International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) |Volume VI, Issue X, October 2022|ISSN 2454-6186
Error Analysis in the Written Works of Bangladeshi EFL University Fresh Learners
Muhammad Afsar Kayum
Assistant Professor, Department of English, Manarat International University, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Abstract: This paper envisages the university fresh learners’ syntactic errors in the use of Tense from the EFL context of Bangladesh. Written essays from thirty university freshers from one private and one public university have been collected and analysed to find out the root causes of the learners’ errors in their written works. As found chiefly the causes, the mother language interference, as well as the other socio-economic factors, are responsible. Qualitative research design has been employed in data collection, identification and explanation of the study The identified data have been classified with proper description and explanation of the error types. The errors have been identified and explained so that the teachers can have enough knowledge on the type, causes & sources of the learners’ errors. So, the teacher might devote special attention to certain areas and can devise new pedagogical approaches to help learners overcome those difficulties.
Key words: Errors, syntactic errors, causes, sources, plausible solutions
I. INTRODUCTION
This is quite inevitable that the learners of EFL or ESL context commit errors in the process of acquiring the writing skill of any foreign or second language. Therefore, it is often observed as a common problem that the Bangladeshi EFL learners struggle hard to acquire the satisfactory level of proficiency in written English. It is also quite questionable that the students continue making various syntactic errors in their written works even though the concerned syntactic rules have been repeatedly taught to them through formal classroom instructions for twelve years as English is taught as a compulsory subject in all schools and tertiary institutions. It is undesirable for a student, entering the university education, to commit a lot of syntactic errors specially, in the use of tense and auxiliaries. Sometimes, it is seen that on the very first class, the students write sentences about his/her educational background as- “when I was go to a college, I was enjoy very much” (Kayum, 2011). This clearly shows that many of the students in Bangladeshi universities struggle to acquire the basic syntactic rules of Tense and auxiliaries even at the level when they are supposed to deal with the tougher linguistic courses and language research. In such situation, the university itself faces a lot of difficulties as the medium of instructions in all universities are in English and a student is assessed by his written English expressions in the examination scripts. Several studies have been done earlier on the pedagogical level on the same issue- such as, – Fahmida (2010), Khanom (2014), Rehnuma (2015), Tina (2016), Karim (2017) and so on. However, the problem retains. Therefore, a