Error Analysis in Essay Writings of Selected Secondary Schools in Mubi

Errors in (written) communication have communicative ramifications and may inhibit the achievement of language users, particularly senior secondary school (SSS) pupils. Unfortunately, most SSS students do not adhere to grammar rules while writing. In this context, the current study aimed to analyse the language usage of 150 students from three purposefully chosen public secondary schools in Mubi in order to assess the learners’ communicative competency. The data was submitted to error analysis, which revealed that the students committed several grammatical mistakes in the areas of verbs, spellings, word usage of words, nouns, punctuation/capitalization, and article. Similarly, it was discovered that, due to the prevalence of faults in most essays, the majority of students were unable to write meaningfully on the prescribed writing job. Furthermore, the research found that the pattern of mistakes produced by students seemed to be same across all three institutions. Using the theoretical foundations of Error Analysis (EA), the discovered mistakes were considered to be caused by overgeneralisation of rules, interference from the mother language, extra-lingual influences, and insufficient learning. Keywords: Language use, writing, error analysis, senior secondary school students, errors