Error Analysis in Descriptive English Writing among Undergraduates in Hunan City University

Chen Qian, Subadrah Madhawa Nair — Mon, 06 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0600

In this age of globalization, EFL writing skills are essential for Chinese undergraduates, especially in the areas of communication, education and business cooperation. The objective of this study is to study and analyze EFL descriptive writing errors among Chinese undergraduates, according to gender and faculty of study. Descriptive research design was employed in this study. The undergraduate students in the study were given a descriptive writing test and their essays were marked by a lecturer using rubric provided by the researchers. The sample of the study consisted of 400 Chinese undergraduate students (200 males and 200 females,) from Hunan City University in Hunan Province, China. Stratified random sampling was employed in selecting the samples. Students’ errors in EFL writing were analyzed based on Corder’s error analysis and James’s classification of errors. The findings from quantitative data revealed that male students made significantly more errors than female students in their overall writing, mechanical, coherence and cohesion, grammar, lexical and sentence structures. There is also significant difference in the mean errors among students from the four faculties. Moreover, the results indicated that the students from the faculties of Education Management and Chinese Language Studies (social sciences) performed better than the students from the other faculties. In terms of pedagogical implications, the findings suggest that further research should be carried out to minimize male students’ errors in their writing skills as well as the students from the Information Technology and Civil Engineering faculties.

Chinese Undergraduates’ Performance in HOTS and LOTS EFL Reading Comprehension for Different Reading Materials According to Gender

Li Lingfeng, Subadrah Madhawa Nair — Mon, 01 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0600

Many studies indicate that Chinese undergraduates face problems in their HOTS comprehension. The objective of this study is to investigate Chinese EFL undergraduates’ HOST and LOTS reading comprehension according to gender. A descriptive research design was employed in this quantitative study. The researchers used an English reading comprehension test involving 5 different materials (education, economy, entertainment, technology and natural disaster) as the research instrument. Each material consists of 3 LOTS questions and 2 HOTS questions. All the comprehension questions were multiple choice in nature. The sample of the study consists of 411 second year undergraduate students (261 females and 150 males) from a university in Hunan Province, China. SPSS Program for Windows version 25 was used to analyze the data (Independent samples t-test). The findings of this current study indicated that the female students performed significantly better than their male counterparts for both LOTS and HOTS comprehension questions. The female students also outperformed their male students in their overall score for comprehension. As such, these results clearly revealed that female undergraduates performed significantly better than the males in their EFL reading comprehension skills. However, this research only involves participants from one university; as a result, future research should include a larger sample from different provinces in China to get a better insight of students’ performance in EFL comprehension.

Contemporary Research in Education and English Language Teaching

Error Analysis in Descriptive English Writing among Undergraduates in Hunan City University

Chinese Undergraduates’ Performance in HOTS and LOTS EFL Reading Comprehension for Different Reading Materials According to Gender