An error analysis Of english paragraphs Written by students at phu cat 3 high school in binh dinh province: A discourse analysis perspective

Abstract

Based on the theories of Discourse Analysis, this study makes an investigation into the English paragraphs written by students at Phucat 3 High School in Binhdinh province in an attempt to analyze the linguistic errors that the students made in writing English paragraphs. The study is both quantitative and qualitative. The data for the study was taken from English paragraphs written by the 10th grade Vietnamese students during the school year 2010-2011 at Phucat 3 High School. The findings of the thesis are mainly concerned with the common linguistic errors in writing by the tenth-form students at PC3HS based on Ferris’ classification. The study reveals the most frequent types of errors made by the students. The greatest number of errors occurred in this study were morphological errors, lexical errors, syntactic errors and mechanical errors. The study also shows the errors of paragraph organization due to the fact that students at PC3HS lack access to the theory of building a paragraph such as building topic sentences, developing supporting ideas. Based on the findings, implications for enhancing the effectiveness of English paragraph teaching and learning writing are put forward. It is hoped that the results of the study can be beneficial for both students and teachers.