Abstract

The present study aims to analyze the common writing errors made by EFL students at Dhofar University in the Sultanate of Oman. The study included 93 first-year students enrolled in a university requirement course. The students’ written English essays were collected to carry out the analysis. A number of errors in the students’ essays are identified and classified into various types. The results of the analysis of the students’ writing samples show that the common errors of EFL students at Dhofar University are basically related to spelling and grammar. Spelling and grammatical errors are classified into different types, with a frequency count for each type of error. Grammatical errors account for the biggest number of errors which are distributed on eight different types. These types are listed in order based on their frequency as follows: (1) verb tense and form, (2) plurality (3) subject-verb agreement (4) prepositions (5) part-of-speech (6) word order (7) articles (8) adjective form. Spelling errors, on the other hand, are classified into four types which are listed in order as follows: (1) omission (2) substitution (3) insertion (4) transposition. Based on these results, a number of recommendations for treatment of writing errors are suggested.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.