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Argumentative essay/ Academic An academic essay is a document that
essay has a defined structure – an introduction,
Bryne a body and a conclusion. It is a specific
writing genre that functions within a set of
norms, rules, and conventions.
Moreover, Bryne identified a writing style
of an academic essay. There are a
number of academic stylistic conventions
to be followed when writing. It uses
Standard English avoiding American
spellings. It makes use of the third
person unless otherwise directed. It
avoids slang terms, clichés and colloquial
expressions. It avoids gender bias and
sexist language. It does not make use of
emotive language. It is direct – use the
active rather than the passive voice.
Most importantly, it must be concise.
Cohen (1994) regards content,
Cohen (1994) organization, register (appropriateness of
level of formality), style (sense of control
and grace), economy, accuracy (correct
selection and use of vocabulary),
appropriateness of language conventions
(correct grammar, spelling and
punctuation), reader's acceptance
(soliciting reader's agreement), and
finally, reader's understanding
(intelligibility of the text) as the major
dimensions of the writing construct.
In another study, Attali and Powers
Attali and Power (2008) (2008) focus on the same features, but
substitute organization and development
with essay length, which is easier to
measure using computers. They found a
very high correlation between the two
features and essay length (around .95)
and reported essay length as “the most
important objective predictor of human
holistic essay scores” (Attali & Powers,
2008:6). That is to say, the longer the
Based on the recent study entilted,
Writing Challenges “Writing Difficulties and Quality of
Pablo and Lasaten (2018) Academic essays of Senior High School
students” by Pablo and Lasaten (2018)
the study concludes that the Grade 11
SHS students in the Schools Division of
Laoag City have difficulties in all areas in
writing academic essays. The prevalent
difficulty of the students in terms of
content and ideas is the absence of
variety of ideas, while for organization is
the absence of connectives. For
vocabulary and word choice, the
students’ most prevalent difficulty is the
use of incorrect word and word usage,
while for language use is the poor
sentence structure. Meanwhile, the
prevalent difficulty of the students along
formality and objectivity is the evident
use of first and second person pronouns,
while for referencing is the lack of
citations.
Alinsunod (2014) conducted a study on
Alinsunod (2014) common writing errors which
primarilyfocused in identifying the writing
errors of the Engineering students. She
found out that thedifficulties experienced
by the ESL students are hard to escape.
The sampled actual writing problemsand
self-reported writing difficulties only prove
the existence of language learning
problem. There ismuch to be regarded
with the writing skills of ESL learners.
The difficulties reported by the
studentssimply shows how this skill at
times maybe disregarded by others.
Error Analysis Error analysis is given by Brown (1980,
Brown (1980) cited by Haysim, 2002:43 cited by Hasyim, 2002:43), when he
defines error analysis as the process of
observing, analysing, and classifying the
deviations of the rules of the second
language and then to reveal the systems
operated by a learner. Similarly, Crystal
(as cited by Hasyim, 2002:43) proposes
that error analysis is a technique for
identifying, classifying and systematically
interpreting the unacceptable forms
produced by someone learning a foreign
language.
Corder (1981) Corder (1981) stresses that the function
of error analysis is useful in its relevance
to language teaching and the study of the
language acquisition process. He further
emphasizes that a good understanding of
the nature of error is necessary before a
systematic means of eradicating them
could be found, and the theoretical
justification, which claims that a study of
learners' errors is part of the systematic
study of the learners' language which is
itself necessary to an understanding
of the process of second language
acquisition.
Gorbet (1979) The term 'Error Analysis' implies that the
focus of the students' errors. But this is
misleading. Althoughanalyzing errors is
certainly involved in an Error
Analysis,much more is
[Link] it is a theory
developed toexplain the learning
processes involved in acquiring a second
language and in this sense it is first and
foremost a language learning
theory.1The assumption underlying the
theory is that errors are evidence of a
learner's language system, which is not
the system of the target language, but a
system of some ‘other' language. And the
theoretical objective of Error Analysis is
to describe the 'other' language.2.
Some errors can be attributed to
weaknesses or failure of memory
(Gorbet, 1979).He added that the theory
of error
analysis proposes that in order to learn a
language, a person creates a system of
„rules‟ from the language data to which
he is exposed; and this system enable
him to use it.