Error Analysis in Composition of Iranian Lower Intermediate Students.

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Learners make errors during the process of learning languages. This study examines errors in writing task of twenty Iranian lower intermediate male students aged between 13 and 15. A subject was given to the participants was a composition about the seasons of a year. All of the errors were identified and classified. Corder's classification (1967) and Keshaverz's classification (1997) of errors were assumed for analyzing it. The results of the study showed that most common errors were spelling, word choice, verb tense, preposition, subject-verb agreement and word order. Sources of errors were examined, too. This study has pointed out that interlingual transfer and interalingual transfer are the sources of errors. Having such an understanding into language learning problems is useful for teachers because it provides information on common problems in process of language learning. Also it can be used to predict and reduce problems of learning English. (Contains 2 figures and 13 tables.)