Analysing Intra-lingual and Inter-lingual Errors in ESL Learners’ Essays at the University Level

Abstract

The present study aims to analyse intra-lingual and inter-lingual types of errors, their causes and accessible solutions to the writing deficiency that majority of ESL learners face at the university level, and they fail to get satisfactory results in language learning. For investigation of this problem, a mixed-method approach, an explanatory sequential design was used. For data collection two instruments were used i.e., essay writing and semi-structured interviews. The data analysis was done by applying the Gas and Selinker (2008) error analysis model. Moreover, for intra-lingual errors, James’ (2013) error analysis taxonomy, and for the inter-lingual types of errors, the inter-lingual error taxonomy, suggested by Riri, Haryanto, and Salija (2018) was followed. The results demonstrate that the highest percentage of errors was found in intra-lingual and the lowest percentage of inter-lingual errors. Furthermore, the results indicated that the highest percentage in intra-lingual types of errors was overgeneralization followed by overlooking co-occurrence restrictions, exploiting redundancy, incomplete rule application, misanalysis, and hypercorrection respectively. Whereas, in inter-lingual errors, the highest percentage was overproduction, followed by misinterpretation, underproduction, calques, and substitutions. This present research is very significant for language teachers in finding minimize errors made by ESL learners in their essays at the university level.