Abstract:
The study aims at identifying, classifying and analyzing errors made by
Sudanese university students at Ahfad University for Women and Sudan
University of Science and Technology, discovering the role played by mother
tongue, the arbitrary nature of English language, the techniques of teaching writing
skills, and the University Curriculum of English Language in the occurrence of
these errors.
The sample of this study consisted of 30 university English language
teaching staff, and 60 second year students of English language at Ahfad
University for Women and Sudan University of Science and Technology. The
researcher used the descriptive analytical approach. To achieve the objective of the
study, two types of tools were used to collect data, a questionnaire of 27 statements
was developed covering the areas of mother tongue interference, the nature of
English language, writing teaching techniques; and an English test. The validity of
the questionnaire was done by a group of referees. Its stability was determined by a
sample consisting of 10 persons. The questionnaire's correlation coefficient was
0.97 at 0.00.1Collected data were analyzed using frequencies, percentages. Major
findings were as follows:
- Errors committed by Sudanese university students are attributed to learning
strategies adapted by them such as over generalization and simplification of the
target language rules.
- Errors committed by Sudanese university students are attributed to carelessness
and lack of memorization of spelling words, in addition to ignorance of
punctuation rules.
- English teachers need training to improve their teaching skills.
جIn the light of the results of the study, the researcher suggested some
recommendations as follows:
- Further studies should be conducted to investigate errors committed by EFL
students in their spoken English Language
- A study is recommended to investigate the effectiveness of a combination of
techniques in teaching writing compared with other techniques.
- A further research is needed to investigate the effect of training and
curriculum writing
