An analysis of EFL students’ paragraph writing: Errors and their causes

Abstract

Students’ difficulties in language learning have been extensively researched as they play an important role in teaching. The study can reveal the source of difficulties that can be used as consideration in determining the best remedy for the students and can provide a guideline for the teachers to create a better instruction. To this concern, the current paper reported on an analysis of students’ paragraph writing papers, by focusing on the errors made by them. This study employed content analysis research method by examining 26 paragraphs scripts collected from the exam papers of the first year university students of Unit 1 majoring in English Education of State Islamic University of Ar-Raniry, Aceh academic year 2015-2016. The students were instructed to write free topics following the structure of paragraph. The students’ errors were identified, grouped and analyzed. The findings indicated that most of the students’ errors in terms of organization of paragraph were on all components; topic sentences, supporting sentences and concluding sentences. In addition, students’ errors were also found in language structure. It was also identified that Syntactic and stylistic errors were the most frequently mistakes committed by the students. The pedagogical recommendation of writing skill was also presented through this study.