MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY NGUYEN THI THU THUY

AN INVESTIGATION INTO COMMON ERRORS
IN PARAGRAPH WRITING OF THE 10
TH
GRADE STUDENTS
AT HONG LINH HIGH SCHOOL
MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION
NGHE AN - 2014
MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY
NGUYEN THI THU THUY
AN INVESTIGATION INTO COMMON ERRORS
IN PARAGRAPH WRITING OF THE 10
TH
GRADE STUDENTS
AT HONG LINH HIGH SCHOOL
Major:Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)
Code: 60.14.01.11
MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION
Supervisor: TRAN BA TIEN, Ph.D.
NGHE AN, 2014
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP
I hereby acknowledge that this study is mine. The data and findings
discussed in the thesis are true, used with permission, and have not been
published elsewhere.
Author

are put forward. It is hoped that the results of the study can be beneficial for both
students and teachers.
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Pages
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii
ABSTRACT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi
LIST OF TABLES vii
Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1
1.1. Rationale 1
1.2. Scope of the study 2
1.3. Aims and objectives 2
1.3.1. Aims 2
1.3.2. Objectives 2
1.4. Research questions 3
1.5. Organization of the study 3
Chapter 2 LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4
2.1. Previous studies 4
2.2. Theoretical background 6
2.2.1. Teaching writing 6
2.2.1.1. Definition of writing 6
2.2.1.2. The reason for teaching writing 6
2.2.2. Approaches to writing teaching 7
2.2.2.1. Product approach 7
2.2.2.2. Process approach 7
2.2.3. Principles of teaching writing 9
2.3. Teaching paragraph writing 9

4.1.2.3. Preposition errors 40
4.1.2.4. Pronoun errors 40
4.1.2.5. Spelling errors 41
4.1.3. Syntactic errors 42
4.1.3.1. Word order 43
4.1.3.2. Omitted words or phrases 45
4.1.3.4. Run-ons - comma splices 46
4.1.3.5. Fragments incomplete sentence 48
4.1.3.6. Unidiomatic sentence construction 49
4.1.4. Mechanical errors 51
4.2. Paragraph organization 52
4.2.1. Topic sentence 53
4.2.2. Supporting sentences 54
4.2.3. Concluding sentence 56
4.3. Some solutions to the problem 58
4.3.1. Suggestions on teaching how to write a paragraph 58
4.3.2. Suggestions on reviewing grammar and practicing writing 59
4.3.3. Suggestions on making drafts 60
4.3.4. Suggestions on teachers’ error correction 61
4.3.5. Suggestions on teachers’ checking 61
4.4. Summary 62
Chapter 5 CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 64
5.1. Conclusions 64
5.2. Implications 65
5.3. Limitations 67
5.4. Suggestions for further studies 67
REFERENCES 68
APPENDIX 72
v
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Table 4.8. Mechanical Errors 51
Figure 4.8. Mechanical Errors 51
Table 4.9. Topic sentence display 53
Table 4.10. Organization of supporting sentence display 55
Table 4.11. Concluding sentence display 56
Table 4.12. Summary of Errors in Writing by HLHS Students 62
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Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
In recent years, there has been a growing awareness of the importance of the
English writing skill at high schools in Vietnam. The writing skill is part of the
English syllabus at high schools. In a school-year at high school, there are 105
periods for teaching English in which there is one fifth for teaching writing. Writing
is one of the five parts of every unit in English textbooks from grade 10 to grade 12.
Writing an English paragraph is a main activity as a result of the writing
lesson in the tenth form. Some kinds of writing are writing descriptions, writing
about people’s background, writing about the advantages and disadvantages of
something. Writing paragraphs is basic to students’ development of their writing
skill later. Writing a letter, writing a composition and writing an essay are based on
writing a paragraph because they are constituted from some paragraphs. Hence it is
very important for students to be taught how to write a paragraph.
However, knowledge of how to write an English paragraph is not presented
in the English textbooks. Although the students are required to write a paragraph,
they have not been trained to construct a well-organized paragraph. Though writing
a paragraph has been put into the eighth form textbooks, building a paragraph is still
strange to HLHS students. They learn to write paragraphs with some help from their
teachers. Sometimes their writing is nearly based on a model given out at the first
part of a unit in the textbooks or on a reading passage. At the end of each writing

This study aims to identify some discourse features of English paragraphs
written by HLHS students as well as find out the mistakes they often make when
writing English paragraphs and put forward some solutions.
1.3.2. Objectives
The objectives of the study are to:
- Investigate the discourse features of English paragraphs written by HLHS
students (layout, lexical features and syntactic structures).
- Identify problems faced by the HLHS students in the process of English
paragraph writing.
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- Provide suggestions for teaching and learning English paragraph writing
to HLHS students.
1.4. Research questions
Examination of the English paragraphs written by HLHS students aims at
answering the following research questions based on the analysis of students’
written products:
1. What are the types of errors in English paragraphs written by HLHS
students?
2. What are the features of organization of English paragraphs written by
HLHS students?
3. What are some suggestions for the teaching and learning of English
paragraph writing at HLHS?
1.5. Organization of the study
Chapter 1- Introduction
This part introduces the study. It consists of the rationale, the scope of the study,
the aims, the objectives and the research questions .
Chapter 2- Literature Review and Theoretical Background
This part provides the previous study and the theoretical background for the
research questions raised in the study. It also includes the working definitions of the

“interference”, Dulay et al. ( 1982) refer to the former as the use of patterns of the
first language in the production of the second language. Up to now, so many
researches have been done on English errors and mistakes, especially on
grammatical and lexical errors. “Common Mistakes in English” written by
Fitikites (1961), “Right Words Wrong Words” by Alexander (1994) and
“Dictionary of Common Grammatical Errors” published by Thong Ke publishing
house (1998) present a large number of errors and mistakes in English such
as grammatical, lexical, phonological errors.
EA with a discourse analysis perspective makes use of DA. A result of EA is
made to show the causal factors of the errors and how the errors may happen
in students’ writing or speaking. Based on Corder’s theory (1981), the reason
that students usually make errors in writing is the wide differences between the native
language and English as the foreign language to be learned. Hence,
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these differences cause interference (they usually carry over the speech habit of
their native language into a second language), over-generalization (they create a
deviant structure on the basis of their experience of other structures in the target
language) and ignorance (they fail to observe the restrictions of existing structures) in
learning English. Gass and Selinker’s theory (1994) of steps in conducting an EA
consists of collecting the data, identifying errors, classifying errors, quantifying
errors, analysis of source, and remediation in Second Language Acquisition.
In Vietnam, the appearance of EA seems to be much later. However, as
regards the study of discourse and discourse analysis, there is a variety of
linguists who have made every effort to embark in pursuing and applying this new
approach into Vietnamese. There are more doctoral dissertations and more master
theses related to DA and many pieces of research on errors of particular groups of
learners. For instance, in “An Investigation into Common Written Errors Made
by High-School Pupils in Danang”, Vo Khac Tien presented most types of
common written errors made by high-school pupils in Danang such as

produce a product-a paragraph, an essay or a report and writers try to express their
ideas, feeling to impress their readers in certain ways. Writing involves many different
aspects. According to Roger, Phillips and Walters (1995, p. 113), writing involves
seven aspects. They are handwriting, spelling, punctuation, sentence construction,
organizing a text and paragraphing, text cohesion and style. All aspects are carefully
considered by any writers.
2.2.1.2. The reason for teaching writing
According to Harmer (1998, p. 79), teaching writing to students of English
include some reasons as follows.
Firstly, it is reinforcement. Most of students gain great benefits from seeing
the written language especially the visual demonstration of language construction is
valuable for both their understanding and committing the new language to their
memory. So it is very useful for them to write sentences using new language after
they have just studied it.
Secondly, language development is also a reason for teaching writing. It
seems that the actual process of writing helps students to learn language better. The
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highest level of writing skill involves critical thinking. To deal with their mental
activities, students have to construct proper written texts using all their learning
experience.
Thirdly, the most important reason for teaching writing is that it is a basic
productive language skill. Obviously, students need to know how to write a letter,
how to write a report, etc. Therefore, they need to know some writings’ conventions
such as punctuation, paragraph construction, forms of paragraph.
2.2.2. Approaches to writing teaching
In the field of writing, product and process approaches are the most popular.
2.2.2.1. Product approach
Product approach is a largely “prescriptive and product-centered” way of
teaching writing (Applebee, 1986).

encourages the development of critical thinking skills, which help them to have
chances to challenge their social reality (Nunan, D, 1991, p. 87).
Roger, Phillips and Walters (1995, p. 115) provide some guidelines for a
process writing activity.
Introduction: Teachers create a piece of writing for students to write by the
way of stimulating students’ interests through listening, speaking or reading
activity. Then teacher asks students to discuss the text type, definite the readers who
are they and definite the content that the writer is going to inform, etc.
Working with ideas: Using maps, picture or sketch, etc. to ask students
brainstorm in order to get ideas. After noting down, students need to decide which
ideas can be kept and which ones should be rejected and develop them before
ordering them logically.
Planning: Teachers ask students to remind the typical feature and structure of
the text type they are writing, for example of paragraph: introduction to the topic with a
topic sentence, the supporting ideas for the topic sentence and the writer’s conclusion.
Drafting: The students start to write the first paragraph from their plans.
They may use dictionary to find words, grammatical structures if they need.
Editing: With the teacher comments, students correct and improve their first
paragraph by looking at content, language accuracy, organization, etc.
Re-writing: Students write out the final version and teachers have to decide
to give the final correction and responses to the students’ writings.
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2.2.3. Principles of teaching writing
There are several principles of writing. According to Huong, T.T, Minh
N.T.T.etal. (2007, p. 58), teachers should consider some of following principles
when teaching writing.
First of all, teachers should provide many opportunities for students to write.
Students’ writing skills just improve when they practice writing a lot. So, just
asking students to practice in writing lesson is not enough. Teacher can create

short as one sentence or as long as ten sentences. The number of sentences is
unimportant. However, the paragraph should be long enough to develop the main
idea clearly”. Besides, Feist (1996, p. 6) reckons that “A paragraph as a group of
sentences that develop a single idea. We write in paragraphs to make the
organization of our ideas clear to our reader. If you think about paragraph writing as
a step-by-step process, it will help you sort through the confusion. The first step of
the writing process is to gather your ideas and facts”.
In fact, besides elements of unity and coherence, a paragraph should have
three main parts. They are the topic sentence, supporting sentences and the
concluding sentence.
What is a topic sentence? A topic sentence is usually the first sentence that
summarizes the main idea of a paragraph. It states the most important thing that you
want to say about your topic. In the other words, a topic sentence consists of
controlling idea of the paragraph (Feist, 1996, p. 17). To write a good topic
sentence, writer should put it in a complete sentence.
What are supporting sentences? They are the sentences those include the
ideas related to the topic (Feist, 1996, p. 23). Supporting sentences may develop
various aspects of the topic such as causes, effects, reasons, example, etc. All the
supporting sentences are connected together by cohesive devices. What is a
concluding sentence? It is usually a single sentence. But some paragraphs may
require more than one concluding sentence. The conclusion is usually placed at the
end of paragraph. It summarizes or restates the main point you made.
2.3.2. Classifications of paragraph
According to Feist, there are four main kinds of paragraph: informative,
descriptive, narrative and persuasive.
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2.3.2.1. Informative paragraph
An informative paragraph is a paragraph that informs information. For
example, “Write a paragraph to inform your friend about your missing a date” To

narrative paragraph is usually arranged in chronological order. It answers following
questions:
1. Who was involved?
2. What happened?
3. Where did it happen?
4. When did it happen?
2.3.2.4. Persuasive paragraph
“Persuasive writing convinces the reader to take action or to support an idea”
(Feist, p. 54). In this kind of paragraph, the main idea is your opinion on the topic. It
is usually stated in a topic sentence. The others support the opinion with reasons,
evidence.
The tone of persuasive paragraph should be strong, but polite in oder to
encourage the reader to act.
2.4. Writing process of paragraph
To perfectly complete a paragraph, the writer needs to conduct four main
stages. The first is prewriting, the second is draft writing, the third is revising drafts
and proofreading is the last one.
There are different tables, charts or articles showing the paragraph writing
process like Ann Raimes, Alice & H. Ann. But in general, when a paragraph is
written, the writer needs to concern about some main steps that cannot be lacked.
They are shown by the following chart.
Start Here X
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The graph of writing process
In the pre-writing stage, writers need to choose and narrow a topic to a
specific focus then they generate ideas. That is called brainstorming. This process
can get them to start the writing more easily and quickly. It means that if they
conduct the stage, it helps them save time in later stages of the writing process.
After brainstorming, listing step is conducted. Students think about their topics

2.5.1. Error and error analysis
According to Crystal (2003) “Error is a term used in psycholinguistics
referring to mistakes in spontaneous speaking or writing attributable to a
malfunctioning of the neuron-muscular commands from the brain. It is thus distinct
from the traditional notion of error, which was based on the language user’s ability
to conform a set of real or imagined standards of expression.” (p. 165). Whereas,
for the error analysis, he defines as follows: “In language teaching and learning,
error analysis is technique for identifying, classifying and systematically
interpreting the mistakes made by someone learning a foreign language, using any
of the principles and procedures provided by linguistics.”
Corder (1971), suggests that errors are “the result of some failure of
performance. They may contain what are often called slips of the tongue, false
starts, changes of mind, and so on. They may be the result of failures in memory.”
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(p. 162). Norrish (1983, p. 7), like Corder, defines ‘an error’ as a systematic
deviation that happens when a learner has not learnt something and consistently ‘get
(s) it wrong’. Corder (1981) also states that the learner’s errors are significant in
three ways: (1) To the teacher, they tell him or her how far toward the goal the
learner has progressed and what remains to be learned, (2) To the researcher, they
provide the evidence of how language is learned or acquired and what strategies the
learner employs in language learning, and (3) To the learner himself, they can be
regarded as a device the learner uses to learn a language. It is a way the learner
employs to test the hypothesis about the nature of language.
Dulay et al. (1982) also see the significance of the learner’s errors. They
view that studying the learner’s errors serves two main purposes: (1) It provides
important information from which inferences about the language learning process
can be made, and (2) It indicates which part of the target language is most
problematic to the learner and which types of errors affect the learner’s ability to
communicate effectively.

considerable debate about the extent of this role in interlanguage construction,
many researchers agree that L1 transfer is involved to some capacity in a learner’s
interlanguage continuum.
It has also been used by educational psychologists to refer to the use of past
knowledge or experience in new situations. For example, learners may use their past
knowledge in L1 when they learn L2. If they know how to read in one language,
they do not have to learn written symbols representing sounds in L2. In this case,
“the basic concepts and skills involved in reading are said to transfer to the new
language” ( Dulay & Burt, 1982, p. 101). In SLA, it is believed that the learner’s
first language significantly influences the
SLA.
Based on the above definitions, two types of language transfer
arebdistinguished: positive and negative transfer.
Positive transfer or facilitation is any facilitating effects on acquisition due
to the influence of cross-linguistic similarities. It is believed that much of the
influence of the native language or of some other language that the learner has
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