Asian EFL Journal Research Articles. Vol. 23 Issue No. 3.

2 May 2019

ERROR ANALYSIS OF STUDENT INTERNS’ REFLECTIVE JOURNALS:

BASIS FOR A GRAMMAR REMEDIATION CLASS

Marie Claudette M. Calanoga, Ph.D.

Ria Arellano-Tamayo, Ph.D.
College of Teacher Education
Cagayan State University-Andrews Campus
marieclaudette.calanoga@gmail.com
air.good@yahoo.com.ph

Abstract
The study aimed to analyze the errors evident in the reflective journals written by
student interns. The respondents came from the different programs and academic majors who are
studying at Cagayan State University in the Philippines. All of the participants are from non-
English speaking environments and rarely communicate in English outside the university campus.
However, in their student- teaching internship they need to make use of English as a medium to
their students. And at the end of this phase, the student interns are required to write reflective
journals to narrate and make account of their day to day experiences and exposures in their
respective cooperating schools. Their reflective journals are required to form part of their
individual portfolio. The instruments used in the study were the participants’ reflective journals.
All the errors committed by the students were checked and categorized into different types of error.
The findings of the study revealed that that the student interns have committed several errors such
as: run-on, wrong use of words, word order, error on subject-verb agreement, noun- antecedent
error, etc. The results also showed that the most frequent errors committed by the students were
run-on sentence and subject-verb agreement error. In light of the obtained results, several
recommendations and pedagogical implications were suggested in order to help EFL teachers in
their attempt to reduce errors and difficulties among student interns in writing reflective journals
after their student internship stint.

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Keywords: Error analysis, linguistic competence, communicative competence, student-teaching
internship, reflective journal and grammar remediation

INTRODUCTION
Student teaching internship is the final and significant phase for training the students at the
College of Teacher Education. It is a program that provides opportunities and experiences to
expose the student interns to actual teaching-learning environment. This is the avenue where they
are able to put into practice the pedagogical knowledge, skills and attitude which were learned by the
students in the university. Furthermore, it provides the students all the opportunities to act like real
teachers in their respective cooperating schools. And it also helps the students understand
their roles in the larger arena of the teaching profession and in the extended operational
environment of the school where he or she is assigned to.
Expectedly, student-teachers must be linguistically competent before they will be
deployed to the primary and secondary schools. These interns must be communicative competent
and must possess speaking and writing skills as well. When these competences and skills are fully
equipped by the student-teachers, teaching-learning process will certainly take place.
Significantly, part of the student-teaching internship is the submission of the reflective
journal where the substantial teaching experiences were documented. The collective narrative
reports or journals serve as an eye-opener to the faculty members and to the administrators because
this would be their basis in improving the student-teachers’ performance particularly in be
improved.
However, it was observed in their submitted reflective journals the evident grammatical
errors such as Subject-Verb Agreement Errors, Sentence Fragments, Missing Comma After
Introductory Element, Misplaced Or Dangling Modifier, Vague Pronoun Reference, Wrong Word
Usage, Run-On Sentence, Superfluous Commas, Lack of Parallel Structure, Sentence Sprawl,
Comma Splice, wrong punctuation usage and split infinitives.
This prevailing situation alarmed the administrators in the academe particularly the
language head and professors. This further motivated the researchers who are both language
professors to conduct an Error Analysis on their Reflective Journal. The results of the study will
serve as basis for the conduct of a Grammar Remediation class for all incoming student interns.

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 This research is anchored to MacSwane’s (2017) adopted model Time-on-task Theory—
for educating English language learners (ELLs), with a focus on the role of language factors in
explaining achievement differences among ELLs. In this research, the said theory is employed
because the researcher also focused on the present or prevailing proficiency status of the
respondents particularly in composition. This study also described qualitatively whether the profile
of the respondent has significant relationship in his or her proficiency in writing.
Linguists have always been attempting to describe the types of errors committed by the
language learners, and that is exactly the best way to start with, as it helps out the language
professors in the university like the Cagayan State University to identify where the problem lies.
According to Dulay et al. (1982) errors take place when the learner changes the surface structure
in a particularly systematic manner. Thus, the error, no matter what form and type it is, represent
a damage at the level of the target language production.
Errors have been classified by J. Richard et al. (2002) into two categories. The Interlingual
Error and the Intralingual Error, those two elements refer respectively to the negative influence of
both the speaker’s native language, and the target language itself. Interlingual error is caused by
the interference of the native language L1 (also known as interference, linguistic interference, and
crosslinguistic influence), whereby the learner tends to use their linguistic knowledge of L1 on
some Linguistic features in the target language, however, it often leads to making errors. This is
related with Malana’s (2018) study. She stated that first language interferes in learning the second
language.
On the other hand, Intralingual error is an error that takes place due to a particular misuse
of a particular rule of the target language, it is, in fact, quite the opposite of Interlingual error, it
puts the target language into focus, the target language in this perspective is thought of as an error
cause. Furthermore, J. Richard, et al. (2002) consider it as one which results from ‘’faulty or
partial’’ learning of the target language.
The present study is somewhat related to Maleki’s (2008) findings. He stated that one of
the most serious problems that Iranian EFL students face in their field of study is their inability to
communicate and handle English after graduating from university. This is due to their weaknesses
in general English.
On the other hand, the present study is related to the study of Silalahi (2018) which focused
on grammatical errors analysis in translating English texts into Bahasa Indonesia text. The results
of his study showed that the errors were on: 1) 85.29% of morphological error on word formation
and 14.70% of affixation errors found; 2) syntactic error on phrase (3.96%), clause (1.00%), and
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sentence (95.04%); and 3) the factors causing the errors in translating namely the students did not
understand the context of the source language text, the students were not able to build sentence
grammatically in the target language, the students were lack of grammar comprehension of source
language and target language, the students did not use the dictionary and machine translation, and
the students did not implement the right translation strategy. He concluded that the respondents
made a lot of errors in translating English texts in to Bahasa Indonesia texts on morphology and
syntactic.
Similarly, Crompton (2011) studied problems encountered by English learners whose
mother tongue does not have an article system such as Arabic. His article described an enquiry
into article system errors in a corpus of English writing by tertiary-level L1 Arabic speakers.
Frequencies of articles are compared with those in native English and non-native English speaker
corpora. A detailed account is given of the commonest types of errors, classified according to the
misuse of each article. It is found that the most common errors involve misuse of the definite article
for generic reference.

Objectives of the Study

This study analyzed the errors committed by the student -teaching interns which are evident
in their reflective journals. The written outputs were analyzed using the error analysis of Coder
(1981).

METHODOLOGY
Research Design
The study made use of descriptive-qualitative research design since the reflective journal
was described. An error analysis on the respondents’ reflective journal were done by the
researchers.

Locale of the Study

The study was conducted at the College of Teacher Education, Cagayan State University-
Andrews Campus, Tuguegarao City during the second semester of school year 2018-2019.

Respondents and Sampling Procedure

The respondents of this study were the student teaching interns of the Colleges of Teacher
Education (CTE) of Cagayan State University-Andrews Campus, Tuguegarao City during the
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school year 2018-2019. Random sampling procedure was employed in the study to determine the
respondents.

Research Instrument
Error analysis adopted from Corder (1981) was used to analyze the errors in the reflective
journals submitted by the student teaching interns.

Collection of Data
The reflective journals submitted by the student-teaching interns to their professors were
read intensively and these were analyzed using the Error Analysis of Corder (1981).

Analysis of Data
The data gathered were categorized based on the type of errors committed and those were
analyzed by adopting the Error Analysis of Corder (1981). This focused on errors that are
systematic violations of patterns in the input to which the respondents have been exposed.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Table 1. Emergence of the Common Grammatical Errors in the reflective journal of the
respondents
Sample sentences/phrases Errors committed
The head of the English Department talked to us for a Pronoun antecedent error
while regarding the mentor whom will be assigned to
us.
She made me teach for my first day because she wants Incorrect verb and preposition
me to immediately have the experience of being there in
front of the students.

I learned from her that it’s good to keep authority but not Incorrect direct object
in the way that the students will detest you because
students tend to reciprocate the attitude that you show to
them.

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It is already my second week but I am still working with Run-on sentence
the relationship that I have with the them but what I can Absence of a comma
see to my students is that first, they are interactive during Complicated thought
discussion and it means a lot to me because for me they
can understand the topic that I discussed.
My objectives are composed of cognitive, psychomotor Subject-verb agreement error
and affective aspect that it is used to guide my students as Wrong use of word (instead of
they reviewing aspect, it should be domain)
To cater their different perspective in the subject matter I Incorrect plural form of the noun
incorporate creative thinking and multi intelligence Run-on sentence
Just like the other week I can say that I was able to get Run-on sentence
interest of my students through motivating them before Absence of a comma
discussion and engage them into enthusiastic learning
Before I discussed I flashed pictures or give some Absence of a comma
activities to be able to catch their attention.
It is already my third week and the relationship that I had Run-on sentence
with my students is good because during discussion I can Absence of a comma
tell some funny stories that make them laugh a little to
relaxed and enjoyed and sometimes I do this to catch Infinitive –verb violation
their attention.
Being a teacher isn’t not easy, but one thing it most Double negatives
definitely could be labelled as a teacher is by loving and
be interested to what you are doing
This is the most practices that the students need to avoid. Subject-verb agreement error
I am trying to confiscate their cellphones and also to call
their attention and give some task or I let them work Incorrect plural form of the noun
individually.
I believe that they also have something mind Absence of preposition
(something in mind)
Giving high numbers of kilometers as their recitation Inappropriate use of word
scheme really motivated them to do well.

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This week for me was all about working with my Plural form of the noun is
students who need to improve their grade to become one needed when one of the is used
of the academic excellence awardee.
When I got home, I compare my situation now to many Lack of parallel structure
weeks ago, I can really see how much I have learned and
how far I have become with the help of my very Run –on sentence
supportive cooperating teacher.
Now we will be discussing a new lesson but before I Absence of a comma after a
have here pictures you just say what is it. transition word
I can say that my objectives are powerful they are Wrong use of word
actionable and measurable so they are easy to reach.
4 weeks being with my students is good because every Misplaced and dangling
discussion I can already share some of my experiences in modifiers
life
During discussion I also incorporate issue-based and No comma after an introductory
multi-intelligence statement
I deal with this through giving them activities that fits to Run –on sentence
all of them and discussing it in away where they can all
understand it
All of my objectives are always composed of cognitive Tense of verb error
for the mind….
These objectives are all measurable wherein I know that I Incorrect verb after a modal
can reached these objectives by the end of the discussion.
All the activities that I let them do fits to all of them and Subject-verb agreement error
during discussion I give all the information that they Absence of a comma
needed in a simple way that I know all I know of them Run-on sentence
can understand
As I always see of effective classroom management Fragment
specially student’s need.
Their objective of this is, the student’s way of expressing Parallelism
will broaden, their act of talking in front, especially their
esteem, it will take into place.

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 Table 2 shows the emerged common errors committed by the pre-service teachers. Majority
of the errors committed were absence of a comma, subject-verb agreement and run-on sentence.
This finding implies that regardless of the course and majors of the student intern, the errors
committed are the same. During the informal interview to some of the student teaching supervisors
and teachers, the student interns are not fully linguistically and communicatively competent. This
can be attributed to weak grammar foundation and orientation of the students.
This finding coincide with the ideas and statements of Corder (1976). He stated that errors
are significant of three things, first to the teacher. Exclusively, as to how useful his or her teaching
strategies towards the goal the learner has progressed and, consequently, what remains for him or
her to learn. Second, how language is learned or acquired, and what strategies or procedures the
learner is employing in his discovery of the language. Third is the learner himself or herself,
because making of errors makes the students learn.

CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This study concluded that the student teaching interns are not fully linguistic competent
and proficient writers even if they are done with Grammar 1 and 2 or had their student teahing
internship. Their exposure and training in using the language most especially in using correct
grammar usage caused their inability to produce a refined reflective journal that is completely
free of grammatical errors.
The outcome of the conducted research has a great implication to language teaching and
language curriculum. The EFL teachers should conduct Grammar Remediation class to the
students so that the existing linguistic problems will be addressed. The offering of a Grammar
Remediation could be one best practice of the College of Teachers Education and an extra mile
of the English faculty members whose should passion always be increased to refine the writing
of reflective journals.
In like manner, the administrators should push through for the inclusion of the two
additional English subjects, Advanced Modern Grammar and Language Proficiency next school
year so that the students’ linguistic and communicative competences will be enriched and be
enhanced.

Pedagogical Implications
The reflective journals written by the pre-service teachers have grammatical errors that
should no longer be committed. As an intervention to this, learning activities along grammar rules
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should be intensified in ESL classes. Moreover, the checking of written requirements of pre-
service teachers should be dealt with by their Supervisors in the strictest sense for them to minimize
or avoid committing errors.

REFERENCES
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Crompton, Peter (2011) Asian EFL Journal. Professional Teaching Articles. Vol. 50
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Hansen, Chur (2002). Language background, proficiency in English, and selection for
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Radwan, Adel a. (2007). Effects of L2 proficiency and gender on choice of language

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Silalahi, Mardin (2018). Grammatical Errors analysis in Translating English Texts into
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 APPENDICES
Sample students’ outputs with errors

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