• Vicente J. Leuterio

  Author

• Trixie E. Cubillas

  Author

The study aimed to determine and analyze the common errors committed by the grade six pupils in writing essays in English in accordance to Corder‘s linguistic levels namely; graphological, lexico-semantic and grammatical. It also aimed to determine the error density index of the pupils and the challenges they met in writing essay in English. It made use of a mixed method design and it utilized the corpus-based method where the primary sources of data were the essay compositions of the pupils. There were 79 pupils who participated in writing essay composition based on theme provided by the researchers. The findings of this study revealed that the frequency of errors committed by the grade six pupils in essays in English fell on the graphological level obtaining a total of 2, 177 error counts or 43% of the total number of errors. Grammatical level is second in rank obtaining 1, 974 counts or 39% of the total number of errors. While lexico-semantic level has obtained 911 counts or 18% of the total number of errors. For the level of Error Density Index (EDI), results revealed that majority of the grade six pupils‘ level is ‗very problematic‘ which implied that the density of errors committed by the pupils is very alarming. As to the challenges met by the pupils in writing essay in English, pupils‘ lack of vocabulary, Mother tongue interference, lack of writing activities, and textbooks were identified. These factors have contributed to the grade six pupils‘ errors committed in writing essay in English as justified by the responses of the pupils and teachers in the interview. Thus, a Strategic Intervention Material (SIM) is designed by the researchers which may be used by teachers to improve the essay writing skills of their pupils.

• pdf