This presentation was given by Robert Bushong and Florin Mihai at the Sunshine State TESOL 34th Annual Convention in Orlando on May 12, 2012. It was based on a study in which the presenters identified errors common among advanced level ESL writers at the intensive English program at the University of Central Florida.

1. How Advanced Is Advanced?
Identifying the Top Five Errors
in High-Level ESL Writing
Robert W. Bushong II
ESL Instructor
Center for Multilingual Multicultural Studies, UCF
rwbushong@yahoo.com
Dr. Florin Mihai
Assistant Professor
MATESOL Program, UCF
Florin.Mihai@ucf.edu PowerPoint
Presentation
Sunshine State TESOL 34th Annual Convention, Orlando May 12, 2012

2. Outline
• Statement of the Problem
• Research Question
• Context & Study Design
• Findings & Pedagogical Implications

3. What Is an Error?
“Errors are morphological, syntactic, and lexical forms that
deviate from rules of the target language, violating the
expectations of literate adult native speakers” (Ferris, 2011, p. 3).

4. Research Question
What are the most frequent errors among
students enrolled in an advanced ESL writing
course?

5. Context & Study Design
• Center for Multilingual Multicultural Studies at UCF
• 350–500 students enrolled
• Four levels of proficiency
• Majority Arabic L1
• 26 participants
• Two different sections of an advanced level writing
course
• One time writing
• Error Inventory Instrument
• Ten error types

9. Results
• Fragments (6%)
• Comma splices/run-on sentences (4%)
• Subject/verb agreement (6%)
• Tense (5%)
• Wrong word choice (17%)
• Word forms (14%)
• Noun forms (13%)
• Missing words/unnecessary words (16%)
• Articles (13%)
• Prepositions (7%)

10. Top Five Errors
1. Word choice
e.g., Good or bad, everyone has to take decisions.
2. Missing word/unnecessary word
e.g., Children need more (than) one time to learn.
People then understand how does it feels.
3. Word form
e.g., Edison had never went to college.
4. Noun form
e.g., Experience is useful to get a new skill in their
life.
5. Article
e.g., Many people have a useful knowledge.

11. Conclusions
(1) Vocabulary is paramount.
(2) Teach vocabulary explicitly.
(3) Use word lists, such as the General Service List (West, 1953) &
Academic Word List (Coxhead, 2000).
(4) Encourage extensive narrow reading (using one genre or author for
vocabulary repetition).
(5) Raise awareness of cognates when possible.

12. Suggested Readings
Bushong, R. (2010). The academic word list reorganized for Spanish-
speaking English language learners (Unpublished master’s thesis).
University of Central Florida, Orlando.
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34,
213–238.
Ferris, D.R. (2011). Treatment of error in second language writing (2nd
Ed.). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Folse, K.S. (2010). Is explicit vocabulary focus the reading teacher’s job?
Reading in a Foreign Language, 22(1), 139–160.
West, (1953). A general service list of English words. London: Longman,
Green, and Co.