The paper titled "Lexical Errors of Third Year Undergraduate Students" by Wafa Ismail Saud focuses on analyzing the types of lexical errors made by third-year English major students at King Khalid University in Saudi Arabia. The primary research question investigates the specific types of lexical errors that occur at both individual and category levels in the students' writing.
The purpose of the study is to identify the common lexical errors in order to help educators address these issues in their teaching. The study particularly aims to enhance students' lexical knowledge and improve their overall language competence, with a specific focus on vocabulary usage.
The methodology involved a quantitative analysis of 30 essays written by female undergraduate students. The essays were assessed based on James’ (1998) taxonomy of lexical errors, which categorizes errors into formal and semantic types. Descriptive statistics were employed to analyze the frequency and mean scores of the errors.
Key findings reveal that the majority of errors were formal rather than semantic. Specifically, the most frequent errors were related to formal mis-selection and distortions, with vowel-based and suffix errors being the most problematic at the individual level. Semantic errors, though less frequent, were primarily due to confusion of sense relations and collocational mistakes.
The study concludes that these lexical errors stem from insufficient practice and a lack of comprehensive vocabulary knowledge. The paper suggests that educators should focus on contextualized vocabulary teaching, provide corrective feedback, and design targeted activities to address these specific errors. Additionally, the study calls for further research, particularly comparative studies between EFL and ESL contexts, to better understand lexical error patterns.