Error Analysis of Turkish Learners’ English Paragraphs from Lexical and Grammatical Aspects

Abstract

This research aims at exploring grammatical and lexical errors of seven adult Turkish EFL learners who took one-month intensive English course at a research and application centre of a state university in Ankara. In this study, the target group at A1 proficiency level was selected with convenience sampling to reveal the most common error type(s). To that end, take home papers were collected in the third week of the course program and then analysed to identify written errors. During the scrutiny, grammatical errors were categorized into verb related errors, prepositions, articles, spelling/punctuation/capitalization, word order, possessives, use of language domain and subject-verb agreement, whereas lexical errors were grouped as interlingual and intralingual errors. The results indicate that the most frequent errors of the participants were verb related errors, whereas subject-verb agreement was listed as the least conducted error after contracted forms. As for lexical errors, which were the only items examined in terms of transfer issue, interlingual errors outnumbered intralingual errors. Accordingly, some implications and suggestions have been provided for further studies at the end of the study.

Keywords

• error analysis
• grammatical error
• lexical error
• EFL learners

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