An Analysis of the Written Errors of Thai EFL Students’ Essay Writing in English

Abstract

A major skill in English language that Thai students underperform at, comparing to the students from neighboring countries, such as Malaysia,
Indonesia, Vietnam, and Singapore is English writing. Against this background, the aim of this study is to examine the English writing errors that Thai learners
commit in essay writing, as well as a discussion of their written errors taxonomy.15 Thai undergraduate students in a university in Southern Thailand with
Arabic as their first language (L1), Thai as their second language (L2), and English as their foreign language (EFL), participated in the study. Convenience sampling was employed in participant selection. 45 essays written in English (of different genres) were collected from the students (total of 3 essays per
student) throughout one semester and analyzed. The researchers identified anomalous structures of the student’s essays and compared the errors with their L1 characteristics in order to identify cross-linguistic influences. An analysis of the errors was based on the morphological, lexical, syntactic and discourse
categories. The findings show 33 types of written errors associated with the different analytical levels: 1) syntactic (25 categories – the most frequent); 2)
lexical (4 categories); 3) morphological (2 categories); and 4) discourse (2 categories). The findings of the study are essential to English teaching practitioners in Thailand for their pedagogical implications when teaching writing to Thai EFL learners.