A Comparative Error Analysis of Iraqi EFL Students’ Timed Paragraph Writing Across Three Language-Related Departments

Abstract

The current work investigates timed paragraph writing from 30 senior students in three departments in an Iraqi University: The Department of English of the College of Education for Humanities, the Department of English Language in the College of Arts and the Department of Translation in the College of Arts. In a 20 minute-task, the students produced one paragraph each in response to the same topic: writing on the advantages and disadvantages of studying in their department. The sample contained five males and five females from each department, and the total number of running words in the corpus was 2,576 words. Using an error-analysis framework consistent with research on learner language, an attempt is made to code observable errors manually in five broad categories: orthography, grammar, syntax, lexis and mechanics. The findings showed a total of 558 errors. Errors in the category of orthography were dominant; there were 161 instances, making up 28.9 percent of the total number of errors. The category of grammar contained 130 errors or 23.3 percent of the total, and for mechanics it was 97 or 17.4 percent. The category of syntax had 95 errors (17.0 percent), and finally lexis had 75 (13.4 percent). The differences in error density were obvious between departments. The students in the Department of English Language in the College of Arts produced texts with the highest length while having a significantly low mean normalized error density. However, the students of the Department of English in the College of Education for Humanities did the opposite. They wrote short paragraphs with significantly high normalized error density. Adherence to the task also seems rather problematic; out of 30 samples only two were at a length of 130–150 words as required. The conclusion drawn from the current study is that the students’ problems in writing should not be restricted to the category of grammar. Other categories such as spelling, paragraph boundaries, editing process and limited elaboration of ideas seem to be an essential contributor in writing quality. The paper concludes with suggestions that should take departmental differences into account, mainly in relation to teaching writing skills, diagnosis and remedial action.