An Applied Linguistic Approach to Grammatical Errors Analysis: The Case of First -year Master Students at the Department of English

Resumen

Error Analysis is a tool that researchers in applied linguistics use to scrutinize errors made by foreign language learners through the comparison between errors made by learners of a target language and their native language system. It is widely used nowadays for it helps scholars identify the difficulties in the acquisition of a foreign language. It allows teachers to know their students’ errors and give special attention to them. This paper aims at analyzing first-year Master students’ grammatical errors at the Department of English in Hassiba Benbouali University of Chlef in order to recognize their errors, describe and categorize them and explain their occurrence. Twenty essays were randomly selected and analyzed focusing on students’ grammatical errors only. Students were given one hour and a half to write an essay in which they explain how a researcher formulates a good research title. The study was based around one research question: What are the most frequent grammatical errors made by students of English as a foreign language? It was found out that reliance on L1 to L2 transfer may have an impact on misleading foreign language learners, thus, they produce grammatical errors while writing. EFL teachers should be able to deal effectively and positively with types of their students' errors.