Error Analysis in Role-play Presentations among Less Proficient L2 Malaysian Learners

Abstract

The speaking skill in non-native language has been the subject of investigations in recent years (Hojati, 2013). The present study examines errors in the speech of less proficient speakers of English during their role-play presentations. The samples were obtained during their enrolment in Foundation English class, a class where those who scored low during English Placement Test registered. The errors in their speech were analysed by following surface structure taxonomy that specifies four types of errors namely misformation, misordering, addition and omission. Findings indicate that omission accounted for the majority of errors identified and this is followed by misformation, addition and misordering. In addition, linguistic descriptions of errors identified verb form and word form to be the most frequent types of errors committed by speakers