The error anaysis of English writings of 11th and 12th grade students in foreign language classes

In this study, it is aimed to determine and analyze the errors in English writings of students studying at foreign language departments of Anatolian High Schools. In accordance with this purpose, answers for these questions are sought in this research: "What type of errors do the students studying at 11th and 12th foreign language departments of Anatolian High Schools do in their English writings and how often do they do these errors?, "What are the sources of these errors?" and "How is the difference between 11th and 12th grade students in terms of error type and frequency?" In this qualitative research, case study design was used. Participants are 50 students studying at 11th and 12th foreign language classes in two Anatolian High Schools in Zonguldak in 2018-2019 academic year and they were chosen by criterion sampling method, one of the purposeful sampling methods. The criteria of this research are "to be a student in Anatolian High School", "to be a student at the foreign language class" and "to be 11th or 12th grade student". Two schools determined in this research were chosen because they meet these criteria and they are accessible and affordable. Document analysis method was used to collect the data. The written materials collected were analyzed by qualitative content analysis. As a result of the study, 444 interlingual errors and 619 intralingual errors in students' writings were detected in terms of sources of errors. As to error types, the most common error type is grammatical errors (f=861) and the least common error type is morphologic errors (f=11). It is found out that among grammatical errors, article errors (f=157) are the most frequent ones and missing object (f=5) and active passive verb (f=5) errors are the least frequent ones. In addition, it is concluded that the number of errors made by Anatolian High School 12th grade foreign language class students are more than that of 11th grade students. Language teachers of the students taking part in this research should take into consideration of students' errors detected in this research while planning the teaching process. In addition, it is possible to do more detailed researches by taking students' and teachers' opinions. Key Words: Error; writing; foreign language