iii
ABSTRACT
This minor thesis was carried out with an attempt to improve the teaching and
learning of writing skill of the teachers and the 12th form students at Thanh Ha High
School, Hai Duong province.
The purposes of the thesis were to investigate the types of errors that 12th form
students at Thanh Ha High School often make in learning English, possible causes of
common English written errors made by 12th form students and to offer some possible
solutions to overcome these common English written errors.
The subjects involved in the study were 130 students' actual writings in class and 8
teachers who are currently teaching and have taught writing skill before. Teachers were
invited to answer the survey questionnaire and to participate in the interview.
The study reveals that in lexical and grammatical errors, students often commit
errors in spelling, noun number, word choice/ wrong word, wrong conjunction/ connective,
article and verb form mistakes. The common causes for these kinds of errors are mainly
their carelessness, mother tongue interference, incomplete application of rules,
overgeneralization and ignorance of rule restrictions.
The study suggests that teacher should use some techniques in pre-writing stage
and post- writing stage to reduce and prevent students' written common errors . In pre-
writing stage, teacher can elicit students' vocabulary and structures, give students samples
of the topic which students are required to write, and sometimes teach them grammar rules.
In post-writing stage, teachers can ask student to correct themselves, then correct in pairs
and finally teachers give corrective feedback.


3. Research questions
2
4. Methods of the study
2
5. Scope of the study
3
6. Organization of the thesis.
3
Part B: Development
4
Chapter I: Literature review
4
1.1. Overview of writing
4
1.1.1. Definition of writing
4
1.1.2. Roles of writing
4
1.2. Overview of errors.
6
1.2.1. Error versus mistake.
6
1.2.2. Errors in language learning process.
7
1.2.2.1. First language and second language errors.
7
1.2.2.2. Receptive errors and expressive errors.
8
1.3. Causes of errors in foreign language learning
8

2.3. The study
17
2.3.1. Method
17
2.3.1.1. Participants
17
2.3.1.2. Data collection instruments
17
2.3.1.3. Data collection procedure
18
2.3.2. Data analysis and discussion
19
2.3.2.1. Research question 1
19
2.3.2.2. Research question 2
26
2.3.2.3. Research question 3
30
2.4. Findings and possible solutions
32
2.4.1. Findings
32
2.4.2. Possible solutions
33
2.4.2.1. Techniques in pre-writing stage
33
2.4.2.1. Techniques in post-writing stage
36
Part C: Conclusion
39


English language but also its usage. It means that his aim is to train learners with a good
control of English skills and to teach them to put the language into use in real
communicative situations: either writing or speaking. This learners' competence is assessed
in terms of how comprehensibly and accurately a message is conveyed. If a message is
unsuccessfully conveyed, the teacher will consider the reason why it is so, and the answer
often is the means that causes it. What lessens the effectiveness may be that there are
something wrong with the meanings of the sentences i.e. what is usually called 'error' in
foreign language learning.
In effect, learners often make mistakes when they produce English. When teachers
find the learners' errors, they often give feedback by correcting or just pointing them.
However, this is sometimes not effective because learners still make the same errors the
next time. Like many teachers and researchers, Vietnamese teachers have been always
seeking for new and effective methods and techniques to improve their teaching with the
hope of predicting and preventing errors before they appear. Nevertheless, they pay much
more concern to why Vietnamese learners commit errors and how to prevent or reduce
these errors, not students at high schools. Therefore, the situation encouraged the author to
do the research on "Possible causes of common English written errors made by 12th- form
students at Thanh Ha High School, Hai Duong and some possible solutions". This study
will be really useful for both teachers and students in teaching and learning writing skill.
2. Aims of the study
The researcher defines the major objectives of the study as:

2
 to investigate the types of written errors that 12th-form students at Thanh
Ha High School often make in learning English.
 to investigate possible causes of common English written errors made by
12th- form students.
 to offer some possible solutions to overcome these common English written
errors.
This study is carried out with the hope that teachers can improve their writing

discussions of the findings, some possible solutions will be introduced.
6. Organization of the thesis
The thesis has three main parts: introduction, development and conclusion.
The introduction presents the background to the study, aims and significance of the
study, research questions, methods, scope and organization of the thesis.
The development consists of two chapters. Chapter One exposes literature review
relating writing and causes of errors in foreign learning. Chapter Two is about the study
which investigates possible causes of common English written made by 12th- form
students at Thanh Ha High School from survey questionnaires on teachers and students'
actual writings. It also contains findings of the study and some solutions for the problems.
The conclusion gives a summary of what has been discussed so far in the thesis, the
limitation of the study, and suggestion for further research. 4


5
(i) Primarily for action: public signs (on roads and stations), product labels and
instructions (on food, tools or toys purchased), recipes, maps, television and radio guides,
bills, menus, telephone directories, etc.
For social contact: personal correspondence, letters, postcards, greeting cards.
(ii) Primarily for information: newspapers and magazines, non- fiction books
including textbooks, public notices, advertisement, guidebooks and travel literature, etc.)
(iii) Primarily for entertainment: light magazines, comic strips; fiction books;
poetry and drama; film subtitles; games including computer games.
In classroom, the teaching and learning of writing also play an important role.
Through writing we are able to share ideas, arouse feelings, persuade and convince other
people. We are able to discover and articulate ideas in the ways that only writing makes
possible. Therefore, writing has always occupied a place in the language syllabus.
Discussing about this issue, White (1981, p.1) describes a number of reasons why writing
merits a place in the language syllabus:
(i) Writing remains the commonest way of examining student performance in
English (all public examinations include a composition). Consequently, ability to write
remains a key to examination success.
(ii) In the eyes of both parents and students, ability to write may be associated with
evidence of having learnt the language. Writing is tangible-parents and students can see
what has been done and what has been achieved. So it has high "face validity".
(iii) In the classroom, writing may be used as one of a number of techniques to help
add variety and interest to lesson.
(iv) Teachers may use writing as a testing device to provide feedback on what
students have learnt. Students' writing can provide useful evidence of successes of failures
in learning, of confusions, and errors.
(v) Writing requires thought, discipline and concentration. It is relatively a
permanent form and readers judge us by our style, content and logic. So writing demands
care and thought.

principle of distinction was not reliable. She discovered that many recurrent systemic
errors: failure to express genitive relation or confusion of passive an active voice, etc
reflected no defects in knowledge at all. She also provided an explanation for these cases
saying that lack of autonomy in rule application was responsible.
In that situation, Duskova, L. (1969) suggested a criterion for treatment of errors,
according to which errors manifest themselves in their regular occurrence and the systemic
nature they share. This is noticeable and well taken for our research:

7
An error analysis should be based primarily on recurrent systematic errors
that are made by a number of learners and that can be readily traced to their
sources, no matter whether they reflect defects in knowledge or they result
from inadequate habit formation.
1.2.2. Errors in language learning process.
To enhance language teaching we should make a clear understanding of how
language is learned. It means that we should know language learning process. In order to
comprehend the process, researchers always observe the product of learners: through what
they successfully take in and what failures they experience. Some linguists stated that
"errors are trustable evidence based on which they can look into the process". Therefore, in
this part, we try to give a brief account of the background setting in which errors in
language learning are approached and dealt with. Some issues are included: errors in first
language and second language; receptive errors and expressive errors.
1.2.2.1. First language and second language errors
Error committing is an observable and common phenomenon both in first language
acquisition and second language acquisition. An examination of both L1 and L2 learners'
speech as well as writing enable researchers to conclude that these learners both undergo
similar systematic stages of learning since most of the errors they systematically make
share the same nature. These erroneous forms are categorized as developmental errors, i.e.
those which are "the result of a normal pattern of development in language learning"
(Richards et al. 1992, p.104).

utterance does unnecessarily originate from inadequate knowledge although neither does it
mean "never".
Corder, S. (1975) therefore presents two types of errors: the receptive errors, which
are caused by failure of comprehension on the reception level, and the expressive ones,
which manifest in the learners' utterances in "meaningful discourse". In this paper, the
investigation is carried out on the written discourse of Vietnamese learners, so the focus is
stressed on those errors on the level of self-expression.
1.3. Causes of errors in foreign language learning
To know why certain errors arise from learners' performance is essential and
helpful in different ways as aforementioned. However, it is not easy to elucidate the
problem in psycholinguistic terms: what process and strategy it is that leads to the making
of errors. According to Norrish, J. (1992), he reported that some causes of errors were
carelessness, first language interference, translation, overgeneralization, incomplete
application of rules but Richards, C. suggested that over-generalization, ignorance of rule
restrictions, incomplete application of rules and false concepts hypothesized are main

9
causes. From the two authors' theory above and from my experience, The researcher see
that a number of reasons for how learners go wrong are mother tongue language
interference, overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restrictions, incomplete application of
rules, and carelessness.
1.3.1. Mother tongue interference
According to Norrish, J. (1983, p. 22) "It was commonly believed until fairly
recently that learning a language (a mother tongue or a foreign language) was a matter of
habit formation. The learner's utterances were thought to be gradually "shaped" towards
those of the language he was learning". That is the reason why whenever an error appears,
there is likely that the mother tongue is responsible. Traditionally, the notion of
interference is understood as negative transfer. It stems from what is termed "proactive
inhibition", i.e. the way learning new habits is hindered by previously- learnt ones. This
explanation which relies on the behaviorist theory so far discussed goes that learning takes

use literal translation as a learning strategy to overcome their ignorance. Reliance by
translation is indeed dissimilar to influence. Norrish (1983) distinguishes interference
against translation. The explanation goes as follows: translation is a voluntary strategy
reflecting learners' consciousness of using L1 while interference takes place
subconsciously. This suggested distinction is very fine, and it is uneasy to decide whether
an error reflects a conscious or subconscious process.
Despite the fact that many linguists have not accepted the habit formation theory,
the notion of interference still proved to be useful and necessary in a number of nun-
contrastive studies of errors. Errors due to L1 interference have been estimated to range
approximately from 23% (Mukattush. 1975) found in English of Jordanian students to 51%
(Chau, 1974) found in non-native speakers of Spanish in Toronto.
Then, beside the different nature of the L1 and FL, what other factors might be
sources of L1 interference? Generally there are four major factors that may enable FL
learners to use their native language in second language acquisition.
In the first place, it is common knowledge that at a certain stage of their learning:
often very early in classroom settings, FL learners are required to produce the new
language. The performance forms needed in classrooms are for example writing
compositions, talking about something, or taking tests. The important thing is that they are
forced to perform even though they do not want or their linguistic competence fails to meet
their expansive needs to communicate. It is due to this pressure both from the demand for
communication and the teacher's request that the learner falls back on the language he is
most familiar with.

11
Secondly, the limited L2 environment is to blame. The absence of a natural
linguistic input with native speakers and confinement to contact with non-native teachers
and people cause learners to have recourse on their language.
What is more, the way learners are asked to perform the FL also has a significant
affect on his verbal production. For example, he is asked to translate a paragraph into the
target language, write an essay or describe a picture orally, etc. All these things may have

Certain types of teaching techniques increase the frequency of over- generalized structures.
Many patterns drills and transform exercises are made up of utterances that can interfere
with each other to produce a hybrid structure. Richards (1971) gave the following example:
Teacher
Instruction
Student
He walks quickly
Change to continuous form
He is walks quickly
This has been described as overlearning of a structure. At other times, he walks
may be contrasted with he is walking, he sings with he can sing, and a week later, without
any teaching of the forms, the learner produces he can sings, he is walks.
George (1972) also agreed on the same thing. He postulated that the erroneous
structure like Did you mended it? Owed its cause to the instruction of simple present
statements, simple present questions and simple past statements respectively in succession.
In short, along with l1 interference, over-generalization is regarded as one of the
major causes of error-making. It is the result of learners' processing and making hypotheses
about the language that is subjected to a variety of factors and is hard for us to control.
1.3.3. Ignorance of rule restriction
Closely related to the generalization of deviant structure is failure to observe the
restrictions of existing structures, that is, "the application of rules to contexts where they
do not apply" (Richards, 1974). The scholar also mentions that some rule restriction errors
that learners commit may be accounted for in terms of analogy. For example, the learner,
encountering a particular preposition with one type of verb, will attempt to apply the same
preposition with similar verbs by analogy. To be specific, students know the sentence "He
showed me the book" so that they may think the sentence " He explained me the book" is
correct one.
Besides, the rote learning of rules is also a cause of learners' ignorance of
restrictions. For instance, students are taught to use a to-verb infinitive after some verbs
such as allow, enable, permit and then that makes students assume that the use of verb

language learning process. That is to say, the researchers discover what strategies FL
learners use in learning and acquiring a language. The last benefit is practical in the sense
that errors can serve as good feedback to the learners for self- adjustment.
However, errors searched in those studies come from learners other than
Vietnamese and may be characteristic of those learners. The causes may be common but
the types of error may be distinctive and must be pointed out together with their causes.
Despite common errors believed to exist in learners of various language backgrounds.
Etherton (1977) still holds the view that learners of different mother tongues "make

14
different types of mistakes". This is why this study should be conducted to find out what
types of errors are derived from the Vietnamese students and what their causes are. To be
specific, in this study the researcher wants to investigate common written errors made by
12th form students and from these findings she gives some possible solutions.


teaching methods should be taken into account in order to foster and develop their writing
skills efficiently.
2.1.3. Facilities
Generally speaking, the average class size of fifty-five students is rather big and
inconvenient. The desks are arranged traditionally with two rows of seven desks. There is a
narrow isle in the middle and two narrower on the sides, no other empty space left where
the teachers and the students can move to and from if they implement interactive activities.
Moreover, the classroom are not equipped with modern facilities such as television,
computer, DVD and projector, except for a board.
2.2. "Tiếng Anh 12" textbook
2.2.1. An overview of English textbook 12
The textbook 12 is compiled following the communicative approach in which
communicative competence is emphasized. The development of communicative skills are
the most important objectives in teaching and learning. Therefore, each unit focuses on
four skills: reading, speaking, listening and writing. Language knowledge such as

16
phonetics, vocabulary and grammar are considered the means and condition to form and
improve communicative ability.
Along with the communicative approach, the learner-centered approach is also
adapted in order to promote students' activeness and creativeness. The teacher is the
organizer and controller in the class.
To achieve the teaching objectives under the two approaches mentioned above,
task-based teaching is the major method applied in the book. In each lesson, tasks are
stated clearly with different activities which provide students with opportunities to interact
and cooperate.
The content of the book was designed under theme-based approach. It is the
succession and development of previous grades textbooks with 16 units covering different
topics which were contextualized and developed naturally to attract and to help students
practice communicative skills. Each unit includes five items corresponding to five periods

Describing the world you would like to live in in the
future
9. Deserts
Describing main features of a desert
10 Endangered species
Writing about measures to protect endangered species
and possible results
11. Books
Describing a book
12. Water sports
Giving instruction
13. The 22nd Sea Games
Describing a sporting event (a football match)
14. International organizations
Writing a short description of an international
organization
15. Women in society
Describing a chart
16. The association of Southeast
Asian Nations
Writing a letter of recommendation
("Tieng Anh 12" textbook)
2.3. The study
2.3.1. Method
2.3.1.1. Participants
The participation chosen for the study are 130 12th-form students with their
writings during the writing lessons in the class and eight teachers of English. (three of them
are teaching grade 12 at present)
2.3.1.2. Data collection instruments
In order to obtain adequate data for the study, the researcher employed three data

The researcher interviews teachers for question number 3 only to get better insights
into the recommendation for reducing and preventing students' common errors. Four
teachers were invited to discuss for further information about the items raised in the
question number three.
2.3.1.3. Data collection procedure
As being described in the previous part, various instruments were designed.
Document analysis was the first instruments for this study. The students' actual
writing were the results of their writing lessons in the class. The researcher collected
students' writings in units 9, 10 and 16.
Secondly, eight sheets of questionnaires were delivered to the eights teachers of
English. While the respondents were working on the questions, the researcher was also
present to give any explanation, if any problems arose.

19
Thirdly, after teachers completed the survey questionnaires, four of them were
chosen to take part in a one to one interview. It was conducted in a quiet room free from
distraction.
2.3.2. Data analysis and discussion
This part serves as a representation of data collected during research procedure.
Accordingly, the interpretation of these data is also offered to address the three research
questions.
2.3.2.1. Research question 1
As stated in the Introduction part, the first research question is " What are the types
of written errors that 12th- form students make in learning English?". This question was
answered by the interpretation of the qualitative data gained from analyzing 130 students'
actual writing in the class and the quantitative data collected from eight teachers' survey
questionnaire. Following are the tables to illustrate 12th form student written errors at
Thanh Ha High School.
Items of errors


50%
12.5%
0%
Article mistakes
0%
25%
62.5%
12.5%
0%
Noun number
0%
37.5%
25%
37.5%
0%
Wrong conjunction/
connective
0%
37.5%
25%
37.5%
0%
Wrong verb tense
0%
12.5%
25%
50%
12.5%
Subject-verb
agreement


As for table 2, the researcher would like to consider the percentage of five as the
standard figure to determine whether a certain category of errors falls into the groups of
common errors or not. I choose this figure because 5% would mean that the category is
Common written errors made by 12th form students at
Thanh Ha High School
Lexical
items
Incorrect spelling
34%
Word choice/
Wrong word
15.1%

Grammatical items
Preposition
3.9%
Article mistakes
8.5%
Noun number
16.6%
Wrong conjunction/
connective
10.4%
Wrong verb tense
1.4%
Subject-verb
agreement
2.6%
Verb form