Error analysis on english compositions and paragraphs of vietnamese students

 TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 55 - 63 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 55 
ERROR ANALYSIS ON ENGLISH COMPOSITIONS AND PARAGRAPHS 
OF VIETNAMESE STUDENTS 
Pham Kim Chi
* 
FPT University 
ABSTRACT 
The present study aimed to explore the writing errors in English compositions and paragraphs of 
Vietnamese students at a university in Vietnam and to compare the shared common errors made in 
their writings. This intended to see whether students with different levels have the same errors. 
The study used a corpus of 36 Vietnamese students’ composition writings and 36 paragraph 
writings. The data committed were categorized into three different error types by the framework of 
Chanquoy (2001). The results showed that the three most frequent writing errors were spelling, 
subject-verb agreement, verb tense and form respectively in paragraphs and compositions. Results 
revealed the three most shared errors involved spelling, subject-verb agreement and verb tense and 
form; nevertheless, there is no significant difference between the number of errors. It is suggested 
that intensive knowledge of language teaching in vocabulary in spelling and English grammar, 
especially subject-verb agreement should be paid close attention. In light of the results obtained, 
implications and recommendations were provided to teachers to assist their students in writing and 
limit common errors among Vietnamese students. 
Keywords: Writing error; error analysis; writing compositions in English; writing paragraphs in 
English; Vietnamese students 
Received: 23/5/2020; Revised: 18/6/2020; Published: 22/6/2020 
PHÂN TÍCH LỖI TRONG VIẾT LUẬN VÀ ĐOẠN VĂN TIẾNG ANH 
 CỦA SINH VIÊN VIỆT NAM 
Phạm Kim Chi* 
Đại học FPT 
TÓM TẮT 
Nghiên cứu hiện tại tìm hiểu các lỗi viết trong các bài viết luận và đoạn văn bằng tiếng Anh của 
sinh viên tại một trường đại học ở Việt Nam và để so sánh các lỗi phổ biến trong các bài viết của 
sinh viên. Điều này nhằm mục đích xem sinh viên với các cấp độ tiếng Anh khác nhau có cùng 
một lỗi hay không. Nghiên cứu đã sử dụng 36 bài luận và 36 đoạn văn của 72 sinh viên học tiếng 
Anh. Dữ liệu đã được phân loại thành ba loại lỗi khác nhau theo khung của Chanquoy (2001). Kết 
quả cho thấy ba lỗi viết thường gặp nhất là chính tả, sự phù hợp giữa chủ ngữ, động từ và hình 
thức câu tương ứng trong đoạn văn và bài luận; và không có sự khác biệt về tổng số lượng lỗi của 
hai nhóm sinh viên. Từ kết quả nghiên cứu, tôi đề xuất giáo viên dạy viết Tiếng Anh nên chú ý đến 
chính tả và ngữ pháp, đặc biệt là phù hợp giữa chủ ngữ và động từ của sinh viên để hỗ trợ sinh 
viên viết và hạn chế các lỗi phổ biến ở sinh viên Việt Nam. 
Từ khoá: Viết lỗi; phân tích lỗi; viết luận tiếng Anh; viết đoạn văn tiếng Anh; sinh viên Việt Nam 
Ngày nhận bài: 23/5/2020; Ngày hoàn thiện: 18/6/2020; Ngày đăng: 22/6/2020 
 * Corresponding author. Email: chipk@fe.edu.vn 
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34238/tnu-jst.3183
Pham Kim Chi TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 55 - 63 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 56 
1. Introduction 
In the Vietnam context, English is considered 
as a foreign language and a compulsory 
subject for all university students prepared 
before entering specialized subjects. Students 
are required to master four skills to pass every 
single level in the curriculum. Vietnamese 
students find writing skills difficult to master 
and complete since backward and forward 
ideas and grammar structures. Besides, 
students today usually appeal for technology 
as the foremost learning practice by the 
reason of software support, but the number of 
common writing errors seems to appear 
repeatedly on final exams. Therefore, 
Vietnamese students’ writing problems need 
to analyze in order to improve the quality of 
teaching and understand students’ common 
errors to raise their awareness. 
To analyze the database of writing, Error 
Analysis, first established in the 1960s by 
Corder and his colleagues, is a preferred tool 
to concentrate on. According to Corder [1], 
correcting learners’ errors is substantial in 
three crucial ways as telling the teachers 
about their learners’ progress; supplying 
evidence of how a language is acquired and 
what strategies the learner employs in 
language learning; and as a device the learner 
uses in order to learn. 
Numerous studies in writing have been shown 
the different types of errors committed by 
students with paragraphs, sentences or 
compositions. However, the research has not 
yet investigated into students’ writing errors 
between students’ paragraphs and students’ 
compositions in the two sequential levels. 
Consequently, the current study narrows 
empirical gap on errors by 36 pre-
intermediate Vietnamese students in writing 
paragraphs and 36 intermediate Vietnamese 
students in writing compositions to identify 
the types and the frequency of errors. 
As a result of the significance of students’ 
errors themselves, English teacher in this case 
as a researcher, needs to find out what types 
of common errors made by students’ 
paragraphs and students’ compositions in two 
different levels in order to find out common 
errors to apply strategies in language teaching 
effectively by the taxonomy of Chanquoy [2] 
produced by students. 
1.1 Research question 
1. What types of writing errors are (if any) 
frequently found in Vietnamese students’ 
English compositions and paragraphs in two 
sequential levels? 
2. Is there any significant difference between 
Vietnamese students’ compositions writing 
errors and students’ paragraphs writing errors? 
1.2 Significance of the Study 
This study will contribute to enhancing 
teaching and learning the English language to 
encounter in the process of English Second 
Language (ESL) learning. 
Lightbown and Spada [3] argue that when 
errors are persistent, especially when they are 
shared by almost all students in a class, it is 
useful for teachers to bring the problem to the 
students’ attention. Corder [4] notes that Error 
Analysis (EA) is useful in second language 
learning because it reveals the problem areas 
to teachers, syllabus designers and textbook 
writers. Errors can tell the teacher how far 
towards the goal the learner has progressed 
and consequently, what remains for him or 
her to learn. Therefore, students’ errors are 
valuable feedbacks to assist teachers identify 
systematically the specific and students’ 
common language problems so that they can 
deliberate on these types of errors. The 
significance of this study is to inform 
educators and teachers about the kind of 
errors and further reveals the errors’ 
frequency of occurrence. If educators and 
teachers become conscious of likely problem 
areas that face specific writing error groups, 
they would be in a better position to put 
appropriate intervention strategies into place. 
Pham Kim Chi TNU Journal of Science and Technology
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 
This study is also valuable to learners. 
Researchers such as Kaplan [5] and Nunan 
[6] have reflected that learners’ errors are 
systematic, rather than random, and many 
learners tend to commit the same kinds of 
errors during a certain stage of language 
learning. Consequently, the obligation of 
teachers to summarize these frequently 
appearing errors and remind students of these 
errors as often as possible so that they can 
make greater effort to avoid them. 
2. Literature Review 
2.1. Theoretical framework 
2.1.1. Error Analysis (EA) 
Error analysis is a type of approach to analyze 
learners’ speech or written performance in 
different settings and has been received a 
great number of concerns in the field of 
second language acquisition. 
Previous studies have been provided with 
different definitions of EA. Dulay, Burt and 
Krashen [7] state that the analysis of error is 
the method to analyze errors made by EFL 
and ESL learners when they learn a language. 
James [8] points out that EA refers to “study 
of linguistic ignorance, the investigation of 
what people do not know and how they 
attempt to cope with their ignorance.” (p.62) 
Brown [9] highlighted the importance of 
learners’ errors because it shows the state of 
learners’ knowledge. The study of error is a 
part of the investigation of the process of 
language learning. It provides us with a picture 
of the linguistic development of a learner and 
may give us an indication as to the learning 
process [4]. From Corder [10], teachers can 
understand students’ current level in learning 
and can let teachers prepare accurate and 
precise teachings which are suitable for 
students. According to Hasyim [11] EA may 
be carried out in order to: (a) find out how well 
someone knows a language, (b) find out how a 
person learns a language, and (c) obtain 
information on common difficulties in 
 225(11): 55 - 63 
language learning, as an aid in teaching or in 
the preparation of teaching materials. 
EA not only helps teachers identify the types 
of errors committed by learners to assist them 
and employing appropriate strategies in 
language teaching but also helps students 
reduce errors and be aware of errors which 
are borders in their language learning process. 
2.1.2. Classification of errors 
Corder [12] classifies the errors as the errors 
of competence and the errors of performance. 
According to [6], errors are categorized into 
six: omission of grammatical morphemes, 
double marking of semantic features, use of 
irregular rules, use of wrong word forms and 
alternating use of two or more forms. 
James [13] proposes five categories of errors 
including grammatical errors, substance 
errors, lexical errors, syntactic errors and 
semantic errors. 
Chanquoy [2] classified these errors into three 
main types including spelling errors that deal 
with the errors related to orthography errors; 
the grammatical errors that discuss the errors 
related to gender and number, agreement of 
nouns, verbs and adjectives, and subject-verb 
agreement; and the punctuation errors that 
deal with punctuation and capitalization 
errors. The taxonomy was based on various 
resources and therefore, it was well suited to 
the research questions and study focus. 
2.2. Previous studies 
Research studies have been investigated a 
comparison between the different groups of 
students. Ulkersoy, Genc and Darmaz [14] 
examine types of errors in writings of Turkish 
EFL learners by comparing freshmen and 
sophomore student’s writing performance 
based on Kroll and Schafer’s [15] 
classification. The result revealed that there 
was a statistically significant difference 
between the two groups of students in terms 
of word count and number of errors. Among 
the four categories of errors, sentence 
 57
Pham Kim Chi TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 55 - 63 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 58 
structure errors, verb-centred errors and word-
level choice errors are the most observed 
error types. Another investigation into three 
groups of students, Computer Science, 
Engineering and Medicine and Translation 
revealed the common errors namely grammar, 
lexis, semantics and mechanics [16]. 
Similar results in the grammatical structure 
were observed in a number of studies. Lin 
[17] examined 26 essays from Taiwanese 
EFL students at the college level. The results 
of this study indicated that the four highest 
error frequencies were sentence structures 
(30.43%), wrong verb forms (21.01%), 
sentence fragments (15.94%), and wrong use 
of words (15.94%). Likewise, another 
grammatical error that is frequently found in 
Taiwanese EFL students' compositions was the 
misuse of English articles from Chen [18]. 
They can learn English grammatical rules such 
as the correct use of articles and apply the rules 
with no interference from any prior 
knowledge. Similarly, Kao [19] studied 169 
compositions from 53 Taiwanese college 
students who were English major students. A 
total of 928 errors were found, among which 
grammatical errors occurred with the greatest 
frequency, 66%, semantic errors occurred 18% 
of the time, and lexical errors occurred with 
the least frequency, 16%. Amoakohene [20] 
explored the errors in a corpus of 50 essays 
written by first-year students of UHAS. The 
findings showed that 584 (55.6%) of these 
errors were related to grammatical errors, 442 
(42.1%) were mechanical errors and 24 (2.3%) 
of the errors detected were linked to the poor 
structuring of sentences. 
3. Methodology 
3.1. Research Design 
The present study aims at analyzing the 
frequent writing errors in students’ English 
compositions at a university in Vietnam. The 
study adopts both quantitative and qualitative 
research design in order to achieve objectives. 
3.2. Participants 
Thirty-six pre-intermediate preparatory 
students and thirty-six intermediate 
preparatory students participated in this study 
by writing paragraphs and compositions for 
final exams. The students’ age range is from 
18 to 20 years. 
3.3. Data Collection Procedures 
To collect the data of compositions writing, 
36 intermediate participants were asked to 
write an essay of 250 words in 40 minutes on 
one of the two topics “Genius should be 
treated differently from normal people” and 
“Robotics technology will play a big role in 
the future” on an online platform. Students 
provided accounts to log in and finished on 
their own computers. Then, 36 written 
compositions were saved to be analyzed. 
Similarly, 36 pre-intermediate participants 
were asked to write a paragraph of 120 words 
on advantages of reading online and then 36 
written paragraphs were saved to be analyzed. 
3.4. Data Analysis 
Writing errors were coded, using the following 
scheme developed from the framework from 
Chanquoy’s [2] classification of writing errors 
presented so far. 
There are three main types of writing errors 
illustrated in Table 1 including spelling, 
grammar and punctuation. The data was 
based on this taxonomy to code the errors. 
After data collection, the following steps of 
EA by [4] were followed. Firstly, each 
composition writing was counted number of 
errors examined according to the coding 
scheme. After that, quantifying and analyzing 
errors were applied with inter-coders. 
In order to ensure the reliability of coding, 
20% of the entire data was coded by two 
independent coders. The coders agreed on 
90% of their coding, suggesting that the data 
were coded with strong consistency. Then, the 
pair sample t-test was applied to find out the 
significant difference between the two 
groups’ writing errors. 
Pham Kim Chi TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 55 - 63 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 59 
Table 1. Writing errors coding scheme with definitions from [2] 
Type of writing errors Explanation 
Spelling error 
spelling 
the act or process of writing words by using the letters conventionally 
accepted for their information 
Grammatical error 
subject-verb agreement wrong combination of subject and verb 
verb tense and form error of constructing a verb 
singular and plural form a mistake with number (singular or plural) 
word order syntactic arrangement of words in a sentence, clause, or phrase 
preposition the relationship between a noun or pronoun and other words in a sentence 
articles used with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun 
fragment the sentences miss a verb or a subject, so it becomes disconnected 
Punctuation error 
capitalization 
writing with a word with it is first letter as a capital letter and the remaining 
letters in small letter 
punctuation 
he marks, such as period, comma, and parentheses, used in writing to 
separate sentences and their elements and to clarify meaning. 
4. Results and Discussion 
4.1. Frequent types of writing errors found in Vietnamese students’ English compositions 
The analysis of the writing errors on compositions indicated that 164 (25.6%) was spelling, 137 
(21.4%) was the subject-verb agreement, 109 (17%) was verb-tense and form and 58 (9.1%) was 
fragment error. 
Table 2 below shows the result of the most frequent writing errors occurring in English 
compositions were grammatical error category with 380 (59.4%) and the second one in spelling 
category with 164 (25.6%). 
Table 2. Frequency of writing errors committed by writing compositions 
Type of Error Frequency Percentage (%) Rank 
Spelling error 
Spelling 164 25.6 1 
Grammatical error 
Subject-Verb agreement 137 21.4 2 
Verb tense and form 109 17.0 3 
Singular and plural form 37 5.8 7 
Word order 12 1.9 9 
Preposition 3 0.5 10 
Article 24 3.8 8 
Fragment 58 9.1 4 
Punctuation error 
Capitalization 47 7.3 6 
Punctuation 49 7.6 5 
Total 640 100 
Pham Kim Chi TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 55 - 63 
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4.2. Frequent types of writing errors found in Vietnamese students’ English paragraphs 
The errors from paragraphs showed that subject-verb agreement was ranked the highest with 130 
(21.1%), the second one was verb tense and form with 127 (20.6%) and the third one was 
spelling with 94 (15.3%) illustrated in Table 3. 
Table 3. Frequency of writing errors committed by writing paragraphs 
Type of Error Frequency Percentage (%) Rank 
Spelling error 
Spelling 94 15.3 3 
Grammatical error 
Subject-Verb agreement 130 21.1 1 
Verb tense and form 127 20.6 2 
Singular and plural form 35 5.7 8 
Word order 49 8.0 4 
Preposition 24 3.9 9 
Article 23 3.7 10 
Fragment 44 7.1 6 
Punctuation error 
Capitalization 42 6.8 7 
Punctuation 48 7.8 5 
Total 616 100 
Table 3 above shows that grammar classification was most frequently observed with 432 errors 
(70.1%) in comparison with the second most common spelling errors 94 errors (15.3%). 
4.3 Significant difference between students’ compositions writing errors and students’ 
paragraphs writing errors 
Table 4 shows the three common errors as spelling, subject-verb agreement and verb tense and 
form in students’ compositions and paragraphs. However, there is one highlighted difference 
between the two groups was word order. The group of compositions writing, word order placed 
the ninth while the group of paragraphs writing placed the fourth. 
Table 4. Types of errors difference between students’ paragraphs writing and students’ compositions 
Type of Error 
Paragraphs writing 
Percentage (%) 
Compositions writing 
Percentage (%) 
Spelling error 
Spelling 15.3 25.6 
Grammatical error 
Subject-Verb agreement 21.1 21.4 
Verb tense and form 20.6 17.0 
Singular and plural form 5.7 5.8 
Word order 8.0 1.9 
Preposition 3.9 0.5 
Article 3.7 3.8 
Fragment 7.1 9.1 
Punctuation error 
Capitalization 6.8 7.3 
Punctuation 7.8 7.6 
Total 100 100 
Pham Kim Chi TNU Journal of Science and Technology 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 61 
Table 5. The significant difference between writing errors in paragraphs
 and writing errors in compositions 
Paired samples t-test 
 t df 
Pair 1 
total writing errors in paragraphs 
total writing errors in compositions 
.309 35 
Pair 2 
spelling errors in paragraphs 
spelling errors in compositions 
2.390 35 
Pair 3 
subject-verb agreement errors in 
paragraphs 
subject-verb agreement errors in 
compositions 
.305 35 
Pair 4 
verb tense and form errors in 
paragraphs 
verb tense and form errors in 
compositions 
-.766 35 
225(11): 55 - 63 
 Sig. (2-tailed)
 .759
 .022
 .763
 .499
Table 5 illustrates that there is no significant 
difference between the total number of errors 
in students’ paragraphs and in compositions; 
however, spelling errors showed a significant 
difference (with p=.022). 
The re