Practice Talk: Analysis of Grammatical and Lexical Errors in Writing Made by English-Speaking Learners of L2 Swahili

Come support and listen to Maggie’s practice talk Friday, 22nd, in B342 from 11:30-12:00pm.

Presentation Title: “Analysis of Grammatical and Lexical Errors in Writing Made by English-Speaking Learners of L2 Swahili”

Abstract:

This study applied the Error Analysis approach (Corder, 1967) to analyze written learner language samples of 17 second language (L2) learners of Swahili who were enrolled in an intensive summer language program in one large university in the United States. Data was collected from weekly exams that students took from week one to week eight. Overall results indicate that these learners struggled with both lexical and grammatical aspects of Swahili which varied across proficiency levels. The most problematic grammatical features of L2 Swahili were the noun class agreement system and agglutinative verbs followed by L1-induced spelling errors and omission of connectors. In terms of the lexicon, these learners overgeneralized the borrowing of English vocabulary into Swahili and misused near-synonyms whereby they often used a wrong word which had a closer meaning and/or looked orthographically similar to the target word. Results also indicate a relationship between error types and proficiency levels. Implications for designing instructional materials and actual instruction are discussed.