TY - JOUR TT - Different types of spelling errors made by Kurdish EFL learners and their potential causes AU - Ahmed, İbrahim Abdulrahman PY - 2017 DA - August DO - 10.21600/ijoks.334146 JF - International Journal of Kurdish Studies JO - Kurdish Studies PB - Hasan KARACAN WT - DergiPark SN - 2149-2751 SP - 93 EP - 110 VL - 3 IS - 2 KW - Spelling mistakes KW - Kurdish EFL learners KW - Kurdish writing system KW - English writing system KW - orthography N2 - The purpose of this study is to investigate various types of spellingerrors and the causes of spelling inaccuracy of first year Kurdish collegestudents found in their compositions. Participants are 40 Kurdish learners ofEnglish at two different universities, Koya University and Saladin University,who were studying English language and literature. The present study firstdisplays general background about English writing system and definitions ofrelated terms followed by an overview of Kurdish writing system and itsorthography. In addition, differences between both languages’ writing systemshave been shown as is likely to be the cause of Kurdish learners’ spellingmistakes. Spelling mistakes made by Kurdish college students are thenclassified into eight main categories and analysed statistically. The eightcategories of English spelling mistakes incorporate Insertion, omission,substitutions, transposition, grapheme substitution, space inaccuracy,capitalisation and others. Despite lack of sufficient phonological andmorphological knowledge in English the dissimilarity between English andKurdish writing systems tends to be the main cause of spelling errors by firstyear Kurdish college students. It is significant for both students andinstructors to be aware of the causes and types of English spelling mistakes soas to try to minimise them. It can be thought that knowing these causes wouldprobably help not only English language learners but also its instructors tosolve erroneous spellings to a large extent. CR - Abdullah, S. & Aram, K. (2004). English-Kurdish (Sorani) and Kurdish (Sorani)-Dictionary. India: Star publication/Languages of World Publication. Akamatsu, N. (2003). The Effects of First Language Orthographic Features on Second Language Reading in Text. Language Learning 53: pp. 207–231. Al-Hassan, A. (2011). English spelling is chaotic: What facts lie behind this popular judgment? [Online]. Available from: http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2011/sessions/2011-04- 17/english -spelling -chaotic-what-facts-lie-behind-popular-judgment. [Accessed 2 April 2014]. Al-Jarf, R. (2010). Spelling error corpora in EFL. Sino-US English Teaching, 7(1), pp. 6-15. Al Jayousi, M. T., (2011). Spelling errors of Arab students: types, causes, and teachers’ re-sponses. Thesis (Master). The American University of Sharjah. Altmann, G., & Fengxiang, F. (Eds.). (2008). Analyses of script: properties of characters and writing systems (Vol. 63). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Baron, N., (2005). The written turn. English Language and Linguistics, 9(2), pp. 359- 376. Birch, B., (2007). English L2 Reading: Getting to the Bottom. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. UR - https://doi.org/10.21600/ijoks.334146 L1 - https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/334249 ER -