AN ANALYSIS OF COMMON GRAMMATICAL ERRORS MADE BY OMANI UNIVERSITY STUDENTS IN WRITING ENGLISH ES SAYS

Abstract

It is widely known that the errors encountered by students in learning, play an important role in the study of language acquisition in general and in examining their performance in foreign languages in particular. This study is an attempt to investigate and identify the grammatical types of English language errors in writing English essays written by Omani university students at Nizwa University and to find out the possible causes and the sources as to why these errors occur. The study investigated errors of 100 essays which were gathered from Omani University freshmen enrolled in the “Foundation Program” during the second semester of February, 2014. They enrolled in the College of (Arts and Sciences), College of (Engineering& Architecture), College of (Economics, Management & Information Systems) and the College of (Pharmacy and Nursing). The results of this study have almost confirmed the hypotheses on which it was based. The conclusion is that there are different problems these students face, which impede their proficiency in the target language. Hence , some recommendations are suggested.