Abstract
This paper investigated the syntactic errors prevalent in Pakistani undergraduate students’
written English. It also sought to outline the possible causes of these errors. The study employed content
analysis by basing it on Corder’s error analysis methodology to accomplish the research objectives. The study
was conducted at a renowned private university. Participants for the study were those BS first year students
who had obtained their higher secondary school certificate from Karachi Intermediate Examinations Board.
The writing samples of eighty eight o students from this group were obtained. The corpus was then analyzed
to discover the syntactic errors, and determine their frequency, types and causes. The major syntactic errors
that emerged from the analysis were erroneous verb phrases, run-on sentences, semantically and syntactically
ill-formed clauses due to literal translation from mother tongue, and faulty vocabulary respectively. An equal
number of interlingual and intralingual errors were found. Students’ inadequate competence, insufficient
training, and limited exposure to the target language are considered to be the major causes behind the thence
discovered errors.
Sameera Sultan. (2015) Syntactic Errors in Pakistani Undergraduate Students’ Written English, Journal of Education & Social Sciences, Volume 3, Issue 2.
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