earticle

영어

The purpose of this study is to investigate and analyze the writing errors of pre-service elementary education teachers at a university who are majoring in English education. In order to accomplish this, research questions were examined in particular: what types of errors were most troublesome for the subjects and how frequent they made mistakes. To answer these questions, 56 pieces of writing were collected and assessed for their writing proficiency. The results of the writing assessments indicated that the subjects made mistakes, from most to least prevalent, in the areas of language control (grammar), mechanics, vocabulary, contents and organization. Since grammar, mechanics and vocabulary are the top three categories of errors, this seems to indicate that there needs to be a greater focus on accuracy as well as fluency in the writing class. Analyzing the errors further, it was determined that first language interference was a major cause of mistakes. This was exhibited in both intra-language errors (e.g. articles, prepositions, capitalization, etc.) as well as inter-language errors (e.g. effective sentence structure, punctuation, agreement, tense, number, etc.). All of this points to the need for a more systematic methodology for improving the writing skills of these subjects. It is important for teachers to consider the most common errors that students make and teach with these in mind. Knowledge of these errors can be used to help prepare lesson plans and teaching materials, as well as choose appropriate textbooks. Additionally, given the intra-language errors that were prevalent, relevant grammar and authentic materials are needed in the classroom to give the students appropriate input.