Errors committed by EFL university students in writing composition

الملخص EN

This research is intended to identify and analyze the errors committed by the Iraqi students when they deal with composition.

Before writing a good composition, students should master a lot of things.

first, they should learn a great deal of vocabulary as to be the lexical forms(words) that refer to parts of our experience(Hejal, 2003: 22).

Secondly, they have to know grammar, i.e, the rules of joining words, phrases and clauses in sentences and different parts of speech with their functions (Gramley and patzold, 1992:124).

Punctuation is no less importance than the previous ones since it helps readers well understand different sentences and styles(Fromkin et al, 2003: 559).

So composition is considered as the ultimate writing or experience of man's ideas.

This investigation tries to answer the following questions: (i) Do university students commit any errors when writing free composition? (ii) What are the kinds of errors if any? (iii) What are the reasons behind doing such errors if any? The present study tackles the types of errors committed by (EFL) English Foreign Language students in writing free composition and the way to help them overcome such difficulties.

The present paper has two goals: theoretical and pedagogical (Richards, 1974; Corder, 1981).

It aims at discovering the types of errors and their causes to be a good guide for teachers and students of English as well as for text book writers.-