A Unique Three-sided Linguistic Study to Identify Writing Errors in English: A Case Study from S.H.H.J.B. Polytechnic College, Chandwad, Nashik, (Maharashtra, India)

Abstract

Most of the students from the state of Maharashtra, India, completed their school education through regional language, particularly in Marathi. But the further higher education in faculties of Science etc. is entirely in English. The researcher is a lecturer in English who noticed that students from the Marathi medium find it a little difficult to cope up with these studies in English. They commit certain mistakes while writing in English. The researcher, a lecturer in English, noticed that the students of the First-year Computer Technology branch in the S.H.H.J.B. Polytechnic College commit much less or more errors in different types of assigned written work. So, the researcher decided to study this to find out in what type of written work they commit less or more errors and why and to suggest remedies to overcome this. This study is unique because the researcher did not find such a three-sided study anywhere. So, the researcher selected a sample population of forty-five students from the branch and gave them three tasks of different types of writing works i.e. 1) free writing, 2) guided writing and 3) dictation. The number of types of mistakes committed by them in these writings is classified, analysed , and studied in this work. The findings of this research can be helpful to the teachers as well as to the students to decide the direction of their efforts to minimize the writing errors.