Advances in Language and Literary Studies

ISSN: 2203-4714
Vol. 5 No. 3; June 2014
Copyright © Australian International Academic Centre, Australia

A Linguistic Analysis of Errors in the Compositions of Arba

Minch University Students
Yoseph Tizazu (corresponding author)
College of Social Sciences & Humanities, Arba Minch University
PO Box: 2596, Arba Minch, Main Campus, Ethiopia
E-mail:[email protected]

Doi:10.7575/aiac.alls.v.5n.3p.195 Received: 17/04/2014

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.alls.v.5n.3p.195 Accepted: 26/05/2014

The research is financed by Arba Minch University, Ethiopia.

Abstract
This study reports the dominant linguistic errors that occur in the written productions of Arba Minch University
(hereafter AMU) students. A sample of paragraphs was collected for two years from students ranging from freshmen to
graduating level. The sampled compositions were then coded, described, and explained using error analysis method.
Both quantitative and qualitative analyses showed that almost all components of the English language (such as
orthography, morphology, syntax, mechanics, and semantics) in learners’ compositions have been affected by the
errors. On the basis of surface structures affected by the errors, the following kinds of errors have been identified:
addition of an auxiliary (*I was read by gass light), omission of a verb (*Sex before marriage ^ many disadvantages),
misformation in word class (*riskable for risky) and misordering of major constituents in utterances (*I joined in 2003
Arba minch university). The study also identified two causes which triggered learners’ errors: intralingual and
interlingual. The majority of the errors, however, attributed to intralingual causes, which mainly resulted from the lack
of full mastery on the basics of the English language.
Keywords: error, error analysis, linguistic component, error taxonomy, intralingual, interlingual
1. Introduction
During their stay at a university, students are expected to write answers on exams using paragraphs and complete essays
as well. They are also required to carry out various written activities, such as field and/or lab reports, senior essays or
final year projects. When these students write, they face a variety of problems. One of such problems is committing
linguistic errors which adversely affect the structure of their sentences and the idea they want to communicate. Brown
(2007) stated that making mistakes [errors in writing] is a natural process of learning and must be considered as part of
cognition. Learners’ errors, of course, give insight to the teacher about the learners’ difficulty in their learning and
therefore they are considered indispensable in learning teaching process. Thus learners’ errors must be studied
systematically and appropriately analyzed in order to give effective remedial. Analyzing learners’ errors, in general, has
two fold advantages: Firstly, it gives a good understanding of the nature and types of errors so as to devise appropriate
ways to avoid them (pedagogical advantage); Secondly, it provides an insight about the process of second language
acquisition, for the study of learners’ errors is part of the systematic study of the learners’ language (Theoretical
advantage), (Corder, 1981). These two significances of error analysis, therefore, are absolutely essential to make well-
founded proposals for the development and improvement of the materials and techniques of language teaching in
general and writing skills teaching in particular.
To enable students avoid such errors and construct grammatically well-formed and meaningful sentences, our
responsibility is to systematically study such errors and bring to the attention of material developers and curriculum
designers as Lightbown and Spada (2006) have indicated. Thus, the major purpose of this paper is to study the nature,
type and magnitude of the errors that AMU students commit when they write paragraphs and to provide a means of
avoiding those errors.
2. Theoretical Underpinning
2.1 Studying Learners’ Errors and Its Significances
Among Amharic speakers there is a proverb which reads: ke säw s∂ht∂t ke bret z∂gät lit. ‘Man errs as steel rusts’.
Similarly, English has this proverb: ‘To err is human, to forgive divine’. When people learn a second language, they
cannot instantly develop a native-like control over the target language. Instead, language learning is a gradual process of
internalizing the rules of the target language (hereafter TL) and in such process people can’t acquire the TL without
making errors. Corder (1981) expresses that the learners’ system can be described linguistically and the researcher can
discover the learners’ transitional competence, and this system can be accessed through the learners’ errors. Applied
ALLS 5(3):195-205, 2014 192
linguists, such as Corder (1967), Selinker (1972), etc. recognized the fact that L2 learners construct a mental grammar
of the target language—and this manifests itself in errors. Ellis (1997) also asserts that the L2 acquisition analysis or
description in general focuses on learners’ errors owing to the following three reasons: (a) Errors are prominent features
of learners’ language and they strike the important question, such as ‘why do learners make errors?’;(b) Errors inform
teachers about the nature of learners’ difficulties; (c) Errors help learners, especially when they are able to correct their
errors by themselves.
2.2 Approaches to the Study of Learners’ Errors
2.2.1 Contrastive Analysis (CA)
Contrastive analysis is a technique for comparing the learners’ mother tongue and the target language. According to
CA, errors occur as a result of interference, and such interference takes place whenever there is a difference between
native mother tongue and the target language. So success in second or foreign language learning involves mastering the
differences between L1 and L2 (Brown, 1980). However, CA has been severely criticized for the following reasons.
Firstly, it assumes that error derives exclusively from first language interference. Nevertheless, it has been found
repeatedly that the combination of interlingual and intralingual factors gives rise to errors in learning a second language.
Richards (1974:182) showed that “…many errors, however, derive from the strategies employed by the learner in
language acquisition and from the mutual interference of items within the target language”. Secondly, CA is successful
in predicting phonological difficulties. Studies confirmed that L1 influence is apparent in phonology; for instance,
Dulay et al. (1982:96) revealed, “present research results suggest that the major impact the first language has on second
language acquisition may have to do with accent, not with grammar or syntax”. The other limitation is that CA does not
give attention to what is happening in the mind of the learner.

2.2.2 Error Analysis (EA)

Richards & Schmidt (2002) defined EA as a technique for identifying, classifying and systematically interpreting the
unacceptable forms of a language in the production data of someone learning either a second or foreign language. Such
systematic analysis of errors eventually provides useful insights about the system operating in the learners’ mind and
reveals the learners’ knowledge about the grammatical systems of the target language. By identifying what is exactly
lacking in the learners’ competence, EA brings the problem areas to the attention of teachers, syllabus designers and
textbook writers, and suggests remedial action. EA is usually operated on the production data of language learners
(compositions, speeches, etc.), and any EA activity entails the following procedures (Ellis, 1985).

Ø Defining a corpus of language

Ø Identifying errors in the corpus
Ø Description of the errors
Ø Explaining the errors
Defining a corpus of language: This step involves collecting and defining a set of utterances produced by L2 learners.
Error identification: Ellis (1997) claims that comparing the sentences learners produce with what the normal or ‘correct’
sentences in the target language, which correspond with them enable us to identify errors. This process involves “…a
comparison between what the learner has produced and what a native speaker counterpart would produce in the same
context”, (Ellis & Barkhuizen, 2005, p.58). Errors are those sentences which are ill-formed grammatically or well-
formed grammatically but inappropriate for a particular context. After identifying the erroneous utterance, it will be
possible to compare the reconstruction with the original erroneous utterance and then we can describe the differences in
terms of the grammar of the target language.
Describing errors: The description procedure involves specifying how the forms produced by the learner differ from
those produced by the learner’s native speaker counterparts in the same context. The most useful taxonomies for error
descriptions are linguistic taxonomy, surface structure taxonomy, communicative effect taxonomy, and comparative
analysis taxonomy. The following discussion of error description taxonomies is based on the presentation given in
Dulay et al., (Dulay et al. 1982: 150-163).

i) Linguistic taxonomy: It operates on the basis of the linguistic component (phonology/orthography, grammar,
semantics, lexicon, and discourse) that is affected by an error. This taxonomy improves teaching since it uses well-
established grammatical categories which are utilized to organize language lessons in textbooks and workbooks.

ii) Surface structure taxonomy: This taxonomy works on mechanisms in which surface forms are modified or altered in
erroneous utterances. There are four main ways in which learners alter target forms.
a) Addition errors: such errors refer to the presence of an element or form which must not appear in a well-formed
utterance. Addition errors are sub-categorized into: regularization i.e applying rules used to produce the regular ones to
those exceptions to the rules; double-marking, a kind of addition error in which one feature is marked at two levels;
simple additions are those which are neither regularizations nor double-markings.
b) Omission errors: the absence of an item that must appear in a well- formed utterance.
c) Misordering errors: caused by incorrect placement of a morpheme or group of morphemes in a given utterance.
d) Misformation errors: refer to the use of a wrong form of a morpheme or a structure in an utterance. Three types of
ALLS 5(3):195-205, 2014 193
misinformation errors are commonly found in learners’ errors.
i) Regularization: a regular marker is used for an irregular one.
ii) Archi-forms: the selection of one member of a class of forms to represent others in the class.
iii) Alternative forms: free alternation of various members of a class with each other.
To analyze learners’ errors with optimum description, I employed a combination of the two error describing models
(linguistic & surface structure). The communicative effect taxonomy is employed only to determine the ‘gravity’ of the
learners’ errors.
Explaining errors: Muriel (2006) emphasized the idea that accounting for why an error was made is the most important step in
any attempt to understand the process of second language acquisition and to improve the way a second language is learned.
Researchers of second language learning have identified two sources of errors: interlingual and intralingual factors. Interlingual
transfer is seen as a process in which learners use their knowledge of the first language in learning a second language, whereas
intralingual errors are the result of faulty rule learning of the TL. Richards (1974:174) says “… intralingual errors are those
which reflect the general characteristics of rule learning, such as faulty generalization, incomplete application of rules, and
failure to learn conditions under which rules apply”.
3. Methodology
3.1 Participants
A sample of written productions from AMU students, who took the courses Communicative English Skills and Basic
Writing Skills, was collected and analyzed. These subjects range from freshmen to graduating level.
3.2 Sampling Design
The population of the study is apparently large (7 910 students), so systematic random sampling was employed,
proportionately, and 600 compositions were made the subjects of this study.
3.3 Procedures: Data Collection and Analysis
Areas of topics were given to the sampled learners to produce their own composition using 150 words. The writing
activity was administered in the participants’ respective classrooms by data collectors under the observance of the
researcher. The general procedure of the analysis began with identifying well-formed and ill-formed sentences; this was
done using theories of general linguistics, good dictionaries and English grammar books. The various errors were then
identified, counted, described and classified using a hybrid of quantitative and qualitative methods.
4. Results and Discussion
This section displays frequency and magnitude of errors in the compositions of the six college students of AMU. These
are College of Agriculture, College of Health Sciences, Arba Minch Institute of Technology, College of Social Sciences
& Humanities, College of Business & Economics, and College of Natural & Computational Sciences. Here after these
are referred as CA, CHS, AMIT, CSSH, CBE and CNS respectively. Based on the linguistic components affected by the
errors, we have spelling error, morphological error, syntactic error, and mechanics error.

Table1. Numbers and percentages of errors per linguistic components across the six colleges

Linguistic components affected by the errors

Colleges Spelling Morphology Syntax Mechanics Total no
of errors
CA 132 (23%) 167 (29%) 165 (29%) 103 (18%) 567
CHS 115 (30%) 185 (48%) 102 (26%) 165 (43%) 388
AMIT 290 (27%) 265 (25%) 289 (27%) 190 (18%) 1,055
CSSH 404 (29%) 265 (19%) 318 (23%) 178 (12%) 1,379
CBE 296 (29%) 277 (27%) 265 (26%) 248 (24%) 1,017
CNS 414 (33%) 398 (31%) 332 (26%) 220 (17%) 1,269

In addition to the above linguistic components, a category of unintelligible utterances is created. Because they contain
multiple errors and/or they are covert errors, the meanings of such utterances cannot be discerned. Unintelligible
utterances showed the following percentages in the respective colleges: CHS 7% (27), CSSH 5% (74), CBE 4% (39),
CNS 3% (38) and AMIT 2% (22). The graph below shows the error types and their frequency in the six colleges.
ALLS 5(3):195-205, 2014 194

Figure 1. The frequency of errors per linguistic components & colleges

4.1 Addition Errors
Addition errors identified from the analysis of learners’ data are categorized into simple addition, double-marking and
regularization errors.
4.1.1 Simple Addition Errors
a) 3rd person singular-s
The agreement rule of English states that 3rd person singular–s is added to a verb when the subject is 3rd person (He, She
or It). However, as the following data reveal, the 3rd person singular–s is added to verbs where the subjects are in first
and second person (I, and you). In doing so the learners might have overgeneralized the rule, which only works to 3rd
persons, to other persons i.e first person and second person. In the last example (c) below the addition of –s to the
infinitive form is erroneous because an infinitive always begins with to and followed by the bare form of a verb since it
doesn’t inflict either for number or tense.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Linguistic item added Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
3rd person singular-s (a) I belives that sex befor marriage is good.
(b)….because you hops to marry for future.
(c) …their so many struggle to adapts this things…
b) Verbs
English uses a compound verb to mark grammatical information, such as passive, progressive, perfective, future,
interrogation, negation (in statements), etc. In the sentences given below, however, the auxiliary verbs are used, but they
convey none of the above functions. For instance, in the sentence *if there is sex before marriage there is may be unsafe
abortion, the occurrence of the verb to “be”, is, with the modal verb may is wrong primarily and secondly it adds
nothing to the meaning of the sentence. If that is the case, it is fairly possible to state that the learners use them out of
sheer ignorance of the functions of these auxiliary verbs particularly when they appear in conjugation with main verbs
as the following data reveal. Compounded to the problem is when the main verb is in perfective form and becomes
passive as in the sentence, *I am studied in AMU, in which the learner ended up making a funny error. See also the
following examples.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Auxiliary verbs added Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
are The people are facilitate to other obstacle.
was I was argue that sex before marriage is not necessary for adult peoples.
am I am dis agree by sex before marriage are un important.
have There is no have good life in ARBAMinch universty
may If one person or any person do sex before married, may be the pregnant may occur.

c) Articles
As far as the English grammar is concerned the articles a and an have the same function, that is, marking indefiniteness
in nouns, whereas the shows definiteness. Sometimes these articles pose problems on learners. Consider the following
sentences to see how article errors occur. In the first sentence, the indefinite article a is wrongly placed before a plural
noun numerious impacts. The very simple reason is the articles a/an cannot be used with plural nouns for a/an means
‘one’. The problem with the use of the article the in (c) is down to the learners’
ALLS 5(3):195-205, 2014 195
__________________________________________________________________________________
Description of the error Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
a) a before uncountable noun It’s not need to have a sex before marriage as my opinoun so I disagree.
b) a before a proper noun life in Arbaminch is comparatively other compase like A Smara
unifersity is bater one due to…
c) the before determiner My life is begin like all of the world persons from the my mother.
________________________________________________________________________________________
failure to notice the collocation rules in English. In English we don’t use the article the with other determiners, such as
my, your, her, etc.
d) Tense markers
In English tense is marked on verbs, but as we can see below (a) the adjective ill is marked for past and becomes *illed.
On the other hand, under (b) the infinitive marker to appeared with a tensed verb (*to divorced), which is wrong for an
infinitive almost always begins with to and followed by the simple form of a verb, that is, to divorce rather than *to
divorced. In sentence (c) the progressive marker–ing is not required since it disturbs the tense parallelism in the two
clauses joined by the subordinate conjunction when.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Past morpheme Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
–ed instead of Ø a) and she is Illed mentally…
–ed instead of Ø b) They will go to divorced after marriage.
–ing instead of Ø c) When you chewing chat you are not like eat the other time.
e) Adjectivization
In the sentence given below, the word bright ‘filled with light’ is an adjective in itself. Adding an adjectivizing suffix‘-
ful’ makes the adjective meaning to be expressed twice, which is redundancy.
*My childhood life was not ^ brightful as others.
f) Case markers
In the two utterances given below (a) & (b) the possession marker ’-s is added to the nouns year (year’s) and youth
(youth’s), but the contexts don’t require the marking of possession. The bare forms (year and youth) instead are
grammatically sound.
*a) I was born in Addis in 1982 after one year’s I was went to my grandfather.
*b) At that time the youth’s ^expose to sexual risk like un wanted pregnancy.
g) Pronouns
We use pronouns in place of a noun or a noun phrase when we mention a person or a thing for the second time so that
we can avoid unnecessary repetition. Under utterances (a), (b) & (c) below, the pronouns it, they, and he refer back to
noun phrases sex before marriage, all chewrs or smokers and the noun grandfather respectively, but all the sentences
do not necessitate the mentioning of the noun phrases—thus—the use of the pronouns it, they and he is a mere
redundancy. Again, in (d) the additions of the object pronoun them is unnecessary and disruptive as well.
a)*Sex before marriage According to my opinion it is meangless.
b)*almost all chewrs or smokers they assume their feeling only.
c)*I was born in Addis in 1982 E.C after 1 year’s I was enjoy to my grand father that he was live in rural
d)*AMU is more beautifull univarsity b/c of them their some things obtanted like banan, papay mango
h) Lexical items
As the following table shows the utterances entail words which are deemed surplus for the requirements of a well
formed sentence. Nouns (necessity & needs), adverbs (up to still now), verbs (returned & back), etc. are used together
in a context where only one can do the work. For instance, in the sentence *before one years ago my studying style is
the exam is approach but this not result full studying, both before and ago have exactly the same meaning i.e ‘denoting
past’. Consider also the utterances in the following table.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Linguistic items redundant Examples*
_________________________________________________________________________________________
October & month I came to AMU October month in 2003 on saturday.
returned & back The memory of my child hood is good i want to returned back.
necessity & needs …to fulfill Basic Necessity Needs like food…
up to & still now First of all I’m to inter this campus 2000 E.C and up to still now AMU is very
essential confortable to me in different manner.
practice & make if some one want to practice make a sex befor marriage He get many negative effects.
____________________________________________________________________________________
When learners are unaware of the fact that a preceding word contains the meaning of the subsequent word (i.e when the
two are synonyms), they commit such kinds of errors.
ALLS 5(3):195-205, 2014 196
i) Plural markers
The plural marking morpheme –s is used for singular nouns as the following examples show. The underlined nouns
from sentence (a) to (c) must be in their singular forms, but the learners changed them into plural, thus, the utterances
become erroneous in terms of number, at least. For instance, the noun ideas in (a) refer back to sex or sex before
marriage, which is a singular noun—hence—error in number.
(a) *The sex before marrige, I disagree this ideas.
(b) *befor one years ageo I was sikn.
(c) *since we are youngs we should enjoy our self.
The last one (c) is a little bit different from the rest discussed above. Adding –s/–es for changing something singular
into plural is the feature of only nouns. As sentence (c) illustrates, young, which is an adjective, has erroneously be
given a noun quality and its plural becomes *youngs.
j) Conjunction
Two linkers, which have similar grammatical function, are used where only one is enough as shown from sentence (a)
to (d). In sentence (a) another & also show ‘addition’, in (b) like & as show ‘example’, in (c) due to & to, both mean
‘intention or reason’ and in (d) and & as well as again show ‘addition’.

_____________________________________________________________________________________
Conjunctions added *Examples
_________________________________________________________________________________________
another & also a) another effect of sex before marge is also health problem.
like & as b) Simply students have been milling and Grinding with out any assumption like as hittler.
due to & to c) it can decrease our income due to to get the chat we lost the birr.
and & as well as d) I learned different things from my friends, teachers and as well as from other books.
__________________________________________________________________________________________
The learners don’t seem aware of the fact that these conjunctions perform more or less similar grammatical functions
within each of the sentences they appeared in particular and in the English language system in general. It also indicates
an instance of failure on the part of the learners about when and how to use conjunctions in English.
4.1.2 Double-Marking Errors
a) Lexical items
Consider the addition case in this sentence: *Sex before marrage is It causes in d/t cases unsafe pregnancy d/t types of
deses (በሽታዎች)፡ un planing family. The added item, (በሽታዎች), is a transfer from L1 (Amharic). The mixing of this
Amharic word in the English sentence (particularly with the English word [diseases]), shows one feature (meaning) is
expressed by two languages—thus—double-marking.
b) Tense
Double-marking can also occur in tense. For example, in the sentence *If any individual didn’t made sex before
marrige according to me well, ‘pasteness’ is marked at two levels i.e at the auxiliary verb (didn’t) and at the main verb
(made). The English grammar, however, allows marking ‘pasteness’ only on the auxiliary verb when a sentence
contains both an auxiliary and a main verb as in the above erroneous utterance.
c) Case
Sometimes genitive case is marked twice within a sentence. Let’s consider this utterance …because of the compus’s
[campus’s] people behaver’s and other problems I hate this university. The learner in writing this sentence is concerned
with the behavior of the campus people, so there is no reason to mark possession on the noun behavior.
d) Negation
Writers deliberately use double negative to express a positive meaning as the two negatives cancel out with each other.
If they are used correctly, double negatives are effective in creating variety in sentence construction. Learners, however,
use double negation unintentionally so that they end up expressing the opposite of what they meant. In sentence (a)
below negation is marked in the indefinite pronoun nobody and the quantifier (determiner), no. The meaning of the
sentence is people forget the time of childhood. But from the context it is understood that the learner wanted to say no
person forgets [his/her] time of childhood. The error might have occurred due to the learner’s failure to notice the
negative sense in the indefinite pronoun nobody.
(a) *I think no body will not forget the time of childhood.
(b) *Totaly the stimulate don’t un nescary.
Similarly, in the second sentence (b), as it was extracted from the context, the student wanted to convey the meaning
[stimulants] are unnecessary (for university students). Nevertheless, he/she already negated the auxiliary verb and the
adjective so that the learner ended up expressing the opposite of what he meant.
4.1.3 Regularization Errors
a) Pluralization
In the table below the plural marking morpheme–s is added to the nouns advice and information. As a result, we have
*advices and *informations which are grammatically ill-formed, for advice and information are uncountable nouns and
therefore can’t take the pluralizer–s. They instead form their respective plurals in a peculiar fashion, that is, by adding
an independent morpheme like some or a piece (of). This error occurs when learners apply rules used to produce the
ALLS 5(3):195-205, 2014 197
regular ones (adding–s) to those exceptions to the rules. By doing so, a learner regularizes the irregulars. See the
utterances in which these nouns occurred.
*the teacher gave advices to students but not listen.
*I get informations from senir students.
b) Tense
Though English predominantly marks ‘pasteness’ by adding the suffix –d, or –ed, there are verbs that are not abide by
this general rule. In the two sentences presented below the learners erroneously constructed past tenses for the verbs
hurt, and hit as *hurted and *hited respectively. The verbs hurt and take belong to the irregular category of verbs in
terms of past tense formation as they don’t take either –d, or –ed. The base forms hurt and hit themselves serve as past
and past participle with no addition of past (participle) marker. The addition of past marking morphemes (–d &–ed) to
these verbs indicates the learners’ failure to realize the very specific rules /patterns of past formation for the so called
irregular verbs in English. On top of that it reveals the learner’s strategy in attempting to apply the general rule for
exceptional cases, that is, using the already available linguistic resources and applying for new contexts.
(1) *I feel bad when she is hurted.
(2) *when i was child i hited one boy and go to my village…
c) Concord
Within a sentence a subject and a verb must agree in number. This means, a singular subject takes a singular verb,
whereas a plural subject requires a plural verb. This rule has some exceptions, however. Unable to observe these
exceptions, leads to agreement error. In the following two sentences a concord error occurred because the 3 rd person
singular marker–s is added to the main verbs go and think, while the two verbs are preceded by the future marking
auxiliary will and the modal auxiliary may respectively. In such situations the 3rd person singular marker –s is not
employed though the subject is 3rd person singular i.e she.
*She will goes to many psychological crises…
*She may thinks as if she is pregnant.
d)Article
*After joining to the AMU, I join to college of chamo.
The above utterance has employed ‘the’ before the proper noun AMU. We do not normally use definite article the with
proper nouns, such as the names of universities. Of course, in English we use ‘the’ when we refer to names of
geographical areas (the Middle East), names of deserts (the Sahara), names composed of common nouns and proper
nouns (the New York city), and so on. However, this definite article ‘the’ cannot be used with proper nouns like names
of academic subjects (English), names of countries (Ethiopia), names of universities (Arba Minch University), etc.
When learners do not fully master the rules of using articles with their exceptions, the above kind of problem occurs.
4.2 Omission Errors
4.2.1 Grammatical morphemes: this part discusses how various kinds of grammatical morphemes are omitted in
learners’ utterances and their impact on the grammaticality of sentences.
a) Number marker
In the following utterances the absence of a pluralizer on the nouns impact and problem affects the grammatical
category known as number.
*The negative impact^ of chat and cigarete are damaging teeth.
*There are many problem^ in AMU.
b) 3rd person singular –s
In the utterances given below Smoking cigarette and It are subjects. To keep these subjects and the verbs agree in
number, there must be 3rd person singular –s at the end of the verbs. However, the learners left off the –s from the verbs
bring and increase; as a result, the concord (subject-verb agreement) in the given sentences is violated.
*Smoking cigarete also bring^ disese.
*It increase^ motivation.
c) Case (genitive)
Genitive case answers an important question within a sentence by telling or signifying the owner of a thing, or an
object. An apostrophe is used to show ownership, and it must be put after the owner in English. Failing to use
possessive case within a sentence when it is required will leave such an important question of ownership unanswered.
The underlined nouns in the following sentences don’t have apostrophe so that they don’t show the intended possession.
*So my family^ attitude towardes education is low.
*The persons^ life is goes to very bad ways.
d) Preposition
A sentence doesn’t show grammatical relations when prepositions are omitted or misused within a sentence. The
following utterances display the kinds of prepositions omitted, such as into (direction), with (accompanied by), for (gain
or acquire) and of (indicate apposition or identity).
*The first time I entered ^ the compound I felt like…
*Generally there are so money problems ^ sex before marriage.
*Every individual have need ^ sex
*As we know the chewing ^ chat has a great importance…
e) Article
ALLS 5(3):195-205, 2014 198
In the following sentences learners omitted articles before nouns so that the sentences don’t show definiteness and
indefiniteness. Consider article omission errors below.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Description of omitted articles Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________
a before a common noun (sing.) when I was ^ child I always went to school.
a before class noun defined by adjective AMU is^ bad universty.
the before a particularized noun My life in AMU in ^ past Third (3rd) year…
the before superlative Chamo campus ^ best from other AMU campus.
_____________________________________________________________________________________

f) Pronoun

The utterances provided below lack pronouns of different kinds, such as subject pronoun (I), relative pronoun, object
pronoun, reflexive pronoun, and again subject pronouns (I and he/she) respectively. Obviously, the omission of such
grammatical categories adversely affects the meanings of each of these sentences.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Description of omitted pronouns Examples*
______________________________________________________________________________________
Ø instead of I ^ class follow then reiding hand out & exercise book.
Ø instead of which/that But there are many things ^ not ful filled in the AMU.
Ø instead of me They didn’t tell ^ any information how to use the university properly.
Ø instead of ourselves We up to restrict ^ from this chewing chat and smoking cigarate.
Ø instead of I What ^ am trying to say is that…

g) Comparisons (of adjectives)

In English we can compare a noun with another using either as…as or than within a sentence. The subsequent sentences
seem to be vague because they lost the two different forms of comparison i.e as and than respectively.

*My childhood life was not ^ brightfull as others.

*AMU is more beautifull univarsity ^ ^ b/c of them their things abtanted like banan, papay mango soon.

4.2.2 Content morphemes

a) Verb
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Verbs omitted Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________
i) Main verb
have If the individual ^ sex with partner before marriage he/she knows…
got But after two weeks she ^ better for illness by the will of God.
has Sex before marriage ^ many disadvantages.
____________________________________________________________________________________

The missing of major constituents just like verbs (see above) hinders communication (Dulay et al, 182) because such
omissions belong to global errors, which interfere with communication (cf local errors). Since the function of auxiliary
verbs is to add grammatical content to information expressed by a main verb, their omission doesn’t deter
communication. Auxiliary verbs entail be, do, have in one hand and will, shall, can, could, may, might, must, ought to,
etc. on the other hand. Observe the following instances of auxiliary omission in learners’ sentences.
____________________________________________________________________________
Omitted verbs Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________
ii) Auxiliaries
am But now I ^enjoing even if something become unconfort.
do I ^ not agree or disagree sex before marriage.
will If girl do sex before marriage and have a child she ^ ignored by society.
are Femal students ^ attacked by different diseases.
was I ^ born in Northern Gonder specifically…
should /must …and the government and the society ^ avoid it.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In the utterances given below linking verbs is, are, have, and were are left out; therefore, there is no connection between
the subjects and the predicates in each of the following sentences.
ALLS 5(3):195-205, 2014 199
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Omission of verbs Example*
_____________________________________________________________________________________
iii) Linking verb
is Life in AMU ^ nice.
have A lot of impact ^ chewing chat and smoking cigarette.
were When I was came here in this campus many many things ^ new for me.
____________________________________________________________________________________
4.3 Misformation Errors
4.3.1Verbs (Types): misformation error in verb types with examples and their descriptions is presented below.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Error Description Examples *
_____________________________________________________________________________________
A) Verb to “be” for verb to “do”
is instead of do People that chewing chat is not work…
are instead of do but my parents are not agree.
am instead do I am not agree ^ sex befor marriage.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
B) Verb to “be” for verb “have”
are instead of have chat and smoking cigarete are impact on health of people.
is instead of has before marriage sex is mony disadvantages.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
C) Verb to “have” for verb to “do”
have instead of do I have not smoking, drinkig alcohl.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
D) Verb to “do” for verb to “be”
do instead of are Totally the stemulante don’t un nescary.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
E) Verb to “have” for verb to “be”
has instead of is Sex before marriage has not important.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
F) Modal Verb for verb to “be”
should instead of is There for, No one should expected to make sex be fore marriage.
can instead of are I’am not satisfied with some lectures that can expected and
selected to be the best for that course.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
G) Verb to “be” for linking verb
is instead of become When I share my friends experience she was a boy friend and sex
with him before marriage after this she is pregnant.

_____________________________________________________________________________________
H) Verb to “be” for “modal”
is instead of should Chat and smoking cigarate is Avoid in out of the country it is not necessary goods
4.3.2 Tense
One situation where a tense error occurs is when a writer uses a verb form that doesn’t clearly indicate when an action
or condition is completed (i.e present, past or future). Besides, incorrect sequence of tenses within a sentence and
incorrect tense with irregular verbs can lead to error in tense. Observe a summary of the most common tense errors
identified in this study.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Error description Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________
i) s/ present instead of s/past I come to this campus in 2001. E.C
ii) past perfect for present perfect I had never seen boring area like AMU.
iii) s/ past instead of s/present In religion of protestant is sex befor marriage were forbidden.
iv) present perfect for s/present Sex befor marriage has exposed to money disses wether used or not used codom.
v) s/present for present perfect I enjoy in AMU since 2005 E.C.
A) Regularization Errors
Observe the past forms for the verbs catch, fly and arise in the following learners’ utterances.
(1) *Health problem in fresh man I catched by malaria.
(2) *They Flyed to diFFerent places to get femle.
(3) *in the firsh time so meney factor was reached such as the grade was boring due to some factors (climatic &
understanding) of how the test is arised.
ALLS 5(3):195-205, 2014 200
Interestingly, learners have added regular past marker (–ed) on the irregular verbs catch, fly, and arise—thus—ill-
formed past forms *catched, *flyed, and *arised occurred. These verbs are exceptions to the general rule of past
formation in English and they use different mechanisms i.e vowel modification, consonantal modification or mixed
modification to mark ‘pasteness’, thus, the correct past forms are caught, flew and arose respectively.

4.3.3 Concord
A) Singular verb for plural subject
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Error description Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
is instead of are Therie is diferent languges and diFFerent rligins in AMU.
does instead of do They does not think about their speaking ability.
B) Plural verb for singular subject
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Error description Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________
have instead of has Sex before marrige have different un-wanted effect.
do instead of does my Religion do not support engaging in sexual intercourse.
are instead of is Life in AMU are very deficult.
4.3.4 Content oriented lexical misformations
a) Confusion of sense relations
Sense relations in words sometimes give rise to semantic confusion, which eventually leads to lexical error. Consider the
following lexical errors caused by semantic confusion.
___________________________________________________________________________________
Error description Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

memorize instead of remember There is nothing that makes me sensetional and passionate more than memorizing
my child hood life.
patient instead of disease/sickness before marriage sex is disagree that means it is coming patient or luck of health.
In the above example, the noun patient ‘a person receiving or to receive medical treatment’ and the other noun disease
‘a disorder of structure or function in a human or animal’ are semantically related in the sense that one is the possessor
(patient) and the other is the possessed (disease). The learners, having got confused by such meronymic sense relations,
chose patient instead of disease/sickness–thus–lexical misselection.
b) Wrong word choice
This occurs when a writer chooses a totally wrong word and such selection of an incorrect word for a particular
situation causes misunderstanding. The following is a summary of wrong word choice with relevant examples from
learners’ data.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Descriptions of misselection Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________
contain instead of leads Sexual intercourse contain many deaseses HIV Adis or another dises.
become for leads/causes It [sex before marriage] become HIV Adis, cheBT & ABalazer dississ.
forwarded for ordered Allah forwarded as to protect ourself towards this un necesary thishabits
harmonious for dangerous Chewing of chat and smoking cigarette is very harmonious for human
being and It’s not available.
enjoy instead of join I enjoy the university in 2003.
c) Wrong collocation
This, according to James (1988), is a result from the association of two words which in native usage considered
inappropriate. Wrong collocations tend to affect fluency and sometimes disrupt communication. Look at the following
examples of wrong collocation usage.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Description of wrongly collocated words Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________
bring instead of serve The quality of food to bring for the students is also bad.
cutting for quitting/stopping I just left the cafteria by cutting my eating process.
drinks for takes She is Illeded mentaly and she drinks druges and she dies.
un important for sexually transmitted Sex before marriage exist un important deaseas.
take instead of have One person loves girls and He should take a sexual intercourse
harassment for sexual intercourse I dis agree with having sexual harasment before marriage.
In the above data, interestingly, two different words (take and harassment) are wrongly collocated with the word sex or
sexual intercourse. The English term sexual intercourse, however, usually co-occurs with the verbs engage in, have or
indulge in.
ALLS 5(3):195-205, 2014 201
d) Errors of word formation
i) Error in syntactic class
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Description of the errors Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Adverb instead of Adjective HIV Aids is a dangerously disease.
Adjective instead of Adverb sex befor marriage lead to sexual transmted disease.
Verb instead of Noun in all A.M.U lectures are Bastrd.
Noun instead of Verb It leads students not to success in their education.
Noun instead of Adverb When one girle perform sex with out marrage she is damage by cycology
Noun instead of Adjective The teachers is not punctuality.
Adjective instead of Noun in generally sex before marriaige have no importants.
Verb instead of Adjective the living standard of people become unsatisfied in future
ii) Using non-existent or wrong L2 (English) forms
Error description Examples*
failerity for falilure the failerity of English language the result of this…
worsely for worse Because of peer pressure I worsely affected.
healtfull for healthy if you don’t smoke you be healtfull person.
knowlegy for knowledgeable Lectures are very bast and knowlegy.

iii) Borrowing from L1

words from L1 (Amharic) Examples*
ማስጠላት a) the life in AMU could be ማስጠላት from children life and preparatory life.
በግ ተራ b) I waint to በግ ተራ to get some girls.
ገንዳ c) I go to Swimying ገንዳ with my friend.
ዐባላዘር d) it lead to Hiv and other ዐባላዘር disease.
Amharic words are mixed with the English utterances as shown from (a) to (d) above. In sentence (a) the Amharic
word, ማስጠላት masṭälat ‘something disgusting’, substituted the English word sickening or abhorrent. Similarly, በግ ተራ
bäg tära lit. ‘Sheep line/queue’ is preferably an informal term used among university students to refer to a place where
boys and girls meet with their sweethearts. Another word borrowed from Amharic is ገንዳ gända ‘trough’ or ‘font’, but
the learner actually wanted to say pool as in swimming pool. Finally, ዐባላዘር ‘abaläzär still an Amharic word, appeared
in utterance (d) replacing the English word genitals. Such errors are interlingual because these lexical items are
borrowings from the learners’ L1 (Amharic) vocabulary.
iv) Code switching and using transliteration
Switching from English to a mother tongue, especially to Amharic and the vice versa is observed in students’
compositions. Code-switching has occurred both intrasententially and intersententially. And the following composition
is written dominantly in Amharic except the introductory phrase, which is in English.
(1) *Life in arba minch ጥሩ ጎንም መጥፎ ጎንም ዐለዉ፡፡ ጥሩ ጎን የምለዉ ሃገሩ በጣም ቢሞቅም ለኑሮ በጣም ይስማማል፡፡ምክንያቱም ፍራፍሬ ና
ዐትክልት ስለሚገኙ ነዉ መጥፎ ጎን የምለዉ ዐንዳንዱ ለሚከሰትቱ ችግሮች ዐሉ፡ ለምሳሌ ከሶስት ሰዐት በኃላ ከተማ ዉስጥ ማንኛዉም ሰዉ መራመድ
ዐይችልም ብዙ ችግሮች ይደርሳሉ፡ በተለይም በሴት ዕህቶቻችን ላይ ስለዚህ ነዉ፡፡
The learner began the sentence below (2) in English (In Arba minch university) and immediately switched to
transliteration and then mixed a shortened form of an English word, B/c.
(2) *In Arba minch university ENE yasalefkut Hiwot Betam Tiru Ena Bizu Ye Bahri LEWTE AleGN
Lit. In Arba Minch university ‘I’ ‘passed’ ‘life’ ‘very’ ‘good’ ‘and’ ‘many’ ‘of’ ‘behavior’ ‘change’ ‘have-1S’
B/c metiFOwn Tiche Tiruwn Eyeyazhu EskaHun Dires Alehu.
‘of bad’ ‘abandoned’ ‘of good’ ‘hold-1S’ ‘until now’ ‘exist-1S’
Literally, ‘In Arba Minch University I spent life very good and I have many behavioral change because bad abandoned
good take until I exist’, which generally means ‘In AMU I had a very good life and I showed immense behavioral
changes. I still exist because I take the positives and abandon the bad ones. This utterance is unintelligible, especially to
those readers who don’t use Amharic, for the sentence entails transliteration in which the characters of the Amharic
language are put in their equivalent English characters.
v) Coinage
The items (iutinitlet, curwell, and cut of) don’t entirely exist in the English language lexicon in both the forms and the
senses they occurred in the learners’ utterances below.
Coined items Examples*
iutinitlet Sex before marriage dis agree because they are many or iutinitlet dis advantage
curwell Even some people may be curwell or separated by this sex before marriage
cut of Sex before marriage is not necessary. The reason of cut of the acadamical knowlige.
chicologist I want to adivise female and other chicologist that they have to do sex.
ALLS 5(3):195-205, 2014 202
Interestingly, the last one i.e chicologist is a coinage of a learner from the informal English word chick ‘young woman’
and thus chicologist ‘a person who regularly goes with women’. However, the learner misunderstood the style of the
word, that is, the word chick is used in informal contexts.
4.3.5 Form oriented lexical misformations
The term ‘synform’ refers to lexical forms which show similarity in their phonological and graphic systems, Laufer
(1988). Such forms are sources of lexical errors as they cause lexical confusion, which eventually leads learners to
choose a wrong lexical item. The following lexical errors are found to be motivated by ‘synformic confusions’, such as
the suffix type, the prefix type, the vowel-based type and the consonant-based type.
a) The suffix type: those lexical forms having the same root but different suffixes
Error description Examples*
confidencially for confidently I can say that confidencially I have learned so many thing
oppose for opposite I have not relation ships with opose sex (females).
continuum for continuity other words, there is not continuum of love eache other.
b) The prefix type: those lexical forms having the same root, but different prefixes
disencourage for discourage So the gov’t strategic policy necessary to disencourage the people who
need to sex intercourse before marriage.
c) The consonant-based type: synforms with identical phonemes except for one consonant.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Item description Examples*
____________________________________________________________________________________
scarce for scar Although we get a moment of satisfaction the scarce is not avoid through our life.
whether for weather Sex before marriage it has exposed to money disses whether used or not used condoms.
hole for whole on the economic growth of a country and a nation as a hole is high.
luck for lack So before marriage sex is disagree that means it is coming to patient luck of health
tank for thank I tank God to my success.
d) The vowel-based type: those lexical items almost identical in all phonemes except for one vowel or diphthong.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Error description Examples*
_____________________________________________________________________________________
lake for lack lake of quality tolate servis and so on.
went for want I went to underline the command of God…
vary for very chat & smoking cigarate is vary danger.
many for money We pay a lot of many more than the income.
compass for campus Living in the compass is needs a great deal of patience.
4.3.6 Grammatical morphemes: the following section discusses errors pertinent to grammatical morphemes (cf errors in
lexical items above).
A) Error due to phonological resemblance
The following errors are motivated by phonological similarity; hence, we have vowel-based type, and consonant-based
types as illustrated below.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The vowel-based type Examples*
______________________________________________________________________________________
their instead of there Their is also another dis advantage to chewing chat.
there instead of their most of the students not happy with there life in AMU.
may instead of my …because may family are not educated.
an– instead of un– It was anblevable for all students.
The consonant-based type Examples*
as instead of us Even if God ordered as not doing sex before marrage…
once instead of one’s Sex before marriage not good for once health.
B) Comparative forms
In utterance (1) below a learner seems comparing the serving of food in Arba Minch University with other universities.
When we compare one person (thing) with several other persons (things), we use superlatives, but the learner has used
first degree i.e good (instead of best). The other problem of this sentence is the presence of the phrase rather than,
which is used to contrast two things or situations, not in comparing one thing with several others. Sentence (2) mixes
aspects of comparative and superlative degrees. Firstly, the superlative form of the word fun i.e
(1) *Since Its fooding condition, fruits kaffe also is rather good other than other universites.
(2) *My memory of child hood life is much funiest i remembered when I was a child
funniest is provided. The learner, however, failed to supply other lives that can be compared against childhood life, as in
childhood life is the nicest of all. The learner also employed the modifier much, which English allows to be used with
comparative degrees, not with the superlative.
4.4 Misordering
4.4.1 Misplacement of verbs
ALLS 5(3):195-205, 2014 203
In most English sentence construction, the subject precedes the verb. The following example, however, reversed the
order of a modal verb and a subject.
(1) *…mainly after a time may he become dependent and issolate from society.
The modal verb may must not precede the subject he because the utterance is neither a question, nor a sentence
expressing wish (as in May God bless you). The sentence rather is a declarative one which expresses possibility. The
modal verb occupies the first position when there is verb conjugation in a given sentence as in the above sentence (may
& become). Yet, the modal verb may, appeared before the subject he, not before the main verb become and this
placement has triggered the error.
4.4.2 Misplacement of objects
(1) *By the way AMU I like so much
In this particular sentence the object or the thing liked (AMU) must appear after the verb like (S-V-O pattern) and the
utterance will have the following order: By the way I like AMU so much.
(2)*…it was gave food to eat and drink for water.
The things given according to the above sentence are food and water and these two are direct objects. The food and the
water are given to be eaten and drunk respectively, so to eat and for drink constitute indirect objects. The place of the
direct object and the indirect object is reversed in the phrase drink for water. Based on the above discussion it must be
water for drink. And the whole structure will be: It was given food to eat and water for (a) drink. This misordering (and
repetition of to eat and for drink) might have caused by an L1 (in this case, Amharic) influence.
In Amharic it’s common to say: yä mibälla m∂g∂b ∂na yä miṭäṭṭa wuha täsäṭä
lit. ‘of (can be) eaten’ ‘food’ ‘and’ ‘of (can be) drunk’ ‘water’ ‘be given’
Generally, it means it was given food to be eaten (to eat) and water for drink. This seems to be a result of a word for
word translation of the items and their order from Amharic to English.
4.4.3 Misplacement of adverbs
(1) *during the Night always I goes to church.
In English word order, adverbs of frequency are put before the main verb. In the above sentence the adverb always is
wrongly placed before the subject. To correct this, we need to move the adverb always and put it in between the subject
I and the main verb go(es).
(2) *I joined in 2003 Arba minch university.
Supplying a time adverb (in 2003) after a verb like utterance (2) above is erroneous. The time adverb must come either
at the very beginning or at the end of a sentence. Hence, the time adverb (in 2003) must be placed either before the
subject (I) or after the object (Arba minch university).
4.4.4 Misordering in question formation
(1) *I don’t know what is the reason of them.
English forms questions by reversing the order of the subject and the verb from S-V-O to V-S-O. This means the verb
precedes the subject, but this reversing of the order of the subject and the verb doesn’t work in embedded question
formation. An embedded question is a question that forms a clause within a sentence (a statement or a question), which
begins with phrases like Do you know where…? Or I wonder why, etc. When we reverse the verb (is) and the subject
(the reason) in utterance (1), we get the correct embedded question, that is, I don’t know what their reason is.
4.4.5 Wrong placement of modifiers
a) Prepositional phrases
(1) *When it gets dark we used to retern to our home with our cattles.
The underlined prepositional phrase (with our cattles) above logically modifies the subject (we). Nevertheless, due to
the misplacement of the two, it seems to the reader that with our cattles is referring to our home, which is wrong
because the noun home doesn’t have the capacity to be accompanied by cattles. To avoid such confusion, the subject
(we) and the modifier (with our cattles) must be placed as closely as possible.
4.4.6 Wrong placement of not
Look at the wrong placement of the element not in the following utterances:
(1) *You do haven’t free time in university.
(2) *But I say not life in AMU is fine.
(3) *I do have not relation ships with opose sex (female).
The very obvious function of not in a sentence is negating a verb. To do so, not has to come after the verb, and when
there is a verb conjugation in a sentence not comes following the auxiliary verb. In the above sentences, however, not
comes after the verbs have, say and another have respectively. To correct these not must be placed after the auxiliary
verbs do, is and do respectively because all of the above sentences contain verb conjugation.
The above rule which discusses the placement of not in a sentence has one exception, that is, when there is infinitive to,
not comes before it. A learner who failed to realize this exception produced the following sentence:
(4) *But now a days it is accepted as shame to do not make sex with friends before marage.
In this case the negation marker not must come preceding the infinitive to.
4.4.7 Misplacement of items/constituents in a structure
ALLS 5(3):195-205, 2014 204
a) Passive voice instead of active
(1) *A person who chewing ‘chat’ and smoking cigarette will be lost money.
Technically speaking the agent (a person) has taken the place of the recipient of the action (money). This is why the
sentence gives a strange sense i.e it is the person who is going to be lost. Logically, it is rather the money which is going
to be lost by the person in spending it for chat and cigarette.
(2) *I am hardly studied, so my result is good.
The meaning of this sentence is very funny in the sense that it shows as if the writer of the sentence were studied.
Compounded to the problem is, instead of hard, hardly (which means scarcely) is used and it distorted the entire
meaning of the sentence.
(3) *I was read by gass light.
Similarly, this ill-formed passive sentence tells us as if the subject, I, (a human being) were read (probably by books),
but a more logical sense would be expressed through this structure: I read (books) by gaslight or the books were read
by gaslight. As I said earlier, failure to know what constitutes an actor, action and acted upon motivates such kinds of
errors.
b) Active instead of Passive
(1) *chewing chat in some part of Ethiopia sees as a culture e.g harar
The meaning of this sentence requires a passive structure than an active voice. To do this an auxiliary verb (is) must be
inserted and the tense of the main verb (sees) must be changed into past participle form (i.e seen).
c) Cleft formation
*It is not Accepted by God sex befor marrage.
In the above utterance the element sex before marriage is a constituent for it moves around as a unit under the following
grammatical processes: question formation, topicalization and cleft formation. The utterance above basically is a cleft-
sentence though it is erroneously constructed. The very simplified formula to construct a cleft-sentence is: It + Be + X +
Subordinate clause, where ‘X’ represents the emphasized item. The more extended version, however, is: It + Be (+ Not
and /or Adverb) + Emphasized word/phrase + that (who) clause. The learner put, the constituent (the emphasized
phrase) i.e sex before marriage, at the wrong slot (at the end) but it must come after the be verb is. There is also
omission of the relative pronoun that and another be (is).
6. Summary, Conclusion and Recommendations
6.1 Summary and Conclusion
Both the quantitative and qualitative analyzes revealed that the core components of the English language (morphology
and syntax) are hugely affected by errors in the learners’ compositions. The analysis also showed that morphological
errors are the most pervasive in learners’ written productions. The other notoriously difficult area for learners is the
right ordering of words to produce well-formed utterances (syntax). Errors in core grammar of a language negatively
affect both the forms and meanings of utterances. Such errors are observed in all the sampled students of AMU though
they are acute in CNS, CSSH, AMIT & CBE.
Omission is the most persistent error type followed by addition errors. Although grammatical morphemes are more
frequently omitted, a significant amount of content morphemes has also been omitted. The most disruptive of the
misformation errors is the use of erroneous lexical items. Almost all of the lexical misformations distort the meanings
that learners intended to convey in their compositions. Besides, errors in word order are manifested in misplacement of
verbs, objects, adverbs, and modifiers in one hand and using passive constructions for active or vice versa and wrong
cleft sentence formation on the other hand.
This paper is an indicative of learners’ errors are systematic and regular in the sense that their addition, omission,
misformation and misordering of grammatical items reveal that learners are employing some strategies, such as
overgeneralization, undergeneralization, or incomplete application of rules in learning the different aspects of English.
The interplay of intralingual and interlingual factors triggered learners’ errors. The majority of the errors in this study
are attributed to intralingual factors. L1 induced errors, which are restricted only to the direct translation of Amharic
words and sentences into the target language (English), borrowing, code-mixing and switching, have also been sorted
out.

References
Bardovi-Harlig, K. & Bergström, A. (1996). The acquisition of tense and aspect in SLA and FLL: A study of
learner narratives in English (SL) and French (FL). Canadian Modern Language Review, 52, 308–330.
Brown, H.D. (2007). Principles of language learning and teaching. New York: Pearson Education, Inc.
Corder, S.P. (1967). The significance of learner’s errors. International Review of Applied Linguistics, 5, 161 170.
Corder, S.P. (1973). Introducing applied linguistics. Middlesex: Penguin Books.
Corder, S. P. (1981). Error analysis and interlanguage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dulay, H. C., Burt, M.K., & Krashen, S.D. (1982). Language two. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ellis, R. (1985). Understanding second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellis, R. (1987). Second language acquisition in context. London: Prentice Hall International.
Ellis, R. (1997). Second language acquisition research and language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellis, R. & Barkhuizen, G. (2005). Analysing learner language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ALLS 5(3):195-205, 2014 205
Gass, S.M. & Selinker, L.(2008). Second language acquisition: An introductory course. (3rd ed). New York: Taylor &
Francis.
Hughes, A. & Lascaratou, C. (1982). Competing criteria for error gravity. ELT Journal 36 (3), 175-182.
James, C. (1998). Errors in language learning and use: Exploring error analysis. London: Longman.
Laufer, B. (1997a). The lexical plight in second language reading. In J. Coady and T. Huckin. (Ed.), Second
language vocabulary acquisition (pp. 20-34). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lightbown, P. & Spada, N. (2006). How languages are learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Richards, J. (1971a). A non-contrastive approach to error analysis. English Language Teaching 25.
Richards, J. (1971). A non-contrastive approach to error analysis. English Language Teaching, 25, 204_219.
Richards, J. (1974a). Social factors, interlanguage and language learning. In J, Richards (Ed.), Error analysis:
perspectives on second language learning (pp. 64-91). London: Longman.
Richards, J. (1974). Error analysis: Perspectives on second language acquisition. London: Longman Group, Ltd.
Richards, J. C., and Sampson, G. (1974). The study of learner English. In J. C. Richards (Ed.), Error Analysis:
Perspectives on second language acquisition (pp. 3–18). London: Longman.
Richards, J.C., and Schmidt, R. (2002). Longman dictionary of language teaching and applied linguistics.
(3rd ed.). United Kingdom: Pearson Education Limited.
Saville-Troike, M. (2006). Introducing second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.