Search

This paper sets out to examine the most common errors in the national test and whether the students make the same errors in English course B as in English course A at Upper Secondary School in Sweden. The method used for this study is quantitative where nine grammatical features are used to count the errors made. Twenty national tests were used to carry out this study; ten national tests are from English course A and the other ten from English course B. Results from all features from English course A are compared with some features from English course B. The results show that the most common errors made in the national test are subject verb agreement and tense. Those two features had also a worsening in the English course B. The genitive errors have also doubled in English course B. The best improvement happened with the capital letters. Other features either stayed the same or improved slightly. One of the solutions for grammatical errors could be that teachers and students pay more attention to it and that the teachers include more grammar in their lessons so that the students have an opportunity to improve.

One of the issues affecting the efficacy of peer revision in the writing classroom is that of the knowledge of peer reviewers. Do peer reviewers have sufficient knowledge of content and language to critique the works of their peer writers? Do they provide feedback on content as much as they do for language? Proponents of social constructivism posit that learners learn best when they are involved in exploring, discovering and transforming their ideas and those of their peers through interaction, negotiation and collaboration. In the writing classroom, student writers and reviewers are given the opportunity to build meaning based on their own experiences. This study examined the types of comments made by Malay ESL peer reviewers and their perceived usefulness towards improving peer writers’ composition. Comments on peer writing were collected from ten upper secondary school peer reviewers for equal number of peer writers through reviewer feedback form, peer conferencing session, reviewer field notes and writers’ multiple drafts. Findings of the study show that peer reviewers were able to provide revisions in both areas of content and language. Additionally, the strategies used to providing feedback on content included alteration and reordering, clarification and suggestion, as well as praise and criticism. Overall peer revision has a positive impact on writing and this has implications for teaching and learning, more so for teachers who are overburdened with marking.

The purpose of this study was to investigate student difficulties, common errors and misconceptions in solving simple linear algebraic equations within a group of students (n = 217) from four different schools. The results suggest that the students in lower achievement groups have conceptual problems and mal-rules, some of which might be considered as misconceptions. In general, students in the middle and higher achievement levels did arithmetical and computational errors.