An Analysis of English Writing Errors of Freshmen Students’ Essays: The Case of ‘Aleksandër Moisiu’ University

One of the most important elements of English language is the writing skill. It is a competence which human beings are not born with; on the contrary, it is learnt with practice and experience. In this respect, the focus must be on the hard work of English instructors, who deal painstakingly with the four skills, emphasizing writing, by means of comments, advice, explanations etc. In Albanian Educational system, foreign languages are given a considerable space. In high school students study up to two foreign languages. In ‘Aleksandër Moisiu’ University, apart from the courses that are related to the students’ profile of study, a specific importance is given to English Language as well, which helps to enhance their English Language competences. This leads us to believe that students’ progress in English is satisfactory; however, this is not always the case with all the skills. Even though students are very good at listening and speaking, when it comes to writing, many of them have serious problems, which are noticed while analyzing their written work. In this respect, this study aims to explore and analyze students’ errors through the procedure of error analysis. More specifically, a sample of 100 short essays of our freshmen students from different branches of study have been analyzed with this purpose in mind. This article analyses the types of errors and their frequency of occurrence in English language writing. Based on the research analysis, it was concluded that the mechanical errors, verb tense errors, preposition errors and to some degree article errors, resulted to be more problematic than the other categories. The importance of identifying and analyzing errors is to give English lecturers feedback on the effectiveness of their teaching techniques, information on what is to be reviewed and further notice on what parts of the syllabus need modification. Making errors is an essential part of learning and English teachers should view them from the perspective of improving their teaching approaches and techniques. Keywords: error, error analysis, grammatical mistakes, language learning