A Structural Analysis of the Writing Errors Committed by Foundation Students at Arab Open University, Oman

Abstract

English is considered as Arab students' second language which is not used frequently in their daily conversations. Since writing in English is a challenging experience for Omani students, errors in grammar and sentence structures were identified in bridging language courses (foundation level 2) in the field of ESL (English as a Second Language). Learners' errors were considered positively as the best sources to identify students' limitations in English writing. The present study investigates the structure errors of Omani students' writings in English in foundation level 2 at Arab Open University. The focal aim is to study the errors that Omani students commit when they are using adjectives + nouns, indefinite articles, and subordinate conjunction "because". Results show that Omani students committed the following common errors: misplacement of adjectives, omission of the indefinite articles, and wrong structure of the subordinate conjunction (because). The prime aim of this study is to examine the students' aforementioned structural errors which are the result of the interference of their mother-tongue. In order to achieve these aims, students were asked to write two different topics. Finally, this research suggests further recommendations for further studies which might ameliorate students' learning by adopting appropriate strategies for teaching. Keywords Writing errors analysis, foundation English, Omani studentsWriting is one of the most important skills which appears to be extremely challenging and different experience compared with other language acquisition skills for Arab native speakers. As Abdulkareem (2013) stated in his research on Arab learners' problems in academic writing "Most students commit many mistakes related to sentence structure" (Abdulkareem 2013(Abdulkareem : 1553. In this study, evidently, the most frequent errors that Arab students committed were mainly the misplacement of the adjective and noun, omission of indefinite article, and wrong structure of subordinate conjunction-"because". The reason behind choosing writing skill is to observe and study how students express themselves and communicate which can be recorded as the best source of samples for studying .