Errors Committed by Grade Eight Students in Free Composition

Abstract

Unless and until grammar, mechanics and organizational style are caredforinwriting, it may be better not to attempt writing at all, let alone free writing.Thestudy entitledErrors CommittedbyGrade Eight Studentsin FreeCompositionis mainly concerned with identifying and describing the errors inagreement, preposition,article,capitalization,cohesion and coherence in freewriting. For this study, 80 students studying in five different English schools inBhaktapur district were selected using disproportionate stratified random samplingprocedure, (i.e. 16 students from eachschool,consisting of equal number ofstudents from both the sexesgot selected). A set of subjective test items,consisting of three free writing questions, was theone and onlytool for datacollection. The frequency of errors in agreement, preposition, article,capitalization, cohesion and coherence were counted,computed and analyzed aswell. The study showed thatthe students committed the highest number of errorsin capitalization and the lowest number of errors in using prepositions.Theycommitted 3661 errors in total,out of which 613(16.74%),439(11.99%),487(13.30%), 810(22.12%), 715(19.52%) and597(16.31%)errors werecommitted in agreement, preposition, article, capitalization, cohesion andcoherence,respectively. The study consists of four chapters. The first chapter deals with introduction to thestudy encompassing the general background, literature review, objectives andsignificance of the study. The second chapter deals with themethodology. Itencompasses sources of data, population of the study, sampling procedure,research tools,process of data collection, and limitations of the study. Similarly,the third chapter, which is the core part of the study, includes the analysis andinterpretation of the data. And finally, the fourth chapter incorporates the findings,recommendations and pedagogical implications of the study.