Errors made by first and second year university students are grouped into categories and means for dealing with these errors are suggested. The article is divided into six parts. The introduction includes information about: (1) the linguistic background of the students and the university staff, (2) the educational system, (3) some language…

The prevalence of writing errors made by third-year medical students from the class of 1981 at a large midwestern medical school was studied. The papers of 253 students taking family medicine were evaluated for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. Four types of grammar errors and seven punctuation errors were analyzed, and each word…

Evaluation of the Russian oral and written proficiency of third-year university students (N=9) suggested a clear relationship between the students' initial oral proficiency ratings and the grammatical accuracy of their written compositions; the lower a student's oral proficiency rating, the greater the average number of written mistakes, and vice…

Reports on a study investigating the occurrence of spelling errors in the French dictations of French-speaking Ontarians. The frequency of errors was compared to that of French speakers from Quebec. Results indicate that spelling interference from English is present for French-speaking Ontarians in far greater degree than from French speakers from…

Discusses complexities inherent in correcting second language students' spoken and written errors. Alternatives to current error correction methods (1) focus on the use of error correction to improve students' language form, (2) involve the real communicative consequences of inaccuracy, (3) suggest strategies for attending to form when listening…

Comparison of the effects of error- versus message-oriented written feedback on second-language students' essays found that error corrections and rule reminders did not significantly improve students' written accuracy or enhance the ideational quality of their writing, whereas message-related comments promoted writing proficiency. (63 references)…

The effect of English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) specific sentence-level errors was examined using 18 randomly chosen essays representing the range of ESL writing found in most large testing situations. Results suggest that graders with insufficient training in evaluating ESL essays differ in their judgment of the weight assigned to ESL error,…

Investigates the degree to which teacher cues help students correct their own errors in English-as-a-foreign-language written compositions and what kinds of cues are more effective in self-correction. Sixty-two Japanese college students were sampled. (Contains nine references.) (JL)

Presents a case study comparing a native-speaker undergraduate's performance on an examination and a coursework essay. Relational analysis facilitated text-linguistic comparison of two texts. The study contrasts an adequate handling of material in memory in examination conditions with the uncertain handling of difficult source materials. (40…

A corpus-based approach is used to describe types of spelling errors, concluding that there are a variety of sources for the differences in the sound system of English and the first language of the students in the study. The teaching of spelling and the inclusion of a contrastive analysis approach in English courses are advocated. (20 references)…

Describes how performance in three different foreign-language tasks varied according to certain learner characteristics. The tasks are spontaneous writing, revised writing, and passage-based error detection. The writing is evaluated according to syntactic, morphological and orthographic accuracy; writing speed; and linguistic complexity. (34…

Analysis of spelling errors collected from final examinations of native-Arabic speaking students majoring in English found significant differences in frequencies of error types among remedial and advanced students. Mispronunciation and lack of awareness of spelling rules and regular spelling patterns strongly contributed to spelling errors, even…

A database used in an analysis of writing errors of Swedish university students is discussed, including the major grammatical and vocabulary errors discovered. This study is compared with others, including a study of the writing errors of students from a variety of first-language backgrounds. Applications and directions for future research are…

As a step toward developing appropriate instructional techniques to help learning disabled college students, mechanical errors were compared in the expository essays and controlled stimulus passages (rewrites) of 15 learning disabled, 15 normal, and 15 basic writers at the college level. Analysis of both types of writing samples showed that…

The following error made by Sudanese students in their written English is discussed: giving the direct translation of relative pronoun plus personal pronoun from the Arabic pattern instead of the relative pronoun. The structure of the relative clause in English and Arabic is also compared. (SW)