influences of mother tongue, learning characteristics and incomplete application

of rules The explanation of above causes will be clarified in more details asfollows:

2.3.3.1 The influence of the mother tongue

According to Richards (1971), the learners’ mistakes were due to the influence

of the mother tongue when a linguistic element or a structure in the second languagewhich was similar to elements and structures in the learner's language In this case,the learner moves recognition from the mother tongue to the second language.Selinkker (1994) pointed out the negative influence of mother tongue habits Forexample, many learners think in their native language and they translate directlywhen speaking and writing in English

Students, especially first-year students, tend to think and translate word forword from their native language Moreover, they often make mistakes in wordusage and word order due to the differences between the two languages Therefore,their writings are usually translated from their native languages into English, whichmakes their writing not academic and attached to the thinking of indigenous people

In Vietnam, it is easy to see that first-year students often express ideas inEnglish writing in a Vietnamese way of thinking because of limited vocabulary,basic knowledge about phrase structure and clause structure and sentence structure

In other words, they cannot distinguish the difference between these points of

grammar For example, Vietnam students often produce such sentence as “I very like reading books” instead of “I really like reading books” It is obvious that they

will translate each word, but use improper combination of English word types andword order in their writing This makes the sentence incoherent and sometimesmakes the reader misunderstand the idea of the writer

2.3.3.2 Characteristics of learning writing

Studying writing in limited time is a characteristic of learning writing.Because the amount of time for English writing skills can be said to be very limited,the students have not been trained writing skills on a regular basis Therefore, theyare not quick to create ideas and have no habit of thinking in English before writing.When writing, first-year students usually make quite a lot of errors in grammar,words, and structures These errors can become systematic errors if students are notpromptly corrected (S Bourke and A Holbrook, 1992)

Students are the subject of the learning process, but the majority of students donot show the self-motivation in their learning (Z Dörnyei, 1994) The demonstration

is that they do not really set a goal for learning in general and a specific subject forwriting In addition, many students are still very lazy to study, afraid to dohomework even when teachers assign tasks There are many cases that students dotheir work in a sketchy manner or copy it from Internet sources According to VMRosenberg (1989), “writing is like swimming” and learners have to practice it overand over again However, the fact is that first-year students do not practice writingskills on a regular basis Therefore, they are not quick to find ideas for writing and

do not have the habit of thinking in English before writing

2.3.3.3 Incomplete application of rules

Most of freshmen do not know the exact meaning of a word In fact, “Englishvocabulary system is extremely diversified” (Chen, Chih-Ming, and Yi-Lun Li,2010) “Learning and knowing the meaning of words is not easy; moreover, inEnglish, there are synonyms sometimes used for different contexts andinterchangeable to avoid repetition” (Ben-Ari Meta, 1998) However, some wordsthat are in the same context interchangeably will change the sentence content The

students usually use the words “so” and “very” wrongly, although these words are the simplest in English Two sentences “Thank you so much” and “Thank you very much” have the same meaning; nevertheless, in other contexts, the words “so” and

“very” cannot be changed mutually For instance, in the sentence “I am very tired to continue doing this work”, it is inaccurate to replace the word “very” by the word

“so” In this case, with the word “so”, the sentence will become “I am so tired that I cannot continue doing this work” Indeed, students who learn to write English often make mistakes in finding the right words for each context in their writing In

addition, students who lack vocabulary will not know what kind of words they need

to use to express their ideas while writing Therefore, they often have to replacewords and sentence structures they don't know with what they have learned

In addition, a huge number of first-year students are not good at English

students to use tenses, word structure, clause structure, and sentence structure whenthey write an English sentence, a paragraph or an essay correctly.

CHAPTER III: RESEARCH FINDINGS 3.1 Research findings

This survey was conducted with 130 first-year students of the English-faculty,Thuong Mai University This survey was conducted from March 1, 2021 to March

20, 2021 and got 100 answers

3.2 Research questions

The research was conducted to answer three questions:

a. What mistakes freshmen in English Faculty, TMU often make in English writing?

b. What causes these English writing errors?

c. What are the solutions to improve English writing skills?

3.3 Research methods

The data collection methods that I used in this study were the primary andsecondary data collection methods For the method of collecting primary data, Icombined two research tools including namely direct interview and investigation.For the method of collecting secondary data, the author collects data from books,previous research articles and scientific journal articles

Another research tool used in research was the survey questionnaire andinterview Questionnaires were issued to 130 first-year students of English Faculty,TMU Each student had 10 minutes to complete the questionnaires and return them

3.4 Research results

3.4.1 Analyze the research object

Chart 1: Students' interest in English

I issued the questionnaire and received answers from 100 first-year students ofEnglish Faculty, Thuong Mai University, including 10 are male and 90 are female.These students are between the ages of 18-20 37% of students learn English under

10 years, the rest learn English for 10 years or more Especially, there are studentsstudying English for 15 years Because they have learnt English for many years,they have a clear and correct awareness and attitude towards learning English This

is extremely important because when students have a clear passion and attitudetoward learning, students will have the right motivation to pursue this subject.According to chart 1, most of the students are interested in learning English

very interested in English, while the number of students with normal attitudes tothis language accounts for only 18%.

3.4.2. Errors Frequently Found in English Sentences Written by first-year majors at

TMU

The researcher has detected 416 writing errors in the written work of 100students After the analysis of errors, sixteen types of errors were found in Englishsentences written by first-year English majors at TMU The errors at the sententiallevel include punctuation, subject-verb agreement, parallelism, capitalization,fragments, tenses, passive sentence, relative clauses and word order The errors atthe word level were articles, nouns, verbs, prepositions, adjectives, word choices,spelling, and transitional words The errors were counted and rated in percentage offrequency The two tables below demonstrate types, frequency, percentage and rank

of the errors