Error and Contrastive Analysis of L2 Academic Writing

Abstract

This paper is a quantitative study which aims at identifying the most common errors made by Armenian learners in English as a second language academic writing. The purpose of this study is to identify the grammatical and lexical errors made in the essays, distinguish the most common ones, find the frequencies of occurrence of those common errors and finally explain the causes of the common errors using contrastive analysis. The instruments of this study were one hundred essay scripts written by the students enrolled in a first year English composition course at a private university. The results of the study revealed that Armenian learners made more grammatical than lexical errors in their L2 academic writing. Moreover, the findings showed that among five main categories of errors noun phrase errors were the most frequently made. Regarding the most common errors of all the phrases and their frequency of occurrence, the five prevailing types were errors in article usage, omission and overuse of copula be, wrong word order, wrong use of prepositions and wrong lexical choice. Ultimately, another finding of this study disclosed, that Armenian learners of English as a second language made both interlingaul and intralingual errors in their L2 academic writing. Although the results showed that the interlingual errors prevailed over intralingual errors, there was only slight difference between the frequencies of interlingual and intralingual errors, which proved the fact that Armenian learners not only relied on their mother tongue but also they needed more practice and systematized guidance within target language grammatical and lexical structures.