Grammatical Problems in Essay Writing: A Case in Vietnamese University, Vietnam

Abstract

Errors play a significant role in second and foreign language acquisition. Analyzing the errors in the students' essays helps the students themselves as well as the teachers and curriculum designers. This study conducted with seventy-four English majored students in TraVinh University, Vietnam. Their essays were examined and the grammatical errors in the essay were figured out and analyzed. The findings showed that verb tense, noun, subject-verb agreement and article are the most common types of errors which were found in students' essays. This also revealed that conditional, model verb and phrasal verb are the grammatical elements which the students rarely used unsuitably. The findings may have useful implications for the students and teachers' development.