Common errors in writing journals of the English major students at Ho Chi Minh City Open University Author - Affiliation: Pham Vu Phi Ho - Ho Chi Minh City Open University , Vietnam Pham Ngoc Thuy Duong - The National College of Education Ho Chi Minh City , Vietnam Corresponding author: Pham Vu Phi Ho - ho.pham@ou.edu.vn

Abstract

Students’ writing problems are always a primary concern of instructors in writing classrooms, and to know the common errors which frequently occur on students’ writing papers is usually what the writing instructors have conducted in the classrooms. However, no research study has been conducted at the Faculty of Foreign languages at HCMC Open University to investigate into this aspect. The purpose of the current study is to investigate the common written errors on students’ writing journals and to see whether the extensive writing helps enhance students’ writing fluency. 115 first year English-major students participated in this study. They composed five writing journals every week during the course of 15 weeks. Each student composed 62 writing journals in total. The study found that four most common errors frequently occur in students’ writing journals are relating to tenses, collocations, spellings, and verb forms. Also, the current study confirms that the extensive writing practices effect the students’ writing fluency in terms of length of writing. The results of the study help the writing instructors at the local setting with the facts of their students’ writing problems in order to improve the writing practices in the writing classrooms. Particularly, the finding of this study confirms the effects of extensive writing so that the instructors and students could take this issue into their practices beyond the classrooms.