Abstract:
English Language has emerged as an important means of communication enjoying the
status of a second language as it is offered as a compulsory subject in Ghanaian schools
from the upper primary to the SHS. This is a qualitative study aimed at finding the
common errors form two students of Saint Paul Methodist JHS in the Greater Accra
Region of Ghana commit in their essay writing. The study also sought to examine the
causes of the errors and how they can be remedied to improve the teaching of L2 writing
in the school. The study used a corpus of essay writings of 40 form two students. The
school and the participants were purposively selected. The data were analyzed using
the error analysis approach. The study identified these common errors spelling, word omission, tense, punctuation, article and capitalization. The study also found that the
most frequently committed error was spelling errors followed by word omission errors.
The implications of these findings to the teaching of English writing are that teachers,
where possible should have sufficient understanding of both the L1 and L2 of the
students and teachers should explicitly teach for transfer, have adequate knowledge of
how to identify students’ writing errors, and use effective teaching strategies to improve
students’ English writing. Additionally, teachers should serve as worthy models of
using appropriate English for students to emulate and also create a conducive classroom
environment for students to participate in class activities. Lastly, teachers should create
more opportunities for students to write.
Description:
A dissertation in the Department of Applied Linguistics, Faculty of Foreign
Language Education and Communication, submitted to the School of Graduate
Studies in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the award of the degree of
Master of Education Degree
(Applied Linguistics)
in the University of Education, Winneba
SEPTEMBER, 2019
