Errors Of Articles: A Comparative Study Of Written Script Of Government And Private Schools

Abstract

The purpose of this research is to investigate the occurrence of article errors in the written scripts based on English essays submitted elementary students both from government and private institutions. Further, it is comparative analysis to see the errors of articles made by those students who are studying at private and public sector schools. Data were collected from thirty students at each school for the purpose of this study, and the results were analyzed using surface structure taxonomy of errors developed by Dulay, Burt, and Krashen (1982). The investigation of these mistakes indicated that students attending government schools are producing for a greater number of errors than those attending private institutions. In addition, students attending public schools had higher occurrences of addition errors, and students attending private schools had higher occurrences of omission errors in their written scripts. Both the different backgrounds of the students and the different academic expectations at each school are likely to have contributed to this disparity in the types of errors of articles that were made. Also, the origins behind the various types of errors have been explained in this research, and it has been shown that inter-lingual sources contributed to the majority of the errors produced by students attending government schools, but students attending private schools are more likely to make errors due to intra-lingual sources. These factors contribute to differences in the level of proficiency in article usage that can be found among students who speak the same native language but attend different educational institutions.