<![CDATA[This research investigates the types and sources of English writing errors among students and alumni from non-English foreign language departments, including German, French, Mandarin, Arabic, and Japanese. The study aims to bridge the gap in error analysis research which predominantly focuses on English majors. A descriptive qualitative method was employed, utilizing an Error Analysis (EA) framework. Data were collected from 10 spontaneous essays on the topic "Why did you choose your major?" and analyzed using Ellis’s (1994) procedure and Dulay et al.’s (1982) surface strategy taxonomy. To ensure authenticity, participants were prohibited from using AI or translation tools. The findings reveal that misformation is the most dominant error type, accounting for 55% of the total findings, followed by omission (30%), addition (9%), and misordering (6%). This demonstrates that learners primarily struggle with accurate grammatical and lexical formations. Regarding error sources, the results show a significant dominance of intralingual interference (77%) over interlingual interference (23%). This leads to the conclusion that the participants’ difficulties stem more from the inherent complexity of the English grammatical system and incomplete mastery of its rules than from native language interference. These results highlight a unique linguistic profile for multilingual learners, where developmental confusion outweighs mother-tongue influence. The study recommends that English instruction for foreign language majors should prioritize target language rules to mitigate internal linguistic confusion.]]>
Copyrights © 2026
