Grammatical Error Analysis of EFL Learners’ English Writing Samples: The Case of Vietnamese Pre-intermediate Students

ABSTRACT


Introduction
Grammar is viewed as the key point of learning a foreign language.Chomsky (1965) stated that grammar could be seen as a theory of a language, which means grammar is an indispensable part of language teaching in the view of foreign language teachers.If students are able to build a strong foundation of grammar from the beginning, it is easier for them to develop their language skills in the future, especially writing skills.Writing was proved to be a complicated skill that requires learners to have critical thinking during the writing process, "including task responses, coherence and cohesion, lexical resources, and grammar range and accuracy acquired via language exposure" (Tran et al., 2021as cited in Tran & Truong, 2021).Additionally, academic writing is definitely crucial to tertiary students in order to master their studies (Ndoricimpaand & Barad, 2021, as cited in Tran, 2021).However, before learners can reach a high level of writing skill, being able to write grammatically correctly in English is essential at lower levels.According to Chin (2000), teachers could integrate grammar instructions into the editing and revising process, which helps students not only to recognize their errors but also to see the relation between grammar and writing.This also assists students in figuring out their progress and the next step in their language-learning path (Corder, 1987).
Previous research has been conducted to investigate grammatical errors language learners commit in their writing works.However, in Vietnam, although a lot of written errors, especially grammatical ones, are committed by learners of all levels of English (Bui Thi Tram, 2010), there is little research that investigates their grammatical errors.In fact, from my 3-year experience of teaching writing skills, Vietnamese students, especially students of preintermediate level, make various kinds of grammatical errors in their writing works although they already learned all basic grammar points in high school.The part of grammar review in each lesson of the writing course at my university is not effective as it is supposed to be since the content does not meet the student's needs.Therefore, it is necessary to identify the frequency of grammatical errors in pre-intermediate students in order for teachers to take action to assist their students with their grammar problems.

Literature review
Error analysis Brown (1980) stated that Error Analysis was developed due to linguists' realization of errors' importance in the language learning process.He also claimed that in order to understand the L2 learning process, it is essential to carefully analyze the errors made by learners when they are acquiring the language.According to James (1988), analyzing the errors of L2 learners is concerned with comparing the learners' acquired norms with the target language norms and explaining the identified errors.In Crystal 's view (1999), error analysis is the study of the unacceptable forms made by language learners.James (2001) thought of error analysis as "the study of linguistic ignorance, the investigation of what people do not know and how they attempt to cope with their ignorance." Error analysis plays an essential role in teaching English as a foreign language.According to Corder (1987), errors could assist teachers in identifying how much progress the learners have gained and what remains for them to learn.By analyzing learners' errors, teachers could decide whether they should continue with their teaching strategy or make necessary changes to adjust to the situation.Moreover, error analysis also provides reliable results for reconstructing teaching materials (Keshavarz, 1997).

The reasons resulted in language errors
According to Brown (2000), there are two main sources of errors, which are interlingual errors and intralingual errors.The former refers to those errors that are traceable to first language interference or transfer of the learner's first language.The transfer of interlingual errors may happen as a result of learners' lack of essential information about the target language in order to form the appropriate habit of using the language (Kavaliauskiene, 2009, p. 4).Moreover, intralingual errors refer to those which are made due to faulty or partial learning of the target language (Keshavarz, 2003, p.62;Fang & Jiang, 2007, p. 11).Richards (1972) cites four main types of intralingual errors, namely: (1) overgeneralization, (2) ignorance of rule restrictions, (3) incomplete application of rules, and (4) false concepts hypothesized.After that, he also added six sources of errors, including (1) interference, (2) overgeneralization, (3) performance errors, (4) markers of transitional competence, (5) strategies of communication and assimilation, and (6) teacher-induced errors.
According to Stenson (1974), there are three main reasons resulting in language errors, including (1) incomplete acquisition of the target grammar, (2) exigencies of the learning/teaching situation, and (3) errors due to normal problems of language performance.

Previous research on grammatical errors in other countries
AbiSamra (2003) conducted a similar study about grammar error analysis in which he investigated written samples of 10 grade-9 students.Then the errors were classified into five categories, namely grammatical (prepositions, articles, adjectives, etc.); syntactic (coordination, sentence structure, word order, etc.); lexical (word choice); semantic and substance (punctuation, capitalization, and spelling); and discourse errors.His study's findings showed that one-third of the errors belonged to the interlingual category, with the most common types involving semantics and vocabulary.The rest of the errors were those of over-application of the L2 language, including spelling, syntax, and grammar.
Darus and Subramaniam also conducted research in the same field in 2009.Errors in 72 essays written by 72 Malay students were examined.All the participants, including 37 male and 35 female, were from non-English speaking backgrounds, and they did not speak English outside the language classroom.In this research, six types of errors were found, including singular/plural form, verb tense, word choice, preposition, subject-verb agreement, and word order.Moreover, Darus, together with Ching, also conducted the same research with Chinese background students in 2009.They found out that the most common grammatical errors committed by Chinese students were tenses, prepositions, and subject-verb agreement.
Another recent study of error analysis conducted by Sarfraz (2011) analyzed the errors in 50 undergraduate Pakistani students' essays.The research was based on the procedure of error analysis introduced by Ellis (1994), which is collecting samples, identifying errors, describing the errors, explaining the errors, and evaluating the errors.He found out that most of the errors committed belonged to the interlingual type rather than the intralingual one.
Another similar study conducted by Ridha in 2012 analyzed 80 EFL college students' writing samples.In this study, errors were classified into four types, namely grammatical, lexical/semantic, mechanics, and word order errors.For the results, the majority of the errors were committed due to L1 transfer.Most of the participants in her study tended to base their L1 when they wrote in L2.According to Ridha, the most frequent errors were the grammatical and the mechanical ones.Sawalmeh (2013) examined the errors in the essays of 32 Saudi EFL learners in his study and found that the errors with the highest frequency were those of verb tenses, followed by those of articles, sentence fragments and spelling.One more similar study conducted by Singh, Singh, Razak and Ravinthar (2017) checked errors in essays written by 44 Malay diploma students.The results showed that the highest number of errors was subject-verb agreement, which accounted for 34.7% among nine types of errors classified in the study.

Previous research on grammatical errors in Vietnam
Not many studies on grammatical errors were conducted in Vietnam.One study by Nguy Van Thuy (2010) focused on analyzing common written errors of first-year students at Nghe An Economics and Technology College.It is interesting to find out that all common written errors belong to grammar, including articles, prepositions, verb tenses, verb form, pluralization, and subject-verb agreement.Similarly, Nguyen Thi Duyen ( 2011) also conducted a study on common grammatical errors committed by English-majored students at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education.The findings showed that their common grammatical errors were related to the use of verbs (including verb forms and verb tenses), pronouns, articles, and sentence structures.Another study conducted by Nguyen (2020) also analyzed common written errors of second-year students of information technology at HAUI.Besides errors in spelling, expression, and word choice, about 90% of the written errors belonged to grammar, including pluralization, subject-verb agreement, sentence structures, articles, prepositions, verb forms, verb tenses, singular/plural nouns, pronouns, run-on sentences, comparison, relative clauses, and possession.Nguyen (2020) found out grammatical errors related to verb forms, verb tenses, and subject-verb agreement accounted for the highest percentages, while errors of comparison, pronouns, and possession were the least common types.

Summary
Overall, different groups of participants with different backgrounds and mother tongues have different tendencies to make grammatical errors in their writing samples, and the types of grammatical errors were significantly diverse.Nonetheless, taking a closer look into various research on error analysis of students in Asian countries (Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, China, and Pakistan), it is noticeable that the five most frequent types of grammatical errors committed are verb tenses, subject-verb agreements, pluralization, prepositions, and articles.Especially the grammatical errors related to verbs were the most outstanding ones committed by Asian students in all the reseach mentioned.Thus, verbs in English could be seen as the most problematic grammatical errors for Asian language learners.
Similarly, a few research on the same issue in Vietnamese situations stated above also showed these five types of grammatical errors with the highest frequency, which were referred to as "universal grammatical errors" in writing in this research.Therefore, whether these universal grammatical types of errors are common among students at Van Lang University when they perform their writing skills in English needs to be investigated.If this is not the case, what could be the most common types of grammatical errors they commit in their writing pieces?The results would create the foundation for language teachers to take effective action in their classes in the future.

Research Questions
To fulfill the purpose of the study, the study was conducted to answer the following research questions: 1. Are the five universal grammatical errors the most frequent ones committed by Vietnamese pre-intermediate students in English writing skills? 2. What are the five most frequent types of grammatical errors committed by Vietnamese preintermediate learners in English writing skills?

Pedagogical Setting & Participants
All of the participants are freshmen majoring in English at a university.They are divided into five classes, and each class consists of roughly 50 students.They all passed the first writing course in the first semester, which required them to reach the pre-intermediate level of writing skills.The research was conducted in the second semester when students were already familiar with the new educational environment at the tertiary level.Although the participants have reached the pre-intermediate level, they still need to make a lot of grammatical errors in their writing work in the first lesson of the writing course this semester.
The writing course in the second semester lasted for ten weeks continuously, with one lesson every week.Each lesson lasted for three periods (about 2 hours and 15 minutes) and covered one writing genre together with a small grammar point.The learning outcomes of the course were to be able to write a paragraph about daily topics with correct structures and suitable styles.There was also a requirement about the vocabulary that students used in their writing.The vocabulary should belong to the B1 level to the B2 level, and the words need to be used in appropriate contexts and in correct collocations.

Design of the Study
I decided to choose the qualitative research design, which was suitable for collecting data to find out the answer to my research question.This was supposed to be a case study that examined the grammatical errors in writing made by pre-intermediate ESL tertiary learners in Vietnam.
The research involved a group of Vietnamese students at a university who submitted their writing assignments in a writing class at the pre-intermediate level.The assignments collected were marked based on the specific criteria for writing skills.Then, the assignments were recorded and checked for grammatical errors, which were then counted, classified, and analyzed for the research data.
In the fifth lesson of the writing course of the second semester, all of the participants were required to write a listing-order paragraph (about 120 -150 words) in 20 minutes about a specific topic.The students could choose one among three topics, which are "Advantages of Facebook," "How harmful the junk food is to our health," and "Benefits of living independently."At that time, all students had mastered the basic paragraph structures and appropriate written language so that they could avoid using spoken language in their writing assignments.The topics were related to health, education, and hometowns, which were covered during the first four lessons of the course.Participants were not allowed to use a dictionary while doing the assignment.They also were not permitted to use other reference materials or to discuss with others.
The marking criteria of the assignment included task completion, grammar accuracy, vocabulary complexity, paragraph structures, and cohesion.Each criterion accounted for the same points.For task completion, students had to reach the word limit required, which was 120 to 150 words for a paragraph.For grammar accuracy, there were certain points for the number of errors made in the paragraph.If students made no errors or just a few minor errors, they could get the whole points for grammar accuracy.For vocabulary complexity, students were asked to use words of B1 to B2 level.The more complex words were used correctly, the more points they could get for this criterion.For paragraph structures, students had to complete the paragraph with three parts, including a topic sentence, a paragraph body, and a concluding sentence.For cohesion, a certain number of connecting words were required to be used properly in the paragraph in order to get points in this criterion.

Data collection & and analysis
The procedure was conducted based on the framework introduced by Ellis in 1994.The procedure included participants' sample collection, error identification, error description, error explanation, and error evaluation.
To begin with, 246 paragraphs written in English based on the given topics were submitted by pre-intermediate students after 20 minutes of finishing the assignment in class.All of the students finished the assignment on time, and their paragraphs were complete.
All pieces of writing of the participants were corrected and marked based on the criteria for the assignment.After that, all of the grammatical errors made by students in the assignment were identified, recorded, counted, and classified in terms of types of errors.Then, each type of grammatical error was calculated for its frequency in order to find out the most common one.
Based on the classification of grammatical errors used by Darus and Ching (2009), 11 types of grammatical errors were chosen to be recognized and counted in the participants' writing.They included (1) errors of subject-verb agreement, (2) wrong use of tenses, (3) wrong verb forms, (4) wrong part of speech, (5) errors of countable and uncountable nouns, (6) wrong use of pronouns, (7) wrong forms of adjectives in comparison structures, (8) wrong articles/lack of articles, (9) wrong use of prepositions, (10) fragment sentences, (11) run-on sentences.
Below are the examples of each type of error.

Findings and discussion
There were 246 writing samples collected from the participants.After correcting and analyzing their pieces of writing, 1163 grammatical errors were recorded and classified into 13 categories.
The average number of grammatical errors per writing sample was 4.73.The frequency of each type of grammatical error was presented in table 2, table 3 and table 4, grouped based on the grammatical features.Grammatical errors related to wrong verb forms accounted for 15.9%, which is the highest one, and subject-verb agreement came third (12%).The figures prove that the participants have big problems when dealing with verbs in writing.
For wrong verb forms, participants tended to use the bare infinitive as the subject of the sentence and to use the wrong verb forms with some verbs requiring special structures such as spend money doing something, let someone do something, avoid doing something, etc.Some other errors of this type were wrong verb forms with prepositions and after modal verbs.
• Wrong verb forms with prepositions: "Choose the movie you want to watch by clicking the image…" • Wrong verb forms with verbs requiring special structures: "They still let you to take the food…" • Wrong verb forms with modal verbs: "Facebook can help you to reach out to almost everyone and make friends with people all around the globe." • Wrong verb forms when using verbs as the subject of a sentence: "Have a balanced diet is very important." For errors of subject-verb agreement, students did not pay attention to the main subject of the sentence and used the singular form of the verbs instead of the plural one, or vice versa.The most noticeable error of subject-verb agreement was wrong verbs with subjects as V-ing forms and indefinite pronouns such as someone, somebody, everybody, etc.Moreover, students also made errors in subject-verb agreement in relative clauses in case the relative pronouns played the role of the subject of the clause.
• Using plural verb forms with singular subjects or vice versa: "There are lots of ways that junk food destroy our health…" • Wrong verb forms with subjects as infinite pronouns: "If someone are far away from you,…" • Wrong verb forms with relative pronouns as subjects: "…chat with a friend that live far away…" most common types of grammatical errors.When analyzing this type of error, we could see some popular cases below.
• Using singular forms of countable nouns when needed: "…and eat a lot of vegetable and fruits…" • Using wrong plural forms for irregular nouns: "According to scientific researches,…" • Not recognizing whether the nouns were countable or uncountable, leading to using the plural form for uncountable nouns: "Though it has too much fats, nutritions are…" For pronouns the most noticeable errors of this type were related to the reflective pronouns.Participants used the wrong forms of reflexive pronouns or put the reflexive pronouns in the wrong place in a sentence, as in "…experience things we have never done and learn for themselves…" and "…to save ourself some money.".Additionally, some errors were redundant pronouns in relative clauses in which the relative pronouns played the role of the object of the clause, as in "Being a book club member is a way to experience the new books that you might like it".These errors are scattered among the participants' writing pieces, but they are not significant.Nguyen (2020) also proved in her study that errors in pronouns were not common compared to the other types.
Errors of wrong forms of adjectives in comparison structures accounted for only 1.1% of the total grammatical errors recorded, which was the least common type found in this research.
Only a few errors of comparative adjectives were found in pre-intermediate students' writing.
The two typical cases of this type are: • Wrong comparative forms of short adjectives: "To make our life more longer…", "Avocado salad is one of the most healthy dish…" • Wrong forms of "comparative and comparative" structures: "…keep your heart more and more strong" Nonetheless, a few errors were noticed in the writing samples written by the participants of this study although it only accounted for 1.1%, the least common one.The finding is similar to Nguyen's study (2020), in which there were also 1.1% of the errors related to comparison, one of the least common types.
Grammatical errors related to both articles and prepositions accounted for roughly 9%.To be more specific, the lack of prepositions and using the wrong prepositions with adjectives and with verbs were the most noticeable in the students' writing, as we can see in"To avoid dust, which results sore eyes…", "…and we are not afraid about the language…".A few participants also used the wrong prepositions in some idioms or frequently-used phrases, such as "to my point of view, harsh punishment is unnecessary…", "in conclude, using Facebook has negative impacts…".Darus and Subramaniam (2009), Darus and Ching (2009), and Nguy Van Thuy (2010) stated that prepositions are one of the top common errors committed by Asian students.However, the figures for this type in this research only proved that they are on average of the frequency compared to the other types.Nguyen (2020) also stated that errors of prepositions and articles were not as common as other types of grammatical errors.
The figures for the frequency of error-related articles proved that the types are rather common but not the most common ones, unlike the case of Nguyen Thi Duyen (2011) andSawalmeh (2013).For articles, 3 typical errors found in the participants' writing works are: • Misuse of the article a and an: "Punishment does not help a child with a emotion to act out…" • Misuse of definite and indefinite articles: "…and your body needs food to have energy for a next day.","Going on the diet, people often eat…" • Lack of articles when needed: "Everyone is so generous when they first meet stranger."For errors related to run-on sentences, the participants tend to use two, or more than two in some cases, independent clauses in one sentence without any connecting words, such as "Your motorbike is broken, they'll help you to push it to the nearest mechanic…", "It has a wardrobe at the right corner, beside the wardrobe is a mini fridge.",which lead to various run-on sentences in their paragraphs.The frequency of run-on sentences was about 9.2%, the average among 11 types of grammatical errors analyzed in this research.Compared with the study conducted by Nguyen (2020), the same findings were confirmed with run-on sentences.The percentage of run-on sentences in Nguyen's study (2020) was also around 9%, which proved that this type was quite common after errors related to verbs.

Summary
To answer the first research question, based on the findings, among the five most common types of grammatical errors committed by Asian students (verb tenses, subject-verb agreements, pluralization, prepositions, and articles), only errors of verb tenses are very limited; while the rest is more frequent in students' writing pieces.However, the findings showed that the most common type recorded in this research was none of the five mentioned.
Among 11 types of grammatical errors analyzed in the research, the five most common ones are wrong verb forms, fragment sentences, subject-verb agreement, countable/uncountable nouns, and wrong part of speech, respectively.As a result, not only verbs in English but also sentence structures are proven to be the most serious grammatical problem that students need to overcome in order to make progress in their writing skills.

Conclusion
Analyzing student's types of grammatical errors helps educators realize the main problem that their students have to encounter and suggest a practical measure to tackle the issue.The research has found 11 common types of grammatical errors that pre-intermediate learners make in writing, including wrong articles and lack of articles, errors of subject-verb agreement, wrong use of tenses, wrong part of speech, wrong verb forms, errors of countable and uncountable nouns, wrong use of pronouns, errors of prepositions, wrong forms of adjectives in comparison structures, fragment sentences, run-on sentences.The top 3 most common types are wrong verb forms, fragment sentences, and subject-verb agreement.On the other hand, it is surprising that no errors of dangling modifiers and misplaced modifiers were found during the process of data analysis.
The results have shown that teachers of writing skills should integrate more grammar points with writing techniques in the lessons of writing, especially errors related to verbs.Vietnamese students tend to use wrong verb forms and be confused with subject-verb agreement.As a result, more focus on grammatical points related to verbs should be considered in the syllabus.In addition, teachers' grammar correction with detailed feedback plays an essential role in assisting students to figure out their weaknesses in grammar and find a way to improve the situation.
Students should rewrite the paragraphs after their errors are shown so that they might not make the same errors in the future.
Although the research was conducted with a small population, the findings are significant and worth considering.It is expected that more research with a bigger population can be conducted in the future to get more important findings.

Table 1 .
Examples of each type of grammatical error.

Table 2 .
The frequency of grammatical errors related to verbs.

Table 4 .
The frequency of grammatical errors related to sentence structures.To take a closer look at errors of fragment sentences, it was noticeable that a lot of fragment sentences scattered the whole paragraphs of the participants.Students did not pay attention to the main verb of the clause and could not distinguish between dependent clauses and independent clauses, leading to the appearance of fragment sentences.Some typical fragment Surprisingly, fragment sentences were not one of the most common grammatical errors mentioned in other previous studies about Asian students' error analysis, but this type got the second highest percentage in my study.At least one fragment sentence was found in each writing sample of the participants, and the same situation happened to run-on sentences, although not as common as fragment ones.
sentences that were found in the participants' writing are "Adopting a healthy lifestyle by doing what is right for your body.","When you decide to live outside.You can do anything you want.","In my bathroom, there are basic things.Like shampoo, shower gel…"