VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES - - PHẠM THỊ LAN PHƢƠNG COMMON ERRORS AND CAUSES OF ERRORS IN PARAGRAPH WRITING TASKS BY E.F.L SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS AT HA HOA TIEN UNIVERSITY (Các lỗi thường gặp nguyên nhân mắc lỗi viết đoạn văn sinh viên Anh văn năm thứ hai trường Đại học Hà Hoa Tiên) M.A MINOR THESIS Field Code : English Teaching Methodology : 6014.0111 Hanoi, 2013 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES - - PHẠM THỊ LAN PHƢƠNG COMMON ERRORS AND CAUSES OF ERRORS IN PARAGRAPH WRITING TASKS BY E.F.L SECOND-YEAR STUDENTS AT HA HOA TIEN UNIVERSITY (Các lỗi thường gặp nguyên nhân mắc lỗi viết đoạn văn sinh viên Anh văn năm thứ hai trường Đại học Hà Hoa Tiên) M.A MINOR THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 6014.0111 Supervisor: Dr NGUYỄN ĐỨC HOẠT Hanoi, 2013 i DECLARATION I, Phạm Thị Lan Phương, certify my authorship of the study report entitled “Common Errors and their Causes in Paragraph Writing Tasks by E.F.L Students at Ha Hoa Tien University” is the result of my own research for the degree of Master of Arts at University of Languages & International Studies-VNU, Ha Noi, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Phạm Thị Lan Phƣơng ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ****** I would like to express my thanks to many people who have assisted me when I carried out the research To my supervisor, Dr Nguyễn Đức Hoạt, I owe a special debt of gratitude for his profound knowledge, helpful support and enthusiasm which are of utmost importance to the achievement of my study I would like to convey my thanks to all my teachers of Postgraduate Studies Department who have supported me with a lot of knowledge I also would like to thank all my colleagues for their invaluable comments and assistance during the time I was completing my study My special thanks also go to the students in groups of DA5 and DAC5 for their willingness to participate in writing tasks Without their helps, this study could not have been so successful I owe a great debt of gratitude to my husband who has constantly inspired and encouraged me to complete this research Last but not least, I wish to thank my readers for their interests and comments on this thesis iii ABSTRACT ***** This paper studies the common written errors in paragraph writing made by second year English major students in Ha Hoa Tien University and the causes of these errors To achieve the desired aims of the current study, the author combined both qualitative and quantitative methods, including two main instruments namely analyzing student writing analysis and personal interviews The subjects participating in the research were 19 second year EFL students in Foreign Language Faculty in Ha Hoa Tien, a private University in Ha Nam Research results show that errors second year EFL students often make are basically due to the lack of vocabulary and problems with understanding basic grammatical rules in English The main causes of these errors are the interference of mother tongue, carelessness, overgeneralization, incomplete application of rules and ignorance of rule restriction, in which interference from the first language is the major cause iv TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENTS iv LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii PART I: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale of the study Objectives of the study Research questions Scope of the study Significance of the study Structures of the thesis PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Writing and paragraph writing 1.2 Definitions of errors 1.3 Errors versus mistakes 1.4 Error classification 1.5 Causes of errors 1.6 Previous study 14 CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 14 2.1 Research setting 14 2.2 Data collection instruments 14 2.2.1.Student writing tasks 14 2.2.2 Interviews 15 2.3 Procedure of data collection 15 2.4 Data analysis 19 CHAPTER III: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 21 v 3.1 Common errors made by second year EFL students in HHT 21 3.2 Causes of errors made by second year EFL students in HHT 31 PART III: CONCLUSION 37 Summary of the study 37 Limitations and further studies 37 Recommendations 38 REFERENCES 40 APENDIX ix vi LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES List of tables Page Table 2.1 Error marking symbols 16 Table 2.2 Error classification 17 Table 2.3 Identification of error causes 19 Table 3.1 Number and frequency of errors in paragraph writing by 22 types and by groups Table 3.2 Frequencies of each error types 23 Table 3.3 Numbers of errors per causes 31 Table 3.4 The popularity of each kind of causes to students' common written 32 errors List of fingures Figure 3.1 Frequency of errors in paragraph writing by groups 22 Figure 3.2 Frequencies of each error types 24 Figure 3.3 The popularity of each kind of causes to students' common written 32 errors vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a Foreign Language HHT: Ha Hoa Tien University EFL: Learning English as a Foreign Language L1: First Language L2: Second Language SVA: Subject-Verb Agreement CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Rationale of the study Writing skill plays an important role in learning English and is considered most difficult skill to be acquired A proficient writing ability in second language enhances students’ logical way of thinking, thus facilitating students in meeting the requirements of almost every profession However, to attain the proficiency in writing has long been a challenge consuming much energy and practice for almost second language learners In effect, many Vietnamese teachers and researchers have been seeking new and effective methods to improve their teaching with the hope of predicting and preventing errors before they appear Nevertheless, they pay much more concern to why Vietnamese learners commit errors and how to prevent or reduce these errors Nowadays, there are many private universities opened in Viet Nam and the real quality of students in these universities raised a big question to both educators and the Government As a teacher at Ha Hoa Tien University, the author recognizes English major students’ weaknesses in using English, especially in writing skill One of the most challenging tasks facing both the EFL learners and teachers is to find out common mistakes and their causes in order to avoid possible mistakes or errors in writing To find effective solutions to the above problem, the author has decided to the research on “Common Errors and Their Causes in Paragraph Writing Tasks by EFL Students at Ha Hoa Tien University” It is hoped that the results of this study will be really useful for both teachers and students in teaching and learning writing skill in particular and in improving their writing ability Objectives of the study The objectives of the study are: 32 G2: Noun errors G5: Sentence structure errors G3: Article errors G6: Mechanical errors Causes of written errors Number of errors Percentage of occurrence Mother tongue interference 27 45% Carelessness 13 22% Overgeneralization 10 17% Ignorance of rule restrictions 8% Incomplete application of rules 8% Total 60 100% Table 3.4: The popularity of each kind of causes to students' common written errors Figure 3.3 The popularity of each kind of causes to students' common written errors From table 3.3, figure 3.3 and table 3.4 we can see that mother tongue interference is the causes for all groups of errors It also accounts for the highest percentage of all errors, 27 errors or 45% of all answers Table 3.4 also reveals both carelessness is the second causes in students’ writing errors (22%) The third is overgeneralization Both incomplete application of rules and ignorance of rule restriction rank the least (8%) 3.2.2 Discussion 33 With a view to address the second research question "What are the major causes of these errors?", the researcher would like to analyze the major causes written errors made by second-year students at HHT university basing on the theoretical background as presented in chapter I combined with qualitative data gained from learner interview to find out the causes to students' common errors As being written before, the researcher has identified five major causes, that is, mother tongue interference, overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restrictions, incomplete application of rules and carelessness The detailed discussion and justification of each cause is provided as follow 3.2.2.1 Mother tongue interference As mentioned in chapter I, mother tongue interference means that students carry the characteristics of their native language into the second language learning They have the trend of applying the grammatical rules of their native language into the target one Moreover, the translation, especially word-by-word translation is the most significant cause which leads to the wrong order of word, wrong verb form, wrong use of prepositions and conjunctions in a sentence Firstly, Vietnamese students are often confused with the order of words in such a way like this “ I very like music ” That is caused by translating word-by-word Thus, misordering is accountable by the contrasting nature of the two languages Having a look at these examples: (40) The weather is not awesome very much (The weather is not very awesome) (41) After working hard a day, we were all tired ( After a hard-working day, we were all tired) In (40), the compound adjective was misplaced as in Vietnamese, adjectives as modifiers go after the head noun In (41), the adverb of degree is to be placed before adjectives This is contrasting to the Vietnamese order where the adverb of degree is optional The sentences can be rewritten as follows: 34 Secondly, it is agreed that ellipsis in Vietnamese is more likely to occur within the sentence for the sake of language economy, and the context of situation is more relied on the Vietnamese speaker than by the English speaker (42) The living condition in your house is more convenient than in the hostel Điều kiện sống nhà thoải mái (điều kiện sống) ký túc xá (43) English grammar is very strange, which is different from in Vietnamese Ngữ pháp tiếng Anh khác lạ, điều khác với (điều) tiếngViệt The difference is that in (42), the compared subject in English is elliptic whereas in Vietnamese the subject including the preposition is omitted leading the Vietnamese students to go wrong In the same manner in (43), the pronoun is obligatorily used in English while being elliptic in Vietnamese Lastly, students commonly use "and, so, sometimes" at the beginning of a sentence and they use these conjunctions as preceding elements of an independent sentence although they must be used in subordinating clause instead That is because in Vietnamese, such conjunctions/ connectives can be used at the beginning of a sentence and serve as an introduction of an independent sentence For example: (44) I feel very tired and I want to return my house So I like living in my house (45)Sometimes, we can talk about life, study, love 3.2.2.2 Overgeneralization Overgeneralization is concerned about noun number and subject- verb agreement Students overgeneralize the rule that every expression of quality which is used to denote "plurality" will be followed by a plural noun Therefore, they would see that "every" also denotes a plurality concept and it should be followed by plural nouns For instance, students commit errors like "every years, every activities" Moreover, students are taught to add "s" into plural nouns so that they apply this rule to all nouns even uncountable nouns Hence, it is common to encounter such errors as "importances, seafoods and foods." Additionally, the structure "there +to be + 35 Noun" causes misunderstanding to students because they think that any elements at the beginning of a sentence should be the subject and the number of verbs are supposed to be in accordance with the number of subject Thus, they may see that "there" belongs to a singular subject and it must go with a singular noun In fact, the number of the verb should be based on the nearest noun following it For example: (46) There is few kinds of film that all people like (47) There is few interesting books found in the library 3.2.2.3 Ignorance of rule restrictions Ignorance of rule restrictions is related to wrong word or word choice in lexical items and prepositions usage In particular, students often ignore the restriction of contexts where rules are applied they produce the wrong form or structure For example, instead of using the verb "cover" to express area, students use "to be", "give" for "take", or "useful" is used to refer to things but they use it to describe people Such sentences are: (48) We should give some measures to avoid it (49) People here are very useful Beside lexical items, ignorance of rule restriction also results from students' analogy which can be found out in their wrong use of preposition For instance, students are taught the phrases "speak to somebody" or "come to school" and as a result, there is a tendency for students to use "tell to somebody" and "come to there" 3.2.2.4 Incomplete application of rules As mentioned in chapter I, incomplete application of rules deals with students' ability to apply rules into contexts Although they have been taught that language rules many times, they fail to apply them This cause of written errors is connected with verb tense, verb form and article usage In terms of verb tense, students have problem with the use of the past simple tense They learn that the past simple tense is used to express an action which happened and finished in the past However, in their actual writing, they use this tense to describe the fact (50) Last week, I visited Da Lat… The weather here was cool during four seasons 36 Verb form usage is also problematic to students They misunderstand about the use of verb bare infinitive and V-ing For the last one- article usage, there is a widespread trend that students omit articles where they need or add articles to wherein they not need To illustrate, articles are necessary to precede the only things, defined things, singular nouns or stand in the superlative of adjective However, students omit the articles in these cases such as Hanoi- (the) capital of Vietnam, (a) peaceful and beautiful place On the contrary, students may add articles "the" before proper nouns such as the Da Lat, the Sahara This may be explained that there are a variety of rules for students to learn and apply in English so that if they not have chance to practice, they can not remember all 3.2.2.5 Carelessness Carelessness is concerned about word spelling in lexical items According to the data collected from students' actual writing, careless is the most significant cause It reaches the 22% of students' written errors, ranks the second in error causes Students even make spelling mistakes with familiar words they use every day That may be because they write unconsciously or because of Vietnamese morphological system corresponding with its phonological systems It means that they write the words as how it is read For example: Mistakes with familiar words: abuat (about), more over (moreover), improstant (important), in facts (in fact), enviroment (environment), fist (first), buil (build), beautifun (beautiful), peacefull, peaful (peaceful), entertainm (entertain), delicous (delicious), bussies (busiest), tress (trees), nowaday (nowadays) On the whole, the above analysis of the actual causes to students' common written errors has drawn out a panorama on the research problem This analysis has provided detailed description of the five major causes to students' written errors involving mother tongue interference, overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restrictions, incomplete application of rules and carelessness 37 PART III CONCLUSION Summary of the study The study has collected some important information from the students’ writings Some findings worthy of discussion are: Firstly, the study reveals the most frequent error types the students made The errors are basically grammatical The greatest number of errors that occurred in this study belong to six categories: word choice or lexical errors, verb errors, sentence structure errors, article errors, mechanical errors and noun errors Verb errors consist of verb tense errors, SVA errors and verb form errors Lexical errors consist of errors in word choice or word form, preposition errors, pronoun errors and spelling errors only included if the misspelling resulted in an actual English word All errors in the sentence or clause boundaries (sentence structure errors) are word order, run-ons, comma splices, fragments, and other unidiomatic sentence constructions Article errors are all errors related to article omission, article redundancy or wrong articles Mechanical errors are errors in which the students used wrong, omitted or unnecessary conjunctions or connectives, wrong punctuation and wrong capitalization Noun errors are errors in plural or singular nouns and in possessive ending While the overall error rates help the researcher understand the students’ overall performance, the specific errors the participants made frequently make help to clarify what the students’ learning difficulties are Secondly, from the students’ interview, the main causes of these errors are investigated They are the interference of mother tongue, carelessness, overgeneralization, ignorance of rule restrictions and incomplete application of rules Among them, the interference of mother tongue is the prevailing cause In conclusion, making errors is inevitable in language learning process Studying the learner language in terms of errors and causes of these errors are necessary to teachers and learners in their foreign language teaching and learning process The limitations of the study and further study 38 2.1 Limitations Although the researcher has made great efforts to carry out the study, the study has got certain restrictions due to the shortage of time, lack of reference materials as well as the limited knowledge of the researcher Firstly, the study just collected 19 papers from 19 students in HHT university for error analysis and 60 errors interviewed That is only a small number Therefore, the results of the research may be less convincing Secondly, the criteria for classifying errors and causes of errors are too complicated How to classify one error correctly? One error can belong to more than one cause However, for the study objectives, the author classify one error in one specific class according to teachers’ marking That means there may be some unpredictably incorrect results Moreover, each error is classified into only one cause category This means that the results of the research cannot reflect and detect thoroughly all kinds of errors and all causes of these errors which the students may commit Thirdly, the study could not be conducted on the same students at their different period of their learning process 2.2 Suggestions for further studies Although the findings are useful in some ways as indicated, it is important to continue the investigation of errors and error corrections in the future under the following communicative domains: Firstly, making errors is unavoidable fact in learning process and each teacher has his/her own way of corrections Therefore, errors and error correction are always new objects for our study Secondly, as in the research the subjects are writings of 19 second year English major students at HHT university, it would be more clear if we study errors made by the same students who are major in other fields such as Economics, Banking or Technology and so on 39 Thirdly, the researcher could not study the errors made by the same students in their different periods of their learning process Hence, it would be more interesting to see their errors in their different periods of their learning process and further research should be on reading errors, oral errors and listening errors as well Recommendations According to this study, the second - year students in English Department at HHT university face a lot of problems in writing, especially problem with learning grammar rules In order to achieve effectiveness in writing, the following points should be paid more attention to: First of all, it is necessary to raise students’ awareness of the importance of grammar in writing Before leaning writing, students should attend a course in basic grammar Second, among the causes leading to the students’ errors, the influence of mother tongue is a major one In order to reduce this kind of errors, it is necessary to have students recognize the differences between the usages of English and Vietnamese in thinking and writing Simultaneously, teachers should analyze how a certain first language interference error comes about by carefully explaining the differences between the two languages in term of the particular features Regarding the writing rules, it is necessary to raise student’s awareness of problems they often face writing a paragraph and have them correct their own errors It is obvious that the most important thing to is practicing writing The students need to write in class and at home It would be very useful to increase the number of exercises and activities for writing Consequently, students can develop their skill of writing and for self-correction In terms of error correction, it is crucial that error correction should be carried out frequently Teachers of writing should use different techniques of correction flexibly and effectively because simply presenting the data repeatedly and going through the same set of drills and exercises can make students bored Besides, 40 effective error correction requires that the teacher understands the source of the errors in order to provide appropriate remedy, which will resolve the learners’ problems and allow them to discover the relevant rules However, for correcting written works, it is better that the teachers would not correct the students’ errors directly but should put marks indicating there is something wrong with that sentence, word or punctuation Moreover, team work in class is implemented so that students would have to practice together for their presentations in groups on their tasks and correct each other’s errors In addition, students are also expected to take responsibility for their own learning and become aware of their own strategies They are also often encouraged to carry out self-evaluation in order to further their learning and regulate their language learning and language using skill To sum up, knowledge of error analysis is helpful for language performance It also improves a process of teaching and learning writing It is clear that students’ ability to communicate in writing will be better if they recognize how to avoid errors effectively and how to arrange information logically It is hoped that the results of this thesis can be of some help not only for students to be aware of the importance of writing in English so that they can improve their writing skills but also for teachers of English to develop effective measures for teaching the English writing skill 41 REFERENCES Alice Oshima and Ann Hogue, introduced by Le Thanh Tam and Le Ngoc Phuong Anh (2004), Writing Academic English, 3rd edition, p 257-258 Allwright, R L (1975), Problems in the study of the language teachers' treatment of learner error, Introduced by M K Burt & H Dulay (Eds.), New directions in second language learning, teaching and bilingual education: 9th TESOL convention (p 96-106) Washington, DC: TESOL Cunning Worth (1987) Principles of Language Learning and Teaching New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc Brown, D.B (1994) Principles of Language Learning and Teaching Third Edition New Jersey: Prentice Hall Regents Byrne, D (2000) Teaching writing skills Longman Handbooks for Language Teachers Longman: London Choon, T (1993) “Error analysis and correction of written work in the classroom” The English Teacher Vol XXII Clenton, J (2006) Academic Writing: towards an integrated approach Sussex Language Institute http://www.sussex.ac.uk/languages/documents/academicwritingessay.pdf Corder, S (1967) The significance of learners’errors International Review of applied Linguistics, pp.161-70 Corder, S.P (1973) Error analysis The Edinburgh Course in applied linguistics Oxford: Oxford University Press 10 Corder, S P (1974) Error Analysis, Introduced by J P B Allen and S Pit Corder (eds.) Techniques in Applied Linguistics , London: Oxford University Press , 122-154 11 Corder, S.pit (1975) Error analysis, Paper in Applied Linguistics, Vol5 London: OUP 12 Dulay, Heidi C & Marina K Burt (1974), Natural sequences in child second language acquisition.” Language learning 24(1):37–53 42 13 Dulay, H., Burt, M & Krashen, S (1982), Language Two , Oxford University Press, New York, 110,138-139 15 Etherton, A.R.B Error analysis: problems and procedures English Language Teaching Journal Vol 32, No.1, Oct 1977 16 Ferris, D R (1999) The case for grammar correction in L2 writing classes: A response to Truscott (1996) Journal of Second Language Writing, 8, 1–10 17 Ferris, D R (2001) Treatment of error in second language student writing Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 18 Ferris, D R 2003 Response to Student Writing: Implications for Second Language Students Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates 19 Flower, L S., & Hayes, J R (1984) A cognitive process theory of writing College Composition and Communication, 16, 32, 365-387 20 Geogre, H.V Common Errors in Language Learning Rowley, Mass: Newbury House, 1972, 1-45 21 Hendrickson, J M (1980) The treatment of error in writing work In S McKay (Ed.), Composing in a second language (145-159) Rowley MA: Newbury House Publishers 22 Jackobovits, Leon A (1969), Language Learning, Volume 19, Issue 1-2, 55-56 23 James, C (1998) Errors in Language Learning and Use Addison Wesley Longman Limited 24 Klassen, J (1991), Bates et al (1993), Igram and King (1996), introduced by Le Thanh Tam and Le Ngoc Phuong Anh (2004), Writing Academic English, 3rd edition 25 Lado, R (1957) Linguistics across cultures: Applied linguistics for language teachers University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor 26 Norrish, J (1983), Language learners and their errors London: Macmillan 27 Norrish, J (1992) Language Learning and their Errors London: Macmillan Publisher Ltd 43 28 Richards, J.C and G.P Sampson (1971) The study of learner English In J.C Richards (ed.) Error Analysis Perspectives on second language acquisition, p 3-36 29 Richards, J.C ed (1989) Error Analysis: Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition London: Longman 30 Sardegna, V G., and Slutsky, J (2009) The practiced business writer: An ESL/EFL handbook Briefings Media, LLC 31 Selinker, L (1974) Interlanguage In Richards, J (Ed.) Error analysis: Perspectives on Second Language Acquisition 31-54 Essex: Longman 32 Tribble, C (1996) Writing Oxford: Oxford University Press 33 Ur, P (2003) Unit five: Giving Feedback on Writing A course in Language Teaching - Practice and Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 34 Verma, Gajendra K and Mallick, Kanka (1999), Researching education: Perpective and techniques, Falmer Press (London and Philadelphia, PA) 35 Walz, Joel C 1982 Error Correction Techniques for the Foreign Language Classroom Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics, p 35 I APPENDIX SOME TIPICAL ERRORS COLLECTED IN STUDENT WRITING TASKS N0 Code Error sentences Type of errors (1) [13-3] Vt (2) [18-2] (3) [15-15] When I arrived at Lao Cai, I was very happy because my relatives warmly welcome me “Bong dung muon khoc” is the most interesting film I see When I want to meet my parents, I went home (4) [16.4] My mother teach us work good matter agr (5) [9.11] Smokers has to spend on amount of money agr (6) [3.15] My mother help me understand about the life agr (7) [10.2] vf (8) [3-5] After finish two important exam, my class decided to celebrate … I’ m a student live far from home (9) [10-9] In Do Son, there are a big casino I wish I can enter it vf (10) [5-3] I have many chances to improve my knowledge in every fields pl (11) [16-6] There are four peoples in my family Pl (12) [4-2] One of the bad habit I have is sleeping late Pl (13) [15.14] (14) [2.4] When I live in^ hostel, I feel a few comfortable art (15) [10.5] After a hour of sitting on the bus, finally we arrived art (16) [17-8] I spend for hours a day listening English songs prep (17) [2.8] I lived in the hostel^ years prep (18) [17-15] He gave to me some new CDs prep The main character name is Linh Lan Vt vt vf poss II It is different with living in a house (19) [2-5] prep (20) [14-12] The cat alway find way to catch Jerry sp (21) [15-6] She is a beutifun girl sp (22) [17-6] I like readinh books at my room sp (23) [2-11] I felt a few uncomfortable wc (24) [13-5] wc (25) [6-12] pro (26) [7-16] We concentrated at the school gate and waited for the bus A country wants to develop it economy It must use English fluently She told the wallet is her (27) [8-7] Romeo is a man very strong and intelligent wo (28) [8-16] He lives a family poor wo (29) [4-9] exp (30) [6-16] Jackson is a collection of children children in the family of bring Jackson The aim of it, the first; entering universities (31) [8-14] After, they takes up love each other exp (32) [14-1] One of the film I love best is Tom and Jerry this film was written by William Hanna and made in Hollywood USA Ro (33) [18-7] Quoc is the young boy, was born in rich family he doesn’t study hard P (34) [18-1] I have seen many films, I like best “Bong Dung Muon Khoc” It’s very good and interesting, the film was made in Viet Nam It is a love story film, it tell life’s of “Thanh Truc” she is very poor, she always buy books to sell for every one in the park on every day Cs (35) [11-3] After several years wind and waves frag (36) [9-5] Smoking is bad habit which I hate the best Because, it can make smoker’s health get worse frag pro exp III (37) [18-10] She live with step, mother P (38) [12-3] This film was written by William and made in hollywood Cap (39) [2-7] Conj (40) [3-2] Although living in the hostel is very noisy, sometimes I feel uncomfortable The weather is not awesome very much (41) [2-18] After working hard a day, we were all tired wo (42) [2-16] The living condition in your house is more convenient than in the hostel exp (43) [6-10] exp (44) [6-15] English grammar is very strange, which is different from in Vietnamese I feel very tired and I want to return my house So I like living in my house (45) [6-19] Sometimes, we can talk about life, study, love conj (46) [12-1] There is few kinds of film that all people like agr (47) [2-8] There is few interesting books found in the library agr (48) [10-12] We should give some measures to avoid it ww (49) [13-11] People here are very useful ww (50) [13-3] (51) [1-10] (52) [1-19] (53) [9-11] Last week, I visited Da Lat… The weather here was cool during four seasons Although living in the hostel very noisy, sometimes I feel uncomfortable When I was sick or sad, my parents as a god makes me happy Smokers have to spend on amount of money to buy cigarettes (54) [6-15] My English improve much thanks to learn with foreign teachers Vf (55) [7-4] My English progress better thanks to practice English everyday Vf Wo conj vt Wc Wc exp ... English major at Ha Hoa Tien University in writing paragraphs  to find out possible causes of common errors made by second -year EFL students in paragraph writing tasks at Ha Hoa Tien University. .. WRITING TASKS BY E.F.L SECOND -YEAR STUDENTS AT HA HOA TIEN UNIVERSITY (Các lỗi thường gặp nguyên nhân mắc lỗi viết đoạn văn sinh viên Anh văn năm thứ hai trường Đại học Hà Hoa Tiên) M.A MINOR... Paragraph Writing Tasks by EFL Students at Ha Hoa Tien University? ?? It is hoped that the results of this study will be really useful for both teachers and students in teaching and learning writing skill