An Analysis of Paragraphing Errors in EFL Students’ Written Compositions

Abstract

This study is an attempt to investigate the types of errors in paragraph writing. The hypothesis predicted that Master one students at Mohamed Seddik Ben Yahia University of Jijel would commit numerous errors in their written compositions that are basically grammatical. To test this hypothesis, a corpus-based study of thirty exam copies belonging to Master one students were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively and learners' errors were identified and classified into eleven categories. The results revealed that grammatical errors are the most dominant ones in the students' written production, namely spelling, subject verb agreement, punctuation, verb tense and form, capitalization, fragment, word choice, pronouns, prepositions, singular and plural forms, and articles. In addition, the results showed that students were not able to develop a well-formed and cohesive paragraph. In the light of the obtained results, a set of recommendations were suggested in order to help EFL learners to minimize errors in their writing