Frequently repeated errors in essay writing : a case study of Saudi University students

Dissertant

Muhammad, Sayyid Muhammad Hasan

Thesis advisor

Muhammad, Ahmad Jumah Sidiq

University

Omdurman Islamic University

Faculty

Faculty of Arts

Department

Department of English Language and Literature

University Country

Sudan

Degree

Master

Degree Date

2006

English Abstract

-This study investigates the frequently repeated errors found in essay writing of the third level learners of the college of languages and translation, Imam Mohamed Bin Saud Islamic University in Riyadh.

Learners usually commit mistakes unintentionally and sometimes they insist on repeating these mistakes in spite of the great effort paid by the teacher to do the remedial work and correct their mistakes.

These mistakes are what the researcher called Frequently Repeated Errors and which usually drew his attention in the writing tasks of his students. The study seeks to find a better remedy for these frequently repeated errors and eliminate them from the roots by identifying, examining, classifying and analyzing these errors.

The data for the study was collected through two essay writing tests; one pre-test and one post-test applied on a randomly chosen sample of forty five subjects. For analyzing the data collected the researcher adopted the descriptive and analytical approaches.

Through their search for the best strategies to learn the new language, students commit errors of different types due to several reasons.

Some are easy to eliminate by the learner himself, others are difficult to eliminate because they are Frequently Repeated Errors and this is the statement of the problem.

So, this research is going to deal with the reasons behind the frequently repeated errors committed by Saudi University Students in writing tasks. After thorough investigations and analysis, the researcher came to the findings of his study which proved that frequently repeated errors in essay writing were due to (interlanguage factors), (intralangauge factors), fossilization, habit formation, performance errors and competence errors.

Also, the findings showed that teachers sometimes make their students commit errors unintentionally through improper instructions and corrections.

Then the researcher gave some recommendations and suggestions for further investigations

Main Subjects

Educational Sciences

Topics

• Education
• Higher education
• Learning
• Saudi Arabia
• Linguistics
• Languages

No. of Pages

120

Table of Contents

• APA
• MLA
• AMA

Language

English

Data Type

Arab Theses

Record ID

BIM-364207