IVESTIGATING UNDERGRADUATES’ TENSE ERRORS OF ACADEMIC ESSAY WRITING IN SUDAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

This present paper aimed at investigating the fundamental errors and mistakes that face 4th year students at college of languages, Sudan University of Science and Technology in using tenses in academic essay-writing. The descriptive and analytical method was adopted in this paper. The data of this study was collected by the use of a test. The respondents of this paper were 56 students at fourth year at college of languages who had a test to diagnose the errors of tenses. The findings of the study showed that the students have no background information about knowledge of error analysis techniques and strategies of error correction. The results also showed that lots of students commit numerous of punctuation errors. The study recommended that the syllabus designed at previous stage should be altered by a current English syllabus which has lots of exercises, drills and tasks as well as teachers’ opinions and views ought to be taken into consideration while designing English syllabus. Lastly, English literature should be selected as supplementation to enforce the students’ fluency and accuracy in writing essays without lots of errors or at least minimizing them.