Types of Pragmalinguistic errors in the essays of university EFL learners

Abstract EN

Even though learners may pay much attention to the grammar rules and vocabulary of an L2, a communication breakdown can sometimes occur.

The reason for such breakdown is that L2 learners usually focus on grammar rules, lexis, syntax, and semantics ignoring pragmatic knowledge which is of no less importance and which may lead to a miscommunication when lacked.

This research aims at investigating the types of pragmalinguistic errors (a sub-category of pragmatics) in the writings of EFL learners.

This paper also provides illustrative examples for the misunderstanding -caused by pragmalinguistic errors- which may occur, inadvertently, due to conveying unintended/wrong meaning to the reader.

In this respect, 92 essays written by EFL learners in a private university in Cairo were analyzed for the aforementioned purposes.

The errors were checked against four English native speakers for reliability purposes.

The findings reveal that the types of pragmalinguistic errors found were Erroneous Construction of Sentences, Arabic Construction of Sentences and Lexical Errors.

The findings also reveal that pragmalinguistic errors were detected in the writings of EFL advanced-level learners as well as intermediate-level learners.

Also, possible alternatives are provided for the detected errors