ERROR ANALYSIS OF THE 8TH GRADE STUDENTS’ WRITTEN ENGLISH PRODUCTION

Abstract

Error analysis can help us reach certain conclusions about language acquisition and the relationship between the mother tongue and the foreign (and/or second) language. It can also help us improve the process of teaching and learning, which is the ultimate goal of any methodological research. For the purposes of this study, we conducted a research with 8th grade students (who have been learning English for eight years), by analyzing their written papers, which were concentrated on the acquisition of the past knowledge of everything they had been learning in English language classes. The paper emphasizes the importance of the distinction between language learning and language acquisition, mainly by focusing on the errors that were the result of the non-acquisition or the false acquisition. The aim of this paper involves the analysis of errors the students make during their written production, as well as possible ways of preventing those errors, for the sake of the future generations of EFL learners. This paper tries to give a starting point for some of the future studies and future work with students, mainly at the level of elementary school or first two years of high school.