LANGUAGE ERRORS IN FOREIGN STUDENT WRITING: A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Malaysia's aspiration to become a regional hub for higher education is becoming a reality with the number of international students growing from year to year. The presence of foreign students to some extent shows the world confidence towards Malaysian education system, whether at public or private universities. Mastery of Malay language among these students is very important in the communication process either oral or written form. With good command of Malay language, they will be able to interact more easily, especially in dealing with the administration and also in their on campus learning process. In order to improve the effectiveness of teaching Malay language to the foreign students,a study should be conducted to identify the problems they encounter in learning the language. Therefore, this study was undertaken to identify the types of language mistakes often made by the foreign students in their writing. In addition, the study also identified the problems and constraints they faced in learning the Malay language. Respondents of the study were fifteen foreign students from various countries who were taking MPW2023 National Language Course at Insaniah University College. Essays written by these students were analyzed to identify language errors in terms of morphology and syntax. The data were analyzed using frameworks established by Nik Safiah Karim, M. Farid Onn, Hashim Musa and Abdul Hamid Mahmood (2011). Based on the analysis, various language errors which include the use of affixes, code mixing, conjunctions, prepositions and sentences have been discovered.

Keywords: language errors, foreign students, higher education, writing, Malay/National language