Misordered words: a study in Iraqi EFL learners' written production

Abstract EN

The current paper analyzes Iraqi EFL learners' word order errors (WOE) in essays written for exam purposes.

word order errors here were given a specific definition targeting changes that affect the correct placement of words in a sentence, provided these component words all exist in that sentence.

the type of WOE, subject gender and exam score were also taken into account.

the researchers noted that certain kinds of error were significantly more frequent than others.

the type of error can be related to subject score.

the type of WOE has more connection to score than the number of errors does.

the researchers also found that the degree of flexibility of an element goes hand-in hand with the number of WOE’s; the more flexible an element is the more it is misplaced.

moreover, certain types of WOE’s exhibit higher recurrence with one gender rather than the other.

in addition to that, the researchers noted that a prominent factor of WOE’s was subjects’ mother tongue.