An Analysis of Written Grammatical Errors of Tunisian Learners of English in EFL Context

Abstract

This study investigated grammatical errors in a corpus of 18 essays written by 18 participants. The participants were third-year Tunisian students who were studying business English at the ISEAH Institute of Kef in Tunisia. They had experienced approximately the same number of years of education through primary, secondary and university education in Tunisia. All of the participants came from non-English speaking backgrounds and seldom communicated in English outside the school. The instrument used for this study was participants’ written essays. All of the grammatical errors in the essays were identified and classified into various categorizations. The results of the study show that the most pervasive errors committed by the participants were tenses, morphology, prepositions, articles, verbs, and relative pronouns. This study has shed light on the process through which students internalize the grammatical rules of English as a target language. Such a study of language learning difficulties is useful to teachers because it tells about frequent “trouble-spots” in language learning which can be employed in the preparation of efficient teaching materials. Keywords: Error analysis, grammar, English, Arabic, interference, acquisition.