An Investigation on Written Errors from Low Level College EFL Learners

The present study aimed to explore low level EFL learners' written errors and assess their gravity by native English speakers with regard to communication. The participants were thirty nine college freshmen aged 19-24 who were non-English majors. Errors in the samples were cross-sectionally elicited by means of a written task (i.e., letter) in class. A total of 1308 errors in the corpus were assorted into six general groups in that Verbs generated the most errors, while Adverbs yielded the least errors. Subsequently, misuse of articles was the most common category, followed by misuse of verb tense and aspect. On the whole, 329 (25.2%) of the total errors were attributed to interference (i.e., LI transfer). LI grammatical features, sentence structures, and literal translations appeared to be plausible causes that led to transfer errors. Out of a total of 35 categories, native English speakers judged only 7 to be 'global' errors which were detrimental to communication in that the frequency rate of an error was not necessarily proportional to its gravity. Overall, transfer errors in the corpus did not seriously impede the participants from conveying their intended messages. Pedagogical implications of the findings for EFL classrooms are provided.