Error Analysis on Written Essays in Selected Junior Secondary Schools
Chapter One
Purpose of the Study
The study aims at identifying the type of errors student commit most or frequently in their written essays so as to expose English teachers tp know where to emphasize on and also where to modify to enhance efficient teaching and learning.
The study further aim to analyse describe and explain the errors in the written English of students in junior secondary schools such as wrong tense usage, spelling, errors, omission of articles e.t.c which are common features in the writings of students or learners.
CHAPTER TWO
REVIEW OF THE RELATED LITERATURE
Related literature to this study would be reviewed under the following sub headings:
- The English Language in Nigeria
- Language skills and there Inter-Relationship
- The Importance of Writing Skill to secondary school student
- The Role of Error Analysis in Language Teaching
- Sources of Errors and Procedure
- The Scope of Contrastive Analysis
The English Language in Nigeria
A language is a system of communication within a community or a particular social group. A language is localised in a community by people who share similar values, beliefs and experiences which are expressed in a set of conventional codes. Language on the other hand is the faculty of speech possessed by all human being. The scientific study of human language is known as linguistic. Linguistic according to Hornby (2000) deals with the structure, acquisition and relationship between language and other forms of communication.
Thorpe (2003) is also of the opinion that linguistic is the most scientific of human and the most humanistic of science. Man is therefore a talking animal and without his ability to talk, both man and his society would be significantly different from what they are. Therefore, the study of the relationship that exists between language and the society is known as socio-linguistics. English is a second language in Nigeria. It is a second language because Nigerians already had their first language or mothers tongue (LI) before the incursion of this foreign language called “English” into the country. In this instance, a foreign language (English) left its native environment and met with other languages (Nigerian indigenous language).
The coming of the missionaries marked the beginning of “institutionalized learning” of the English language in Nigeria. As Banjo (2000) explains,’ Nigerians themselves were enthusiastic about learning to speak standard British English, which must have quickly become the most priced status symbol in colonial Nigeria’. Although the English language in Nigeria has fewer speakers than any of the three major languages and even many majority languages (Ubahakwe, 2004). It is the official language in education, commerce, government administration and the mass media nationwide. Igboanusi and Peter (2005) contend that only between 12 and 20 percent of the over 137 million Nigerian population speak English. Yet, it holds sway practically over all the languages in the country at least in terms of prestige and economic empowerment. It is true that the culture and values of the people are embedded in the language they speak. As such it is said that the “language in culture” and none can be separated from the other. So, when two languages meet, then two cultures have met and there is likely to be a lot of changes in that society. The changes will affect the culture and the language of the recipient society, which in this instance is Nigeria and its citizenry.
English language did not come to Nigeria on its own. Its incursion into Nigeria was caused by lots of factors like trading slavery, colonization and missionary activities by the Europeans and this was done in phases. As such, English as a language is a borrowed blanket which has been converted to a personal use by the borrowers so as to suit their purpose.
The exact date that English language usage started in Nigeria is not certain. However, it is believed that the first intimate contact between the British and some ethnic groupings in Nigeria was in the southern part of the country. This must have been at some period before the Atlantic slave trade. It records that as at 1553, English men paid frequent visits to the Nigerians shores, especially the ports of the ancient Benin and old Calabar. The first obstacle confronted by the visitors was communication barrier between the natives and the English men. There was then a pressing need to dislodge this obstruction, hence, the need to teach the Basic English for communication, business transaction, missionary activities and for other official functions arouse.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
The methods of the collection and analysis were described in this chapter. This chapter involved.
Research Type
The method adopted in this study is the descriptive survey. This involves the use of English test items to discover the areas of errors of students in English Language usage with specific reference to the written essays. In order to achieve this, the students in the junior classes of the selected secondary schools were given three essay questions from which they were to answer just one.
Population, Sample and Sampling Technique
The target population used for this study were the students of Junior Secondary School (class III) Classes. The students were randomly selected from JSS III classes of four (4) selected schools which are:
- Olodo Community Grammar School
- Community Secondary School Kumopayi
- God is Able College Wofun
- Educational Legacy College Olukunle
Thus, the test would in turn help in bringing out and detecting the error committed by the second language users of English Language.
A sample is similar number of individual who are in some ways representing population. The individual selected must possess the general characteristics of the population as a whole. This will help the researcher make conclusions about the entire population from a small portion.
This study comprises of four (4) secondary schools in EGBEDA local government area. Purposive random sampling was used to select the samples which include two (2) private secondary schools. The subjects for the study were one hundred (100) JSS 3 students which comprises of both male &female learning English as a second language and they were drawn through the simple random technique from (4) different secondary schools within EGBEDA local government.
CHAPTER FOUR
DATA ANALYSIS AND RESULTS
In this chapter, the written essays of respondents in Egbeda local government Oyo state served as the data collected and they were analysed to answer the relevant research questions and to test the research hypotheses respectively. The one hundred (100) copies of questionnaire that were administered were all retrieved. This gave a response return rate of 100%.
CHAPTER FIVE
DISCUSSION, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
This chapter contains the discussion of the findings, conclusions from the findings and the recommendations as well as suggestions for further studies.
This study examine the error analysis of the written English language essay of the junior secondary schools in Egbeda local government Oyo state. It also examined the types of Errors commit most frequently in their written essays and it also analyse describe and explain the errors in the written English of students in junior secondary schools.
Discussion of Findings
The findings of this study showed that spelling errors and wrong tense usage are the predominant errors in the respondents write-ups. It is obvious from this study that learners have not learnt the correct spelling of some English words because spelling errors has the highest percentage (38.81%) what are the causes and sources of the errors?
Most of the errors committed by the learners were caused by a number of factors ranging from transfer of morphological elements transfer of grammatical elements, over generalization of rules, etc. For instance, the English word unfriendly is formed from friend the adjective-forming suffix-ly and the negative prefix “un”. The “un” prefix was misused by pupils while forming another word. Learners over generalize in the pronunciation of certain words on the basis of what they already know e.g after learning a sentence like “He reached the house at 10:00pm” a learner may produce “He leaved the house at 6:00am”
The outcome of this study showed Error ranging from spelling errors, punctuation errors, wrong tense usage, omission and wrong use of pronoun were made by the respondents. Most of pronounce them, this is a result of other tongue interference e.g “lafing” instead of “laughing” “fone” instead of “phone” just to mention a few while some omitted alphabets in words like “too” instead of “two”, “birthday” instead of “birthday”.
Lastly, the findings of this study revealed that spelling errors has the highest frequency (26) followed by wrong tense usage (10). Sociolinguistic transfer and punctuation error has a frequency of (6), wrong use of preposition (5), wrong use of verbs and wrong use and omission of articles (4), wrong use of pronoun (3), error of redundancy (2) and overgeneralization of rules (1).
Conclusion
Based on the findings from this study, the following conclusions were made
It can be concluded that there is a significant relationship between errors and students’ academic performance in English Language.
It was concluded that spelling errors is the must frequency error committed by respondents.
Lastly, this study concluded that most of junior student lack basic skills in English Language which hinders them from writing correct spellings.
Recommendations
Based on the findings and conclusion made above, the following recommendations are hereby suggested:
- Junior Secondary school students should pay more attention on mastering of spellings.
- Junior Students should also be encouraged to develop good reading habit which will enable them to read wider to be familiar with words from different root.
- Teacher should try with the use of all available materials to get student to work in improving the English.
- Teachers should encourage their leaner with the use of chart and different methods which are capable to make learning convinent.
Suggestions for Further Studies
This study was limited to school subjects and sampled schools in Egbeda Local Government Area of Oyo State., the same study can be extended to all schools (both private and public schools) in all part of the State, Nigeria.
The researcher wishes to recommend that potential researchers should examine the errors caused by the influence of internet communication and SMS technology and propose mechanism for addressing the issue.
Researcher are also advised to try as possible to extend their research work even up to the senior secondary school level of education to identify their types of errors and solution to it.
REFERENCES
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- Burns and Joyce, O. (2007) Focus on Speaking; National Centre for English Language Teaching and Research.
- Corder, S.P. (2007). ”The Significance of Learners’ Errors” In JC. Richards (Eds.) Error Analysis: Perspective on Second Language Acquisition. London: Longman.
- Eric and Hellen (1996). New Method in Teaching Writing. USA.
- Hornby, A.S. (2010). Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary: Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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