A syntatic error analysis of students’ English essay in Babcock University High School students

Abstract

In foreign language learning, error correction has become one of the important teaching processes. Few teachers know a lot about error analysis and some related theories. Teachers often take negative attitudes toward correcting students’ errors and the students often feel upset, for they have found that there is a great gap between them and their teachers. This study is a syntactic error analysis of students’ essays in Babcock University High School. Over the years, students’ performance in WAEC English Language Examination has been source of concern for all stakeholders in our education system. Poor performance of students in English Language can be traced majorly to their inability to express themselves, especially, in writing. This is evident in their errors committed in their written work. The study investigates the errors of Syntactic in students essay at the secondary school level. The study adopted the qualitative research design because the qualitative research design typically makes use of in-depth and verbal description in place of numerical data and a purposive random sampling technique was used to select fifty (50) SSS 3 students in Science classes. The study adopted the exemplified model of Ellis (Second Language 15) and Hubbard of analysis which involved the selection of corpus of language followed by the identification of errors. Results of the study revealed that out of a total of 570 errors committed 116(20.4%) are tenses errors, 131(23%) are wrong words errors, 144(25.3%) are sentence errors, 26(4.6%) are subject verb object error, 53(9.3%) preposition errors, 26(4.6%) are spelling errors, 25(4.4%) are concord errors, 21(3.7%) are wrong collocation errors, 13(2.3%) are conjunctions errors, while 15(2.6%) are strange words/ expression). It was revealed that the error that occurred most was sentence structure. It was therefore recommended that students should avoid carelessness and make genuine and outstanding efforts in learning English. They should be at alert to avoid using wrong expressions that many Nigerians use in the name of Nigerian English, especially in a formal situation whether in speech or writing. Students should study hard to master the language and that teachers at all levels of education should always emphasize on the importance of correctness in the use of the English language.