A study of kinds of grammatical errors and the frequency with which they occur in compositions written in English by Afghan students

• Main Author: Ebrahim, Layla
• Other Authors: Ross, Janet
• Format: Others
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: English language > Study and teaching > Dari speakers.; English language > Study and teaching > Afghanistan.
• Online Access: http://cardinalscholar.bsu.edu/handle/handle/181175; http://liblink.bsu.edu/uhtbin/catkey/415345

This paper presents an analysis of grammatical errors and the frequency with which they occur in compositions written in English by Afghan students.This analysis will account for the causes of errors such as interference of native language, lack of knowledge, carelessness, overgeneralization, and interference in English.The data used for this study were a set of 24 compositions obtained from the American Center English Courses in Kabul, Afghanistan. Compositions were written in class and topics were chosen by the instructor.The errors were classified into five major groups of concept, form, structure, vocabulary, and punctuation. The errors in concept, form, and structure were divided into sub-groups and analyzed on the basis of possible causes for errors. Since this is a limited piece of research, causes of vocabulary and punctuation errors were not analyzed.The conclusion of the analysis shows that the high percentage of 36.6 of errors is due to lack of knowledge, 36.8% is due to interference of the native language, 5.4% is due to overgeneralization, 9.1% is due to carelessness, and 10% is due to interference in English.