An Analysis of Errors Made by Sudanese University Students in Written Production

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