Most of the finding in this research corroborate the findings of the previous
studies on error analysis and essay evaluation‐ that sentence‐level errors have a
significant role in essay score. In this study, the word choice and capitalization
errors are significant predictors of essay scores compared with other error types
contradict the findings of previous research. Brown 1993 concluded that article
errors were more damaging in predicting essay scores; Weltig claimed that verb
formation errors are more damaging to writing scores than any error types
because they cause more problems is the transmission of meaning. Then, more
studies are needed to verify these conflicting findings.
2. Summaira Sarfraz’s study 2011
In her study entitled Error Analysis of the Written English Essays of
PakistaniSarfraz tries to examine the errors in acorpus of 50 English essays
written by 50 participants undergraduate Pakistanistudents. The study is
intended to know further about the occurrence of twotypes of errors;
Interlanguage errors andmother tongue MT interference.
The data used for thestudy is students’ written essays in Englishlanguage. She
followed Rod Ellis’s 1994 procedural analysis of errors; collection ofsample of
learner language, identification oferrors, description of errors, explanation
oferrors, and evaluation of errors in analyzingthe 50 English essays. She then
organized the data of errors according to the following steps: 1 Collection of
sample of learner’s language 2 Identification of errors: Actual errors 3
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Description of errors: Categorization of error based on their specific nature and
4 Evaluation of errors: Affecting intelligibility of social acceptability.
The results of the study show that majority of errors are grammatical resulting
from Interlanguage process. Though, the participants were taught grammatical
rules of target language previously, but the lack of practice and positive feedback
hindered the development of their proficiency in target language. Errors
projecting redundancy show the lack of TL lexicon. Some of the errors indicate
participants’ carelessness in the writing which shows lack of motivation for target
language. This is a very common phenomenon that L2 learner often feels
demotivated and develop negative attitude towards the target language.
3. Rohan Abeywickrama’s study 2010
Rohan Abeywickrama in his research entitled An Analysis of Errors in English
Writing of Sinhala Speaking Undergraduates investigated error analysisto know
whether the negative first language transferinterference became the major
source for errors in the English writing written by the Sinhala speaking
undergraduates. The
subjects of his study were all Sri Langkan students who speak Sinhala language
as their mother tongue. They are students at the Universities of Sabaragamuwa,
Kelaniya and Peradeniya in Sri Langka who are offering English as
a second language for their BA degree. Those students belong to the Upwardly mobile
Middle class. From infancy they have been exposed to an extensive use of
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Sinhala and frequent Code‐Mixing involving a few English expressions. Just like
Sarfraz in her study Abeywickrama also followed the guidelines of Ellis 1995. A
sample of written works were collected from 60 students who are in the first and
the second academic year of their Degree programmes. They were provided with
the topics “An Unforgettable Day in Your Life” and “My University Life” and were
asked to write on it in 200 to 250 words. They were given sufficient time to write
Ellis, 1997 starting with an outline, then a first draft and a final one.
The findings of his study showed that the highly objective and outcome
oriented investigation reflects negative first language transferinterference is not
the major cause for errors in the English composition that were written by
Sinhala speaking undergraduate students.
4. Joel R. Tetreault and Martin Chodorow’s study 2008
