Abstract:

Despite being time consuming and a back-bone breaking labor, many teachers use written commentary to assist students develop their writing ability (Lee & Schallert, 2008). The efficacy of error correction is a central issue for writing instruction (Truscott, 2004; Coffin et al., 2003). However, what is to be corrected and how it should be done seem to be an ever-lasting debate. Having reviewed the papers presented in the last 5 TELLSI conferences, the researchers encountered the dearth of investigation on the most problematic areas for Junior High School Students (JHSSs). While our effort in this investigation was concentrated on finding out the most challenging areas in language production for JHSSs, the researchers sought some practical tasks to remove language production barriers. Therefore, the writing assignments of 173 JHSSs, 3rd graders, were selected and analyzed based on Corder's taxonomy. The upshots of the study reveal that tense sequence, word order, and spelling are the most frequent errors. Moreover, a complement to the above-mentioned lists is suggested to help stake-holders overcome the mistake worries of the teachers, students and their parents. Furthermore, possible causes of the error occurrence were investigated through interviews with 20 JHS English teachers and 40 students. Among some recommendations and justifications, such as the teachers teach structure in isolation, students do not have enough authentic input, and students must be pushed to produce the language more frequently were highlighted by the interviewees as the main causes of students' inappropriate language production. Students also unanimously accented the importance of encouragement and motivation as a key factor to language enhancement. Based on Ferris (1999), these errors are treatable; consequently, the researchers suggest some very practical tasks to resolve teachers, students and their parents' worries on the issues under discussion.