Grammatical errors in the essays of senior high school students, the case of Ghana senior high school, Tamale

Abstract

This is a qualitative study aimed at investigating the grammatical errors students of Ghana Senior High School, Tamale in the Northern Region of Ghana commit in their essay writing. The study sought to identify grammatical errors and examine the causes of the errors. To achieve these objectives, essays from 201 students randomly selected from across the three streams were collected and analyzed. In all, 2864 errors were identified; verb related errors, concord, prepositional, adverbial, number, article and sentence fragments, spelling, and punctuation errors. The findings of the study indicate that causes of errors in learners‟ writing include incomplete learning of rules, ignorance of rule restrictions, overgeneralization of concepts and rules, context of instruction as well as L1 interference. Based on these findings, it is recommended that teachers should make conscious attempts at understanding the L1 oftheir students. Finally and most importantly, teachers should adopt the communicative teaching method in order to minimize errors.