Abstract:

Teaching English writing and grammar especially to students from different background is not an easy task. In addition, the language itself has achieved its status as a second language (ESL) and has become a compulsory subject taken by students in primary and secondary school in Malaysia. The complexity of the English syntactic structures brings difficulties to ESL students thus, causing them to make many errors in writing. As a result, students’ performance in writing is decreasing. This paper attempts to discuss the findings on the writing errors and the causes of errors made by ESL students in secondary school. Furthermore, causes of errors based on the English class teacher’s experience and how to overcome it will be discussed. This study is a case study which employs qualitative method through purposive sampling. Writing test was conducted to six ESL secondary school students. The data were analysed in a descriptive form and errors made by the students were recorded into frequencies. The errors were also grouped into 16 categories. In addition, semi-structured interview was conducted to the six students and eight causes of errors were identified.

Keywords:

English as a second language, errors, error analysis, causes of errors, writing.