AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS’ ERRORS IN ENGLISH COMPOSTION WRITING: THE CASE OF GRADE TWELVE STUDENTS IN MEKELLE UNIVERSITY COMMUNITY SCHOOL

Abstract

Writing is a complex, cognitive process that requires recursive procedures of prewriting e.g. brainstorming, outlining, drafting, evaluating and revising. Composition writing Skills is one of the most difficult, and tough subject even to teach particularly in an EFL context like Ethiopia. More recently, error analysis has become an important field of research. This investigation is an outcome of the researcher's concerns and efforts to identify areas of difficulty in the writing skills among students and to work out remedial procedures to help them overcome their weaknesses in the future. By using quantitative techniques/approach, this study aimed at identifying, categorizing, and analysing the major errors in the written composition of 30 grade 12 students at Mekelle University Community School in 2025 academic year. The instrument used for this study was participants’ written descriptive composition in English language. All of the errors in these compositions were identified and classified into different categories. The frequency of errors was calculated as percentage. The results show that all these students in this study committed nine common errors. These errors committed were verb- tense, subject-verb agreement, prepositions, capitalization, plurality, word order, articles, auxiliaries, and passive voice. But the most common errors committed were verb- tense and subject-verb agreement respectively. Finally, based on the findings of this study, a number of recommendations, and implications for future studies, that will help to reduce the students writing problems in the future are given.