Grammar focused activities to improve writing production: an error analysis study

Abstract

The current study aims to help tenth grade EFL students in Cumbaya, Ecuador, reduce morpho-syntactic errors in their writing skills at an A2 level according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Firstly, a pre-test was given to 40 tenth grade learners to identify and classify morpho-syntactic errors. In the first writing prompt, participants were asked to write an email answering 3 questions. In the second writing prompt, they were asked to write a brief story of the objects that they had in 3 separate images. The most common morpho-syntactic errors that the pre-test revealed are: word order, subject verb agreement, Morpheme/word Omission, Morpheme/word addition. Second, learners were given grammar-focused activities for two months to help them make less morpho-syntactic errors. These activities were based on the errors they made on the pretest. Third, the students took a test after the two-month program to see if they had made less morpho-syntactic errors. The researcher found that the post-test showed a big drop in errors. The post-test gave the researcher information about how the tenth graders' writing skills had improved by the end of the program. The study has implications for teaching because it can help teachers come up with ways to improve their students' writing skills.