Types of Pragmalinguistic Errors in the Essays of Egyptian University EFL Learners

Abstract

This research aims at investigating the types of pragmalinguistic errors (a sub-category of pragmatics) in the writings of EFL learners, the causes that contribute to such errors, and the frequencies of pragmalinguistic errors in different levels of language proficiency. This research also provides illustrations for the misunderstanding -caused by pragmalinguistic errors- which may occur, inadvertently, due to conveying unintended/wrong meaning to the reader. In this respect, 92 essays written by university EFL learners in Cairo, Egypt were analyzed for the aforementioned purposes. The errors were checked by four English native speakers for reliability purposes and for confirming the inappropriateness of the errors. The qualitative analyses of the findings reveal that the types of pragmalinguistic errors found were Erroneous Construction of Sentences, Arabic Construction of Sentences and Lexical Errors. On the other hand, the quantitative analyses of the findings reveal that pragmalinguistic errors are mostly attributed to L1 transfer and inappropriate language use. Moreover, some of the pragmalinguistic errors which were detected in the writings of EFL learners occurred with higher frequency in the writings of intermediate-level students than in the writings of advanced-level ones whereas some other pragmalinguistic errors occurred with comparable frequencies; in both cases, the differences between intermediate- and advanced-level students did not reach a statistical significance.