Linguistic Errors in Second Language Learning: A Comparative Study of Public and Private School Students at a Secondary School Level

Abstract

The current study is analysed under the technique of error analysis, based on the errors of written paragraphs which are present in written paragraphs by female students from two different sectors of Multan. This study is primarily deals with error analysis. It describes the written errors of secondary level learners of both (private and public) sectors. Error analysis (EA) has been used to identify the frequency of errors in the writing of tenth grade students of both sectors and find out the errors in written discourse and analyze the tendency of these errors. In the process of English language learning all aspects of English (listening, reading, writing, speaking, vocabulary, and grammar) are interconnected. The data for current research has been taken from twenty students (ten student belongs to private sector and ten were from government school). The data which is gathered by the researcher is consists of six paragraphs on different topics. Researcher analysed the data by using Corder’s (1967) model. When data has been analysed, the researcher found only ten types of errors in participant’s work. These are spellings errors, error of proximity, inappropriate use of article, wrong use of preposition and pronoun, capitalization error, missing quotation mark, wrong word order, omission of words and singular plural mistakes in a sentence. The depiction of data is in the form of pie-chart. The study is based on quantitative approach. Moreover, the frequency of different types of errors amongst the students of two different schools is discussed. The findings of the present research highlights that the public sector student committed more errors than students of private school