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Analysing students’ grammatical errors in English essays from selected secondary Schools in Dar es Salaam
(University of Dar es salaam, 2019) Mwakasoke, Robert
The quality study investigated common grammatical errors produced by students in their English essays .The study examined errors in 80 essays .The data were collected from two secondary schools Kitunda and Kinyerezi where students wrote the essay on a given topic “causes of road accident in Tanzania”. Following coder’s is (1967, 1974) model of error analysis errors were identified and classified into various grammatical categories. The five most common grammatical errors were tense and verb forms, pronouns, subject–verb agreement, articles and prepositions, findings revealed that student’ errors result from incompetence with interlingua and intralingua rules on part of the students, and lack of adeptness on the part of teachers. Drawing on the findings, this study is of view that the English language should be given first priority as a language of communication among the students and teachers during school hours because most of the errors committed are attributed to students’ LI. Therefore, this is the evidence that the students’ mastery of English which is the medium of instruction in secondary schools is still poor hence students ineffective in producing error-free essays.