ANALYSIES OF ERRORS INMECHANICS IN STUDENTS‘ WRITTEN WORK: GRADE 11 FRE SIWUAT SECONDARY SCHOOL STUDENTS‘ IN FOCUS

Abstract

The objective of this study was to analyze mechanics errors in grade 11students’ composition writing. The study was conducted at Fre Swuat Secondary School grade11 students in focus.To address the problem a descriptive survey research design was employed. To carry out the study, all the 7available English teachers were used together with 71 students using available sampling and simple random sampling techniques respectively. In order to attain the objectives writing test, document analysis, and semi-structured interview were used as data collection instruments. The writing test was applied to identify students’ composition writing ability in terms of mechanics (i.e. spelling capitalization and punctuation) and the common errors occurred frequently in the students’ composition writing. The document analysis was used to discover the sources of errors and the semi-structured interview was used to find out the sources and frequency of students errors. Moreover, all data collected using different tools were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. The data which was collected using writing test was used to show the rater’s average score of the students’ composing ability in terms of mechanics and to analyze the errors obtained in the students’ composition by frequency, percentage and mean quantitatively. And the data that was gathered using document analysis and semi-structured interview was analyzed qualitatively. The study identified the components of mechanics (spelling, capitalization and punctuation)errors that students’ encounter. As a result according to the raters average score,Fre Siwuat Secondary school students composing ability was low (poor), Errors of capitalization, punctuation, together with omission, substitution, and addition of letters in words and sentences were severe errors observed in students’ compositions and documents. But from these errors, error of capitalization and punctuation had the highest frequency. And the causes of the students’ errors were found to be inter lingual and intra lingual transfer errors. Therefore, since using correct mechanics in students compositionis an ability that could be improved through adequate practice, thus Fre Siwuat secondary school students should be given chance of learning and exercising a lot on spelling, capitalization and punctuationto effectively use them to write in their compositions, assignments etc.