Error Analysis of English Essays written by Students of Southern Punjab

Master's Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1.5, National University of Modern Languages, Islamabad (Institute of English Studies), course: English Linguistics, language: English, abstract: It is a descriptive study based on the analysis of essays written by male and female students in two different schools of Multan, Southern Punjab. In the present research, the researcher has collected data from two different schools i.e. one government and one private. The participants for the present research are the students (boys and girls) of secondary level. The data for the present research has been collected from hundred students in the form of essays on My Favourite Personality and My Autobiography. The researcher has employed Pit Corder¿s (1967) model for the analysis of data. The data has been analysed, and the researcher has categorized errors committed by the students into different types i.e. verb tense, subject verb disagreement, inappropriate use of article, wrong use of preposition etc. The data is also represented in the form of pie-chart. Furthermore, the frequency of occurrence of different types of errors is also discussed along with some of the possible causes of errors. The findings of the present research highlight that students of government school commit more errors than that of private. Moreover, the findings also suggest that students commit errors not only due to their mother tongue influence, but because of other reasons which are explained in the analysis section. These findings are valuable for academia to devise policies accordingly.